Wild and Free

This is a terribly long chapter I apologize but I’m hoping that it’s written well. Get the popcorn and the tissues ready because you’re in for an emotional train-wreck :)

(Mason’s POV)

The room was a frenzy, people everywhere arguing, yelling, out of their seats. My father stood still, stunned like the rest of us. I had played it over and over in my mind a thousand times.

First born daughter of Naomi and Bishop Wilde and the rightful born Alpha of the Wilde pack…

Had those words actually been spoken?

I got up from my seat and joined my father on the floor. He looked slightly displeased at my action but did not command me to return. He and the guards around the room silenced the confused pack members, managing to get everyone back to their seats so we could get an actual explanation.

He cleared his throat, trying to act calmer than he was, “This cannot be possible.”

“Believe it,” she answered, slightly out of breath. Her skin was flushed probably from the burning and the attention combined. But there was definitely no indication that she was in the kind of pain she would be if she was lying.

“There are so many reasons why your claim just cannot be true,” Father refused to believe.

“Enlighten me,” Auden muttered through gritted teeth.

“Well for starters, Naomi and Bishop did not have an older daughter,” My father pointed out.

Auden shook her head, “That’s just what they told everyone.”

“How could they hide having another child?” I asked her.

“They did have another child but much later,” My father said. “Too much later for it to have been you.”

I nodded in agreement, “The Wilde pack was one of the most well known packs in history. It wouldn’t have been possible for them to stay out of the public eye long enough to conceive and raise a child in secret.”

She just scoffed and looked up at me, “Their so-called heir, do you recall his name?”

I thought about it but my father answered first, “Aspen Xavier Wilde.”

“He was sixteen when he died and would have been nineteen now,” I recalled, never breaking eye contact with the girl sitting in the chair.

She nodded in confirmation, “No one knew I was born because they were all focused on him. He was their coverup.”

I knit my brows but I finally figured out what she meant, “So you guys were-”

“Twins,” she finished for me, disgust in her voice.

“Not possible,” My father repeated, shaking his head.

Auden just glared at him, “Don’t you think you would know if I was lying? Isn’t that what this whole stupid TS test is about?”

“Why wouldn’t your parents tell everyone they had another child?” I asked, ignoring my father.

“You said it yourself, we were one of the most well known packs in history,” she said. “I was born first, meaning that I would be the next Alpha. There’s never been a female Alpha, ever. My parents didn’t want to be humiliated if people knew that they had a girl, especially one that was their first born.”

The whole room was silent, all the chatter and murmuring gone as everyone tried to process what they were being told.

William stood up from his seat and came to the floor, “So Naomi and Bishop, they just… well no one knew they had you, so what did they do with you?”

“Wow I guess I’m just a piece of furniture to everyone now aren’t I?” she asked sarcastically, immediately regretting it and groaning in pain as the TS burned through her for telling the lie.

“I’d be careful with the smart remarks if I were you,” my father warned. I could tell his patience was wearing thin and so could William.

She breathed heavy but answered his question, “They presented my brother to the public as their first, and only born. When they found out they were having twins in the first place, they kept it a secret in case I was actually born first. No one suspected anything about me because I wasn’t even a possibility to them.”

Her fingers subtly but nervously rubbed against her scars and I wanted nothing more than to hold them still and have her nerves fade away.

“They put me in the care of nannies who had been sworn to secrecy,” she went on. “I was raised like any normal girl in our pack would have been. Grueling training courses and lessons that both worked us until we bled, and me even harder because they expected me to be able to protect myself. Of course as a baby I had no clue about my birthright but they warned me to keep it a secret when I was old enough to know. It wasn’t hard for me to catch on to what they were doing to me as I grew up. Especially because of what Aspen looked like compared to me.”

“God I can still see the resemblance,” Angela said, standing next to her mate. “You and your brother look so much like your mother did.”

Auden gave a sad smile, “I would say thank you but she was never a mother to me and he was never a brother. Just merely a woman who gave birth to the wrong person and a twin who threw me to the curb.”

Angela’s face was filled with sadness and she looked down ashamedly, as if the thought of a mother’s neglect was partly her fault, as a mother herself.

“Aspen knew about me but never treated me like a sister,” she scoffed. “He hardly treated me as an equal at all. Just like my parents,” she looked up at everyone in the room. “They weren’t the people that you thought they were.”

“Why didn’t they just lie about who was born first?” I knit my brows. “They didn’t have to lie about having twins, they could’ve just covered up who was born first and even you probably wouldn’t know.”

