If I was going to live, I figured, I was going to live. Nick and Alfred were dead. In every sense, I should be deader but I was somehow still alive. I hadn't totally fallen for the divine intervention yet. In my own way, I had to be sure I wasn't already in the afterlife, sent to my own assumed fantasies like Maude's mother had promised.
As a consolation prize, maybe the damnable spider would finally drown and die.
My body crashed with a raging hardness against the water surface. I felt all the breath knocked out of me and it seemed my internal bone system got entirely displaced. Slowly, I craned my neck to the side and was mildly grateful to see the spider —the ultimate cause of my fall— bobbing away helplessly with the current as if it had somehow drunk more water than its weight.
Well, it may not survive much longer, but I was still alive! I struggled to remember how to use my limbs so as not to suffer the same fate as the unfortunate arachnid. I waded through the water and was soon safe on dry land, on a rocky river bank.
Assured of my minimal momentary safety, I started to try to process the circumstances that led me to be on the extreme end, outside the territorial boundaries of the Sanctuary. Where I was, the geography beneath the rope bridge, the unknown below, was an unclaimed territory that separated the Sanctuary Pack from the Shiners Pack.
The sun was still beaming brightly. What was the time? How long was I out before I found myself floating away with the moon river, supposedly dead? I tried once again to search for Ara in my mind, but frustratingly remained unsuccessful. This was unusual since she had never actively tried to hide from me before. Everything about my day was bizarrely unusual!
"She'll come around eventually," I mouthed to myself, as if simply saying the affirmation out loud would make it true. Nevertheless, until Ara came back, I had to accept the reality of being truly alone. I now had to deal with my problems — now more astounding than it had ever been— by myself. No Ara to wield the power of my subconscious intellect to speculate for me.
"So, Nick and Alfred are dead," I muttered. "Certainly not somehow alive like I am. Probably bobbed away like that disgusting spider did."
Yet, who would want to kill them? Riza and Maude, why? For the very same reason they allegedly killed me? Nick and Alfred may have informed Maude about my seemingly absurd claim of being Freur's mate and for that, they had to die. Was it remotely possible that Riza and Maude orchestrated their deaths to cover up the tracks of mine? I'd just be that poor neglected wolf that finally had enough and went AWOL on the pack. Nobody else would ever know that Freur is my mate. Maude would marry him, grossly unopposed.
I fancied myself in love with Freur, so much to even consider letting him go if he chose to reject me for Maude. But how dare Maude make the decision for him, going as far as murdering three people when she was not yet even member of the pack? It made me wonder, for the first time, if Nick, Alfred or I were the only ones who had died so far to secure her cause of marrying Freur.
I thought about her frozen rage when she kicked the life out of me. The hardness of Riza's hands when she wrapped them around my throat and squeezed. The carelessness of Tristan's misaligned gaze and his specialized tantrums— as if he had a whole different mindset of what 'normal' should be. Coming to think of it, maybe he had seen Maude and Riza deal criminally with people before.
I shook my head with conviction. Four whole years that Maude Caulkin strung the Sanctuarians along— acting like an ideal wife and luna. But she and her mother may just be bitches, spoiled bitches who only desired more lives to gamble with. Ensconced by this knowledge, coupled with the miraculous epiphany that I was still alive, I could not now possibly let her marry Freur on my conscience. She'd lead the Sanctuary to ruin! She'd decimate the value of Freur's existence!
I thought of how I saw Freur this morning at the moon river. He was trying to act cold but was a real softie under all his hard exterior. It would break him to be deceived by Maude, if she pulled a 360 after the marriage was solidified. I cared about Freur. I could not let that happen to him. I truly now had a reason to end any future that could have ever been between Freur and Maude, even if it meant perpetual enmity between our packs.
I stood up, cracked my bones. I was dizzy at first but managed to regain my balance within a few seconds. I looked up. The water fall seemed to be a pinprick point above me, so far away. How the fuck was I supposed to get back up?
Yet, I could not let myself entertain the option of giving up, so I resolved to scoping the unfamiliar place I found myself in just to see if I could learn any hints of how to reach the Sanctuary again. Not just again, but before tonight. A brief morbid thought swept through my mind that I may have been knocked out for days and Freur was already mated to Maude, but I banished the abominable scenario from my mind and impelled my consciousness to supply me happy thoughts.
The river bank was barren and covered with bleached rocks which I scaled over— only now realizing that I had no shoes on. I was soaked to the skin and the sun was not effectively doing much to alleviate the chills I felt running down my spine.
I reached a most peculiar spot on the bank which I could automatically tell was special. The area was rectangular, its perimeters formed by pink coloured marble rocks rather than the white bleached uneven ones. In the middle, there was what I thought could have been a pretty tulip flower had it not been so withered and dead.
This was a no man's land. Who could have created this special space which curiousity now pushed me towards?
There was a sudden screeching sound, very much like the cocking of a barrel gun. Instincts commanded me to be still.
"Move one more inch and I'll riddle you with silver bullets." The voice was a deep and pure baritone. A man's. I raised my two arms up to initiate surrender. Perhaps I survived death by Riza and death by water fall, it could not mean I was ready to take chances with a gun loaded with silver bullets at such close range.
"Put your hands behind your head and turn around. Remember, any false move and I'll be certain that your blood paints the white ground red."
"Yeesh, poetic much."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing," was my immediately ushered lie as I finally got a first view of my armed accoster. If I wasn't so close to nearly dying again, and if Ara wasn't still so mysteriously silent, one of us may have been screaming 'DAMN' and mind raging like lovesick school girls. My kidnapper was checking me out so I figured it was probably in my best interests to return the favour.
He was unexpectedly handsome and looked to be around Freur's age. His ink black hair was packed in a low ponytail that touched the base of his neck. His t-shirt and jeans did very little to hide his chiselled physique. His eyes were a troubling piercing blue with which he appraised me.
"Well, well, well," he said, an interested look of recognition in his eyes. "If it isn't the one and only Flourescent Palmer."