chapter 39. THE NIGHTMARES THAT LIVED ON...

A pause. A tight swallow. "...I was surprised to see her there. I told her to go back but she refused."

"Aila has always been sheltered by the pack and my own family. Everybody loves her because she's a very lovable child." His voice took on a light tone like he can remember this past, "Even when I was young, I wasn't all easy going and carefree like other pack children, but I had a very soft spot for Aila. It was so visible...everyone knew. No one messes with Aila, not even when pack-children are playing. That person will have to go through me first."

A small smile ghosted Ismena's lips. "I can understand that very much, and I'm sure everyone else can too. You're her big brother, of course you love her that fiercely. It's like that for me and Tina, my little sister, too."

A lightness was in her heart that she's sharing this part of him with her, as she squeezed the washcloth dry from water and blood before dipping it into clean water again and pressing on his wound, "Aila...what a beautiful name."

He heard her but he didn't react to her words or even the painful cleaning of his wounds. Instead, he continued, "I spent a great deal of time trying to reason with Aila not to come with me to the non-changeling world; it's a dangerous place and so different from our world, I'd tried to pound into her head but Aila wouldn't hear of it."

His throat worked again, "Her smile was filled with trust when she threw herself on my body, wrapped her arms around my neck, and whispered 'I am not scared because I am going with my big brother. The most powerful and the best big brother in the world. I trust you to protect me, brother.'...Those were her words."

The lightness in Ismena's heart disappeared into the mist. The feeling she was getting about this story, it is a painful one. A shiver worked down her arms.

"I took her with me. After all, I'm only staying three days and two nights. And I can protect my sister. She saw so much beauty in the human world but then again, that's Aila. She always sees the best and beauty in everything."

His hands tightened further on those chair-arms so hard, Ismena feared that he'll break them in pieces. Forcing herself to focus on cleaning and dressing his wounds while giving him a listening ear she put the water aside and reached for the healing potions.

"The night we were ambushed..." A slight pause. His hands-on the arms loosened. "The night we were ambushed by Wolfhunters, it was so unexpected. Somehow, they'd found out about our mansion in the city and they came prepared; bullets and lethal ammunition to kill or incapacitate us. The fight was bloody, but then again, changelings are very strong beings."

His eyes opened then. The coldest blue eyes she has ever seen stared into space. "So many of them fought me directly. Too many focus on me, told me that these people came for me specifically. The rest of my people are merely bonus. I killed them brutally. Left trails of blood everywhere. We were on the verge of victory. I can remember smelling it. And then..."

He went silent.

Every moment that passed, every moment the silence remained unbroken, the heavy lead that has settled on Ismena's heard became heavier.

So heavy, she was having a hard time breathing. "And then...?" She whispered then, when she couldn't bear it anymore.

Even as she urged him on, fear weighted like a huge imposing figure inside her. Ismena was scared to hear what happened, but she was also scared of him stopping this way.

Finally, his cold eyes blinked once. "And then...I smelled her fear. Aila.One of them had gone into the house, dragged her out by the hair, held a dagger to her chest, and was smiling at me triumphantly from behind."

"Oh no...!"

"It was the first time I saw that kind of terror in her big brown-eyes before. Wolfhunters gave a condition...'we surrender or they plunge the dagger through her heart.' I surrendered. We lost and they won." Silence, "I was holding Aila's small hands in mine when they plunged that goddamned injection through my arms."

His eyes closed again. "I woke in a cage. I needed no one to tell me that I am in their infamous laboratory. According to words we heard over the years, their scientists have a monstrous, well-equipped laboratories they used to torture our kind who are werewolves. Other species, they just kill. We have been searching for their hideouts and laboratories for decades, but they stayed well-hidden."

"Finding myself in that large cage, I went into a raging frenzy, demanding to see my sister. I felt fear for the first time in my life, because I did not know if Aila was alive or not. I practically dared those scientists to come into the cage to try and punish me for the uproar, but no one dared. Instead, they convinced me that Aila was alive by making her scream from a different part of the cell which I couldn't see."

Ismena finished applying the healing potions and dropped the small bottle aside. She reached for the bandages then.

"I knew there were more of my packmates in that lab, but I was isolated just like the rest of them so I had no idea who was captured and who wasn't. To them, we were just experiments. Just animals. And they tortured and treated us like one."

"Oh my God!!" Ismena gasped, disgustedly. Her hands gripped the bandage so tight in her anger, her knuckles turned white.