She narrowed her eyes at the thought, “Next time you see them maybe you could ask them for me,” she spat.

My father straightened slightly at my side, like he realized something, “So if this is true-”

“It is,” Auden interrupted.

“-you were on the Wilde pack’s grounds when they were attacked,” my father continued.

Auden swallowed but nodded solemnly. Father folded his arms over his chest, “Then you are one of the only living beings that know what happened that day.”

“Lucky me,” she scoffed, but even that showed her grief. Despite the fact that her family threw her away, she still had felt their loss.

“Tell us what happened,” my father instructed.

She shook her head, mostly to herself, as if she didn’t want to remember it herself. But my father gave her a pointed look and she sighed in surrender.

“It was a normal day there,” she began, “or at least as normal as it gets in places like this.” she gestured around us.

“I had just turned sixteen and watched from a distance as everyone else went to the big party that they threw for Aspen,” she said, distaste written on her features. But it soon turned to horror as she spoke on, “They all came in so fast. Our border guards didn’t stand a chance, even with our strength. There were just so many rogues, everywhere. Everyone was gathered in the same place for the party. It was so perfect for them.”

She shook her head, glaring down at the floor, “They weaked everyone with Colt stone weapons that slowed healing long enough to let a victim die before they could heal. Everyone that didn’t get away was massacred.”

“And you got away?” Father asked.

She shook her head, “You know what happened to the Wilde Alphas.”

“They were kidnapped and tortured to death,” I said, to which she looked at me and nodded.

“Someone found out the secret about who I was because when they captured my parents and Aspen and our little sister Aurora, they captured me too,” she explained.

“How’d they find out?” I asked.

She shrugged, “I don’t know,” she answered but the look of pain on her face said that it was a lie.

She muttered something in French under her breath and squeezed her eyes shut in pain.

“So you do know?” My father inquired, an eyebrow raised.

She shook her head, “I n-never told anyone about who I was,” she said. “My parents, they threatened to banish me from the pack all together if anyone ever found out.”

She cried out again. Another lie.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Father reminded her. “How did the rogues that attacked you know that you were a Wilde?”

“I don’t know how they found out,” she said quickly.

My father shook his head when she screamed yet again, “You are only hurting yourself. Tell the truth and this will be all the less painful for everyone.”

He glanced at me for a split second, so quick I barely caught it. Did he know?

“Fine,” Auden said, her voice strained, painfully. “There was only one person that was ever nice to me my entire childhood. A boy. I wasn’t stupid enough to tell him but I was enough to let him get close to me. It turned out that he was the one that helped the rogues with the attack.”

She scowled at the thought of this boy, “When he and the others captured us they just said that we were all dirty liars. They hurt my parents for fooling everyone. The boy had seen how much I hated Aspen and he hurt him for treating me like rubbish. I was sure he had figured out who I was but I never figured out how.”

I glanced at my father but he still didn’t look like he wanted to believe any of it. Every once in a while his eyes would turn white and I could tell he was trying to read her thoughts to see if she was telling the truth. As if the TS wasn’t enough.

“They tortured my parents first. Colt stone weapons like they used with the others,” she looked down at the floor. “Aurora was only seven but they made her watch as the killed both of them and then my brother. And then they tortured her.”

Angela choked on a sob and William hugged her tightly. I could see people around the room in the same position. Mates held each other tightly and parents grasped their children as if the same was about to happen to them.

I couldn’t help but look over at Kenzie who wiped away a tear. Holden held her close but she looked right at me. Auden seemed to be the only one who stayed neutral

“They left me for last,”

My father uncrossed his arms, “Why?”

Auden looked up at him cynically, “Well I guess part of your assumption was right. They left me for last because they wanted me to join them.”

“What?” the word escaped my mouth before I could stop it. My father shot me a look that tried to command me to keep quiet but neither of us were focused.

“The boy I was friends with saw how much I despised the Wilde pack, and since they had destroyed them, he convinced their rogue leader to offer me a position in their league,” she explained.

“And?” my father said.

She paused, causing a certain suspenseful tension to cloud the room.

“I not-so-politely declined,” she said simply.

We all waited. For her to scream or to double over in pain. But nothing happened. She was telling the truth.

“But they didn’t kill you?” William asked, confused like the rest of us.

She shook her head, “They tried,” she laughed sadly, “man did they try.”

Auden unclasped her hands and turned them over, showing her scars as best she could to everyone. My father studied them carefully from a far.

“How is that possible? Werewolves don’t scar,” William said.

