CHAPTER 1

“Scar!”

“Ughhhh,” she grunted and burrowed deeper into the warm bedding.

“Scarlett Shaw!”

“Godddddd,” she groaned with her eyes tightly shut, knowing from the closeness of the voice it was a matter of time before the two hundred pound of muscle barged into her room.

How she hated Alan Shaw. How she wanted so much to strangle him. How she wanted so much to take out his innards and shove them down his……

“Scar!!!!,” he screamed at the same time he slammed the door open into the wall, interrupting her sweet thoughts of things she wanted to do to him.

“…his wide throat,” she finished her thought out loud, even if it was more of a grumble.

“What was that?,” Alan asked, making his way towards the bed.

“Leave me be,” she replied and dragged the covers closer around her.

She felt him drop down heavily on the bed but made no move to acknowledge his presence. If she ignored him long enough, he would let her be.

Well, not that it ever worked in the past. But who said she could not hope, even where Alan was concerned.

“Could you speak louder? I did not catch that.”

Scarlett held on tighter to the covers, anticipating his next move, all the while with her eyes tightly shut.

“I hate you so much Alan Shaw,” she replied.

“At least you feel something towards me. That’s more than I could ever hope for,” came his sarcastic reply. “Now, are you going to waste away in this heaven of yours all day or do you plan on joining the human population and do what every other normal person does?”

“Just leave me alone,” she replied drowsily.

“Okay,” Alan replied and Scarlett could hardly believe it when she felt his weight lifting from the bed. It seemed too good to be true until she heard the door shut behind him as he left the room.

Wow.

That was easy, she thought to herself.

What had come over Alan?

Usually, he hassled her until she finally agreed to face the day. It was unlike him to just simply agree to whatever she said.

Was everything okay with him?

Was he dying?

Scarlett knew the only reason he comes after her once the whole household was awake and she was nowhere to be seen was because he wanted to save her from herself.

He worried about her like everyone else in the clan, only his own worrying involved getting into her space and picking on her.

Now, she did not feel so sleepy anymore. She opened her eyes and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!.”

Directly in her face was a pair of arresting baby blue eyes with endless depth of secrets and mischievous promises that had left many hearts broken in its wake, set in a golden face with the most perfect angelic features, a huge contrast to the dark promises in the blue eyes.

And the face was grinning into hers with mischief.

“Alan! The devil take you!”

She should have known it was impossible he had left so readily when she asked him to. She should have known he was up to some mischief.

The devil apparently never left but had opened and closed the door then snuck back to her bed to stand directly in her face, scaring the living daylight out of her!

If only she had been fully awake, he would have not dared to play such a trick without her catching on, no matter how stealth he prided himself to be.

“The devil take you too sister, unless you get out of that bed this minute!”

“I hate you,” Scar grumbled again.

“Me too,” he said grinning from ear to ear as she struggled out of bed.

Scar snorted in an unladylike fashion, “You could keep the triumphant look off your face but that would be hoping for too much isn’t it? Your arrogance would be the end of you Alan Shaw,” she said vengefully, hating him for meddling in area of her life for the past fourteen years.

“Sorry to be the harbinger of bad news, every other member of your gender seem to think otherwise. They are rather convinced I’m the perfect human to ever walk the earth,” he replied with an annoying wink and a more annoying smirk.

“Well, you always say my gender has impaired reasoning. Now, what makes you think their judgement about you isn’t as a result of their impaired reasoning?,” she countered with her own smirk.

Alan let out a loud boisterous laughter, making Scar feign a scared look.

“I told you never to let out that earthquake in my presence ever!”

“That would be the day I’ve the last word when it comes to bantering with you,” he replied still chuckling, his baby blue eyes crinkling at the corners, making scar herself want to smile with him.

No matter how many times she proclaimed it, she could her hate Alan the Tormentor. She loved and worship the very ground he walked on. But the day she admitted it would be the day she draws her last breathe.

And she would never call him Alan the tormentor because it would only em out him to meddle more in her life.

“That would never happen,” Scar stated arrogantly.

“I know. It is like saying the Scathin and Lauchair clan would stop being enemies,” Alan said nonchalantly but he did not for a minute stop watching Scar and as expected, he saw the fire in her eyes dying a slow death.

Alan moved away from her and headed towards the door with a “Everyone is waiting for you in the courtyard. Be down before I come up for you again.”

He closed the door silently behind him and with a heavy sigh, he leaned against it for a moment.

It had been a rough fourteen years for him to get to where he was today with his younger sister. And like everyone else in the family, she blamed herself for Sara’s death.

But he knew it was way more than that for Scar.

It was like every waking moment of her life since Sara’s death, she wakes up every morning and allows herself go over every detail she could remember, punishing herself with the memories and holding it so close to her heart like a prickly rose she could not do without the smell but at the same time hurting herself with the thorn.

What scared him the most was that she seemed to thrive in the pain. She had built a wall around herself and the pain and everything Scar ever did since that day stemmed from that pain.

She never allowed herself to be happy, never allowed herself to smile or laugh.

Merely thinking about it made Alan’s heart break for the little sister that was forced to grow and for the one he could not protect.

The mouthy part of Scar he just witnessed only happened at moments when she let her guard down, the only times she let herself forget Sara had died on her watch.

And they were mostly when she was waking.

It was the only reason he made it his life duty to be the first person there to wake her in the morning. He longed for the sister that was so happy and oblivious of the evil in the world.

He wanted to hold her and shake her. He wanted to talk sense into her and make her understand that a six year old was not responsible for the safety of a sixteen year old sibling, he wanted to make her know there was nothing she could have done better than she did on that fateful night.

But the early times when he had done that, she had withdrawn further into herself and he had almost lost her completely like the rest of the world.

So he had learnt to hold his peace and just take the momentary happiness she gave him.

With another heavy sigh, Alan moved silently down the stairs.

When Scar finally felt him move away from the door, she went about her morning business, all the while thinking of the saddened expression she had seen on her brother’s face.

She knew it was because of her.

She made everyone around her miserable like she was. The only ones who never avoided her was her immediate family, excluding her mother of course, she reminded herself with a bitter smirk.

Everyone else in the clan steered clear of her and who could blame them?

She was scarred, looked ethereal, almost ghostly and she even acted like a ghost with her silent movement and scanty words.

To make matters worse, the more she aged, the more she had looked like a more fragile version of her sister, a constant remembrance to everyone, everyday for the great witch the clan had lost.

And gradually, like a flower wilting, her mother had distanced herself from her second daughter until they barely ever saw each other anymore except on special occasions and even then, her mother never looked her in the eyes.

Scar had lost not only a sister and a mother to the Lauchair clan that night fourteen years, but she had also lost herself.

And till she took her last breath, she would never forgive everyone of that despicable pack.

Talk about the scar, the nature of the two clans.