Chapter 4 - Franco
“Please! Mommy!” I shouted. “Don’t leave me behind!”
“It’s for your own good. Now let go of me and go back inside.”
Strong hands came from behind me, prying my hands off her shirt as I clung to it desperately. I was only eight, but even with my limited strength, it took a great deal of effort for my father to gain control of me. I thrashed around as he wrapped his arms solidly around my wiry frame.
“No! Ki, don’t let her do this to us. You have to stop her!”
“I’m sorry, Franco,” my older brother replied sadly.
Realization struck me as I saw the backpack slung across his shoulders. They were both abandoning me. The only two people in the world that I loved—and who loved me—were leaving me behind with a monster.
I began to sob as they turned their backs and walked away. My body collapsed in a heap, barely held up by my father.
“Inside, boy,” he growled. “You’re making a scene.”
He looked at the windows of the houses on our street, where neighbors peered out from their curtains. But I was too distraught to care. What did it matter that people saw me? I was alone.
“I said Get. In. Side. Or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
With extreme difficulty, I peeled myself off the ground and shuffled back into the house. My father’s threat still rang in my ears as he slammed the door shut behind us. He had followed through on that threat enough times that I rarely showed any emotion anymore.
I wiped my eyes, doing my best to hide the despair I felt at the loss of my mother and brother.
“Good riddance,” he said, plopping down on the couch and taking a swig of the beer he had opened in the moments before my life had come tumbling down. He made a face as the warm beer touched his tongue and slammed it down on the end table, sloshing the liquid over the rim of the can. “Fetch me another, boy.”
My footsteps were quick and silent as I did as I was ordered, returning within moments with a fresh, cold can for my father. He smiled at me tightly, and I decided to take advantage of the momentary lapse in sternness to ask the only question I needed an answer to.
“When will they be back?”
“Humph,” he grunted. “Never. Your whore of a mother isn’t welcome here, and neither is that bastard of hers.”
Tears welled in my eyes, hearing his words. It wasn’t the insults or the profanity that made me emotional. I had heard him call Mom and Ki much worse things before—all because she had a baby with someone else before my parents met. No, it was the fact that I might never see them again that broke me.
This was my life now.
I vowed that day to never feel the hurt that my mother and half-brother had caused ever again. Never again would I allow myself to feel an attachment even close to love. Never again would I be weak.
“He’s dead, Franco,” my father’s second told me. His face was expressionless, as befit the occasion. No one in the pack had followed my father out of love or loyalty—only fear. He had been a ruthless son of a bitch who always got what he wanted, and he had taught me to be just like him.
“Deal with it,” I ordered. “We leave in the morning.”
The beta nodded and left me to my thoughts. I was the alpha now. I was free.
“What have you done?!” I shouted at my pack. The clearing was littered with bodies—some human, some animal—and the entire pack was covered with blood.
“Alpha, forgive us,” my beta begged, kneeling at my feet. “Something came over us. A darkness. A hunger. We couldn’t stop ourselves.”
Indeed, I felt the same darkness he spoke of. I wanted to rip the throats out of every member in the pack for disobeying my orders to stay hidden. There was a huge mess for us to clean up, and it wasn’t one that we could keep secret forever. The human authorities would find out about these deaths sooner or later. All we could do was make sure the blame didn’t land on us.
“Stop groveling,” I ordered. “I don’t care that they’re dead; I care that you made more work for me. So get up and help me deal with it. Now.”
My beta obeyed, and the entire pack began to move the bodies, staging the humans inside their tents to look like they were attacked in their sleep instead of tortured and massacred outside.
I grabbed one of the bodies, my hands sinking into what was left of the torn flesh. Blood coated my hands and clothes as I carried him to his sleeping bag and tossed him inside.
“Burn it,” I ordered.
I woke with the vision of that man’s death stare burned into my retinas. My body was covered in sweat as I swung my feet onto the floor and stretched my tense muscles. The nightmares weren’t unusual, but the feeling that accompanied this one was. I was on high alert and felt uneasy and shaken. It was as if I needed to fix something that couldn’t be fixed.
I got up to get a drink from the kitchen sink and looked toward the cot where Sienna had fallen asleep. It was empty.
“Fuck,” I growled.
She couldn’t have gone far. The pack would still be awake, satiating their bloodlust. Someone was bound to have seen her.
I ran outside and headed straight for the sounds of revelry coming from the makeshift arena I had taken Sienna to earlier. My eyes scanned the area for her red hair, knowing that no one else in the pack had a similar hue. After pushing my way through the crowd, I finally saw her standing next to my beta, Dylan.
