chapter 42

ANA'S POV:

Dreams. That is all I had left were my dreams: dreams of finding my mate who would love and cherish me unconditionally regardless of my faults and idiosyncrasies; dreams of having my own pups and raising them with all the love and nurturing that I never felt during the constant ridicule and abusive torture that I experienced while living in the pack orphanage; dreams of having friends, REAL friends that wanted me around because of who I was and not because they were forced to be around me or because of what I could do for them.

I slowly slid down the wall, pulling my knees to my chin and burying my face in the crook of my knees as I wrapped my arms around my legs and began to sob. I thought back about the events that had occurred over the past two days as the tears streamed down my face. At first my tears were a slow trickle but before I knew it, that trickle became what felt like a torrential down-pour that showed no signs of stopping any time soon. I felt as though my dreams had been violently and cruelly ripped away and shattered into tiny pieces by the woman that I believed cared about and loved me, who had raised me from infancy even, if my life wasn't always easy or nurturing.

FLASHBACK:

It was October 29th, my eighteenth birthday. I had been looking forward to this day my whole life. In the werewolf society, once you hit the age of 18, you could finally identify the one person who would be your mate for life. From everything I had heard and read, there would be sparks upon the first touch, the world around you would stop existing on first glance and there would be an instant bond with each other because we were literally created for each other. This was by design by the Moon Goddess and she never makes mistakes. This is what I believed, and these were the first thoughts in my mind when I opened my eyes from my restless night's sleep. Everything felt right in the world for the first time since, well, ever. My window was open slightly and although it was late autumn the sun was shining brightly, the air was cool and crisp but not unpleasant. I just knew that today would be the day that my life would change, things were going to get better for me, I was absolutely sure of it. Little did I know when I opened my eyes that fateful morning that although my life was definitely going to change, it was not going to be in the way I had originally imagined. I began to stretch my arms over my head trying to work out the stiffness in my muscles from sleeping in some odd position for too long. 

Suddenly the silence and tranquility of the morning was broken when I heard Miss Janice, the housemother, "Ana...Annnaaa...ANNASTASIA LYNN!!! Get down these stairs THIS instant!!" I rolled over to check the time and realized that my clock wasn't glowing with the solid blue LED numbers but was instead blinking numbers. And by the sound of the urgency in Miss Janice's voice, I had overslept!! I jumped out of bed, feet barely touching the floor as I grabbed the dress I had carefully laid out the night before and put it on quickly, smoothing out the small wrinkles in the middle. I went to the small closet my shoes were supposed to be in but when I opened the door, the only things I saw were empty wire hangers from the cleaners hanging on the rod and a pair of ratty black converse tennis shoes on the shoe rack. As I opened the door fully, I saw that even my "notes-to-self", words of encouragement and affirmations, and the few pictures I had were no longer taped to the inside door. I grabbed the converse shoes, which clashed miserably with the purple dress I had on and took a long look around the room. "It's all gone," I whispered to myself, "where did my life go?" I pinched myself, hard on the forearm, hard enough to cause a bruise, to wake myself up from this nightmare only to realize that this was all too real.

"ANNASTASIA...NOW!!!" Miss Janice bellowed up the stairs. "I'm coming, Miss Janice, I'm coming," I answered back as I quickly ran a brush through my hair, tying it up in a loose messy bun, grabbed my backpack and purse from the desk and snatched my prepaid cell phone from my nightstand and threw it into my purse.  My door slammed shut as I sprinted down the stairs. Just before I reached the bottom steps, I stopped cold in my tracks. There, in front of the door, were two small boxes, tightly packed and taped shut with my name scrawled messily across the top. Miss Janice stood at the front door, holding it open with an unnerving grin plastered on her face, "Well, come on Ana, stop dawdling about. We don't have all day!" she said.

I continued down the stairs slowly and stopped in front of Miss Freda, the cook, with unasked questions in my eyes. Miss Freda had always been nice to me and would take care of my wounds after a particularly bad beating I received from Miss Janice if I had stepped out of line somehow.  Miss Freda would also sneak me whenever my dinner was being withheld as a punishment for some wrongdoing I had committed. Miss Freda just shook her head slightly, smiled sadly, gave me a quick hug and slipped a small piece of paper in my jacket pocket before turning around quickly with glistening, unshed tears in her eyes and ran from the room without a word.

"Miss Janice," I began, "I don't understand what's happening here. Why are those boxes marked with my name on them? Why was my room stripped of everything I had? What's going on?" I fired all of my questions in rapid succession. Miss Janice answered with a wicked smirk on her lips and an uncanny lilt in her voice, "Well, today is your birthday, so… HAPPY BIRTHDAY...now, GET OUT!! You don't belong here, not that you ever did," she screamed in my face. I began to feel the sting of tears in the corner of my eyes as I began to back away from her. "Why? What have I done? Where am I supposed to go? How am I supposed to get there?" I asked with a wavering voice, confused.

"This is the pack orphanage for children who have no families," Miss Janice began, "or without families that want them," she added with that same sneer on her face. "As of today, your 18th birthday, your childhood has become nothing more than a memory and you are now an adult. You have reached the age of majority and you have no business here any longer. As for answers to your insignificant and pathetic questions, it isn't my problem as to where you go or how you manage to get there … as long as it isn't here. Use that feeble mind of yours for once and figure it out, or are you honestly so addle-brained that you cannot even manage a task as menial as that?"

