Chapter 1 - Aria

I lay there in nothing but darkness. Muffled sounds surrounded me. A pain ran through my body that I could not describe nor explain. I was desperate to call out to my parents for help, but I feared my voice would not work. I was unsure how long I had laid here like this… sure I had flitted in and out of this state numerous times… the weight of my eyelids was too much to bear. Unable to open them to see where I was... or to see why I was so sleepy. Everything seemed so confusing... too much.

Yet there was a niggling in my mind each time it felt like I had come to. A niggling that would not go away. Like something had sparked within my mind... and something seemed so odd. Had I fallen in my room? Perhaps when I was dancing? Could that be it? I sure did like to dance around my room when my music was playing… forever being told by my parents to turn the music down… maybe I had slipped? My room was forever cluttered. Hit my head even? Would that leave me here feeling like this?

My mind felt like it was swimming... such a strange sensation, yet one I felt unable to control. Had I fallen? But would my parents not have heard me fall if they could hear even the slightest curse word in some of the riskier songs I had taken to listening to lately?

I listened carefully… no. There was no music. Maybe the song had come to an end? When I listened now, there were just those same muffled noises I had heard before. Muffled voices, but what they were saying I did not know... they sounded so close, yet strangely so far away... as I drifted back into the pitch blackness of sleep…

A large clatter from around me, made me jerk, but my eyelids once more were heavy… I fluttered them hard, desperately trying to pry them open. Did my eyes stop working? I need to try to see where the source of the noise came from. Who was in my room? No. Why were there people in my room? I was sure I could hear voices here again…

My body ached like nothing I had ever experienced before. Parts of my body I did not know could hurt throbbed in discomfort. Was it normal to hurt this much? I don't think I could say when I didn't even know what had happened to me. I mean, what happened to me? Had someone hurt me?

Finally, with some strain, I lifted one eyelid, only for the slight vision I had provided myself to be flooded with a bright, unnatural light… the light so bright it hurt my eyes... tempting me to close my eyes tightly closed again.

“Doctor!” a voice bellowed from somewhere at the side of me. “She is awake!” the voice made me tremble with shock. Doctor? Was I in a hospital? The question was there once again... just what had happened to me? And where were my parents?

I struggled to bring my other eyelid open too, both feeling like weights upon my eyes, but somehow I managed, and now I found myself battling to focus my eyes upon the source of the noise. And, I found him... there was a tall, dark-haired man in front of me. Piercing blue eyes, staring intently towards me… a look of relief upon his face… was he the doctor? A doctor would make sense. I was in a hospital after all...

“Oh, Aria… baby, you are okay!” he exclaimed, moving toward me, causing my entire body to freeze in shock. Who was he calling baby? I was Aria… I know that, but did he have the wrong Aria? Because I did not know him… I knew that much. And right about now I felt far from okay.

My eyes darted anxiously around the room, and as they adjusted to the horrendously bright medical lights within the private room I was enclosed within, I desperately searched for a sight of my parents. I had so many questions to ask, but the tightness in my throat and the sharp pain I was feeling there meant I did not trust my ability to talk right now. Who knew how long I had been asleep... I mean I wasn't even sure I could still talk...

But I knew I needed my parents here to help. They would help me communicate. They would ensure I had all I needed. Surely, if I was injured they would be here with me, wouldn’t they? They would be here by my side waiting for me to recover, right?

But with every sweep of the room with my eyes, as the man in front of me looked at me with concern, I could see no sight of my parents. Where had they gone? Maybe they had gone for a coffee? They did like a coffee… of course! I told myself. If they had been waiting with me for a long time they would need coffee, right?

“Aria?” the man perched himself upon the edge of my hospital bed, reaching forward, and gently stroking my face… once more my entire body froze under his touch… this felt all too familiar… his voice filled with affection, and it was like he felt entitled to touch me… how dare he?! “I can’t tell you how worried I have been baby.” He whispered moving closer to me, his eyes full of a look that terrified me.

“Help!!!” I screamed, my whole body trembling as my voice broke under the pressure of trying to scream after not speaking for as long as I may have been unconscious. “Help me! I want my parents. Please…”

The door of the room flew open for a number of nurses and a doctor came rushing in, as the man upon my bed moved away from me, seeming to collapse to the floor as he did, tears within his eyes and his head within his hands…

I now lay staring at the roof. The starch whiteness of the room is everything you would expect of a hospital, and I feel myself struggling to stay focused. The doctor is checking me over, and he has been for some time now. I am sure he is speaking to me, but the words he says I am struggling to focus upon... my mind seems to wander, or my eyes feel so heavy... could they have drugged me? Was that why I slept? My mind feels so full of thoughts... ideas... but they seem all in a jumble, and nothing appears to make sense.

