Eclipse Child
Chapter 49

part I-

for the first time in her life,

she has given herself permission

to unpack her wings...

The next morning holds both joy and sorrow.

Alpha Theon signs the last of the paperwork, his eyes shining with undiluted happiness as he looks to his new found mate.

Sandra cannot stop grinning. They both cannot stop grinning.

A bitterness of jealousy twists in my soul at the site, but at the same time, I cannot help but smile with them. My heart feels like another weight is added, the coming event of knowing Sandra was leaving the pack making a new heaviness crawl and rest in me.

“Just a second,” Sandra squeezes Alpha Theon’s hand, not rising from the chair.

“Don’t be too long,” his voice already speaks of an untold agony at having to let go of her. He bows deeply to me, “thank you Alpha Soraya.”

I nod to him, at a loss for words.

He steps out, eyes trailing upon Sandra until the last second when he closes the door to grant us privacy.

She moves closer, her grin of the sun still smothered upon her face.

“Soraya, thank you.”

I don’t know what they are thanking me for. The Goddess worked in mysterious ways it seemed. I was just a tool used to make her string of fate happen.

Sandra pauses, something in hesitating before she faces me fully.

“I’m a Luna now.”

I frown at her words. I want to point out her naivety in saying just because she had found her mate to be an Alpha, did not make her a Luna by default. Like with all things- titles had to be earned.

But she sits up straighter, the words of her power giving her courage she never had to move on.

“Soraya. You…you are a great leader.”

My heart swells at her words, my bitterness slowing dissolving until-,

“But you do not make a great leader here.”

A barrier shuts down in my mind.

“As your former Alpha, I still deserve your respect.”

“You never had it.”

It’s like a punch to the stomach. Sweet Sandra. Loving Sandra. Sandra that had always held her hand out to me when I was small and lost. Who took me into her kitchen when both mom and dad did not know what else to do with me.

“Do not speak so freely,” even I can hear the hurt in my words.

Sandra’s smile of radiance slowly morphs into one of sadness.

“I have to say this before I leave Soraya. I have to say this to know that I at least didn’t leave without trying to help you.”

“I don’t need-,”

“Soraya…I felt like you were my own child. It was painful to watch you struggle and scrap your way to this place- only to see how miserable you are now.”

“The goal was never my happiness.”

“It can be though.”

Sandra moves in closer.

“I thought I respected you Soraya. But then I felt nothing but disappointment and sorrow that you would abuse yourself to this pack who did not even know the greatness that they had been awarded. I’ve seen your accomplishments. I’ve heard your father and Jay talk of how the pack has been growing, the supplies being used, the advances it is making. Word is spreading yet the pack still is stuck in the mud.”

“They will adjust.”

Sandra’s face goes blank for a second. It’s then that I see she is hiding her emotions.

“Maybe.”

She stands, her glorious smile coming back through the clouds she had cast into the room.

I want to look away from it. I want to ignore all the words she has said.

I sigh in relief when she walks towards the door.

But she stops, hand still upon the handle.

“I have heard this come from Alpha Atlas’ mouth many times that the pack comes first. I have even heard Jay say such a thing when…” Sandra pauses to clear her throat, her eyes turning to rest upon me, “They both seem to forget that they are the pack also. Never forget that Soraya. You are a great leader. I believe that with all my heart.”

“Goodbye Sandra,” a lump has formed in my throat, making the words come out thick.

She only smiles, giving me that look that I was so used to. A motherly look that I always could count on receiving from her.

I want to hug her. I want to hug her and thank her but the-

I stand.

She starts, the door open to show a pacing Alpha Theon.

Without any thought, I go to her.

Her smile of radiance now is directed at me. Now is showing to only me as she holds out her arms, wide in acceptance. There is a flicker of surprise. A flicker of doubt at what I actually am doing. I have never hugged Sandra back. Never showed her warmth that she deserved.

I embrace her, feeling her arms wrap securely around me. I bury my face within her neck, inhaling the familiar scent of the kitchen- of the various foods she always was making. A hint of cinnamon. Something like strawberries.

“Oh Soraya,” I feel a tear come onto my shoulder as her body shakes with mine, “my tough little Soraya. I’ll miss you the most.”

She kisses the top of my head, her last show of love before she smiles down at me and turns to face her mate. Alpha Theon looks taken back, his eyes slightly wide as they stare at me.

I want to growl at him. I want to lash out and say that it meant nothing. He saw nothing.

But I hold it in. I inhale deeply, closing my eyes to block out her leaving me.

When I open them back again, I see nothing but a falling drop of sorrow, running down my arm- and an empty hallway.

The rest of the day I stay within the office.

There is something fighting within me.

A demon wrestling with my soul. Something that itches in the back of my mind that I cannot stop thinking about.

A knock upon the office door stops my tormented thoughts.

I raise my head to see mom.

She looks almost lost. I realize then that the leaving of Sandra was probably affecting her more than me. Sandra had been a constant in mom’s life since she had arrived at this pack. She had been mom’s companion many nights upon the porch as they sat and drank warm cocoa.

“Do you mind?”

Her head goes towards the chair in front of me.

“No.”

I watch as she drifts to it.

Her hands are stained with paint, but the colors are old and chipped. Nothing new.

This worried me.

Under normal circumstances, mom would be painting now. She would be shutting herself in, trying to erase whatever feeling she could by splattering it upon a canvas.

I should know.

She disappeared a whole week after Vincent left.

She disappeared several days when I needed her the most- after I had been found in the woods with a bloody back.

Dad’s concern had been for mom as she shut herself with her colors of a mixed reality.

