Sapphire Nightborne

I groaned as I forced my opens, tears sliding down my cheeks as the bright light of the Sun assaulted my eyes. My eyes closed shut once more as I laid there on the soft bed... bed! No... not again!

I made a move to get up, but I couldn't... I couldn't move any part of my body from the neck down. My heart started to race as I turned my head from side to side, trying figure out where I was. The room I was in smelt familiar, but it was not Damien's room... there was a distinctive smell of charred wood that perfumed the room.

I turned my head to my right to see that there was a stand holding a clear bag of black liquid, its contents snaked down a tube to my side... probably into one of my veins. That had to be the reason why I could not move, but what was it?

The sound of the door swinging open put me on edge, I willed my claws to elongate but they did not... I was completely helpless, vulnerable to anything Damien and Cordelia had planned for me. I still could not believe that she was alive, and working with Damien. She was willing to work with the man that slaughtered her entire pack, and killed her son.

Footsteps grew closer as someone walked to my side, I strained my neck to finally get a good look upon the face that had haunted my nightmares for months.

Her dark hair cascaded down her back over her slender frame like a river, I had always envied her hair as her simple waves were much easier to tame than my large curls. I studied everything about her, and it was like no time had passed... everything was the same as when I saw her corpse in the stronghold. The mole on the top of her upper lip, the small scar across her eyebrow from when she had accidentally cut herself with her own blade, even the slightly pointed left ear that I used to tease her about.

My sister, Cordelia Lyra Nightborne, stood alive once more.

My sister watched my pinched expression, as I tried to move , with a cruel grin on her face as if my pain brought her the utmost joy. She walked away to draw up a chair to sit before using her hands to roughly grab my jaw, turning it forcefully from side to side observing my facial features before letting out a scoff and pushing my head away causing it to hit the soft pillow once more.

"I hope you like where I brought you, *little sister*... it has been a while since even I had set foot in this wretched place."

She spat the words, 'little sister', as though it was a curse, hatred dripping from her lips like venom.

"Is the Great Head Warrior Commander of Blackwater still in the dark? Your famed senses finally failing? Take a deep breath, Sapphire... a wolf should always know the scent of its birth den."

My eyes widened as she said her last few words. It could not be, Blackwater had been burned to the ground... I had started the fire on my own. Even if it didn't, the structure would not have been able to hold.

Cordelia looked down upon my face before throwing her head back, her laughter ringing through the room.

"Everything has to come full circle, Sapphire."

Tears slid into my hair as I took in the all she had just revealed to me. I never thought I would set foot in this place again, Xander had suggested it after this whole thing was over, but I had always changed the subject. I was not ready... not ready to return to the place where I had lost everything.

Cordelia gently brushed away the tears from my skin, her smile still as cruel.

"I heard you missed me, Sapphy, and I am touched that you loved me so much. From what I heard from Damien you were really distraught over my... what was it again... *'passing'*.

I kept my silence causing her to snarl, her fingers digging into my scalp.

This was not my sister, this was not the same girl who would make me cookies when the Elders were too harsh on me, who would spend the night in my room and stay up till the wee hours of the morning just to sooth my nightmares.

This person might look like my sister and might sound like my sister, but she was not the Cordelia Lyra Nightborne that I knew, that I loved.

"Stubborn as usual, Sapphire, but that is okay, it just leaves me more time to talk before Damien arrives. I was wanted to kill you in the forest, but his minions came crawling, leaving me no choice but to bring you here... where he could keep you safe."

My eyebrows raised as she spoke of killing me with no hesitation... no remorse. She spoke of taking my life as if she were simply going to stamp out an insect.

"I am your sister!"

Her nonchalance to the obvious made me blurt it out. She had always spoken about the importance of blood and that we should always have each other's back no matter what and now here she was, talking about taking her sister's life without so much as a care in the world.

"Half-sister! Never call me your full-sister, it is already bad enough that we share some blood. You see Sapphire, we might share the same father, but... we both have different mothers. My mother was the wife of our father while your mother was just a rat he found in the woods."

"What in the world are you talking about, Cordelia. Everyone in the pack knew who was my mother."

This revelation was news to me as I had always grown up with the story that my mother, who I was now told was not my mother, died of an illness when I was just a few months old. I was told that story so many times throughout my life that I believed it and moved on, carrying the guilt that I'd never had the chance to grow up with my mother's guidance and did not get to learn about her personally.

"My mother was not our father's mate, but he married her out of obligation to the pack as they needed him to sire heirs to take his place as Head Warrior Commander... they did not want to wait any longer for him to find his mate, his successor needed to be trained as soon as possible. And so, my mother was chosen due to her good 'breeding background', her strong traits were favourable with our father's. They married and had me, a daughter, much to The Elders dismay as they hoped for a son. This caused my parents to fight and father left in rage to the forest near out border lines where he met your mother, his *mate*."

