Once Loved, Twice Marked

Death of my Childhood

The night the rogues attacked my father was running late coming home from a warrior meeting at the packhouse. We had a small cabin by a clearing a few miles inland from the edge of the pack lands. My mother was tucking me into bed when they broke in. Nicole Shaw, my mother, was a fighter and did her best to defend me but she was no match for the male rogue werewolves. I still remember the terror in her face as she shoved me in the closet, telling me to hide. How she begged them when they broke down the door to my bedroom. Their laughter as the two rogues stalked into the room, striking her and taunting her would haunt my nightmares. I don’t know what their exact intentions were, but it hadn’t been hard to guess when they threw her on the bed and started shredding her clothing. A third rogue came in and dragged me from the closet. I came out kicking and screaming, terrified but wanting them to get off my mother.

“Child’s meat is so much sweeter” he snarled while opening his jaws, revealing sharp teeth. I had panicked and shoved my fingers in his eyes just like my father had taught me. I was in the process of crawling away when my father burst into the room, shifting into his massive russet-colored wolf at the site of the rogues. He went for the one trying to grab me again first. The man’s eyes were still healing, and my father was able to rip his head from his body with ease. He had turned to the two attempting to ravage my mother and tore the one on the side of the bed closest to the closet apart first. By that time the last rouge had pinned my mother against his chest with one arm and had his other arm wrapped around her neck, jaw firmly grasped in his massive hand. I will never forget the sickening crunch as he snapped my mother’s neck. The moment she died my father had crumpled to the floor from the pain of the mate bond breaking. The man used that opportunity to shift and attack my father. The battle was short but bloody. In the end, my father avenged the death of his mate by ripping out the other wolf’s throat but the injuries he sustained himself were too critical. He saved me but at the cost of my own life. After my father died his wolf shifted back. My aunt came in only a few minutes after. I will never forget the look of shock on her face and the way she screamed over my father’s body. She took me that night and ran. She spent every day after that telling me how it was my fault that my parents were dead. That I had led the rouges to the house, and they must have been there to take me for being such a horrible child. I endured her mental abuse without comment and when she couldn’t get a reaction out of me that way she turned to physical violence. Drinking was an everyday occurrence. We spent most of our time moving from one run-down shitty motel to the next. I don’t know why she didn’t abandon me. I feel like I would have fared better if she did. I think she saw some portion of my father in me and she just couldn’t snuff out her last connection to him.  Things took a turn around my 13th birthday. We were at a quick-stop convenience store so she could restock on alcohol. A man had started following me. It had weirded me out, so I went to my aunt and stuck close to her. He followed and struck up a conversation with her. my aunt still had a vague beauty about her, but her youth had been ripped away at that point. She was only thirty-four, but the years of drinking had caught up with her. The man invited her to join him for dinner. After that, it took only two weeks for him to ask her to bring me and come live with him. It turned out he was a werewolf as well and had caught my scent that day in the store. I had been hopeful that he would help her and change her for the better. Maybe it could have been like that under different circumstances, but it turned out that Uncle Felix was no better than my aunt. He was a rogue with a drinking problem as well. He laughed when my aunt hit me, and it wasn’t long before he joined in. I became an outlet for their aggression. I spend the next five years doing my best to avoid them.

 The small town my uncle lived in with a paltry 46 residents turned out to be founded by my uncle and his merry band of rogues. They had found an abandoned ghost town nestled far away from civilization. They took possession of the land from the rightful owner through threats and used it for their own nefarious purposes. I knew for a fact I wasn’t the only one getting abused in this s**t hole. I had tried only once to escape but I hadn’t made it out of the territory before my uncle had dragged me back along with two of his friends. My punishment had been a brutal beating that I barely survived. A mate of one of the rogues happened to be a nurse and she managed to set my bones and stitch me up. My bones had been put back in place and everything stitched up. It had taken a full month to be able to walk again. I knew after that the only way I would be able to get to civilization and far away from them was to steal a vehicle and drive as fast and as far as I could. That or I could shift and run. Which is why I was on my way to my special hiding spot. Today was my 18th birthday. I knew from my years being part of a pack that when a wolf turned 18 the barrier holding their wolf half back would disintegrate and their first shift would initiate. My soul rejoiced that I would be able to leave the custody of my aunt and her hellacious husband. The thought made my heart speed up and I quickened my pace, eager to get to my sanctuary and start my new life.