He continued anyway. His tone was flat. "I was called Number 6. Aila was Number 26. For weeks, I was more drugged than sober. They did all kinds of experiments on me, focusing on me solely because they got the idea that I was the strongest of 'them all'."

"In that lab, their aim was; to know everything about our DNA so they can find out our weaknesses and explore them, and also to create werewolves babies, keep them away and raise them into armies under their commands that can do all they say, and also help annihilate our kind."

"That is so horrible...!"

"I heard most of my people die from the monstrous drugs and experiments. I was in a rage all the time...fear and misery. I was unable to protect my sister. I know they'd drugged her up and forced our males to rape her several times. She and the few other changeling females in that lab. Their screams-likewise the roars of the males-can be heard through the thick walls and iron barricades."

Her hands shook as she put the last bandage on the wound. Her vision of his leg blurred, not because of the darkness of the night, but because of the tears that has filled her eyes.

"They used drugs to keep us in animal form most of the time, and still use drugs to make us force-shift when they want to, especially when they want to breed us. Two scientists discussed my people's pains all the time in front of my cage." He swallowed again, his eyes opened. "They talked casually about how my people die so rapidly from their drugs and tortures."

Age-old rage filled him, Wolfaraine can no longer sit still again. The werewolf and the mountain lion were filled with fury inside him, clawing at him in agitation and restlessness to be let out.

Barely keeping himself from vibrating visibly with his rage, pain, and misery. He rose to his feet and walked towards the big window beside his bed.

His shoulders still bled from the ghastly untreated bruises, and his left leg throbbed in a giant pain with each step he took towards the window, but he did not stop.

He did not stagger. He did not limp.

"Most of those untested drugs they used on us were very hard and deadly to the wolf but because those drugs get the job done, those humans did not care about the consequences...the excruciating pain. It only angered those humans that their lab-rats were dying off, not that they are actually killing beings with feelings. They drugged me up more than the others, so why am I not dying? Those were their baffling questions."

Ismena stood up too but she didn't move with him. Instead, she wrapped her hands around her suddenly chilled arms and rubbed vigorously.

"They had no idea that I have two beastly forms. That was how I stayed alive as long as I did. Most of those drugs that would have killed me in wolf-form were absorbed by the part of me that is a cougar. They did not know that, they only know that I was more powerful and not dying."

"Because of that, they focused more of their drugs and experiments on me and made it their life's mission to make sure that my seed takes root in a female. They bred me with all females both humans and changelings. They needed my child."

"Heavens..." The tears she was trying to hold for minutes finally escaped her eyes in waves, down her cheeks, and splashed on her chest. Her body, naked under the towel, have long dried but she did not bother with it.

He turned and faced her. The fury and raw pain she saw on his face were like a punch to her belly.

"In that cage, I swore that I would never birth a child. Not then, not in the future. Not ever. It is better any child of mine does not come into this world than to be caged, tortured, or trained by those monsters." He looked her in the eyes and stated baldly.

How can people be so wicked? She looked away so he wouldn't see her blink those tears away.

No wonder he hates humans this much.

Who goes around with such heart-breaking past and deep-rooted pains like the ones this Alpha King has?

More tears gathered in her eyes.

His claws sprang out, he fisted his hands and faced the window again. "No child of mine will go through what I went through in the hands of humans. No child of mine will be altered to a monster weapon. And no child of mine will ever be trained to annihilate our species."

Ismena does not know what to say. She was tongue-tied and her chest hurts too much. For him. And for their future as mates, if they ever have one.

Staring out in the darkness of the night, he wore his pains on his features. "You know, I thought I would break one-day; go insane or die. It was too much. Everything was too much. The pains. The drugs. Aila's screams. My people's roars of anguish. Everything."

Blood spilled where his claws broke the skin of his palms, "For the six months I stayed in that hell, my hatred for humans grew as fast as the foxglove tree. Everyone of their monstrous action was like fertilizer to that hate until it became as large as the General Sherman tree. Me and my other halves especially the cougar."

It was just one human that he wasn't able to keep hating. One small girl...

Shit! An imaginary loud clang sounded on his head with the force he banged the door of that memory shut.

Never think of her.

Never ever think of her.

If you ever want to keep sanity close, never think of her, ever again.

