War of the Roses [Book 1]

Red Rose

Hope y’all enjoy!

Chapter Quote:
“You’re a freak for not being terrified of me.”
~Calla from Nightshade
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Chapter 10: Red Rose

“Your… what?” Ren demanded in shock, eyes flitting between Arya and the picture he held.  He thought some of the people in it were younger versions of some of her pack now.  The two guys that were most likely brothers resembled Dmitri and Rigg.

“My pack now… they haven’t always been my pack,” Arya said quietly, not looking at Ren. “I was ten when they died.  In fact, that picture was taken a week before everything spiraled out of control.” She scooted next to him so she could point to the people. “That’s me.  My dad told us we were going out of town soon, for a break, so I was ecstatic.  The boy next to me is Loren Hess.  He was a few months older than me.  He was my second.  The two boys right there, the blondes, they were brothers: Dean and Sam Fray.  And then, that girl standing next to Loren is Casey Gray.  She was my best friend.  The girl with the pixie cut is Tracy Stein.  Feistiest girl in my group next to me.  Not very level-headed though…  The other girl with black hair is Reyna.  She was the fashionista of the group.  If she were still here today, she would not approve of my wardrobe.  She would claim I had too many pairs of jeans and not enough skirts.  The second guy with black hair is Jake Johnson.  The guy with brown hair is Tony Parker.  That was the pack I was supposed to lead.  I didn’t know it, but the ‘vacation’ my dad talked about was actually us being rescued by the Searchers and going to the Academy.  The Keepers somehow found out.  They took all of us.  Lumine tortured me with wraiths for-” Arya fell silent, counting something on her fingers, “two months.  In that two months, I watched each of my pack mates die.” Her voice was just above a whisper.  Ren could barely hear her. “I couldn’t do jack about it either.  I screamed for them.  I screamed at the Keepers to stop.  I screamed at them to kill me too.  But no.  That was my punishment.  That was my parents’ punishment.  I had to watch my pack die, and my parents had to watch their daughter go through agony and learn that not only was I being tortured, but genetically altered; the Keepers messed with magic to get me to change coat colors.  Their experiments caused as much pain as the wraiths.  One day they got it to work.  They ordered me to change my coat color and I was so out of it, I just did as I was told.  How the Searchers found us, they never said, but I remember people breaking me free, carrying me in their arms, and me sobbing for my lost friends.  They brought me and my family to the Academy.  I had my own room.  Everyone tried to get me to come out, but nothing worked.  I was depressed.  My parents threw themselves into rescuing other Guardians.  You wonder how my parents’ pack came to be?  Well they rescued Shiloh, Carrie, and Ray’s parents along with the kids.  From what I was told, Shiloh, Carrie, and Ray met the other members of our pack when they got to the Academy.  Apparently, except for me, the others had been there for years.  The process to genetically alter us was different for each wolf.  Some of their Keepers were really good at figuring out the spell, others, like Lumine, sucked.  But, because of our shared experience, we bonded instantly.  I was the last person to meet everyone.  I hadn’t even known there were other wolves besides my family there.  Shiloh found me.  He convinced me to as least meet the people.  I reluctantly agreed.  We all ended up grouping together.  We were inseparable.  When I was… sixteen, the Searcher’s moved us here.  No Keepers controlled this territory.  The people had burned the last one that came in.  About seven people died in doing so.  Keepers tended to avoid the area after that.  The Searchers thought it safest for us to be here, so we did; they kept a Weaver with us at all times until the war ended though so in case we had to make a quick getaway.  The townspeople were about to burn us out of our houses, because some figured out what we were, until mountain lions started terrorizing the town.  It’s the same one that hurt Shiloh.  We’d been walking downtown.  I noticed a little boy had lost his parents so I ordered my pack to keep going.  I had been asking what his parents looked like when a growl sounded behind us.  I turned around and two of the three mountain lions were there.  My pack had caught the cats’ scent and came running back in wolf form.  I got the boy out of there while my pack got rid of the cats.  The townspeople who knew about us accepted us.  They know we’re not here to hurt them.  But that’s my story.  My pack now is the pack I would die.  They’re my family, just like my old pack was.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I got scared.  We’d already been through a bunch of crap and with past experiences of telling others what we are, meaning we can change coats, I panicked.  I thought you’d think the same as them and leave.  I didn’t want to risk it.”