Scarlett's Light

Chapter 4

The same morning, Reynold took his time looking over the map of Sokireon that he had laid out on his desk. He couldn’t shake the feeling of worry he had for Scarlett on her journey home. He also couldn’t shake the need to see her again. He started his search at Skarsguard, then scanned north of that and the only thing that far north was the Black Mountains. One of the biggest, most important, and most dangerous pack of werewolves was located that far north. He packed his bag quickly, planning to take off as soon as he was done helping Harrison.

They met in the garage and take Harrison’s truck down to Skarsguard. A part of Reynold hoped Scarlett never actually left the small town and that they’ll run into each other once more. As they get closer, they both could they smelled what seemed like the pungent and bitter scent of burning wood, fish, and plastic. They could see a mountainous, black cloud of smoke. Skarsguard has been set aflame and the smell of blood and sickeningly, sweet smell of burning bodies began to blend into the scent of burning builds. Reynold slowly go off his Terracorsa and just stood there in silent shock. He watched as every happy memory he had left burned to ashes and carried away by the wind. Harrison slapped his back to get him out of the trance he was in. “Reynold, we have to go in and find survivors!” Harrison yells over he sounds of the rampaging fire and collapsing buildings. They call for reinforcements to stop the fire, grab their respirators and run into the town to look for survivors.

As they begin to split up, they hear a little girl’s scream come from a house nearby, Harrison runs toward the house while Reynold goes farther into town. He comes across the flower shop as it crumbles to the ground, he keeps going until he reaches the town square where he finds he same man he had dueled a week before, crucified, and mangled, he could see the man’s organs. He was living but by a thread that was about to break.

Reynold walks up to him and sees the man has shallow breathing. He had burns across his entire body and was beyond the need for medical attention. “Help… me… please.” The man says with a gruff tone, he couldn’t lift his head. “Reynold!” Harrison yells from a distance.

“Over here!” Reynold responds, “I found a live one! Barely alive…” He adds softening his voice near the end. “Do you know who or what did this destruction?” He asks the man. He takes a deep breath before answering, “werewolves, ashen and white.” He responses. “The omens of the Black Mountains,” Reynold thinks to himself.

“I’m sorry for trying to embarrass you, the devastation was brought upon our town because of…” He takes another deep breath, “my ego and I apologize…” Reynold hears the man exhale his last breathe and watched as his exposed heart beat for the last time. Harrison stares at Reynold in disbelief, “I thought you took care of their problem.” He says with anger starting to reveal itself. “I did.” Reynold says as he turns and walks away, Harrison following behind him.

They walked out of the town in silence, passing the little girl Harrison was able to rescue and several groups of firefighters and other Revenants trying to fight back the flames. “When are we leaving?” Harrison asks quickly after taking off his respirator. Reynold stops and removes his as well and just looks at Harrison. “Not we… me.” He says and keeps walking.

“Reynold, you cannot fight a whole pack of werewolves by yourself.” Harrison says which makes Reynold look at him with distaste. “Okay, you can but this is The White Omens. They are ruthless and whoever their alpha is will be ten times worse. You almost died the last time you went up against a powerful alpha, this one will be even stronger than he.” Harrison explains, desperately trying to change Reynold’s mind.

“This was my fault; I must be the one that fixes this, and I don’t want you involved. Maddie would kill me herself if you got killed on my watch.”

“This isn’t your fault, the werewolf you killed must have been a she-wolf’s mate and they got their revenge.”

“I couldn’t kill her.” Harrison stops dead in his tracks hearing that sentence leave Reynold’s mouth. “Her? What did you do?” He asks. Reynold sighs and hesitates to answer, “she wasn’t creating an actual issue and we may have spent the night together…”

“You f****d a werewolf?” Harrison yells in disbelief. Reynold pushes him into the tree line and covers Harrison’s mouth. “Shut the f**k up or someone will hear you!” Reynold takes his hands off Harrison and takes a deep breath to calm himself. “You hate werewolves, what about this one changed your mind enough to f**k her?” Harrison asks softly, keeping his voice down.

“She… she was different, she didn’t act like most werewolves.” Reynold answers, he looks down at the ground to hide his smirk, “I don’t know what it is exactly, but there was something about her that just didn’t seem right but in a good way.” He adds. Harrison noticed the smirk and started to smile, “you fell for her!” He exclaims quietly.

“No, I didn’t, she is just different to be around. It would be nice to have a partner again.”

“Yeah, one that you can f**k after every mission.” Harrison says sarcastically. Reynold smacks the back of Harrison’s head and keeps walking. Reynold spent the rest of the day preparing to leave. He left around night fall so no one would notice he was gone, he planned for it to take him a week to get from Demir to the Black Mountains. He prepared for the treacherous terrain and the darkness that engulfed the forest covering the mountains.