“Yes they do,” I muttered to myself, to which Auden smirked for a split second. I cleared my throat, “If the wound is executed a certain way or with a certain weapon then it’s possible, just rare.”

Auden nodded in agreement, “Like I said, they used silver and Colt stone weapons for torture. I guess they thought a warrior without their hands was useless. I was barely strong enough to escape when they left me. They thought I was dead.”

“And how did you escape?” My father asked her.

Auden turned and looked at him, “Well you’ve got you mind reading thing, your daughter has her visions, and your son has his… abilities,” she said, glancing at me for the slightest second. “I used mine to escape.”

I could see my father shift, as if just the mention of her escaping made him remember that he was supposed to think she was a criminal.

“Care to enlighten the class?” My father said sarcastically, using my words from earlier.

Auden smirked and shrugged. The next thing we knew, she was standing, her hands free from the cuffs they’d been locked in not a second before.

Everyone on the floor stepped back like they were reacting to an explosion or something.

“H-how did you do that?” William asked.

She held up a finger, “I’m not finished,” she told him with a smirk and the next second she was gone in a wisp of gold light.

A tapping on my shoulder made me jump, startling me when I turned and saw her. She grinned and was gone again, this time standing against the door, waving to us.

A second later she was back in her chair. She slipped her hands back into the cuffs, or at least that’s what I thought she did. When I looked closer, I realized that she didn’t just put her hands into the cuffs, the cuffs went right through her wrist as if her flesh was made of water.

Everyone whispered and murmured in their seats and again my father had to get everyone under control.

“Enough!” he yelled, his Alpha tone silencing everyone.

Our attention turned back to her.

“I-If you could do that the entire time why didn’t you escape hours ago?” I asked her, still in disbelief.

“What good would running do me in trying to prove I’m not lying?”

“None I suppose,” I whispered to myself.

“Besides,” she added, “like how all Alpha abilities have limits, I can only jump to places I can see. In a room without windows or open doors, I can’t go anywhere but different positions in the room. So in that lovely cell you threw me in, no windows, no open doors, I couldn’t leave even if I wanted. And then there was the fact that I haven’t been able to heal myself since-”

She cut herself off and looked at my father. She could spill to everyone in that moment if she wanted to. Then they’d all know we lied about the attack.

“Well that’s not important,” she finished. “The point is I was to weak to move, much less to transport out of there.”

“But outside of the cell, you didn’t leave in the open courtyard or in the pack house with plenty of windows and open doors,” Father said. “Why not?”

“Let’s just say there were… certain people who needed to know that I wasn’t who they thought I was,” she replied, her gaze never meeting mine.

Father didn’t seem to notice the tension between her and I, which I supposed was a good thing.

“So you got away from the rogues that captured you,” William repeated, trying to confirm the story that Auden had given us. She nodded in reply. “If you’ve lived in White Chapel for two years, and were sixteen when your pack was destroyed, what did you do for the year before you came here?”

“I didn’t want to risk going back to our grounds in case the rogues were still there so I ran,” she answered. “My parents had never let me leave our territory before for fear that I’d spill their precious secrets so I didn’t know anyone outside our pack. I went from city to city trying to get as far away from all werewolf kind.”

“Why not find another pack? After the attack, any Wilde pack members who survived were easily accepted into any pack they wanted,” I remembered.

She shook her head, “No one would believe me if I told them who I really was. And after being treated like a prisoner for years I wasn’t about to try and join another pack that would pretend that they actually wanted me.”

“So you would have rather spent a year on the streets alone then in a place that would’ve welcomed you?” My father asked.

“At the time yes,”

“Did they ever come after you?” said William. “The rogues I mean.”

She nodded, “After probably four and a half months of searching, I came across a town that was well between two overlapping neutral territories and away from any inhabited land. I stayed there for about two months which was the longest I’d stayed put since the attack.”

She leaned back in her chair and sighed, as if tired from reliving everything. It did seem as though the pain from the TS had gone away so perhaps the effects had faded.

“I was coming home from this art studio place where I had gotten a job teaching kids to paint,” she went on. I almost grinned at how like her that was. “I had been staying with the woman who owned the studio in an apartment above it. She let me stay with her in exchange for work. One night she asked me to run to the store across the street to a market for some things and I was cornered in the outside it.”

My mind went back to everything that Cassie had told us when we were in the infirmary after Auden’s break down. It was hard to imagine the girl sitting in front of me as the same girl we found sitting in a bed of glass and blood.