I shivered, wondering what own form of torture mom had to live through within her mind.

I never asked.

They never told.

They never told.

They never-

“Mom.”

She looks up, her glazed over eyes somewhat becoming clear as she stares at me.

“What happened to you?”

Confusion spreads across her face. I clear my throat, then reframe the question, “why do you paint?”

She inhales sharply. It is the question she has been waiting for.

I know she’s been waiting for it.

It was not in mom’s nature to push darkness upon others. That was another thing I had concluded as I watched her close herself off within her rooms.

She did not want darkness to be spread. So she stopped it as best she could, by sealing away her own self. By stopping her own demons from preying on others.

“I-,”

She holds her breath. I wait in anticipation, not sure if this is something I want to know now.

But then she exhales and a calmness takes over her.

“Things happened to me when I was young. I was…Someone took me when I was small and did bad-,”

“I’m not two,” I snap the words out, becoming suddenly impatient. “What did he do?”

An anger is spreading through me. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear this.

“I was…” mom shakes her head. Her hand closes around her throat. She can’t breathe. She can’t say it. She stares silently at the floor, inhaling deeply until she looks back up, “I was violated.”

It takes me a second to understand what the word means when applied to her.

Red sweeps into my vision.

Small things about mom- about dad’s behavior to mom- make sense in my mind now.

“And that man…when I was here at the pack and was just starting to become Luna- he came again. But Grandma and your father saved me.”

She shudders, arms encasing around herself. I watch her- watch as she slowly becomes smaller and smaller- shrinking in upon herself.

Anger runs through me.

No one should make you feel small like that. No one. And no one should make mom- sweet, caring mom- feel that. Curl in upon herself. Collapse and skin in.

“You’re brave.”

She starts at my words. The arms to my chair are breaking. Splintering in an effort to control my anger. They remind me of another time when I was in an office, with breaking arms, splintered hands, and that same feeling of being small.

She smiles at me, “so are you.”

Something changes in the room. I look at mom in a different way. Not the way I always had before when facing nothing but emptiness and a closed door.

I saw a breaking woman who had put herself back together to face the world again and again.

My heart seemed to ache, and for once, a lingering whispered thought filled my mind- I want to be more like my mom.

“Have you heard anything from Orion?”

His name sends a jolt of pain through me.

“No.”

Something close to panic crosses mom’s face before she shuts it down, masking it with worry.

“Soraya…if you need to talk…”

I still. And then voice a question that had been ringing in my mind.

“Mom…that day…that day during the challenge when I…” I look away from her as I continue, “You said you trusted me. Why?”

I glance back to replace a softness has overcome her face.

“Because I do.”

“But why?”

She tilts her head, looking down at her paint-splattered hands. A mixture of brown and creams and different shades of green.

“Because I know you Soraya. All those years of watching you fight, watching you look at your father with eyes that said you would do this,” she motions around the room, “in all those years, you never once lost yourself. I knew you were still there. I knew my daughter was still inside.”

“I feel lost now,” I whisper. The broken confession hangs in the air. An admitted weakness. I was slowly crumbling. What was I becoming? My defenses were coming down, the walls that I had so carefully constructed were falling. But the madness of it all was that I was the one pulling each brick out, to watch the chaos that consumed.

“Soraya, if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that we have a power that no one can take away from us.”

“Tell me,” I said, my words eager for her next advice, eager to hear what this power, this source of strength mom had found to keep herself breathing and going was.

She smiles, that rare smile that always took my breath away and made me wish she would smile more as she said, “the power to change ourselves.”

As the revelation of her truth washes over me, sending a spiral of confusion and numbing hollowness to drown my mind- a knock is heard on the door.

Henry opens it, shock showing on his face at seeing the two of us together.

“Alpha Soraya, you have a visitor.”

I look in confusion at the dark windows.

“It’s late Henry, what-,”

“He’s demanding to see you now.”

Hope floods into me at his words.

He.

Him.

Ori-

“It’s not him.”

Henry and mom both look at me with mixing eyes of pity and sorrow. I straighten my back, knowing I had revealed too much weakness. Shown to much vulnerability in front of them.

“Who is it?”

Before Henry can answer, he is pushed aside.

A male steps forward, his face unfamiliar. There is a lightness in his gaze, yet a weight in his skin that seems to drag his whole body down. He limps. It’s noticeable and there, his weakness causing me to roll my shoulders and feel my own scar of visible pain.

Deep russet eyes connect to me. And then he smiles.

“So this is the famous Alpha Soraya.”

Henry attempts to push him back, but the male is larger than him. Actually…the shock washes over me when I start to take in just how tall the male actually is. His limp took away any attention from his other predominant features.

His first words still ring through me.

“I am. And who are you?”

He waves me away, the gesture so much like my own that I’ve done many times in questions I would rather not ask. It is familiar, and instantly I feel some connection with the male before me.

“Not important to know my name. Only that I’m here.”

“Here for what?”

He limps to the desk, not even bothering to glance at mom. His steps are heavy and loud shaking me with each vibration as he reaches me and leans forward to whisper, “Alpha Soraya, I have an offer for you. And I hope by the Moon Goddess above that you accept.”

“And what,” I ask, leaning back in my chair away from the male, “are you praying so desperately for?”

He inhales sharply, a shudder running through him. It is a shudder of anticipation. A shiver of barely contained excitement. He does not whisper his question. He does not shrink back his words. With the whole room able to hear, he asks, “Soraya of the Alba Rosa Pack- I ask for your guidance. I ask for your strength. I ask for your wisdom. I ask that you come with me. Come with me and be the Alpha of my pack.”