Once he reached the tree line that stood between him and the pack that called for the execution of a thousand lives the week before, he covered his motorcycle in brush and fallen branches a mile into the forest and set off on foot. He massacred every wolf that was unfortunate enough to cross his path until he reached a wall. He killed the guards in tower he climbed and snuck his way through the small almost ghost like looking town on the other side. He swiftly and silently reached the other side of the town undetected and was met with a massive six story, gated house. It was a decrepit looking palace, though it looked to have not been taken care of and was falling apart, he knew that’s where he would find his target. He searched for flaws within the walls, he finds a hole just big enough for his to squeeze through. Some guards he can evade, the others he had to kill, as he enters the palace, he uses the darkness of it to stay hidden. The place looked like as if it were haunted and unlived in for decades, it was if a royal family used to live here and once the Queen had gone, no one took up her responsibility of keeping it up to date.

He makes up to the sixth floor and is meet with a long hall filled with portraits, “this must be all this pack’s past leaders.” He thinks to himself as he looks quickly at each painting, but one stops him for a moment. This portrait was of a small family, a man in his early twenties, the woman around the same age, she was holding a toddler. He stared specifically at the woman and her child, her emerald eyes and small stature seemed familiar, the child was pale and had dark hair like her mother, but she had neither eye color of her parents, her eyes were scarlet in color. He keeps walking and spots two guards standing outside of a room at the end of the hall. “You must have guards protect you while you sleep? How pathetic.” He kills the guards quickly and keeps his gun out as he knocks on the door. Just as the door begins to open, he forces his way in and put his gun out in front of pointing at what he thought was going to be the alpha of this pack. To his surprise he met with a whimpering and terrified young woman, who was small and pale. Her ice blue eyes bloodshot from sobbing and her long dark chocolate hair a mess from self-neglect.

Reynold stands there stunned at the sight before him and quickly shut the door behind him. He lowers his pistol and stares at Scarlett for a moment, he quickly pulls her into a tight embrace. “I’m so glad you are okay; I’ve been so worried about you.” He says and pulls away from her.

“W-what are you doing here?”

“I’m here to kill your alpha, this room is very extravagant and there were guards outside, I assumed this was his room.” He pauses for a moment and comes to an untrue conclusion, “You’re not his play toy, are you?” He asks becoming angry at the thought.

“Gross, Goddess no, this is my room.” With that answer, Reynold turns to leave.

“I’ll be back, just stay here.” He says and reaches for the doorknob, Scarlett pulls his hand away from it and looks at him with pleading eyes. “Wait, where are you going?” She asks.

“To kill your alpha, he sent an army to destroy my childhood home and sent one thousand people to their graves, he has to die.”

“No, you can’t fight him!”

“I’ve taken on plenty of alphas, I’m sure I can take yours.” Reynold says with smirk.

“No, he’s too strong Reynold and I can’t bare you dying because of my actions too.” Reynold just rolls his eyes and tries again to leave without farther argument. Just as he opens the door slightly. Scarlett forces it shut. “If you leave now, I will go with you.” Scarlett offers without a second thought.

“Why are you protecting your alpha?”

“I’m not, I hate my father, I’m trying to protect you from getting yourself killed.” Reynold begins to think about her offer and looks around her room as he does. He notices the smell of old blood and follows the scent to its source. He pushes open Scarlett’s bathroom door and finds a small pool of blood on the floor and bloody towels. “Where… did he hurt you?” He asks his anger growing quickly.

“It doesn’t matter, let’s leave, please.” Scarlett begs, Reynold sighs.

“Fine, come on,” just as Reynold looks over to her, her eyes begin to glaze over and her body become stiff, but just as quickly it happened it stopped. “We need to go now! Someone found the bodies you left.” Scarlett mentions annoyed, Reynold accepts the fact he couldn’t bother to hide them.

Scarlett takes him out to the balcony, and she begins to climb down the trellis, Reynold on the other hand just jumps down to the ground. “Just let go, I’ll catch you.” He says quietly and Scarlett does so, giving him her trust. He catches her with ease, and she leads him to an unpatrolled path that she used to sneak out of the territory. They evade every warrior they come across and make it to the tree line. They get onto Reynold’s Terracorsa and quickly peel off down the dirt road. They stopped once a day to eat and sleep, Reynold makes and detour to avoid letting Scarlett see the destruction her father caused, and their last stop was city about 5 hours away from Demir. They get a hotel room as it was almost midnight and ordered food, they sat on their separate beds to eat and chat. “When we get to Demir, we are saying that you were a human slave and I rescued you and brought you there because you have no other family. I will help you pay for a small cottage until you can find a job, you’re good at. You will also learn how to fight more like me so you can protect yourself and help if Demir ever gets attacked.” Reynold explains and Scarlett looks at him concerned.

“What about when I need to shift? If I don’t shift, it will harm me and increase the chances of me becoming feral when I finally do.” She asks.

“I’ll take you hunting every two days. While you run about doing whatever, I want to observe you. As much as I despise your species, it fascinates me especially because there no cure for Lycanthropy.” He explains and Scarlett shakes her head in agreement. After they finished eating, they both went to bed, Reynold taking longer to fall asleep than Scarlett. In the middle of the night Reynold wakes up to whimpering and a sniffling sound. He look over at Scarlett and sees she is curled up with her back turned to him, she looked as though she was breathless. He gets up and crawls into Scarlett’s bed and pulls her close, he realized she was crying in her sleep. He holds her a little tighter and after a few minutes she stopped and began to snore softly. He chuckled softly at the sound and felt his heart skip a beat, he was falling more in love with her the longer he is around her and it scared him, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.