Chapter 2
"Mama, am I a monster?Why am I different from everyone else?"
"You are not, my darling. Just like there are many flowers in the world, the red camellia is the rarest of them all. You are like the red camellia. Rare. And that makes you special."
Camille to her daughter, Ally (8 yrs old)
Ally’s POV
The first time my powers manifested, I was eight.
Kara and I had been playing in our mother's garden in the backyard and something had bitten my bare foot.
One minute I was screaming and the next, I saw my sister sitting on the ground several feet away from me, terror in her eyes.
Our mother, heavily pregnant had rushed out to see what the commotion was about and gasped.
That was when I looked around to see what used to be her garden. Nothing remained. Just a huge pile of ash. I'd passed out almost immediately, the migraine that hit me knocking me out in an instant.
If I'd thought mama was overprotective before, after that day, it quadrupled.
And then when mama passed, Kara became my babysitter, as much as her position as the Alpha's oldest could allow.
And then Kara died and the job of protecting my secret fell on my shoulders.
Sometimes I wondered if sleeping and never waking up would be a mercy compared to what would happen if anyone found out my secret.
Unnatural. Hybrid. Crossbreed.
I groaned and covered my head with a pillow when the first rays of sunlight hit my face.
"Rise and shine, my disciple."
Only one person called me that. I squinted my eyes and was met with the face of a boy that looked so much like Kara, it hurt to look at him sometimes.
My brother, Myers.
His dark blonde curls were glittering as the sun's rays rested on his head.
"Go away, Myers" I said, stuffing my face in a pillow.
There. Some peace and quiet. That is, until my entire body hit the ground.
"Myers!"
"Catch me if you can." And he took off for the living room, sure I'd run after him like I always did. And I was planning to, standing from the bed and stopping almost immediately when I saw handprints all over my sheets, only that where those handprints were, they were holes. Burnt into the fabric by my palms. It'd been so long since it last happened that I'd almost forgotten that I was capable of burning the house to the ground if I ever lost control.
Ripping the sheets from the bed with speed in case Myers came back to find me, I dumped it in the laundry basket and walked out of my bedroom. I met him in the kitchen drinking from a bottle of juice, despite knowing he should use a cup. On the counter was a plate of toast, bacon and eggs.
For a moment, I forgot what brought me here and helped myself to some bread. "Hey, that's mine. Go make your own." He whined and I smacked the back of his head.
"Well,you woke me up. Besides, who made this? Last I checked,you can't cook."
"Dad did."
"Oh."
It was no secret that my father and I were not friends. Ever since Kara died, I'd distanced myself from him, rebelled, fought with him until he couldn't take it anymore and finally snapped. And there was the fact that I'd done it all so that he wouldn't get close enough to know my secret.
"You can't do this forever, Allyson." He growled at me as I stood by the window in the living room.
"Of course I can. What do you want from me?"
"I want you to grow up, Grow up. You've lived your entire life being a shadow of your sister and I didn't complain because—"
"She was best at everything, father. She took care of us when you didn't. Of me when you didn't. She became both mother and father to us when mum died and in your grief, you shut us out. Myers and I were able to have a normal childhood because she made sure she exceeded all your expectations and carried the burden of being the Alpha's oldest." I yelled.
"You think I don't know that! Do you for one second think I'm okay with losing Kara? She was everything a father would have wanted in a child. She wouldn't be making trouble around and constituting a nuisance everywhere." He blurted out, but not before he saw how he'd broken the battered remnants of my heart to pieces.
"Ally, I didn't mean-"
"No,it's fine. I understand. I'll never be the kind of daughter that you'd be proud of. I'll never be Kara."
"Ally, you're not eating." Myers said, a frown etched on his slender face. He was just eleven and was already bigger than most boys his age, looking like a fourteen year old. The perks of werewolf genes. Alpha genes.
"Its alright. I'm not just hungry anymore." I said, standing up to leave the kitchen.
"But I can't finish all of this. I asked him to make for the two of us. Please, don't go." I could hear how hurt he was as he pleaded.
Turning around to face him, I saw his green eyes filled with tears. I sighed and opened my arms for him.
He hugged me tight and started crying as I apologized to him. Even though he barely talked about Mum and Kara and tried to put up a happy face, I knew he was just as affected as I was.
He was barely three when mum passed away, and then Kara died a few days before his eighth birthday.
Then he had to watch as I spiraled down for a while before trying to pick up and put the pieces of my life together. It filled me with shame that despite knowing all of that, I couldn't protect him from the repercussions of the discord between myself and our father.
"I'm sorry, Ally. Men don't cry, do they?" He said, sniffing as he pulled me to sit beside him by the kitchen counter.
"Don't let any one fool you, Myers. They cry, a lot. But don't cry in front of anyone except me,okay?" With that,he nodded and gave me a genuine smile. Something that I'd been struggling to give to everyone who was worried about me. There and then, I decided that I was going to try harder to be the sister he deserved "So,will you eat with me?"
"Of course. I'll even drive you to school. How about that?"
"So,what's it going to be? East or West?" Caleb asked as we sat in our favorite diner. The sun had just set.