Death At The Borders

Goddess, what happened here?

I try my hardest to keep my dinner and the midnight snack I had inside my stomach while Axel walks towards the body to inspect it better. I have seen blood and gore before, I have seen what the monsters outside our pack can do to the weaker, but this?

"So, what do you think happened here?" Axel asks no one in particular, voicing out the question all of us are sharing while staring down at the poor woman with sorrowful eyes.

"Rogues, probably?" Liam, our new gamma, says with a contemplating face, and everyone tends to agree with him for some reason, rogues are indeed notorious for their brutality and hinged nature, they are the lone wolves that failed to follow the law and remain in their packs which turned them into rabid creatures that live to kill.

But something about this theory seems off to me.

"What do you think, Ora?" Axel gives me a side glimpse, and I can see that the gentle tone he uses with me doesn't quite please the other wolves. Even after all these years, most of the pack still sees me as an outlandish, an intruder that was brought back by their future Alpha. They don't, of course, say it to my face, but they don't put the effort in hiding it either.

As if I am some kind of a ticking bomb that would explode the second they let their guards down around me.

"Her clothes are intact..." I answer Axel calmly, pushing away the negative thoughts and focusing on the task I have at hand. The mysterious body, as I inch towards it, my heart rate accelerates with the weird sensation that hits me.

Danger...

Something was definitely off about this one.

"She is a human..." I voice out the obvious fact, ignoring the audible snickers from the warriors. I'll be lying if I say that it didn't hurt somewhere, but now is not the time for me to focus on my own pain, not with the sight in front of me.

The woman is young and beautiful, well, at least she was before someone did this to her. Her beautiful blonde hair is now covered in blood and mud, her head is barely still attached to her body thanks to that nasty beast bite on her neck and the rest of her body, but what worries me the most is her bleeding eyes...

Her eyes are closed, with two trails of blood tears staining her cheeks.

"If you have something to say, spit it out already!" Liam's vicious snarl is quickly followed by Axel's warning growl. I glare at the arrogant gamma with cold eyes before looking back at the girl. He doesn’t deserve my attention nor is this the time to indulge in such stupidities.

"The bite on her neck does indeed resemble that of a rogue, and from the size of it, I think it is safe to assume that it was a male rogue, however, her clothes are intact, and there are no other victims anywhere near.

If I have learned anything about rogues, it is that they are instinctual, they behave based on what their instincts dictate. Hunger, threat, animosity, or lust, these are their primal motivators, but the girl was obviously no threat to him. He didn't feed on her flesh, which leaves us with lust, but her clothes are untouched."

"A male rogue would have raped the girl before killing her," Axel says with a nod, and from the look on his face, I can see that he was considering the same thing.

"There is something else, humans are well aware of how dangerous the northern borders are, and except for some stupid adventurous teen, no one dares to come here. Yet, she is alone, and doesn’t fit the “adventurous girl” description..."

The boys look at me weirdly. Axel has that contemplating look on his face, like he is considering everything I have said and trying to link it together, while the other two roll their eyes at me. I am no mind reader, but I can swear that they both want to remind me that I wasn't summoned to play Detective Gadget and assume possibilities, and they are right, I am here for something else.

With a deep breath I collect myself and march towards the body. The earlier danger I felt increases with every step I make, as if I am walking straight into a snake hole, kneeling in front of the body. I first try to inspect her bleeding eyes, They are what worries me the most, and I wonder why no one else seems concerned about them, swallowing my saliva, I open the closed eyelids of one eye before retreating my hand quickly.

"Is something wrong?" Axel comes to kneel beside me, concern written all over his face. I want to look at him, to look inside his eyes instead of the girl's but I can't, my eyes remain fixated on her.

How can a dead person have eyes that are so...alive?

"Do you see anything?"

"No!" I answer apologetically, ashamed with myself for my inability to help. I don't know what it is with me, but I have always been capable of sensing death around me. I am able to feel when someone was about to die, and even see a dead person's last moments just by looking at them as if I am the one dying, and that is why the pack is so wary of me.

I am the freak.

"I can't see anything, Axel, it feels as if there is some kind of barrier keeping me away. All I feel is this strange menace..." Finally, I turn to look at his eyes, the sight of them calming me immediately. "This one is bad news, Alpha."

"Black witches?" Leo finally speaks, and even when he was one of the strongest warriors in our pack, the fear in his voice is evident to us all. Not that I can blame him, black witches were the bane of our existence, they weren't the deadliest creatures, but they surely were the evilest, unlike rogues or vampires. They are not under the influence of madness nor primal instincts, their brutality is conscious, extreme, and vicious. They massacre others with hundreds, and torture innocents for fun, with their wicked ways and forbidden spells.

However, black witches are extremely rare, with the help of the white witches, the notorious sorcerers were hunted and burned. The remaining few are hiding themselves efficiently to protect themselves, some even chose to join some shady packs and coffins and serve them just for their safety, so why would any witch kill a human on her own and throw the body near a werewolf pack?

"Do you think that it is a message? A threat of some kind?" Liam addresses his Alpha with a knowing look, and right after it his eyes become distant. I swiftly glimpse at Axel who is staring at his gamma. The two are mind linking, which probably means that Liam doesn't want me to hear his next words.

Is he suspecting me now?

"Just move the body to our hospital's morgue, and send words to all the human towns near us, see if there are any reports of a missing girl that matches this one. Meanwhile, search the area and tighten the guard. Tell the warriors to stay alarmed, but don't speak of this to the other pack members, understood?" Axel commands in his Alpha voice and everyone bend their heads in respect, unlike the pack members. I am not to submit to him forcefully because he is the Alpha, however, I still follow their lead as a sign of respect.

With one last glance at the body, I turn to follow Axel back to the car, but my mind keeps on bugging me about this whole situation. Her eyes...they looked almost alive. I have seen thousands of bodies so far, and they all had lifeless eyes, unlike hers.

And he wanted to keep her in the morgue? I wish I can object to that. I wish I can just make him or convince him to give the order and burn the body, but that will be an open disrespect to his clear orders, something he doesn't tolerate from anyone, not even me.

Maybe I am just being too skeptical.