ZINA
"Well well, look who we have here."
The voice that spoke to her belonged to a very powerful man. Zina knew it even without seeing the man. It was a skill she had to possess to survive their brutal world, an ability to read people even though she couldn't see them.
The first thing Zina thought about on hearing those words was that Jacen Vampage was out for her blood.
She imagined his family—a High ranking pack— wouldn't take it lightly if they found out his destined mate was an Aberrant like her… or that her pack was from the lowest pitiful depths of the small ranking packs.
But something much sinister was playing out, and Zina would bet her life on that fact. It was a hunch that whispered horrors against her skin.
"Who am I speaking to?" Zina asked, her voice strong and unwavering.
"The girl asks who I am?" The man scoffed incredulously. Then he sniffed at the air, an act that Zina heard. Even without a wolf, Zina had always been surprised at how powerful her hearing proved to be.
"She is an aberrant?" The man said as he came to terms with that fact for the first time.
"I am afraid that is how I met her." Her original captor said in his usual gruff voice.
The suspense was killing Zina and not in a good way, "I asked who are you!" She said more forcefully at an attempt to appear strong, detesting how pitiful she looked at the moment.
She felt it coming before it actually came. A kick landed on her stomach, and she fell flat on the floor. In her mind she was elated that she had managed to tip the scales of their very unequal relationship.
By destabilising their moods a little bit, whatever knowledge they had and the power in such knowledge had reduced. Now, they will see she wasn't simply one that they could command at their whims and caprices.
"She's a talkative one." The man said, his smile seeping in his words. "Since you've asked, I will answer. Two years ago, I visited a certain late Luna of the Savage Pack…" he trailed off, using the element of suspense and foreboding to his advantage.
Zina stiffened on hearing those words. It became almost painfully clear what was coming for her. The man approached her, and Zina felt him squat before her, his breathing fanning her face.
Zina tried smelling him, but there was nothing. It would seem her captors cloaked their scent.
"I can see you know why I am here…Seer Zina." The man grinned manically as he observed the blindfolded girl. It wasn't everyday that one stumbled on a talent, and his case was a rare case of luck and hard work.
Very hard work.
"What do you want?" Zina asked him grimly.
As the man's cold clammy stare observed her, Zina could very well guess what he saw. Her hair deathly white like that of a pale ghost, her eyes hidden behind a white fold, and her skin equally as pale as her hair. Her lips full and red, the only sign that she was a living person and not the dead.
She knew he could see her clothes, a simple and shabby white dress tied at her waist with a rope, and how she still clutched to her nondescript wooden staff.
Zina could guess that with the knowledge of her powers, her appearance added an ominous presence to her. Like a goddess.
She knew it, because that was how her pack members described her.
The son of their Alpha would say that he ever saw a woman like her in his dreams, he would think the Luna goddess had finally decided to grace a man like him with her divine presence for the sole purpose of taking his life.
Those words didn't exactly put Zina at ease, but it very well helped her gauge how it is that people saw her.
Helpless but not totally helpless. Unnerving appearance but not capable of causing harm.
"I can see you know what I speak of." The man clucked his tongue.
"What do you want?" Zina gritted out as her encounter with Luna Savage filtered through her mind. Four years ago, she had the opportunity to encounter one of the most powerful women in their world, and that year when she was just fourteen, the gods had revealed to Zina a prophecy that the child the Luna carried was a Deformed.
Zina had told the woman the prophecy in hopes that the gods had revealed it to save her from heartbreak, as she was a woman who had issues with childbirth, and was hoping the child would come and stay.
The Luna thus went through her pregnancy without expecting a child, and true to Zina's words, she had given birth to a deformed and as custom, the child was thrown into the mountains to appease the gods.
Zina had thought the effect of her prophecy was taking away the Luna's eventual despair, and the Luna had in turn promised to never reveal Zina's identity to anyone. Part of her promise stemmed from the fact that Zina didn't want any relations with the High-Ranking Packs for it would spell nothing but doom for herself.
Not even Jacen Vampage knew of her powers. And till that day, only her small pack and a few villagers she had told a vision of knew about it. And even the latter were sworn to secrecy.
"Do not think so much of it, the Luna never revealed you, even with her last dying breath."
Zina's breath hitched in her throat. So the Luna was dead?
"For two years I've looked for you and now I have finally found you. Bring the boy in!"
Her original captor scurried away, and moments later he was back.
"Zina!" The voice of her ten year old brother rang out. Footsteps ran to her, and then small hands engulfed her in a hug.
"Pia!" Zina hugged the boy, finally losing whatever shred of composure she possessed. While she loved her pack terribly and was willing to die for them, her foster brother was another matter. He was after all the son of the woman who had discovered Zina as a child.
A woman who was now late.
"Take him." The other man said coldly, and Pia was taken away from her. The boy screamed and struggled, and the Pain Zina felt that moment rivalled that of the pain of her rejection.