Chapter 20 - Amelia
I feel numb again—as numb as I felt when Dorian rejected me and I had no choice but to escape the warehouse without him.
This time, it’s different though. We’re not trying to run away from something, but instead face the source of all our darkest horrors.
Damita…
My maternal instincts kick in and snap me out of the void of emotions that kept me frozen outside my childhood home. Just as quickly as my sense of reality kicks in, so does the recognition of the house in front of me.
All of my childhood memories come crashing in like a projection playing out from my subconscious mind. The memories I’d buried beneath the dirt of the grief of losing both parents and the only family member I had left are unearthed now. Tears cloud my vision, but I hastily wipe my eyes and stare at the house.
It used to be a home, back when Jackson and I were kids. Now, it’s just an empty shell as deserted as Jackson’s heart. He’d rejected it when he chose the dark side and became a monster.
My brother died when our father did—it’s something I have to accept.
Sniffing and wiping away my tears, I take a deep breath to strengthen my resolve. I’m a mother now, and I am the Nightclaw Luna. I can’t stand idly by when our daughter is in there somewhere. I have to save her.
I walk in just as the floorboards shake and squeak with a thunderous bang that startles me behind the kitchen wall. I peek out from the side when a wailing howl signals Dorian and Damian’s shift into their wolf forms.
When they lunge forward together, I follow the blur of their speed to see Jackson’s mangled, deranged wolf form growling at them. Dorian snarls and pounces on him, knocking him over and sending him crashing into the first few steps of the staircase.
“Shit…” I murmur under my breath, my eyes following what’s left of the staircase as my heart rate picks up pace like a tell-tale indicator that Damita is upstairs somewhere. I narrow my eyes, trying to calculate a clear path to the staircase.
I have to get to her, but the fight that rages on blocks my path to the broken staircase.
With all the noise of the tumultuous fight as Dorian’s wolf snarls at Jackson’s rabid wolf before pouncing on him and tumbling to the ground, Damita’s wailing can be heard from down here. My heart races as adrenaline rushes through me, fuelled by the maternal need to get my daughter in my arms.
As soon as Damian growls and joins his brother to have Jackson pinned down while they snap brutally sharp teeth in his face, I see a window of opportunity to bolt for the staircase. I climb to the highest mound of heaped, broken wood, then use all the strength I can muster thrust myself forward, and grab the splintered balustrade to haul myself onto the staircase. The impact sends my right side crashing into the acute edge of one wooden step, but I pick myself up again just as a warning howl rings out from below.
Dorian’s glassy, blackened eyes of dominance meet mine as if he’s commending me for the courage it took for me to come inside the house. It only lasts a split second, but his silent praise is enough to spur my climb to the landing just as the fight rages on below.
“Damita! My baby!” I cry out as I launch myself forward, following the sound of her crying that leads me to the only pink bedroom in the house.
It’s my old bedroom—the one I grew up in and helped my mother paint the walls when we first moved in.
The memory freezes me on the spot, all the ruckus around me fading until I hear my mother’s voice inside my head as if she’s still alive, dipping a paintbrush into the metal can of paint.
“ I always wanted to have a bedroom of my own to paint my walls pink,” she says, her voice so faint in my mind, but the message so profound.
“ Now I get to do it with you, my child.”
It’s almost as if I can see her face flashing in my mind’s vision, and I realize how much I missed her. When Damita was born, I made an oath to myself to try and be everything for my daughter that my mother was for me.
On the other side of the spectrum, Jackson was close to our father, and Dad was to him what Mama was to me. When Dad died, it turned him ruthless, while Mama’s death made me want to be just like her.
That’s why I became a nurse. When I became a mother, it was my own mother who would live on in me.
Jackson, however, is nothing like Dad, and he’ll never be. All of this is because of greed, and I can never consider him my brother anymore. I don’t care that we share the same DNA. He doesn’t exist to me.
With that firm, mental declaration, I come back to the present moment just as Damita’s cries pound my eardrums. I’m just about to take a step forward when I’m unexpectedly hit in the back by a strong, relentless arm that flings me across the room until I crash against the wall and land in a twisted heap on the ground.
“Ow!” I yelp as I writhe on the floor from the excruciating pain gripping every bone in my body. It’s only when I blink a few times that I find Jackson’s hybrid wolf form towering over me with an ominous snarl curling its lips from where saliva drips out from the sides of its blackened gums.
The vile, inhumane creature bucks its head and clasps sharp teeth on my arm, lifting me off my feet to stare into its demented eyes. The smarting pain from how deep its teeth have punctured my flesh throbs and burns as if there’s fire on my skin.
“Let go of me you fucking monster!” I scream, glancing frightenedly at Damita wailing in the crib. I try flapping my good arm at Jackson’s monstrous face, but my feeble attempt to fight back only aggravates him as he flings me across the room again, this time my back cracking against the nightstand.
Jackson’s murderous eyes narrow at me as he marches forward, licking a frightening purplish tongue across his muzzle. But when the light of the moon illuminates his wolf face as he stands beside the window, a normal werewolf spears its frame into Jackson and they crash through the wall to the sound of splintering wood and shattering glass roaring through the air.
A howl rings out from the distance, and I fight to keep my eyes open when my eyelids grow heavier with the restraint of the pain rolling over every inch of my body.
“Damita…” I murmur, attempting to turn my face toward the bed, but failing. I realize I can’t move, and the dread has tears flowing from the floodgates of my helplessness.
“Amelia!” Dorian calls out from somewhere ahead, but I can’t see him until he sprints forward in human form and rounds the side of the bed. He falls to his knees and scoops me into his arms, eyes wide and alarmed and he rakes his gaze across my limp body.
“I need to get you out of here now!” he says in a panicked tone. The condition I’m in is only visible to his eyes from the outside, while internally, I’m numb and can’t feel a thing. It must look worse than I thought, but I can’t feel or move a single finger.
“N-no…” I croak, my throat getting dry. “Y-you need to save our daughter.”
Dorian shakes his head, tears pooling in his eyes. “I need to save you, Amelia!”
I manage a small, wistful smile in reassurance. “D-don’t worry about me…” My voice is hoarse now as if my fate is clambering up my throat. I have to get these last words out before it’s too late.
“Save our daughter,” I say as a wave of exhaustion washes over me while I’m riddled with guilt.
The only reason Dorian preserved Jackson’s life was for my sake, and it was all in vain. I was better off without him because wanting Dorian in my life was as selfish as him keeping Jackson alive to find me. It’s all Jackson’s fault. If he wasn’t alive and paid for his crimes…
“Do whatever it takes to save Damita…” I groan as my vision begins to blur and Dorian’s face starts to fade. “Damian… Fix things with him. Only some relations are worth saving.”
I feel a flicker of energy shoot through my arm, and it gives me enough strength to lift my hand to Dorian’s face and feel the stubble on his cheek beneath my palm. My lips lift into a gratified smile with everything I would have wanted to admit to the man hanging on my tongue while I’m unable to speak. My arm grows limp and it falls to the side just as my vision darkens and the first stirrings of nothingness cloud my mind.
“Amelia! No! Stay with me!”
Dorian’s helpless pleas become distant in my mind as I drift off into the abyss of a dream-like state in which the unlikely family of three live happily ever after in safety, not subjected to the nightmares of a hybrid human-werewolf like Jackson.