Chapter 6

~Alistair~

“Jenny!” I yelled out loud.

She didn’t howl as she had done a few minutes ago.

I was deep into the woods, surrounded by bulrushes and thick trees, and as I went further, I was approaching the deep forest, which I hadn’t been in in many years.

Catching her scent wasn’t going to be easy, especially since she wasn’t howling anymore, for me to be able to be drawn into the direction she was in.

“Please, be safe,” I thought aloud to myself, moving further, instead of running like I was doing, for fear of going past where she was.

Dammit! I shouldn’t have been hard on her earlier in the day. If she was dead or something really terrible had happened to her, I would have only myself to blame, and just like I had never forgiven myself for what happened to my biological parents, I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her as well.

Several years ago, our pack had gotten torn apart and everyone had decided to leave in separate directions, accusing me of what I hadn’t done, and not ready to put their lives in the hands of a young Alpha, the same one who had supposedly stolen his power from his own father by putting an end to his life, for the sake of satisfying his insatiable greed and because of power. In order to satisfy the members of our pack, my aunt had agreed to the banishment of the young Alpha.

The young Alpha was me, but no one ever believed in my own side of the story, or even bothered to listen to it. The only person who had believed in me was Jenny, and I always sneaked out to see her, even after I got adopted by a human family. Somehow, no matter how deep into the forest her family went, we always found each other.

I’d never admit that she was my best friend and the only person I could trust in the world, and would always get on her nerves; something which I never apologised for.

I staggered, and held on to a tree for support. Making a resolve, I decided to howl to let her know I was close by, and just give me some kind of feedback, to point me in the right direction.

“Owooooooooo!” It was a grunt sound, and a howl born out of anger and desperation.

I panted heavily, and stood in the middle of the forest, with sweat dripping from my forehead and neck. I had used every ounce of strength to howl out loud, so that she could sense how badly I wanted to find her.

“Owooooooooo!”

A small smile lit up my face, as I heard the sound of her howl. It was weak, frail and had a tired disposition to it.

You know why wolves howl? It is for the purpose of signalling their position or location to any of their pack members. Without having Jenny who chose to remain as a member of my pack, I’d have been demoted to being an Omega. An Alpha could also become an Omega, if he is without a pack member, as the Omega is the lone-wolf; the one without a pack, or the servant in any pack.

My legs ran as fast as my super speed could allow them, and sped towards the direction Jenny’s howl had come from. It sounded as if horses were stampeding, as I raced with all my strength to where I was sure she was.

I got to the middle of somewhere, in which there weren’t any tall trees, but just a mild amount of green grass. There was no one in sight, and no place where she could possibly be. However, I was sure that her howl had come from there...except she had been taken elsewhere.

I shook my head, disallowing that thought. It had to be where I was. I felt it, but couldn’t prove it.

A strong scent caught my nose. Was that...? It was strawberry.

Jenny loved that strawberry-flavoured peach lipstick, and I was well aware that there were no strawberry trees in the forest. The scent, no doubt, came from Jenny’s beloved lipstick which I hated.

Having successfully caught her scent, it stopped beneath a pile of grass. I bent, and sniffed around. There was no evidence of foul play and I suspected that whoever had abducted her, was probably not around.

I removed the pile of grass, and found out that beneath it, was a hole, and when I looked inside, I saw Jenny, held by electric cables and strong chains. Electricity was a tool which could suppress her abilities, and whoever had abducted her knew that all too well.

I lowered myself into the wide hole, and approached her, with gentle and mild footsteps.

Her mouth was tied in-between with a black cloth, and her hands were crossed together and bound by chains; she was hanging from a cross, and had electric cables tied to her body. There were several scratches on her pale arms, and blood was dripping from her forehead.

When her eyes met mine, instead of sparking in delight, a rush of fear swept through it, and she incessantly shook her head, as if to tell me to leave her there, warning me that danger lurked around.

Before I could grasp what she was trying to tell me, a wooden chair was broken on my head, and I growled in pain. Acting like I was falling to the floor, I heard my attacker laugh in mockery, then turned the tables around, by spinning around swiftly and unpredictably, and sending him to the floor with a blow on his right eye, making him crash with a loud thud.

I got on top of him, and dealt him with blows and threw several punches in his face, and on his chest.

“Alistair!” He screamed, to draw my attention, but mostly in agony.

I stopped dealing him with blows for a moment, upon recognising his voice, and looked him in the eye, stunned and bewildered.

“Yes, that’s the look I was hoping for,” He said, sarcastically, reading the shock that was evident on my face.

“How did you...”

He cut in, without bothering to let me complete my statement. “How did I get free? You left me in captivity with the Druids for five good years, without even coming to see me once,” He said, in anger.

“You monster...”

“Careful! You don’t want Jennifer getting hurt, do you?”

I swallowed hard. “Why are you doing this, Garrett? She’s your sister,” I reminded him.

He scoffed. “She forgot she was my sister when she joined forces with you, and trapped me for a whole five years, and guess what? During that course of time, I didn’t even see her for once,” He said, anger emitting from his heart.

“That’s because you became reckless, and killed a lot of people...”

