29. Death anniversary.

Deangelo.

I woke up sad and solemn today, it was my mom’s death anniversary after all. it was also my wife’s. The fact they both died on the same day is something that I think the universe intentionally planned on just to mock me.

I remained seated in my study as my mind wanders around, my zeal and quest for revenge went higher and higher the more I reminisce about how my mom and my wife had been killed by the same set of people and how they have somehow managed to keep evading being death with by me and my pack.

A particular scene kept coming back, how I had watched my mom get raped and killed by the alpha of the Amato pack, how I had watched it all happen while I hid away like a coward under the bed just to avoid being seen as mother had instructed. no child should ever have to see their mother get treated so inhumanely. No child should watch his mother get brutally taken advantage of and then choked till there was no air left in her lungs.

I had grown up with that image of my mother etched in my head and I had been trained so harshly by my father because of it. “No weakness, no forgiveness for any Amato,” he had always said to me until it became my watchword. As if all of that had not been enough, they took my wife too, they dared to shoot at her even while she was pregnant.

I first met Jules on a holiday to an exotic country. The moon's delicate light had just turned the world aflame with silver when I saw her. She had a comely figure which was stem-thin. Her curvilinear waist didn’t surprise me as much as the saffron tint to her complexion. She must be a native, I thought to myself only to find out that she was not. Her crescent-shaped eyebrows inclined slightly as she saw me staring at her while I yelped at being caught. Her languid eyelashes of velvet-black blinked once slowly as if to invite me over.

When I came closer, I noticed her scrolled ears and her elegant nose. She nuzzled me with her nose and I couldn’t believe it. It was the custom for the people she had lived with for a while and she had picked up their ways, I reckoned. It was love at first light. Her luminous, heavenly-white teeth flashed as she pawed at me with her film star nails. Her hair was a glorious tumble of star beam-gold and her virility-brown eyes set my heart a-thump. Her oxbow lips positively drooled with goodness.

Oh! Those sugar candy-sweet lips, and her elegant personality, all mesmerized me. She may not have had a saccharine voice or retro clothes, but what do you expect when two Labrador pups meet in a dog pound?

She married me even though we belonged in different worlds and kinds, even though I was a werewolf and she was a human, it never mattered to her, not even a little. She easily accepted things and she always believed that what is meant to be will always be.

As cliché as it may sound, Jules was my everything and my happiest years were those spent with her. She gave me the experience of being clearly understood, truly supported, and completely and utterly loved. She inspired me in ways I cannot explain. She was my number one fan, blowing my trumpet the loudest. When I was worried, she always said it would be okay. When I wasn’t sure what to do, she simply figured it out. When things were difficult, she was a pillar. And even while she was on her sick bed when I neared my wit's end, she would hold my hand and reassure me that everything would be okay.

I was consoled however by the fact that I have buried only her body. Her spirit, Her beautiful soul, and Her uncommon ability to calm the storm were still with me. She lived on in the stories of those who knew her and how she touched their lives, in the memories of our pack who she touched most closely, and in the love that is so visible in the eyes of our children.

Things had never been the same for us, yes, but we all have been made better because she was in our lives.

Someone suddenly knocked on my door and I asked the person to come in. It was Sofia. She was dressed in a black gown with a white collar and she looked like she had been crying her eyes out too. I sighed, she was Jules's very best friend and she had always been there for her even after her death. I have always felt like I’ll be indebted to her forever for her diligence and constant care toward us.

“Uh... Alpha, I was told that you asked me to come immediately I come around.” She said and I nodded.

I took a deep breath as I thought more carefully about what I was about to ask her to do, after some seconds, I was convinced that this was in fact the best step for me to take. Jules had requested it days before she died.

“My wife’s... uh... pictures, I want them all to be off the walls everywhere and kept carefully and safely in the store,” I said, almost sounding like I was committing an abomination.

It took a few seconds before Sofia responded to the instruction that I had given, “alpha, I want you to know that what you have just asked me to do is right. I do not want you to beat yourself up about it at all because this is the first step to making sure the kids heal and move on from Jules’s death. The more they see her all around and hang onto her, the harder it gets for them to step into a new phase in their lives. And this also includes you, sir.”

I took another deep breath and then I nodded to what she had said, deep down, I still wasn't so sure. Sofia walked out of my room to carry out the instruction given while I took another look at a picture of my wife on my phone.

barely thirty minutes after Sofia had gone out, I started to hear yells coming from Mia, and soon enough, she brought it right into my study, looking very angry.

“Dad, Ms. Sofia is out there taking off mommy’s pictures and I kept trying to stop her but she just wouldn’t heed and when I asked her why she would even dare to do something like that, she said that you asked her to? but then, I know that she's lying because you would never let anyone touch mommy’s pictures, much more taking them off our walls and putting them away...”

When she saw the look on my face which probably signified that I had in fact, given that instruction, her face fell, “dad? You will never let anyone take mommy’s frames off, right?”

“Mia, it’s high time we let go, I’m not destroying the pictures, I’m just having them stored away more safely, and... this is what your mom would have wanted, trust me, your mom would...”

“Stop it! Just stop, dad! Stop the habit of hiding under the ‘what mom would have wanted umbrella’ when it is very clear that it is clearly what you want. It is always about you dad, you, and no one else! You want to forget her already, is that it? Just two years and you are already tired of mourning mom?”

“Mia, that is not it at all... and you know that! I know exactly how you feel.. but...”

“No! No, dad! you do not know how I feel at all, that’s for sure!” She said as she out of my study in tears.

I looked at the people at the entrance of my room who were all dressed in black and then straight at Sofia and then I asked her, “Do you still think that I’m doing the right thing?”