To Kill a Werewolf King

Nothing But Black

Chance

My world is nothing but darkness and shades of black. I’ve learned to name the many different shades of black, though I couldn’t tell you if they’re accurate or not.

My father tells me I’m lucky for two reasons and two reasons only. Firstly my mother loves me, and secondly, and undoubtedly most importantly, he already had an heir. He never forgets to mention that if he would have had no heir, he would have drowned me and tried again.me taken to the lake and drowned as a newborn. That doesn’t hurt anymore. Maybe it never did, because he’s been saying it to me since before I even learned how to comprehend what he meant.

My sister, Davina, was born with a more curious, more outgoing, more protective and fiercer wolf than I or any of my cousins had. She was a natural born leader, taking chances and risks that I was too timid to take alone, sometimes even with others. Davina, is an Alpha wolf, and as such, my father’s heir. He couldn’t be prouder of her and he couldn’t be more disappointed in me.

Her Beta, now and once the title is passed on, is our brother Johnathan. He’s the middle child who was once the baby, so he’s got some pent up resentment towards me that he’s never afraid to show… in private. Though everytime Davina catches him, or anyone else bullying me besides Dad, she whips their ass into next Tuesday for it. Our mother is the reason for it, though I know that at this point, it’s also Davina. Our father mostly leaves John alone.

Occasionally, he gets a lecture to leave me alone. It’s usually a disdain filled lecture, which tells me that my mother sought out punishment, not my father. As John got older, he learned that beating me was something I could fight back against, and win. So he changed to taunting me with words and actions that are beyond me.

Thankfully, most of our pack understood the situation, understood my learning difficulties, my preferences, and to stay out of my way, literally. As an Omega wolf, however, I was not immune to bullying from other kids with higher ranking wolves. There were a lot of things that I could not do, a lot of things I had to do entirely differently from other kids, and that’s mostly what spurred the other kids on. That I was different. Jonathan didn’t help and neither did the lack of support from my father.

At 29, I was more than accustomed to it. It never ended, it never would. I knew that. I found my place early in life though. I learned how to become the entertainment, and enjoy it.

Over the years, some of my pranks landed me in some deep s.hit with Davina, my father, multiple schools (until they decided I needed to stay in the pack school or ‘homeschooled’ as the state would say), doctors, human law enforcement, you get the jist. A you name it, and I likely have a story for you kind of life. Which terrified my mother near to death on a few occasions.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I’m blind. Wholly, irrefutably, blind. No, I cannot see the pen you’re holding right in front of my face. No, I can’t see the color of your hair after you’ve dyed it for the fourth time this month. And finally, stop grabbing my arm and telling me to ‘Look!’

I would love to, if it weren’t for the simple fact that, oh, my eyes don’t work.

“So, now that I’ve given you my sob story…” I trail off,tipping my head a bit, listening carefully to the labored breathing of the man in the chair in front of me. Most wolves get excited during torture, their heartbeats racing a mile a minute, pounding as loud as war drums. It’s not a vile type of excitement, usually. It’s just adrenaline being passed through the body at the experience of a new high, a new feeling of power.

Okay, so maybe it is a vile type of excitement.

Point is, I’m not immune to the excitement, to the high, though I’ve learned that controlling every emotion, even the ones on a face I have never seen, is a very useful skill. So while this wolf’s heart is so loud to me that it echoes around the room, my heartbeat is damn near nonexistent in the true silence around us. I have to remind myself at times that sounds are louder to me than the average wolf, that I pick things up at farther distances. I forget because I grew up learning to hone these senses, these instincts, knowing that I would never have the ability to see my enemy coming.

“You have nothing else to say?” I finally finish, knowing that the silence will turn awkward for me if I don’t. I feel the hard fabric of the handle of my knife in my hand. I bring up my other hand, placing just my pointer finger on the very end of the blade, running it up to the tip, feeling the warmth of the blood coating it. It mixes with the rest of the blood on my hands.

I know from the many times I’ve sharpened it and run my fingers along the blade that it’s exactly 6 and 3 ⁄ 8 inches long. I know it’s that long because I’ve also had to learn to use my hands in everything I do; memorizing the size and weight of things as I heard and felt them to compare to in the future, examining and memorizing textures, fluidity and consistency of everything from leaves to water to dough with only my hands and my mind’s eye.

