Chapter Twenty-One

Regan’s POV

The decision to wait until after the memorial before resuming Rage’s meetings with Jasmine was providing to be too much for Rage to handle.

I had felt it was only proper to put their meetings on hold until after the memorial. Partially out of respect to our fallen, but mostly out of respect to my late mate.

It would have been disrespectful to keep the company of another she-wolf while mourning her.

Gina.

That had been my mate’s name.

She had been a year older than me and had been Luke’s cousin as well as Lena’s sister.

Even though many years had passed, I still remembered her. With strawberry blonde hair and a glowing smile, Gina had been the most beautiful she-wolf I had ever seen.

I couldn’t recall a time I hadn’t adored Gina.

From growing up alongside each other’s family, to stealing glances at each other during family dinners, our attraction and connection was undeniable.

It was so obvious that even our parents and some members of our pack had speculated about us being mates.

But we hadn’t known for certain until an old friend of Nana’s had visited our pack.

According to what I had overheard by eavesdropping, the woman had been a powerful witch and had taken one look at the pair of us before declaring how fortunate we were to have found each other so early.

Our parents had been delighted with the news of us being mates and had immediately announced it to the rest of the pack.

Everyone had agreed that Gina would make a perfect Luna with her kind heart, generosity and bravery.

Personally, I remembered being incredibly happy that the girl I liked had turned out to be my mate.

We began to spend more time together afterwards and grew even closer.

All seemed perfect with the world for those months.

Until Nana’s friend visited again.

Unlike the last time she had visited, this time was brief. She didn’t have time to be polite and courteous and had immediately requested to see Nana urgently.

Sensing that something was clearly wrong, my parents had overlooked her disrespect and obeyed her wishes.

She and Nana had gone up to her room that night and had not been seen until early the next morning when our strange guest had beat a hasty departure.

Everyone was anxious to know what her strange friend had told Nana, but Nana did not leave her room until the following day.

Even though I couldn’t remember all that had happened, I remembered being anxious and worryingly that Nana’s strange friend had returned to tell her that she had made a mistake in declaring me and Gina as mates.

So when Nana had finally come out of her room, I had rushed over to her to confirm that her strange friend had not gone back on her declaration.

Looking back now, I could still remember the look on Nana’s face, though I hadn’t truly noticed or understood what it meant at the time.

She had looked absolutely terrified.

And that was an expression I had never seen on Nana.

If only I had been old enough to understand or help at the very least, then maybe things would have been different.

I still remembered the day my world had changed forever.

I and Luke had just finished our training lesson with Luke’s father and I had just convinced Luke to come along with me into the woods after we had washed up.

He had already known that the reason I wanted to go into the woods was to see his cousin, my mate, and had begun to tease me mercilessly.

Just as I had endured enough and turned around to push him away playfully, we had suddenly heard a scream.

The scream was immediately accompanied by others and was coming from the pack house where I knew my mother had been in.

Knowing my father was still in the training fields since we had just come from there, I immediately ran towards the pack house where the screams and sounds of fighting could be heard.

Luke had been behind me as always.

Just as we had gotten to the entrance, the huge doors suddenly flew open, knocking us back a good distance and my mother’s wolf jumped out, in a fierce battle with about three unfamiliar wolves.

I quickly got to my feet and began throwing as many rocks as I could at the unfamiliar wolves that were attacking my mother.

Luke had joined and was doing the same.

It distracted them enough for my mother to get rid of one and continue tackling the other two.

A familiar wolf jumped out from inside the pack house and instantly came to my mother’s aid.

It was Luke’s mother.

But as they got rid of the two other unfamiliar wolves, about three more suddenly broke out from around the pack house.

‘You both get out of here!’ I remembered my mother had mind linked us. ‘Find the girls and hide. Go!’ She had commanded and Luke and I had run in the opposite direction the wolves had come from, towards the woods to where we were certain the girls would be picking flowers.

The only problem was, when we had arrived, they hadn’t been there, so Luke and I had split up to find them.

A foolish decision considering we were young at the time and hadn’t gotten our wolves yet.

Seeing that they were not in the woods, I had tried to block out the screams and the sight of blood and carnage and had run towards the fields where I was sure my father would be, hoping to ask his help in finding the girls.

Just as I neared the fields, a sudden pain coursed through my body and my heart began to ache.

Not understanding what the feeling meant, I had started to push myself up from the ground where I had fallen due to the unexpected pain, when I suddenly began to hear the wails and howls of pain.

I looked around to see that the chorus noises were coming from only our pack members.

And if they were all feeling the same loss at the same time, it could have only meant one thing.

“No!” I had cried out and stood to my feet, pushing them faster as I ran into the field.

Amidst the proof of deaths laid the familiar black wolf I could never confuse.

Mostly for its huge size but also because of how rare it was for wolves to have that midnight shade of black fur.

