Broken Souls

I wake up groaning in pain. My cell is nearly pitch black; the light outside my cell door is off. Sitting up and shivering, I can feel a breeze, so I look up and see a tiny window with bars I hadn’t noticed before. I hug my knees to my chest, trying to stop the shivers. A door opens somewhere in the hall making light flood in, and I hear heavy feet walking to my cell. The outline of John’s backlit body appears in front of the door. Hiding my face in my knees, I try to look small and disappear. John unlocks the door and slides something onto the floor. Then the door slams. As his steps fade away, the door opens and closed killing the light. All that’s left is dark, cold silence.

I look up from my knees; there is a tray sitting in front of the cell door and a lump next to it. Slowly crawling my way over to the tray, I see that the lump is an old rag of a blanket. I grab it and wrap it around myself. It has holes and smells awful, but it’s better than nothing at all.

The tray has a slice of white bread on it. I pick it up, and it’s as hard as a rock. There is also some kind of mushy stew-looking stuff that smells like dog food. Tears leak from my eyes, but I force myself to eat it. I don’t know if they will feed me again, so I choke it down. Lucky, they have given me some water that looks pretty clean. After I eat what I can manage, I wrap the blanket around myself even tighter and move back to the farthest corner of my cell. More tears fall from my eyes, and I curl up into a tight ball as silent sobs shake my body. I’m not sure when, but sleep eventually finds me.

I spend the next three days in my cell. Someone puts a bucket next to my morning tray of plain oatmeal the first day, but I never saw who it was. I refuse to look out from my tightly curled position in the corner. Breakfast and dinner was plain oatmeal and dog food stew respectively.

On day four, I finally sit up and watch as a small old woman brings me the morning tray. She looks at me, and I look at her. Her gray hair is up in a bun, but her gray-blue eyes are kind. She looks like I always imagined a grandma should look.

She has a long gray dress that matches her eyes and a purple shawl. Her eyes meet mine, and she almost smiles at me, marking her wrinkled face look warm. She put her finger to her lips, telling me to keep quiet as she reaches into a pocket of her dress.

She pulls something out of her pocket, and I feel myself inching forward; she holds out an oatmeal cookie. My eyes get big as I get up and walk slowly to her. She hands me the cookie and gives me a weak smile, closes the cell door, and is gone.

The following day, I’m still sitting in my corner, wrapped in my blanket, waiting to see if the old woman will come again. I hear the door and footsteps heading toward my cell. John is back. As he swings the door open, in walks the Boss. His black eyes are burning into mine ’til I can’t stand it and look at the floor.

“Stand up and come here.” The Boss’ cold voice leaves no room for argument and no hint of emotion. I do what he tells me, but keep my blanket wrapped around myself like maybe it could help protect me from the harshness of his voice.

Never looking up, I stand in front of the Boss; I can still feel his eye burning into me. “Do you think you have learned something from your little time out?” I nod my head slowly. “Good. John, take her to the kitchen now.” With that, John walks over and grabs my arm. This time, I don’t fight but let him pull me from my cell.

I didn’t know how dark it was in my cell ’til I find myself out in the yard being pulled across the open space. The sunlight is so bright that all I can see is white burning light. If it weren’t for John pulling my arm, I would have been frozen in place.

I let John pull me across the yard, tripping only a few times. I finally keep my eye closed as John pulls me along. I hear a door bang open and get yanked harder. I open my eyes, slowly blinking. I’m in a rather old-looking kitchen, but it’s clean. Standing at the counter is the same old woman that brought me the cookie; maybe I can find a way out of here.

Alpha Aaron POV

How many more attacks? This rogue issue is getting out of hand. I’m staring at the map on my desk, rubbing my temples. Fifteen packs have been lost or destroyed the last year. While they are all small packs, the attacks are becoming much more frequent, making me think that it is more than just the small rogue problem that the older Alphas of some of the other packs want to dismiss it as.

I’ve had an issue with a few of the older ones not wanting to listen to this issue at all. I am one of the younger Alphas at 20. I may be young, but I’ve come to realize that a few of the Alphas have become lazy and just don’t want to see a problem when there is clearly a problem.

My head is killing me. I definitely need some air. Letting out a long breath, I stand up and run my fingers through my hair. Maybe I’ll see if Lily would like to go for a run with me. My wonderful Lily has been my Luna for the past year. She couldn’t be more perfect: she’s tall, blond, with green eyes, and so strong. I can’t even imagine my life or the pack without her in it. I think going for a run tonight will help to clear my head. Then I can figure out where the rogues are hiding and what their next move will be.

It was so easy to convince Lily to come for a run with me. She never argues with me. We are out on our run, enjoying being with each other, when suddenly, fifty rogues breach our patrols and ambush my sweet Lily and me. Griffin and I fight with everything we have. It turn to see Lily’s white wolf fighting hard, but I notice that her fur turning red with the mixture of rogue blood as well as her own.

The harder we fight, the more rogues seem to come from the trees. I see her biting and clawing the rogue trash and hear the snarling of the wolves around us. I try to get to her. I call for more warriors. I’m being ripped and slashed, but it doesn’t matter. I have to get to her. I can feel her slipping away from me. Griffin howls in pain, not from the bites, but from the pain of our hearts as we hear Lily’s pain.