Her fingers dug deeper into my scalp as she spat out those words. I forced myself to stay calm even though my heart continued to race.

"They spent time together, meeting in secret, and fell in love, but father could not bring himself to leave my mother as he had a child with her and felt obligated to stay. This little tryst of theirs lasted for a year before your mother disappeared and things went back to normal before you ended up on our doorstep, permanently destroying the peace in my family."

Her fingers dragged against my scalp before she released me from her grip. The tip of her nails red with my blood.

"My mother was outraged at father's betrayal and told him to kill you but he refused, saying that you were a *'product of actual love'*. He managed to convince the pack that my mother had you secretly as he was worried of what the Elders would do if they came to know that my mother had birthed another daughter. Unfortunately, you resembled him enough for the pack to believe his lies."

She gripped my jaw once more, forcing me to look directly into her eyes.

"Father soon forgot about us as he focused most of his attention on his *'miracle child'*, his precious little jewel. Mother grew distraught at his neglect and the fact that she had to parade the product of her husband's infidelity as her own."

Water droplets hit my skin as Cordelia began to cry.

"She could only take so much before she de...decided to take her life rather than to continue raising proof of her husband's infidelity."

Cordelia continued to look into my eyes, but her own were distant as if she was somewhere else.

"She swallowed silver right in front of my bed and ended her life. I lost my mother all because of you."

Her eyes were now focused, and looked upon me with nothing but hatred.

"I was a baby! None of this was my fault!"

I could sympathise with her for the loss of her mother and the fact that her mother had selfishly taken her life in front of her young daughter. But how could Cordelia blame me? I could not control how I was conceived, her mother's death was the result of events beyond my control.

"This is entirely your fault Sapphire, this is what you do! You barge in and destroy people's lives!"

I could not believe her, if her mother was not my father's mate than she should have expected something like this might have happened on both sides if any of them were to find their mates. Granted my father was at fault for not ending things the moment he found my mother, it would have prevented so much unnecessary pain, but blaming a baby who had no control whatsoever over the situation was absolutely ridiculous.

"Do you know how I knew about all of this? It is because our dear father walked in one day when I was nine, blind drunk. I thought that he was still grieving over my mother's passing, but no, he was grieving of the loss of his *mate*. He stumbled into my room and screamed at me, telling me that I was a mistake, that I... I should have never been born."

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before her lips formed a fake smile.

"He told me everything from his little tryst to your birth before passing out. That night I stood over your bed with a knife in my hand, ready to kill you... but I couldn't. You looked so innocent as you slept and I could not blame you for our parent's mistakes so I put the knife and went back to my room. Things might have gone smooth sailing from there if you did not ruin things once more."

Her hand released my jaw, causing my head to flop back into the soft pillow. I tensed as she brought a finger to my cheek, softly bushing against it.

"You grew up to be such a sight that everyone compared me with you. They praised your eyes because unlike mine which looked 'soft and sweet', yours 'burned with the fire of a warrior'. You excelled in training, forcing me into the shadows so you could not imagine how relieved I was when you did not shift with everyone else. I thought that things were finally going to go my way, that for once I would be noticed, be praised. But no, Sapphire Ragna Nightborne must outshine everyone at every stage of her life. You had to shift into a black wolf with Lycan eyes."

My eyebrows raised once more, as she blamed me yet again for something I had no control over.

"That made the pack adore even you more and some who were against the idea of women training agreed that maybe having you in charge would probably not be a bad thing--"

"The pack treated me as an outcast, and you know it, Cordelia. My blood, sweat and tears built who I am. I had to fight for the position just anyone would have!"

"But you had an advantage, didn't you? You have to admit that the training was easier for you than the rest of us! I calmed myself by saying that it was not your fault for being a Lycan Legacy as I thought it came from your mother, but of course it was not. Upon further testing it was discovered the gene was a dormant one from our father that decided to just wake up in you. It was not by your own talent that you became Head Warrior Commander, you just got lucky in terms of genetics."

She seemed to have forgotten that the Lycan trait had to be given from both parents, which meant unless her mother was a carrier as well, she would have not been a Lycan Legacy anyway.

"I don't have to explain myself to you, Cordelia. You are so set in your belief of what is the truth that I know nothing I say at this point will change your mind. All I want to know is how are you alive? And why are you working for the man who slaughtered your pack?"

She threw her head back, laughing at my question.

"Everyone paid attention to my warrior sister, and I knew that I could not compete with you on that level... so I found an area where I excelled. While you were busy training, I was in the library learning about horticulture, doing my best to find another way to shine... and after years, I finally did. I learned how to turn the very thing that our kind feared into our pack's greatest weapon. With my work, we could win battles without losing our own, sneak into other lands without being detected... and even *trick people into thinking we were dead.*"

I closed my eyes, my mind flashing back to that day where I saw her body on the battlefield, it was all a lie. I had carried so much guilt since that day... all that pain I had forced myself to go through was for nothing.