The knife in my hand is lightweight compared to a regular knife, though I know it’s not the weight of the blade that makes it so. The Damascus steel is wrapped in a piece of leather binding at the handle, a piece of cloth coming that I’ve held onto all my life. I drop my hand from the blade, knowing based on the whimpers that came from the action, that my message was received.

“I did it for my son.” He finally answers the question I’ve been asking for the past hour.

“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? This all could have been avoided if you had simply answered my question the first time. I move back away from him, listening to the cadence of my footsteps to know when I’m near the table. I know I’m in front of it when the blackness that consumes my vision from facing a wall, gives way, just in the lower center, like focalized blindness, to a light, less dense type of black.

My movements are careful, precise. It helps the fact that I’ve been down here many times over the last seven years. Davina has ensured the layout of everything remains the same and in orderly fashion over the years so that I would never embarrass myself with my occasional clumsiness. That’s the only downside I’ve ever really found to my lack of eye sight. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I would love to know what a tree looks like, not just what I think it looks like and I would love to see the color yellow because I love the way daisies feel in my fingers, and I would love to be able to see my mate, with eyes that weren’t broken.

But I’ve also learned not to dwell on the things that I will never be able to do, see or experience because of my blindness. I’ve learned to harness it instead. Still, my father looks at me with such disdain, it makes me tremble in his presence like a young boy. I think it’s why Davina asked me if I wanted to help the pack in this way. She wanted to show both me and Father that I could be useful. That my life didn’t have to be a series of shortcomings, jokes and failures. I jumped at the opportunity and never looked back. I have proven myself many times over as an excellent torturer, no matter the type of supernatural dropped in front of me. So much so, in fact, that just this week, for the first time in my whole godsdamned life, my father actually said “Well Done” to me.

Mind. Blown.

But only for like a second.

The instant I comprehended why he was telling me that, that same resentment, hatred and rage burned through me that had been just before he had said it.

Well Done.

F.uck him.

I don’t want or need his ‘well done’.

I never f.ucking have.

I’ve proven myself to Davina time and again.

She f.ucking knows my worth here.

She always has and she’s my f.ucking Alpha. She always has been. Maybe that’s why Dad has never liked me, but I don’t give a f***k anymore. I stopped caring at fourteen, when I realized I’d never be enough after I took a f.ucking grown ass foot soldier down in less than ten minutes and still all I got was “Next time, you need to do it in five. You can’t waste time on a battlefield.”

I never wanted to f.ucking train in the first place but as the Alpha’s son, it was required of me. I don’t regret it now. I have trained to my heart content and then some, and I will continue to train, just in case. There has never been a war between the pack, or between the species, for as long as I have been alive.

The last war wolves of any kind participated in was World War II and mostly because as citizens of the United States, the men didn’t have a choice. Though plenty of unmated women signed up to join as well. Many wolves did not come home during that time, our already dwindling population, dwindling further. Though, vampires and witches also dwindled then so that was a bonus for us wolves.

Since then however, vampires have multiplied by double, whereas witches and wolves have only been able to add two and three new generations to the mix. Since vampires can’t procreate, they’ve been turning more and more over the years. As if afraid they’ll run extinct.

After carefully placing the knife in my other hand, I gently feel around for the key to his handcuffs, watching as the shades of black change and lead me in the correct direction. Once I have the key, I turn back. It’s easy to find him in my mind’s eye. There is, what my mother has told me, a gray aura coming from his space which leads me back to him. I first saw this aura when my mother led me to the pack hospital for an annual checkup.

A man, I could tell by the deeper, masculine scent, was laying very still. I didn’t know what he was on, couldn’t see it, found out later it was a gurney and he was dying. The man had actually been behind a window, in a private room, hooked up to machines, but I was like 4 and hadn’t been able to decipher things like that with my other senses yet.

My mother told me then, after I told her what I could see, that I was blessed by the Moon Goddess. Though I remember her voice was laced with sadness that I could not actually see anything. Why the f***k Selene would bless me with the ability to see people’s aura as they die, I don’t f.ucking know. I f.ucking hate the b.itch because of it though.

You won’t find anything in or around my house that shows any kind of acknowledgement towards the deity who decided to f***k with my life in my mother’s womb.