I stare at the roof again, while the doctor's voice continues to drone in the back of my mind, truly unsure now if he is talking to me or the others in the room. There were others there when I last looked... and I looked many times. But still there was no sign of my parents. Why had the doctor not called them to let them know I had woken? Is that not what a doctor would do when a family member has woken up after a long illness or injury? I am sure my parents would want to see me... my mind flickered again... just how far did they go for that coffee? I knew they wouldn’t leave me…

My parents may not be here, but that same man remained… the man with the piercing blue eyes was still here. Watching. Waiting. But silently now. But I knew he was watching me all the same, from across the room this time. I think my screaming scared him...

But it did not stop him watching over me. His eyes appeared to darken every now and again, but I don’t know if that was just my tired eyes, or maybe even the lighting in the room… but his intense gaze terrified me. He looked angry... possessive even, yet I had no idea why. This was a man I did not even know.

The door of the room flung open once more, with some force this time. A tall, chocolatey-skinned man with an air of confidence strode in, his eyes falling upon the scary man, before looking at me. A gentle smile appeared. “Aww, sweetheart, I am so glad you have woken up, you gave us a scare.” He seemed to know me too. What was it with these people?

Yet as I looked into those warm brown eyes of his, I saw nothing. No recognition of this man whatsoever. I felt the same as I looked across each person who had walked through the door to see me so far. Were they simply pretending to know me? Was I being held prisoner? Had I been kidnapped? Is that why my parents were nowhere to be seen? My mind whirred with the possibilities, while still trying to adjust to being awake again. But then, would a kidnapper call me sweetheart? I tried to reason with myself.

My mind seemed to be spinning, and I still felt so tired. Was my own mind playing tricks upon me?

“So doc, how is she doing?” the smiling man asked. He seemed genuinely friendly and kind. Would such a man kidnap me? I did not know.

“Alpha Micah, she is doing okay. Her stats are where we’d want them to be. I think we will have to monitor her for a few days, potentially more. Certainly need to do some more tests when she feels up to it. I am more concerned about her lack of response to you all.”

The doctor seemed to be muttering. What had he called him? Alpha Micah? Micah… do I know that name? The name did not ring a bell. Much as his face had not... I was sure I did not know the man showing concern for me.

Hmm... Alpha? I knew what an Alpha was though … we had grown up in a small little village in the countryside on the outskirts of a large forest. My grandmother had a cabin there that we spent a lot of time in during my childhood. Many days during the holidays we would spend with her, loving our time in the freedom of the forest... Grandma by our side... so many happy memories...and seeing wolves was commonplace…

And, part of those memories that I remember are tales my Grandma told us of these wolves. I would sit for hours listening to her tales. It seemed my grandmother had become more than a little friendly with a few of them. And they were a little more than wolves too.

She told us many tales of her friends. And I used to love hearing about them, thinking it was perhaps her wild imagination, or the loneliness and isolation living out in the forest brought to her, but I knew that an Alpha was the leader of a pack… but now my mind took me down another route... had I been kidnapped by a werewolf pack? Surely not…

A deep cough sounded by my side, breaking my thoughts. And the dark, warm eyes of the Alpha were smiling upon me. “Rocco, why are you not here talking to her? Trying to help her feel better?” The man I now knew was called Alpha Micah demanded to the man with the piercing blue eyes, who now stood at the foot of my bed.

“She screamed when I came near her. Begged for her parents, Mic, what was I meant to do? She needs to heal.” His voice sounded less calm now than it did when he spoke to me earlier. He sounded almost broken, and I had no clue why. This man was a stranger to me, so why was me needing my parents to come and take me home going to hurt him?

Micah turned to look at me again but this time the smile was gone, before looking towards the man with blue eyes, the man who was unable to take those eyes away from me, the man I now knew was called Rocco, and shook his head. “She is awake. That is amazing in itself. You have been here every one of those 71 days, brother, waiting, hoping, praying. And it worked, for she woke up. So why give up now?”

71 days?! I had been here 71 days?! Unconscious for 71 days?! What had happened to me to cause that? Why were my parents not sitting here by my side? Holding my hand, the way you see parents and family do… no something wasn’t adding up to me. Not when it seemed this man, this complete stranger, had been apparently sitting by my side each day, according to his friend… I assume they were friends… he called him brother, but they did not look like brothers…

“You did not see the fear in her eyes, Mic.” His voice shook as he spoke, and I could hear the pain… why was he hurting? He was not the one stuck in a bed in a hospital he did not know, surrounded by people acting like they knew her…

The pain in my head was pounding once more. The confusion was becoming too much... and a heaviness building within my eyelids as they began to flicker. Whatever was being said around me became muffled once more… I hope they did not plan to hurt me… these men that seemed to have me here trapped against my will. As soon as I was able, I would need to find a way out. I needed to get home…