Third person's POV
"Father...?" Lyra's lips trembled as she mumbled. Her eyes were blinking in shock.
The angry man hovering over her didn't seem like the father who had read her book till she fell asleep, a night ago.
Some of the pack members closer to them gasped and gave Lyra a weird look.
At that moment, she understood that the man standing before her and shooting daggers at her wasn't the loving father who had raised her with love and adoration.
The eyes that had always looked at her with pure love were now capable of burying her six feet if looks could kill.
"Why did you do this?" Alpha Blackmoor yelled. Lyra flinched and staggered backwards. Her knees were failing her.
"He has never raised his voice at me before..." She didn't need to pay much attention to quickly note the significant shift in her father's behavior.
"Father, I... I... Don't know..." She tried to talk but couldn't form a coherent sentence.
"What excuse do you have anyway? You took your sister into that forbidden forest I have been warning you about, to not dare enter. And now she is gone." He gritted his teeth.
Shaking his head, he said;
"No, it shouldn't have been my poor Alina. You should have been the one to die!"
"Father..." Lyra burst out into tears at that point. Her young age and heart couldn't take it anymore. She didn't really understand all that was happening, however she knew her father was so angry and her sister wasn't standing up.
"I'm sorry..." She began, trying to reach out for her father's hand.
"Sorry? No, sorry won't bring her back, Lyra." He maintained bitterly, glaring at her.
Lyra's hand trembled in fear and she sank onto the ground.
Alpha Blackmoor didn't spare her another glance. Instead, he went back to where Alina's body was, dejectedly.
"Alina..." Lyra kept mumbling the name as she cried bitterly. In no time, her eyes had become swollen.
"Please stand up, Alina. Please. I won't ever disobey father again. I will protect you always. Please..." She pleaded, as she looked at how her father lowered Alina's body into the wooden box some guards had prepared and layered with some plain material and wolfsbane.
"Let's put you to bed, Lyra." Lyra was still sobbing when a familiar voice said beside her.
She didn't need to look before knowing it was the Omega who was in charge of taking care of her.
"Not until Alina stands up and come to bed with me." Lyra insisted. The Omega, Alyssa heaved a deep sigh then gently lifted Lyra up from the ground.
"Let me down... I'm not a baby. I want to talk to Alina." Lyra protested but Alyssa just patted her back.
"Did she die?" Lyra asked, her voice laced with doubt and dread.
"Shh, Nobody died. it's going to be okay." Alyssa tried to pacify her.
"Just embrace sleep. Come morning, everything will be alright." She added.
"Promise?" Little Lyra resigned to tiredness and yawned.
"Yes." Alyssa replied as she walked into the manor with Lyra in her arms, heading to the girl's room to tuck her into bed.
~~~~~~~~~~
The following morning came but everything was far from alright.
"Where's Alina?"
"I want to see my father." Little Lyra would demand but it was a futile endeavor.
"Your father is busy dealing with some pack issues." Alyssa had lied, her voice slightly shaking.
Alpha Blackmoor had instructed all the workers in the Alpha manor to keep Lyra out of his sight, unless they wanted to lose their heads.
"Then let me see Alina... She has gotten out of that wooden box, right?" Lyra asked, innocently, her eyes filled with hope.
"Huh, soon. Now, let's get you cleaned up." Alyssa had smartly changed the subject.
Days rolled by painfully slow, and it was a week, already.
"I will go and check on Alina, then check on father too." Little Lyra had decided one chilly afternoon. Alyssa wasn't around and had forgotten to lock the door from outside as she had been doing for the past few days, whenever she needed to leave the room.
So Lyra stepped out. She got to the living room and was going to tiptoe her way around when she heard some familiar voices conversing. It was Alyssa and another servant.
"I feel bad for the young girl..." The other servant stated and sighed.
"Poor Lyra. She has no clue that she is responsible for her sister's death and her father doesn't want to see her ever again because of that." Alyssa replied.
Lyra' eyes blinked as she struggled to process what she was hearing.
"I heard the Alpha said she would soon be banished to live in the cold hut at the back of the pack. You know you will go with her, as her servant, right?" The first speaker said and Alyssa grimaced, a frown making its way unto her face.
"That unfortunate girl has implicated me too with her bad luck. I hate her!" Alyssa seethed.
"You will be okay, at least you will be free to go around your surroundings unlike here where monitoring eyes are everywhere." The servant tried to motivate her and Alyssa was inconsolable.
"As if that makes it any better!" She hissed.
Lyra gasped and for a minute, she couldn't breathe well.
"Alina is dead and it's my fault. Father doesn't want to see me anymore... Alyssa hates me." Lyra thought as she let tears stream down her cheeks relentlessly.
With blurry eyes, she walked out of the manor. Whether Alyssa and her colleague saw her or were just too engrossed in their discussion to notice her slow footsteps, Lyra wouldn't know.
All she knew was that nobody stopped her from walking out of the manor.
Even when she got outside, nobody stopped her or asked her where she was headed. They only whispered amongst themselves, glancing at her in a weird manner, as she walked past them, as if she had become an alien and grown horns overnight.
"Everybody hates me..." Lyra concluded based on their reactions so she didn't stop walking.
She kept walking, even as she reached the pack's perimeter, she didn't stop there.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The roasted bush rabbit she had been holding slipped from her hand and that was when 18-year-old Lyra snapped back to reality.
She had been daydreaming, reliving the painful memories from when she was eight and could still taste the bitterness on her tongue.
"Alina..." She mumbled but before she could say more, she heard rustling followed by growls from outside the small hut she had been living in, in the wilderness, as a rogue.
"Those hungry rogues again!" She snarled, believing it was the normal routine of the rogues looking for what to steal.
However, she was wrong. This wasn't a robbery. It was something more dangerous.
The small entrance to the hut suddenly got locked and something was thrown onto the roof. Lyra jumped to her feet, alarmed, as she heard the sound.
In no time, the hut was rapidly burning.
"What? No!!!" She screamed, knowing she was trapped in.