Miss Janice continued "As for what is happening and why, let's just say that I have counted down the years, months, weeks and finally days until I could finally tell you this: you were dumped here by your parents when you were six months old with a note saying that there was something "fundamentally wrong" with you and that they did not want you as their burden to raise. They didn't care what we did with you with the exception of one stipulation, we were NEVER to try to find or contact them," Miss Janice continued, almost gleefully. "They were right about you, you know. There really is something very wrong with you. I felt it from the first moment I picked you up from the misshapen rattan basket you were left in. You MUST realize it too, I mean, look at you. You are 18 years old and not once have you ever shifted or even shown the slightest inclination towards having any wolf-like abilities. For Goddess' sake, you are fat and wear coke-bottle glasses!! What werewolf needs glasses? Our vision is extremely acute, day and night! So yes, you are beyond damaged, but as of today, you are no longer my concern." Miss Janice pointed at the boxes at the front door with her perfectly manicured nails, "Now, be a good girl and take your meager belongings and leave these premises IMMEDIATELY! Do not ever return here because as soon as you cross that threshold, there is no longer anything or anyone within these walls that belong to you, pertain to you or that you are entitled to. But you do have a choice, you can leave now, of your own volition, or if you rather, I can summon the Alpha's guards to remove you forcibly."

"May I at least have something for breakfast before I have to go? I can take it with me. I haven't eaten since early last night." I pleaded with Miss Janice. The only morsels of food I was allowed last night was two pieces of stale bread and a glass of watered-down milk. Miss Janice laughed hysterically as though she had just heard the funniest joke that had ever spoken since the dawn of time. When she was able to compose herself enough to speak, she answered, "If you hadn't overslept," she stated sarcastically with special emphasis on the word 'overslept', "you wouldn't have missed breakfast...the kitchen is CLOSED, now, GET OUT!!" Miss Janice's voiced boomed.

As I began to gather my paltry belongings, I looked up at Miss Janice, asking, “Where do I go to get my injections now? I have been getting them from you and your nurse friend Miss Kaira my entire life. I don’t even know the name of the prescription. Not to mention that the last one I had was a couple of days ago.” I realized that I didn’t get my injection last night, they must have forgotten about it since I normally got it directly after dinner and I wasn’t at dinner last night.” Miss Janice answered back, snidely, “Don’t worry about that. They weren’t doing any good for you anyways, no matter how many times adjustments were made, there simply were no medical breakthroughs in your case. I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” she said under her breath.

Just as I was lifting the second box into my arms, one of the omegas came bounding down the stairs, arms full of bed linens from my room. “I got all of the linens and pulled the curtains from Ana’s old room like you asked, Miss Janice. I don’t know why her alarm clock was unplugged but I went ahead…” she stopped dead on the stairs when she looked up and saw my horror-stricken face and the rage-filled look in Miss Janice’s eyes. She ducked her head and hurried past them towards the laundry room without so much as another glance their way or uttering another word.

I turned around slowly as understanding began to dawn on me how my entire morning was completely pre-planned. All of my personal belongings were thrown carelessly into boxes in the dead of night while I slept, and my clock was conveniently unplugged so that not only would I miss breakfast, but it would also make me late getting to school. The fact that not even my shoes matched my carefully planned, pressed and laid out ensemble did not escape me, either. I began to feel my anger as it rose from the pits of my stomach.

As I looked at Miss Janice, I felt as though I was mentally being pushed to the side. I caught my reflection in the mirror just inside the front door, my eyes turned from their normal cerulean blue color to completely black with the exception of a blood red ring around the outside of my iris. When I spoke, I didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice. “Miss Janice, you say that you have been counting down the years, months weeks and days until you could spill your little venom-filled secret. Now that that is over, I have a new counting task for you. Starting today, you can begin to count the hours, days, weeks and possibly years until we return to avenge sweet Ana of the misdeeds you have inflicted on her for the last 18 years! Mark MY words, this is NOT the last time you have seen Anastasia Lynn Tomes’ face, but it IS the last time you have seen her cower to you and your abuse. Consider this your only warning, you will never see me coming but know this, the last thing you WILL see is this face as you choke on you own blood! Your ONLY hope is to pray for the Moon Goddess herself to intervene on your behalf and releases you of your useless life before that day comes! You will rue the day that you ever thought to mistreat Ana.”

With that warning passed along, my eyes returned to their beautiful cerulean blue, glimmering with unshed teas as I continued to gather my belongings and walked out the door, holding my head as high as I could. With a look of determination on my face and a foreign feeling of strength and resilience in my heart, I whispered, “I will be back, fierce and better than I am as I leave this place of misery,” I vowed out loud to know one but myself, “I will show all of you how strong I can be.” Miss Janice heard the determination and tenacity in Ana’s voice as she spoke those last words to herself and, for the first time in all of her 52 years of life, she was frozen in fear, trembling slightly at the finality of the articulated promise as well as the implicit warning Ana’s wolf declared just before she walked out the door.