On the other hand, Ismena was remembering Wolfaraine's rage in cougar form clearly when he chased her earlier in the day. The murder-look in its green eyes is not something that can be easily forgotten.

Also, Alphose's words earlier came back to her.

"The cougar does not like you, so beware of his eyes going all green."

A cold shiver worked through her spine.

"I was not surprised that the King-Cougar's rage and hate for humans surpassed that of the King-Wolf because the cougar protected us the most in those hellish months; my mortal form and in wolf-form. Taking every drug those doctors stuck into me in wolf-form and absorbing itself. It damaged the cougar badly."

Her voice finally worked. "How...?" It came out hoarse.

He thought of ways to explain it better, "In animal form, we are basically instinctive and not rational or reasonable like we are in mortal form. But even at that, I am more in control in wolf form than in cougar form. That part of me is so damaged, I am tethering at the edge of the insanity because of the basic instincts that are riding it all the time, especially when I'm in mortal form." A pause, "To Kill. To Destroy. Those are the only instincts the cougar knows now."

Suddenly, his words in the afternoon were making more sense now.

"Today, if I had caught you in the form of the mountain lion, I would have killed you in the most horrible way. That was the instinct I was riding on. If I had caught you...if Alphose hadn't stopped me...I would have torn you apart."

His face cold and blank, he continued. "I killed every single human female those doctors threw my way for me to breed."

He heard her shocked gasp behind him.

Wolfaraine only shrugged, his eyes overlooking the foxglove tree a few miles away, "Every single one of them. A part of me was drugged and goes right ahead to ravish the human at that moment, to relieve the overriding ache in my body, while another part of me-the cougar-lies in wait...," A pause, "...waiting for me to lose control in the climax, then the rest is history. I wake up to blood and bones of the female I had sex with."

"God..." Ismena pitied all those women, even as her heart weeped for him. They were all victims.

He threw a look over his shoulders, "That is one of the reasons you and I will never work, Ismena. There is every chance that you would end up like those women. It is not a good way to go."

Then, he faced front again. A muscle ticked in his jaw, "Anyway, after four months, those monsters began raging about the realization that they aren't getting my child anytime soon because I killed all the human females, and haven't impregnated any of the changeling females they'd drugged and dragged to my cage too."

"Right on their faces, assholes." Ismena muttered her agreement, wiping the tears from her eyes. She sniffled, feeling a bit happy that they didn't get what they want.

But Wolfaraine didn't share her enthusiasm. If anything, she saw his body go taut.

"So, they decided that it's better they bring in a relative because there is a better chance of pregnancy since our bodies are related." For the first time since he began his narration, his pain was heard in his voice.

Ismena was beginning to get the idea.

"No..." Her eyes widened. "No, God no..." Heavens, God, no. She shook her head, hard.

"No..." Her voice trembled. Anything but this...

Blood dripped from his hands where his fangs were cutting himself. The wolf howled in misery inside him. The mountain lion roared in agony inside him.

His tone was hoarse when he spoke again. "I was too drugged when I saw my ten-year-old sister again after months. Months...of hearing her scream almost all the time. Even drugged to the point of overdose, I can still remember seeing her again in her mortal form when they dragged her in and locked the cage. The terror in her eyes...but at the same time, the trust in those brown-eyes too."

"No. No...please..." Tears flowed freely from her eyes. She can't hear more. God, she doesn't want to hear this.

"She was close to breaking point, I could see it in her eyes on that day." He swallowed to wet his throat again. "I was overdosed, and on that day I was almost sure that the excruciating pain will be the death of me. The pain was too much, Ismena."

He raised his hands and looked at his bloodied palms. The hands he'd dragged and devoured his sister with.

His head was filled with the memories of that day...

The day he raped his own baby sister.

The day he broke Aila.

The day he killed Nalaila.

Over the months, he'd heard Aila scream so much, the sound of it were imprinted in his tortured mind forever. But the sound of her screams on that day were different.

More agonizing. She pleaded with him. Struggled to escape from his arms while he tore her apart from the inside out.

Even in his feral mind, those moments were imprinted in his mind. The moments that damaged him forever.

A soft feather-like touch on his arm jerked him out of that dark vortex of nightmare back to the harsh realities that are his life.

"Wolfaraine..." She whispered behind him. Her voice tearful, he doesn't need to look behind to know that she is crying.

Voice dead and toneless, he whispered, "I hurt her badly, Ismena. I failed Nalaila in every sense of that word.