His hand gripped her elbow as he was forcing her to watch yet another violent battle between a captive rogue and a member of the pack. The sight of his hand on her skin sent bristles down my spine. Sienna was mine . He had no right to touch her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, striding up to Dylan and forcefully taking Sienna’s arm away from him.
“Alpha,” he replied. “Just giving her a repeat performance of what she saw earlier.”
“What makes you think it was a good idea to enter my cabin without permission?” I couldn’t explain why I felt protective over the girl, but the thought of someone taking her out of my sight had caused a surge of possessiveness to course through me. I was determined to make sure it never happened again.
“I didn’t want her coming up with any crazy schemes about trying to run away,” Dylan said. “Best she has all the information about what she’d be dealing with upfront. You were asleep, so I was just trying to help you out.” He shrugged.
“ Never do that again,” I ordered. “Sienna is off-limits. I will deal with her myself.”
“Of course, Alpha. My apologies.”
Dylan turned around to finish watching the battle as Sienna cowered next to me.
“You,” I said, turning my attention towards her. “Come with me.”
I dragged her away from the center of the ring toward the edge where the older members of the pack were standing. Elise, a wiry, silver-haired she-wolf with eyes like amber, was the closest thing the pack had to a medicine woman. She didn’t know much about healing, but she was very spiritual. For the past few decades, she had been the one in charge of any marriages within the pack.
“I need you to come with us,” I said to the old woman as I approached her.
“When the fight is done,” Elise replied, not looking away from the bloody battle taking place behind me. She was the only member of the pack who ever dared to speak to me in such a disrespectful way.
“Now,” I ordered.
Her eyes snapped toward me viciously, and I knew I was playing with fire by forcing any member away when their bloodlust was so heightened. It couldn’t be helped, though. This needed to be done as soon as possible. Waiting any longer would only cause more problems.
Something in my eyes convinced Elise not to argue with me, and she nodded at me in understanding. I walked a few dozen feet away from the group, pulling Sienna with me while Elise followed.
“What do you need?” Elise asked when the sounds of the jeering crowd abated.
“I need the ceremony performed immediately,” I said.
She nodded, and I knew she was keen to get her part out of the way so she could return to the fight.
“No!” Sienna cried. The trance she had been in since I had found her moments ago seemed to have broken at the mention of the mating ceremony. “I am not going to marry you.”
“Not that I care much for your well-being, but I do need you alive so you can repay your father’s debt to us,” I said. “If you don’t marry me, you won’t be safe here. Do you want that violence aimed at you?” I nodded in the direction we had just come from.
As if on cue, a loud scream echoed through the air from the rogue. Sienna shook next to me, but I ignored her emotional reaction. Feelings had no place in what she and I had entered into today.
“Go ahead, Elise,” I urged.
“So begins the mating ceremony between Alpha Franco Stone and…”
“Sienna Mowry of Sparkle Hollow,” I supplied.
“Between Alpha Franco Stone and Sienna Mowry of Sparkle Hollow,” Elise continued. “Exchange your vows.”
“I, Franco Stone, Alpha of the Pinedale Pack, take you, Sienna Mowry, to be my mate,” I said. “Now you.”
“I,” she whispered. “Sienna Mowry of Sparkle Hollow, take you, Alpha Franco Stone, to be my mate.”
“You may mark your mate,” Elise said.
She didn’t wait to witness the marking, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t important for anyone to see what was about to happen. The scar that my bite would leave on Sienna’s neck would be enough to let every werewolf know that she belonged to me.
“Mark?” Sienna asked.
There was no point in explaining it to her—best to get it out of the way quickly. I placed my mouth on her neck and allowed my teeth to sink into her flesh. Sienna let out a scream of fear and pain as my canines pierced her skin, but I didn’t prolong the process. The mark had been made.
I stood back up, placing a swift kiss on her lips to stifle her shriek. Blood dripped from her bottom lip as I withdrew, and she reached up to wipe her mouth with an expression of horror in her eyes. She looked down at her bloodied hand and up at me before cocking her head back and spitting into my face.
“You monster,” she cursed.
“There is no other way,” I explained, wiping the bloody spittle from my eyes.
Without another word, I grabbed her hand and marched her back to my cabin. I bolted the door behind me, unwilling to chance having another member of the pack enter without my permission.
“Go to bed,” I ordered.
“You have no right to tell me what to do!” Sienna screamed. Her eyes were wild as she grabbed a towel and held it to her neck to stem the bleeding.
“I have every right,” I argued.
“If you think I’ll ever sleep with you, you’re dreaming. Do not touch me,” she warned.
“Don’t kid yourself, honey,” I laughed. “I don’t need you for that.”
I marched her over to her cot and covered her unceremoniously with the quilt that had fallen to the floor.
“Go to sleep,” I said. “You’re going to need it.”