“Now, that’s a lie. I attacked people, and two of them almost died, Alistair, and they deserved it. They were part of the elders who decided to banish me from the pack and its surrounding territories. It’s not my freaking fault that the entire pack put me on exile, is it? All I did was reject a stupid girl that I was mated with. What crime did I ever commit?” He asked, angrily.

“You didn’t just reject her, Garrett; you killed her. Rejection isn’t a sin; your crime was killing her to communicate that you weren’t in any way interested in her,” I explained.

“In my defence, the stupid girl didn’t let me breathe. She kept on following me around, and anytime I looked back, she was there. I’d admit I have anger issues, because I got so fed up one day, and made a resolve to end her life in order to have peace, but you know, it wasn’t my fault, I swear. She said she was going to drown herself if I didn’t accept her as my mate and I was so annoyed and just pushed her into the river, telling her to go ahead and die, then, I turned my back on her.

“I didn’t know she couldn’t swim, and maybe things would have been different if I had known, and I’d have probably saved her life, but no one cared about my side of the story, they just banished me. You know what it means to be judged unfairly, don’t you? You’re a pariah, after all,” He said.

I let go of him, and sat on the floor, like how we did when we were kids, with our legs crossed on the ground.

“Perhaps the members of the pack had done wrong by just sending you on exile, but it’s not enough reason for you to just start hunting your own and trying to kill them. If you say it was for revenge, how about the human beings you brutally injured? They didn’t even know anything about what happened. Why did you involve them in our mess?” I asked, looking him in the eye.

He shook his head, regrettably. “I don’t know...I just...I was in a fit of rage, and it was the full moon. I’m sorry. I never planned for that to happen,” He said, offering an apology.

“You know that saying sorry won’t cut it, right? There were also kids, and they all sustained injuries that they’ll have to live with, for the rest of their lives,” I said.

A drop of tear slid down his face, and he wiped it immediately, with the back of his palm. “I know, and I’ve spent every moment in the last five years, hating myself for it, and regretting my decisions,” He said.

I scoffed. “Really? You’ve been regretting your decision ever since and the first thing you could do after escaping from the Druids is to kidnap your own sister?” I asked, giving him a distasteful look.

“No, it’s not like that. I just wanted to speak to you, and I decided to use her as bait. Otherwise, you’d never come to see me, or even let me see you,” He said.

“So, you chained up your sister like this just in order to see me?” I asked, not buying his story.

“I went too far, right?” He asked.

“Oh, no. You went more than far. You should see a therapist, because you’re obviously out of your mind,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I just felt she’d eventually heal, so, it was no big deal,” He said, and stood up, proceeding to go and free his sister.

“How did you even know how to find her?” I asked, befuddled.

“I’d always find my own sister even if she moved all the way down to Africa. It was easy though. I had been wondering how to kidnap her from your luxurious estate or company, but then, she came to me,” He explained.

“She came to you?” I asked.

“Yes. She came to the forest today, and was sobbing really hard. I figured that it was an opportunity for me to do what I had had in mind, ever since I escaped being with the Druids three months ago,” He replied.

“Well, you picked the wrong time. Because of you, my date with Eliana was ruined, and I’ve added what you just did to the list of horrible things you’ve ever done, that I’ll never forgive you for,” I told him, with a sneer.

As soon as Jenny was set free, she landed a hot slap across Garrett’s cheeks, like I had expected.

“You should hit him harder,” I told her, boosting her morale.

“No, thanks,” She said, and began to dust off her clothes.

It appeared as if she was still angry for what had occurred earlier in the day, but my ego didn’t allow me to calm down and just apologise to her. In my defence, I had done nothing wrong. All I had done was to just tell her the truth, and it wasn’t my fault if she could not handle it.

“Jenny, why were you crying?” I asked, rising to my feet.

“It’s none of your business,” She responded.

“Jenny!” I called.

This time, she didn’t give me a response.

“Do you have any stuff you want to bring along?” She asked her brother.

A smile crept up his face. “Are you taking me home with you?” He asked.

“I abandoned you once, and you’ve paid for the crimes you committed. I won’t abandon you again,” She said.

“Seriously? You’re just going to forgive him?” I asked, shocked to the bone.

“And what’s your problem with that? He’s not going to live under your roof, is he? He’s the only family I have left. We share the same blood, and that’s more important to me than any other thing,” Jenny said to me.

I scoffed. “With time, you’d realise that sharing the same blood with people doesn’t mean anything. Good luck with taking your brother back in. For the record, Garrett, if you had come to me, I would have let you see me. You didn’t need to go through all this trouble. I may not forgive you or even trust you, but I understand you,” I said, then lifting myself up, I climbed out of the hole.

Jenny and her brother could find their way out of the forest, and it hurt me to know that they had succeeded in ruining my perfect dinner with Eliana, for no good reason. I was going to try to make it up to Eliana, and this time around, I was going to ignore every other distraction, and focus on having a good time with her alone.

As for Jenny, I knew that she was hurt now, but soon, she’d come around. I had treated her brother like mine when he was younger, and I meant the best for him when I took him to live with the Druids five years ago, when he was nineteen, so that he could learn from how peaceful they were, and I didn’t send him there with any bad intention in mind.

Someday, Garrett would understand why I did what I had done, and his sister would forgive me for not feeling the same way she felt about me.