~Zephyr~
The rogue scream pierced my eardrums like a dagger, the sound waves echoing through my skull and reverberating deep within my brain. The cries were like sparks, and I wished I could hear them forever, but they didn’t hold the information I needed. I gripped the dagger in my hand tighter and plunged it into the face of the rogue.
‘’You are useless,’’ I spat and plunged deeper until the dagger was poking out of the other side of his face. He screamed out in agony, and then he slumped forward. His blood pooled on the floor of the dungeon.
I had hit a dead end. Again.
‘’Here,’’ Silver, my beta, handed me a handkerchief, and I took it without a word, using it to wipe the blood from my hands. ‘’Did you find anything useful?’’ Silver asked, his eyes scanning my face.
I shook my head. ‘’no, nothing,’’ I gritted my teeth. ‘’it is just another dead end.’’
Silver placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘’You will Zephyr. You always do. And speaking of which, the gamma mind linked me earlier that rogues have been spotted again at the border.’’
My head snapped up, and I felt my heart racing excitedly. ‘’Let's go,’’ I said, already moving towards the door. ‘’This time, I might be able to get what I wanted.’’
Silver nodded. ‘’let get them.’’
We rode our horses through the heavy rain, and the borderland stretched before me. I expected to see a pack of rogues. But instead, I saw only a lone woman on the ground. She was drenched to the bone, and her clothes clung to her shivering body. She had arrows in her shoulder and stomach. The rain poured down like it was angry and pounded relentlessly on the earth.
I wondered who the woman was and how she had appeared on my border. What could she be doing out here? Every other pack knew that my border was only easily accessed if you were invited, but this woman was here with an arrow stuck on both her sides, bleeding out in the rain.
‘’She is nearing her death, so we should leave her to her fate,’’ I muttered, turning my back on her. But as I was about to turn, a sweet scent wafted through the rain, like the delicate perfume of a freshly bloomed Jasmine flower. My heart pounded as memories I had long buried came flooding back, and my eyes locked with the woman’s as she pleaded for help.
‘’Please save me.’’
‘’Take her,’’ I muttered. Something wanted me to save the woman’s life even though she was about to die.
Silver raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He walked towards the woman and carried her onto his horse. We rode away from the border back to the pack, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of why I had suddenly had a memory from my past because of the strange woman.
Reaching the pack house, I headed to my office while Silver took the strange woman to the pack hospital. In a fit of rage, I swept everything on my desk; papers, books, and trinkets crashed to the ground as I growled. I had broken my own rules by saving a rogue. Why had I acted like that? Why had I saved her?
I paced back and forth, my mind racing until I finally collapsed into my chair. That was when I heard a low, rumbling voice in my head,
‘’what got you so worked up, Zephyr?’’ My wolf, Wahya, asked.
‘’That woman,’’ I growled.
Wahya growled back. ‘’you saved her because you wanted to, Zephyr. It is as simple as that.’’
I scowled. Even Wahya could have been more helpful. ‘’ But why? She is not our mate, and yet my memories came rushing in. We don’t even know her.’’
‘’Exactly,’’ he replied. ‘’she is not our mate, and we don’t know her. But you saw something in her, and that made you help her. Don’t fight it, Zephyr. Just accept it.’’
I sighed, rubbing my temples. Wahya was suitable, as always. I had seen something in her, stirring memories I didn’t want to see. But what was it? And why did I feel so drawn to her?
My door burst open, snapping me out of my thoughts. Silver entered with a severe expression on his face. ‘’Zephyr. I took the woman to the pack hospital. She’s badly injured. If we had come late, she would have died.’’
I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. I didn’t save her because I wanted to. ‘’Good for her.’’
Silver raised an eyebrow. ‘’why did you save her, Zephyr? You’ve never shown mercy to strangers before.’’
I stood up and rubbed my temple. " She reminded me of…her. She looks strange, yet I find her intriguing. There’s something about her that cries out to me."
Silver’s eyes narrowed. ‘’She could be a spy, Zephyr. We can’t trust her.’’
No one said anything about trusting her. ‘’ We will have to find out,’’ I stared out my window.
Silver turned to leave. ‘’I have to get to Cassandra,’’ he referred to his mate. ‘’We have a dinner date.’’
‘’Silver,’’ I called.
‘yes, Zephyr.’’
‘’Keep an eye on that woman. I want to know about her.’’ And why she was affecting me so much.
Silver nodded and left, closing the door behind him. I was left alone with my thoughts yet again about the woman.
I was unable to stay away for long. The next day, I found myself at the pack hospital and meeting with Akira, the pack doctor. " How is she?"
The pack doctor, a wise old healer named Akira, looked up from the chart in her hand. ‘’she is stable, but as an omega, her healing process will take longer. She had been through a lot, alpha. She lost her baby, the arrows came close to killing her, and she is severely malnourished.’’
What kind of life did she live where she came from?
‘’This way, Alpha,’’ Akira led me to her room, and I met with the sight of the woman’s fragile form covered with wires and tubes attached to a life-beeping machine. Her dark hair cascaded around her pale face, and her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping. But I knew that she wasn’t. She was fighting for her life.
I approached her bedside, feeling a strange connection to the strange woman. Her scent was weak, but it still lingered, drawing me in. ‘’are you sure she is not our mate?’’ I asked wahya.
‘’she is not.’’
Then why was I feeling this?
I reached out a hand, hesitating momentarily before gently brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. Her skin was cold and clammy, but I felt a spark of warmth in my chest.
‘’I want her watched at all times,’’ I told Akira. ‘’If anything changes, if she so much as twitches, I want to know about it.’’
‘’yes, Alpha’’
I stared at her one last time and walked out of the room.
For a week, I visited her every day, watching her slowly regain her strength. Her eyes would flicker open occasionally, and our gazes would meet, but she wouldn’t say a word.
I also tasked Silver with running a background check on her. ‘’Find everything you can,’’ I told him, ’’ about who she is, where she comes from, and what she was doing out there alone to end up at our border.’’
I had to ensure she was not a spy sent to annihilate me. They once had tried that, but it didn’t end well.
It took over a week and a half when I received the news from Akira that she had woken up, and I rushed down to the hospital. When I entered the room. The strange woman’s screams pierced the air. Her voice was hoarse. She thrashed around, her arms flailing wildly with the wires flying around. Her legs were kicking the bed rails. Her eyes were wide with terror, her face pale. She was like a wild animal trapped and desperate to escape.
‘’where am i!’’ she shrieked, her voice rising. ‘’what do you want from me!’’ Her words were laced with both fear and accusation. Her eyes darted around the room as if searching for an escape route. Her body arched off the bed, and she landed on the ground. ‘’ why am I here!’’
I watched her for a while and signaled to Akira as I walked towards the woman. ‘’ I should be asking you that,’’ I growled at her. ‘’what the hell are you? Where did you come from?’’
The room fell silent, and the only sound was the beeping of the life machine. The woman’s hazel eyes locked with mine, and for a moment, we stared at each other. Then she stood up, only to fall again.
Strange.
