Thereasa ran through the trees at supernatural speed, anxious to find her mother to appease his anger. She hadn’t run far when she scented a wolf, her feet skidding to a halt as she scented the air. Creeping quietly to the clearing, she clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent a wordless cry escaping. Her mother was wrapped naked in the arms of a man but he was no ordinary man… he was a wolf shifter.
No… it couldn’t be true! Her mother couldn’t be having an affair with a wolf. They were a family! She belonged with her father!
“No!” The word shrieked out, her mother and the wolf springing to their feet in shock.
“Thereasa! Wait! Let me explain!”
“You belong with Papa,” she screamed, tears running down her face. She didn’t want to hear explanations. She just wanted everything to go back to the way they had been before the man had found her by the lake.
“We’re soul mates,” her mama wept, a hand reaching out to her daughter. “We can’t fight the mating pull, Thereasa. We belong together.”
She shook her head in denial, hurt, anger, betrayal infusing her soul. “He’s not one of us! He’s a Were! You can’t be soul mates. You’re Papa’s soul mate! This is wrong!”
“It’s no more wrong than when your Papa and I had you, Thereasa,” her mother argued, tears running down her face as she tried to reach her child. “Society told us that was wrong too but it wasn’t. Victor is my true mate, my daughter. We must be together. We can’t escape it.”
“Whore!”
Thereasa screamed as her father appeared at her side. He must have heard her yelling and come to investigate. He looked ten feet tall in his fury and she shrank away from him.
“Francis… I can explain. We couldn’t help it. We are soul mates.”
“He’s a dog!” her father roared, his eyes black, his talons extended. “It’s wrong! What you are doing is an abomination!”
“No, Francis… please listen…”
Her mother’s pleas cut off as her father sped forward knocking her out of the way as the other man shifted into wolf form and sprang snarling at the enraged vampire. Her father’s talons pierced the wolf’s sides, his fangs sinking deep into its neck.
Her mother was screaming, loud anguished sobs as the wolf gave one mournful howl before going limp in her father’s arms. He tossed the dead carcass aside, its bones snapping as it hit a large tree trunk.
“Whore! You betrayed me and now you must be punished!” her father bellowed again, advancing on her distraught mother. “Go home, Thereasa.”
“No, Papa! Please! Don’t hurt Mama!”
“Go home!”
But Thereasa couldn’t move, couldn’t hide her eyes from the horrifying scene unfolding around her. Her father picked her mother’s unresisting body from the forest floor by the neck and he ripped his talons down her exposed torso. The pain made her shriek but she did nothing to protect herself. Staring into her mother’s eyes, Thereasa could see the light die within, and knew that her soul was lost in the moment the wolf had died.
“Papa, please!” she cried, finally finding her body able to move as she threw herself onto his back, trying to remove his grip from her mother’s neck. “Don’t, Papa! Don’t!”
It was as if she wasn’t even there.
“Whore!” he hissed once more before he twisted his hand and his talons sliced her mother’s head from her shoulders.
“NO!” Thereasa screamed, agony rocking through her as her mother’s body collapsed to the ground, her head still firmly clasped in her father’s hand. “NO! Mama! Mama!”
Rage like nothing she had ever experience before rose up deep within. Heart shattering into a million pieces, Thereasa’s fangs elongated and her talons punched through her father’s back. She shredded his heart in an instant, watching as he dropped her mother’s head and sank to the forest floor on his knees.
“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” Thereasa shrieked the words repeatedly, blood splattering wildly as she hacked furiously. When reason finally returned she stared down at the mangled remains of her father’s body, his head lying beside her mother’s.
“Mama? Papa?” Sinking to her knees beside them, Thereasa began rocking as she stared at the carnage. “Please wake up. Please. I don’t want to be alone. I’m frightened.”
They didn’t wake up. She stayed there for three days alternating between pleading to crying to angry words, but her parents never woke up no matter what she did. Finally, she had to accept that they were never coming back. Finally, she had to accept that her father had killed her mother and she, in turn, had killed him.
It was all the wolf’s fault. That filthy, disgusting animal had seduced her mother and broken her family. Rising from her cramped position, Thereasa ran at the broken carcass, shrieking as she kicked and hacked at it. “It’s all your fault! You’re to blame! You murdered my mother the very first time you laid hands on her! It was wrong! You are wrong! I hate you!”
Thereasa fell to the ground sobbing, replaying everything that had happened over in her mind. She screamed as her mother died again, screamed as she took her father’s life again, hated as she destroyed the wolf’s carcass again.
When she finally rose to dispose of the remains as her Sire had taught her, it was with ice in her soul and a deep hatred in her heart. Never again would she allow anyone to matter to her. Never again would she be weak. While she hated all wolves, she wouldn’t go out of her way to hunt them down as that would only get it her way of becoming the strongest, most dangerous vampire on the continent. However, should the day ever come when wolves crossed her path as had just happened, she would hunt them down and destroy the abominations, each and every last one of them.