“They told me that it was a mistake to reject their offer. They said their leader wanted to use me for my ability and if I rejected again they’d kill me. I told them I didn’t want any part of their world anymore and they attacked me,” she pulled up the hem of her shirt the slightest bit to show the scar on her abdomen.

“Silver knife I assume?” My father inquired.

“I tried to get away but I was outnumbered,” she confirmed. “No hospital would help me because I didn’t have any insurance and was alone.”

“You mean they just let you leave? With a stab wound?” Angela asked, horrified at what the girl was saying.

She shrugged, “They didn’t take to well to a seventeen year old girl walking into their ER at three in the morning without her parents or an emergency contact. For a place that should be used to bloody messes they didn’t seem to want to get their hands dirty dealing with me so they turned me away. So I went to a hotel bathroom, sewed myself up and left that town the next morning. A couple months later I came across White Chapel and have been there ever since.”

“And the entire time, you never knew of our pack’s existence here?” William asked her.

She shook her head and once again, “The first week that the Royals arrived is when I started to get suspicious. When they didn’t leave that’s when I knew that there had to be a pack around here somewhere.”

“And you’ve been involved with relationships in our pack through my daughter and son?” Father asked.

A hint of an amused smile came across Auden’s face, “Depends on what you define as a relationship. Simply stated, yes. They’ve been great people to spend time with. Two of the human friends that I met when I came to White Chapel happen to be mated to two members of your pack. We’ve all been friends for a couple months.”

She said it in a natural tone but there was still that ghost of unknowing. Even after hearing what she’s said, nothing was clear between any of us. Especially her and I.

Silence hung in the air for a good minute, showing outright how tired everyone was. Half of us hadn’t gotten the chance to rest since the battle and the rest of the pack were exhausted from all the wondering and confusion.

After another silence my father clapped his hands together, “Well I think it’s about time for a conclusion,” he announced and then he turned to Auden.

“You are the eldest daughter and first child of Bishop and Naomi Wilde, twin sister to their presumed heir, Aspen Wilde,” he began, earning a nod from her to continue. “Your birth was kept secret from everyone because you parents did not wish for tradition of all male Alphas to be broken. You were raised like an average Wilde pack girl and when you were sixteen your pack was ambushed. They kidnapped you because they somehow found out that you were a Wilde. Then they tortured and killed your entire family in front of you before offering you a position in their group.”

Auden swallowed and nodded again.

“You declined and they caned your hands and leaving you thinking that you were dead. You used the last of you energy to use your ability to escape through what I only presume was an open window. You traveled around in the clear for a few months before you were attacked by the same men but you got away again and have been living in White Chapel since about then,” He finished. “Doesn’t that about tie it all up?”

Auden glanced at me for a second and I knew what she wanted to say. It was the perfect time to just do it and get it over with. So why did it feel so wrong?

“That’s it. That’s my story,” she answered, turning away from me.

“Well then,” Father said. “Thank you everyone for joining us here in this enlightening of meetings. No one is to speak a word of what was said here today to anyone outside the Royal pack. This information needs to be handled carefully and no one here wants the reep the punishment if it isn’t. Is that clear?”

“Yes Alpha,” the entire room answered in unison before they were all dismissed.

Everyone steered clear of Auden as they exited the room, acting like she was some unstable object that could explode at any moment.

The only people who stayed were me, my father, William, Angela, Kenzie, Holden, Greyson, Riley and Cassie. My father dismissed Zack and Marcus to the hallway which gave me hope that maybe he was going to let Auden go. She stayed put in her chair, the cuffs still around her raw wrists.

“What now?” Kenzie asked, breaking the ice.

My father sighed, rubbing his stress ridden face, “First of all, Ms. Wilde I believe I owe you an apology. You’re no longer under our possession as a prisoner,” he said.

The second the words left his lips I unlocked the cuffs with my ability before anyone even moved. She looked at me briefly before standing up, rubbing the cuts they had inflicted on her skin.

“I do however suggest that you would consider staying on our grounds for the time being while we clean up the mess that Orion left behind,” My father added. “I’ve been informed by my son that your dwelling was broken into recently by these people. You are free to stay here in one of our guest rooms until you make a decision.”

“Thank you Alpha,” she nodded her head respectfully. When she looked back up though her brows were knit in slight confusion, “But might I ask, a decision about what?”

“Well about joining our pack of course.”

~~AUTHOR’S NOTE~~

that was a lot...*sigh*

Hope you enjoyed!

As always, comment, don’t hate, and read on!

~ your Cheshire Cat loving friend