“No”, I remembered choking out. “Father!” I had screamed and run towards the body.

On getting to it, I had pushed and pushed, all the while crying and calling out for my father to stand up.

But he never did.

Never stood, never moved.

He was gone.

Still amidst the bloodshed, I had felt a different kind of pain as I looked out at the bodies of familiar wolves I had grown up knowing.

I noticed that not too far from where the body of my father’s wolf laid, was the body of the wolf who had been training me not too long ago.

Luke’s father.

I felt my body begin to tremble.

In anger or grief, I didn’t know.

But I stood up and began making my way towards my home.

The cabin my father had built alongside Luke’s father and Gina’s father so that we could all live as a family.

Gina, my mate.

I still hadn’t found Gina.

With that thought, I had turned around to make my way once more into the woods when I heard a sudden familiar scream.

Gina.

How I could have recognized her from the frightful scream I had never heard before, I didn’t know.

But I had raced towards where the scream had come from like my life had depended on it.

Because it had.

I hadn’t noticed that it wasn’t normal that I had heard her scream from that distance or that I could suddenly trace the familiar scent of her to find out exactly where she was.

All I had known at the time was that Gina, my lovely mate, had sounded terrified.

By the time I had gotten to where she was, her body was not the only one laying in a bloody mess on the grassy floor of the woods.

It was quiet.

So so quiet.

Yet I could hear the sounds of the screams from a while away, I could hear the birds as they flew around in chaos.

I could hear everything but nothing as I stood, completely rooted to the spot as I looked at the lifeless body of my mate, and the lifeless body of the familiar wolf a little distance away from her.

My mother.

Then I suddenly began to break.

At the time, I hadn’t known what was happening. I had simply welcomed the physical pain that replicated the breaking of my heart.

I screamed in pain as my bones began to break and continued to scream until I couldn’t anymore.

Then I had heard a voice.

A powerful voice that had echoed in my head.

“Let me help you”, the voice had said, and embracing the pain and anger, I had let him.

That was how I had gotten Rage.

Like his name, he had been born out of Rage.

Out of the Rage I had felt at the murder of my family and pack members.

I still didn’t remember much of what happened after I had given Rage control that first time.

I had only remembered waking up days later to Nana asleep on a chair beside my bed and holding onto my hand.

Feeling my movements, she had woken up and, upon seeing me, had enveloped me in such a tight hug that I hadn’t realized when I started to cry.

She had cried with me.

That was the last time I had cried.

Nana had told me what had happened after I had given Rage control.

How he had torn up our attackers and driven them away from our pack, and becoming the pack’s savior in the process.

She had also told me that in the view of my father’s death, I had become the new Alpha.

It hadn’t been easy becoming the Alpha so long, but Nana had helped me every step of the way.

She had endured through my temper tantrums and rage fits and had helped me become the werewolf I was.

I had never asked her what it was that her strange friend had urgently needed to tell her, just a few days before the attack.

I never asked because a large part of me was truly scared of knowing and I was still not ready to hear it even after all these years.

Rage was getting really impatient once again.

Like a pup, he had resulted to giving me the silent treatment after my most recent refusal to resume his meetings with Jasmine.

If I was being truthful, the reason for my refusal wasn’t completely because of the memorial ceremony.

It was simply because the she-wolf had started to have a hold on me that I was not comfortable with.

And for Luke to have noticed it and started to tease me about it, it meant it was becoming obvious.

At first, I had excused it as gratitude, convincing myself that what I felt towards her was gratitude for helping keep Rage happy and under control, and for making me have a closer relationship with my wolf.

But I knew that wasn’t the case anymore.

For some unknown reason, I had found myself looking out for her, trying to catch sight of her as often as I could, and even trying to catch her eyes.

There was no room to doubt that I had become attracted to her.

And that terrified me.

Even though, as Luke had said, “She does not have a mate anymore”, I still wasn’t certain about acting on my attraction towards her.

Especially when I wasn’t sure she was ready to receive such attentions yet.

It did not escape my notice that she was attracted to me as well.

I constantly felt her eyes on me on several occasions, and even felt them roaming over places that seemed intimate.

I had also caught her staring at me on many occasions. And even though I did not know much about she-wolves, I knew for certain that this particular one fancied me.

It was incredibly flattering how she seemed incapable of controlling her reactions and emotions around me. And although she wasn’t the first she-wolf to be attracted to me, she was the first whose intentions were so obviously pure.

Still recalling her obvious concern for me and Rage when we had returned from the attack on Blackmoon brought a smile to my lips.

Her worry and obvious relief upon finding that we were unhurt touched a part of me I never believed existed.

And with Rage’s obsession with her, there was only so long I could hold out before taking action based on my feelings.

And I knew with certainty that it wasn’t very long.