Lycan's Prey by Jessica Hall

Chapter 139

Looking at my mother, there’s an ache in my chest as I look at my mother, sitting there so defeated. Her fingers wrapped around my hand are warm yet the look in her eyes is as cold as the dead.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers again, but now it feels hollow, like the part my sister took of me when she passed, that piece suddenly feels colder with the realization. Yet looking at my mother I see Brielle took every piece of her, I lost a sister, my mother lost so much more. She lost her daughter, her mother and father, but the most destructive loss was her sense of

self.

It’s with wide open eyes I truly see the damage of her loss, that my childlike mind back then couldn’t. Why and how my mother became robotic after her death. My father became sterner, colder, almost like he was too scared to love me in case he lost me also. I can’t imagine living with that kind of grief or fear but I now understand it.

None of it matters now, the only thing I guess I can be grateful for is that Brielle never met this version of my parents, this hollowed out broken version they became. She died with cherished memories, she died loved, missed. Yet at

the same time I wonder if she were still here if I would have

had the same.

does that, changes people. Some sit in that grief stagnant, never changing, while some have a new look on life and appreciate every moment, and then others die with

Chapter 139

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with full force, penetrating every aspect of your being and echoing through every fiber. But still that agony doesn’t change the fact that Brielle is gone, or that Grandpa killed her,

her alone in the bedroom, the silence heavier now than before filled with unanswered questions. and hidden truths that have been dragged

–

my soul. Everything feels surreal and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to look at family photos again without thinking about this night and my mother’s confession. How Grandma

that why she helped me? I feel betrayed by everyone,

imagi

there is no comfort in that memory for the first time in years. Only a sharp pain that digs deep into my heart. Suddenly I am no longer remembering her life because now all I can see is her death, I can only see what I wish to forget. And now see what I did. forget, I always thought it odd about Grandpa being there so suddenly, not hearing his return, but I heard her cries, her pleas for our mother before I heard her silence and grandma’s wail of despair, before hearing my mother’s grief so loudly it was the only thing I heard for years. Another thing I will never forget, is the look on my parents‘ faces, the pure devastation,