Finally, I hear the warriors howling in the trees, charging into the fight. My Beta, Michael’s, gray wolf gives me an opening, and I race to Lily. She has shifted back to her human body; she is covered in blood lying on the ground. I shift back and grab her face with my hands “Lily! Baby, please hold on!” I’m screaming at her as tears start rolling down my face. She turns her once-dazzling green eyes to mine; they look almost gray, the life nearly gone. “I love you, Aaron.” she whispers, and then she is gone. All light in her eye is gone. She is gone.

Half of my soul rips from my body; I can only feel pain. I hear the sounds of the fight still going on around me, and I feel something other than my pain: pure rage floods every fiber of my body. Griffin takes over, and I remember very little of what happened after that, only blood and rage.

It’s been days of hell. Everything in my office is broken. I can’t step foot in my room, our room. I see her face when I close my eyes. Her green eyes haunt me; I’ve been living on whisky and pain. We managed to keep a couple of the rogues alive to question. My Beta, Michael, is questioning them. I was thrown out of the interrogation room the first day when I nearly killed one after just laying eyes on him.

I sit down hard in my office chair, the only thing still upright in my office. I bring the nearly empty whisky bottle to my lips and kill what’s left in it. The door starts to open. It’s rather hard to miss with all the broken things in front of it scraping on the floor. Michael looks in and sees me sitting in the middle of the destruction. “Unless you have more whisky, go away.” I say, holding up my empty bottle but never looking at him.

Michael is my best friend, has been forever, but I can’t bring myself even to look at him right now. Nothing matters to me except numbing this pain. I can hardly breathe. I know I’ll never truly live again, not without her, my Lily.

“Man, have you left this room?” Michael asks. He knows the answer already. I haven’t. “Well, you might want to get some food and sober up. One of the rogues talked.”

Michael barely has time to finish before I shoot up from the chair, dropping the empty bottle on the floor. “I’m fine. Let’s go to your office. Tell me what you know.” I’m already in the hall headed to his office before he can even move.

“Only if you promise to eat something,” Michael says flatly.

“Are you kidding me? We’re wasting time, and I’m not in the mood for this.”

“I know, but I need you sober and strong, and that means you need food.” Michael has his arm crossed in front of his chest. I know he’s right, but I just want to know what he found out.

“Fine, have someone bring a sandwich or something to your office. Now come on.” Michael has a slightly satisfied grin on his face as we go to his office.

“Well?” I’m almost begging him to start talking.

“It’s big, man. It’s not just a few rogues, it’s a few hundred if not more. They are being led and organized by someone they call the Boss.” Michael is sitting in his office chair, and I move to the small leather couch. This is what I was afraid of and what those old Alpha pricks refused to hear. Rogues don’t organize. They stay in small groups. That was what every one of those morons said.

I close my eyes and run my hands through my hair. The knock on the door hardly registers in my cluttered mind. “Come in,” Michael says, and a small omega woman brings in a tray of sandwiches. She sets them on the coffee table in front of me with a pitcher of ice tea.

The food doesn’t look appealing, “Did you get anything else from them?” I finally ask while having a mental war with my thoughts. Griffin is in my head howling for his mate, wanting to rip apart all the rogues, and destroy every last trace of this Boss person.

“Yeah, I did, but I want you to eat a sandwich, not just stare at it.” Michael is watching me with one light brown eyebrow raised. I pick up a sandwich, making a show of taking a huge bite of it.

I kind of wish I hadn’t done that; it feels like actual sand in my mouth. I half choke, and I’m forced to wash it down with ice tea. After I drain the glass, Michael continues, “Apparently, they have been targeting small weak packs that would have a hard time reaching out for help ’til it’s too late. The attack on you and Luna wasn’t part of the Boss’s plan. In fact, the rogue that talked was quite afraid of what might happen if the Boss ever got a hold of him. The last pack they attacked was Blue Lake pack thirty miles west. They are supposedly staying there.”

I jump to my feet. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.” I’m heading to the door before Michael stops me. “Hold on, I already sent scouts to search the area. The rogues have already packed up and moved on. I’m sending trackers to see if they can get a tail on them. It shouldn’t be too difficult if there are that many of them. We should be able to find them.”

I sit back down and start to rub my face. The three-day beard is itching. I run my hands through my hair and lean back, sighing. Finally, Michael speaks again. “I’m going to talk to you as my friend right now, not my Alpha, and I hope you listen. Aaron, you need to eat, you need to shower and sleep. This pack needs you to be strong, so when we find these assholes, I’m not worried about your drunk smelly ass getting us killed.” I sit there looking at the ceiling. “I know. It’s just so damn hard. I feel like all the air is gone, and I can’t feel anything but the hole she left.”

After the conversation with Michael, I manage to shower and eat, but I have to change bedrooms. I don’t even have the strength to get my clothes from my room myself. I had them all washed and moved to a guest room. I try to lay down and sleep, but the moment my eyes close, I see her covered in blood. Nope, I’m not sleeping, and I promised Michael I wouldn’t drink, so I guess I’ll go down to the gym.