Chapter 1: Mourn Your Darlings

The rhythm of this trembling heart is beating like a drum.

It beats for you; it bleeds for you, it knows not how it sounds.

For it is the drum of drums, it is the Song of Songs.

Once I had rarest rose that ever deigned to bloom.

Cruel winter chilled the bud and stole my flower too soon.

Oh loneliness, oh hopelessness to search the ends of time.

For there is in all the world, no greater love than mine.

~ Love Song for A Vampire, Annie Lennox ~


She lay on her back, gasping and sputtering for air. It was dark and cold, dirt filling her mouth each time she parted her lips. She banged her fists against hard wood, kicking and crying, knowing no one would hear her. She could die like this. She would die like this.

Cold. Alone. Six feet underground.

She couldn't breathe.

She was able to smell blood, she must have cut her hands, an attempt to pull apart the oak box slathered shut with cement, buried six feet beneath, keeping her trapped in the earth.

In, out. In, out.

Eventually she stilled, trying to calm herself. She could smell death. Withered, rotting bones and graveyard soil, it was all she could smell. She was probably in a cemetery.

Her eyes blaze red in the dark, so bright that they glow. Short, bloody fingernails turn into sharp claws and she slices down the middle of the warped wood. Holding her palm flat to the middle of the cut, forcing it apart.

More dirt, the wretched stench of long buried bones and flesh waft her way. She nearly retches at the foul scent. By the time her hand reaches fresh air, it is night, the crescent moon hanging almost mockingly jubilant in the sky.

...

She sits up, gasping and choking. Sputtering, her body fighting to push the water out of her lungs.

Almond eyes blinking away the water that blurred her vision, she let out a shaky breath, shivered in the now, cold water and reached forward, pulling up the stopper in the bathtub.

It made her lungs ache and her eyes burn, but it's usually the only way to make those damnable voices go away. She had heard voices and had stray, worrisome thoughts all her life. That wasn't the problem. It was whose voice she heard that equally angered and terrified her.

He would call these her 'dark periods'. Stretches of time in which she would go through cycles of moodiness. Happy one moment, then shutting herself in her room for hours the next.

She almost smiles at the thought of him, reaching up and clasping the ring that hung on a chain around her neck. She kept it close to her heart. That was how she had wanted to remember him.

Her slight reprieve is cut short by a harsh, sharp ringing sound.

She picked up the phone,

"Hello?"

...

"Hello, princess."

She semi-forces a small smile on her face and nods to the woman across from her.

"How are you feeling today, ma?"

Her mother adopts her own, coy smile, "The same as I have everyday since."

Her mother's dark eyes shift towards the pristine white wall, where a window should be, but isn't. There never is in these places her daughter takes her to. No, she wouldn't want her mother hurt. She was such a good daughter.

"They said you were doing well," The young girl begins again, softly, but with a measure of certainty. "Maybe I could take you out for a visit soon," The light buzzes overhead.

"Maybe," Her mother responds, just as softly. She lifts her fingers out of her lap and gently strokes her own cheek, "It's coming."

She narrows her eyes at the older woman, "What is?"

Her mother's dark honey eyes flash citrine and flutter to the side, "Shh. It's a secret."

The girl swallows and sets her lips in a pout.

"Tsk. Now, now, there's no need to be upset. Have you called him yet?"

"Him, who, ma?" She rolls her eyes and looks away from the nearly hollow woman.

"Don't play games, sweetheart. Him, your uncle."

Ever since Peter's bite, Scott had been a menace on the lacrosse field. Today had been no different. Glowing eyes watched him from the thick off the trees. Close enough to see him, but far enough so that the young wolf would not be able to use scent him out.

He wanted Scott. He needed him in his pack. As a new alpha, he was vulnerable. Soon, word would spread and if he wasn't careful, he could have his status taken from him just as easily as he took his uncle's.

He had offered the awkward boy everything he could think of. A pack, a place of belonging, a brother, someone he could depend on, power, control.

He refused Derek at every turn. He made Derek out to be the enemy, as if he was the reason everything in the 'supernatural' part of his life was going wrong. He rolled his eyes.

Scott was likely just looking for someone to lay blame on. Derek just happened to fit the bill.

He scoffs, annoyed and turns his eyes towards a tall, gangly looking boy. Isaac.

He had been watching him for days. Always alone, no family save an abusive father, he would be perfect. Perhaps after he built his pack, Scott would finally understand and join him, too. Until then, he needed betas.

He couldn't afford to wait for Scott right now. He needed a pack just as much as Scott did.

A few days after, Derek had made his offer. Caught him alone in the cemetery after dark.

He knew Isaac wouldn't have refused. They very seldom do. He lifted his shirt and closed his eyes tight as Derek knelt, grabbed his hips and bit down.

Isaac had shoved his fist in his mouth to swallow his screams.

Derek could still taste the young boy's blood on his teeth.

He had left him there, in his old abandoned house, to come to terms with the life he had just chosen. Derek grinned wolfishly to himself. Pieces were falling into place.

He was building his pack.