Bitter Love

Chapter Five

Sorry for the late post. I had two finals yesterday: Math & English and I've been freaking out. Then I have Science & History on Monday, then Latin on Tuesday, then Wednesday is my last day of school. I'm so excited. I have to study a lot now, though. I have to ace these finals!

Anyway, sorry to Whispered Secrets fans. I'll upload it as fast as possible and the next chapter is going to possibly be in Caleb's point of view! :] Anyway, enjoy!

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Chapter Five 

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Three months passed. I turned twenty, Michael turned seven, a whole Shadow Pack family was slaughtered and nineteen hunters paid the price.

I only visited Xavier’s grave once a week now, but only with an escort. It was always either Zane or Jamie. They had become ridiculously protective of me since Xavier and Darren died and even more so after I had gotten shot in the raid.

The raid. It was violent and created a sea of blood. Jeb and I had led it. After the hunters had barged into the McCarthy’s home and killed the whole family – mom, dad and two children, both under the age of eight – in the middle of the night, we had tracked down the hunter’s base, which was forty miles north.

I had thought that after killing over three hundred hunters in the battle at Springfield, that the Circle would’ve gotten message to leave the Shadow, Midnight and Moon Pack alone. But no – they decided to still send in more people to slaughter our kind. I wondered how many husbands, mothers, daughters and sons were from the Circle were getting killed every night.

This war…it was pointless. The Circle suffered just as much as we did – with their new weapons, we were even in match and the casualty rates were high. The leaders of the Circle were sending in new recruits. Some of them could’ve had a bright future ahead of them and others could already have family. If they died, what would become of their wives or husbands or children?

With these thoughts in mind, I had run through the thick expanses of trees with ten Offenders plus Jebadiah to get to the hunter’s base. I had to remind myself that I had Michael to go home to – I was his mother. Whenever I went out to fight the hunters, I had to make sure I took care of myself, so I could come back home to my family.

The warehouse was dark when we had gotten there. Naturally, the Alpha went in first, then the Beta. The top floors were empty, but there was the soft sound of music playing from the basement. We expected armed men ready to take us out at the bottom of the stairs, but instead we had found half-drunk hunters trying to have a good time.

It was a massacre. They had tried fighting back, but all nineteen men died that night. The names were found and the bodies were anonymously sent back to their families. Maybe it had been unnecessary to kill them when they did not have the upper hand, but all of us had been able to smell the blood of the McCarthy’s on their skin.

Only some of us had gotten injured, me included. I was shot in the back, but it didn’t puncture my spine, thankfully. The bullet had been taken out quickly and I was already healed by now, save for the new scar marring my skin. I already had a lot of them, so another one didn’t really make much of a difference.

In the three months, I had also seen a lot of Tristan. Every time I went out, I saw him at every corner. He lived in town and I wondered why I had never seen him before in the years before the battle. Now I was seeing him everywhere. I didn’t know what to think about that – did he really like me so much? Was he following me around? Or was it just merely a coincidence.

What I did know was that I could not tell Jebadiah about Tristan. He would be six feet under within twenty-four hours and I didn’t want to be responsible for the murder of an innocent human.