Broken Rose

Prologue ~ Rose

It’s true.

All of it.

I confessed to all of it, in order to help my Scarlet.

She should have been my daughter. With my Thane.

What is that saying? The one that they start old fairy tales with? Oh, right, once upon a time I fell in love. With a wolf.

Only this wouldn’t end like those romantic stories told so long ago. He found his mate and I was left more than heartbroken. My soul was broken.

In an act of vengeance, I took their child and hid her away. I wanted him to hurt the way that I did. To feel how it felt to have someone you loved more than anything ripped away from you and there be nothing you could do about it.

I was going to give her back in due time, but a crueler fate intervened. Thane and his entire family were killed in a fire that ripped through their estate home in the night while they slept. So I fled with the baby girl in order to keep my secrets and avoid the punishment for my crime. A certain death.

Goddess knows I loved Scarlet like my own. I looked out for her the best I could. I hid her among humans. Assisted her when she needed it. Gave her anything she wanted.

I had wronged her in so many ways that someday I knew I had to make it right.

So when her mate found her, came for her, he had to know what she had been through, what she was going through and what she faced when she woke from the magic I placed on her to give her back what I had taken from her.

Her wolf.

When I confessed my crime that I had used magic on a wolf, I was to be put to death, but fate intervened yet again. Maybe it was the goddess looking out for me. Her and I have always had a…strained relationship.

I’d been spared my life, but my fellow sisters have bound my magic, leaving me basically...human. Death would have been kinder.

The incantation was beyond painful. I almost didn’t survive it from the blood loss. Runes were carved and inked into my skin, leaving them tattooed down the sides of my neck and down both arms.

Even the backs of my hands displayed my shame for all to see.

The agony and torment continues. With my magic bound, it presses painfully against my skin from the inside out. Like a caged beast wanting to be free.

Now I have nothing.

No Thane.

No Scarlet.

No access to my magic.

No home.

Scarlet’s Alpha mate tore apart the Trench, when the idiot humans took her and were going to use her for their entertainment. There was nothing left to go back to. So I’ve even lost the place I called home for the last twenty four years.

I have no choice but to travel back to the place of my origins in hopes my coven of sisters will take me in.

My dark forest in the Scottish isles.

I have enough magical potions that I made before losing my magic to trade in order to secure safe passage on a boat to take me there, but it will leave me with next to nothing else to barter with. If they turn me away, I have no backup plan.

I actually look forward to seeing the mountains and the moors, the lochs and most of all, my dark forest.

Perhaps being closer to my origins will help breathe new life into me and help me find a new purpose.

My name is Rose.

I am a witch with no magic.

My heart and soul are broken long ago and now my spirit is too.

I am broken.