Chapter 1: The Forest
Voices were whispering in her ears. "Come, you know what you want."
"Don't you see it?" a familiar voice echoed in her ear.
"Ciera." Phoenix muttered, startled, as she turned to her dead sister.
"Don't you see it?" Ceira nodded back up at the moon that she had once aspired to go to. "I'm going to go there. I'll meet our father, I'll bring him home."
"Come on, Phe," my mother nudged me awake, daring to flit one of her tails across my face. There was an urgency in her voice: A rare thing to hear. Normally my mother had a fairly calm disposition. Something was wrong.
Curiosity and a tense energy swept over my face as I sat up silently tensing my muscles for whatever was coming.
Slowly, my mother responded in a tense murmur that was hardly audible. "Follow me," she forced out not wanting to disturb anything. "—and stay quiet." She snapped as I stepped on a twig.
Tensely, I followed my mother who had one of her tails wrapped around my neck. What was going on?
"They went this way… not too long ago," said a voice that was only too familiar: Daisy, an unwelcome voice.
"Good… she's close." The chief replied, my mother's former mate, stopping me dead in my tracks. He sounded relaxed, which was anything but good with him, normally being a fiery man. "Alert the others, nothing will stand in the way this time."
Those last words sent a shiver down my spine. Thankfully, I didn't have time to acknowledge it. My mother was already dragging me away. We would be moving quietly, slowly, and if Arceus was smiling down on us, we might get away. The last time we barely made it out, so I wasn't sure about our chances here, however.
"I can smell them," the chief murmured with a lust that I had only heard once before, the day my sister died. It scared me, knowing his intentions.
"Phoenix," my mother snapped me out of my thoughts as we tiptoed, careful to stay downwind. Not that it mattered, Daisy was the best smeller that the clan had had in, and if she was good at smelling one thing, it was fear. She didn't care who got hurt, as long as she got the job done. No matter to the deaths involved.
"Be careful about tracking them," Naomi, my mother's sister, spoke up, "We might startle them into running away." The fact that she was here meant that most of the clan was here, and that we were being hunted like prey. Even family was in on it, now.
My mother taking the hint that Naomi had thrown out there for us, picked up the pace, still careful to be quiet. It was more dangerous, running. There was always the chance that someone would hear us and then we really would be finished, but running was our best choice given the circumstances. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough.
Almost inaudibly, a twig broke to my right. "Mother…" I warned, but by then it was too late. While we were trying to get away quietly, the clan had been moving in around us. We were doomed from the start.
Loyalty was the law that my mother had broken by falling in love with my father. For so many years, her assigned mate thought that we were his. He said so every night and day, but my mother knew, and my sister knew, and I knew. Now, my mother would pay for her sin, and so would I. I would die because I existed, nothing more, nothing less.
Finally, he came out: the chief, my murderer, my father, and I knew what he was going to do as well as he did.
My mother growled a low, chest growl. A grow of warning, of protest, and in a way, pleading. She knew his intentions.
"You knew better than to run," was all he said as he slammed her muzzle into the jagged ground adorned with stones with his paw. With a cold satisfaction, he continued ", It would have been so much easier had you stayed. Maybe only one would have died."
Moving his paw from her head to her throat, he continued ", maybe, she would have lived."
"Just because she's not yours, doesn't mean that you have to kill her, Jonathon," my mother pleaded. Meeting my eyes, she looked at me, her beautiful brown eyes tearing up as if to say goodbye.
Then, he spoke ", Actually ,Rose, it does," and with that, he stepped on her throat, claws and all. As the light left her eyes, a smug satisfaction crossed his, and I just stood there, numb.
"Run," an echo met my ear so soft that I wasn't ever sure that I had heard it. It was my mother.
Suddenly, the reality of the situation crashed over me. My mother was dead, and I was next. Understanding what I had to do, I started backing up. I could not fight this enemy, not yet. As Jonathon's eyes met mine, I turned into a dead sprint him right on my tracks. Where was the clan? Were they close?
The next few seconds flashed by in a blur of him chasing me down and me yelping as he snapped at me. How long had it been? Seconds? Minutes? She was dead, I reminded myself as I tripped and fell belly up. As he closed in, all I could think was: She's dead. She's dead. As the darkness of him closed in upon me, that was all I could think. Mother. She's dead. I'm dead.
As his jaw closed in around my neck, death came. My last sensation was the wind in my pelt as it took me away.
