Book 1: Chapter 29

“There was a hand-off. I woke up at one point in the back of an SUV. There was no sense of time and they started to drug me as well. Then, next thing I knew, I was in a lab surrounded by Hunters. Some in lab coats, other just normally dressed. I was put into a cage and that became my only thing I found comfort in, at least when I was little. As I grew bigger, they could reach me past the bars but for a few years, they couldn’t.

At first, they kept their experiments and torture relatively mundane. Taking blood samples, trying to force me to shift, checking pain tolerances, checking anatomy differences; things like that were their go to for a year or so. One of the days, they did actually force me to shift. It was beyond painful and Bellum tried help get me out, tried to escape. She had been making plans this whole time while I just mostly was too exhausted to even move. She did her best, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. A few of the Hunters ended up dying and that was the turning point. 

I was labeled dangerous. A label that excited them to no end. It was like their new free pass to do whatever they wanted. I became the monster they wanted me to be and now it gave them full authority to try and destroy me. Instead of taking my blood, they started to inject me with things. Some that burned like ice, others made me partially shift, some would make Bellum take over. I would lose sight or feeling in my body. Usually when those were administered, they tried to torture me. See how much a wolfsbane weapon would really damage me. What were the lasting effects of the poisoning with wolfsbane. Every day was pain and I never felt anything other than pain.

At some point, something they injected me with made me lose days of memories. When I came to, I was chained to my little cage. My connection to our pack, to you and Nate was severed. It was the first time I felt so alone. I still hoped though that you were coming for me. That you knew I was still alive that way and you were coming for me. A year or so after that, is when I lost hope. No one was coming to rescue me and I was on my own. I realized it while I was strung up, wolfsbane coated silver daggers were jammed into my palms holding me against the wall. All the while some old fucking Hunter shoved his dick inside me. At that point, I was eleven roughly.

The next year or so was when I lost Bellum. I was shifted and they had brought in a witch. It felt like my soul was being torn. I could feel each connection to her as they peeled her from my mind. That was the first of many attempts of suicide for me. I’d lost everything. My home, my family, my life, and now my wolf. There was nothing to hold on to. In that first attempt, I lost my eye. It didn’t work, obviously. I was subdued and easily thrown back in my cage.

I stopped fighting. Stopped doing anything unless I saw a window to kill myself. No longer could their pain make me cry or beg for relief. No longer did I try to squirm away when they raped me. I became their favorite plaything. A few years after I lost Bellum, they took my leg and arm. They had injected something into both limbs. It started to turn necrotic within a few hours. They removed both of them and because I didn’t have the strength or my wolf, I couldn’t even heal at a human rate. Instead they just burned me shut to not bleed out. From there, any attempts I’d make would stupidly futile.

It wasn’t until I was sixteen, which I can guarantee the year, was I able to almost successfully die. They’d left me on one of their damn tables, after rearranging some of my insides and taking a few out to replace them with some of the others that came and went. They left a vial of wolfsbane right next to me. I downed all of it and before they could even scramble to take it from me, the darkness was already taking over.

The next thing I remember was cold. I had somehow woken up even after all that but they had declared me dead. All dead were zipped into a body bag and dumped into the local river which connected to a lake in the middle of nowhere. The cold water had jolted my heart back to start but now I was going to drown in a body bag. It was until I was dragged out of river. Alpha King Ulrich was the one who had pulled me out. He was looking down at me as the bag unzipped and he carried me back to the castle.

The Hunter lab I was in was destroyed but no other wolves or supernatural creatures survived outside of me. Honestly, I haven’t heard of any other creature making it as long as I did. The Alpha King had his best healers and witches try and help my body to heal. Even when my body had healed, my mind and soul were still broken. For about two years after that, I would do my best to throw myself from roofs, windows, poison myself, starve myself, steal anything sharp that could be used to take me from this world. I hated the Alpha King for saving me. What was I? I had no arm, no leg, no eye, no wolf and at the time I was so weak I couldn’t even shift for a long time. 

Plus the nightmares that ensued, the feeling of years of abuse, the scars, the amount of times I was fucked, how can you live with those memories? How can you keep your humanity after years of that? I didn’t think I could. It wasn’t until one of the times the Alpha King came to check on me did he finally get through the stupid teenager in me. He told me he didn’t want or need Aelia. There was no way I could go back and if I did, it would only bring me more pain. He never expected me to be who I was before. All he wanted was me to take a step forward in this world, as this version of me.

I stopped trying to throw myself off buildings from then on. I turned to molding myself into someone who could get revenge. Who could use my lack of feeling, my past experiences, everything that I had become to destroy the very thing that kept me captive. It was a job that I enjoyed and I was thorough and cruel. Never once though did the Alpha King turn me away for my methods. Instead, he gave me a new name when he adopted me as his own. Solaris Ulrich became the most feared soldier in his army. 

Lor was brought in with her expertise in robotics and being a witch. Suddenly, she found her new favorite friend and she was actually my first friend after all that had happened. She replaced my arm, leg and eye with magic versions. It took some getting used to, but it was just another weapon in my arsenal. I met Noah and Finn not too long after that either. There were moments I thought about coming back. My trips to Maggie’s house were wonderful and a break from what I had become. Every time though I would think to reach out to you and Nate, I would look in the mirror and see nothing that I was.

I started to spread out a little more. Help rogue wolves in setting up their lives since I had run across so many in my travels around the world. Money meant nothing to me and helping others gave me a sense that I was washing some of the blood off my hands that I swam in on a daily basis. I ended up helping and opening businesses and investing in rogues so much I was making more money than I was before. Opposite of what I wanted to do, so I just started investing more. All the while I was lobbing off heads of Hunters or wiping out packs per the request of my old man.

At some point, I received the nickname of the Rogue King and my old man was planning on skipping the whole ‘find yourself a prince’ and make me his sole heir. But its around that time I had my first episode. It was throwing up blood when I hadn’t drunk myself into alcohol poisoning. The witches and healers worked for hours but their news wasn’t good. My body was shutting down. Frankly, they didn’t know how I made it so long as it was but I had run out of time. The more strain put on my body, the worse it would get. At the time, they gave me a six year timeframe. 

That was four years ago. Could I have been better? Maybe. But it wouldn’t change the fact that I was still dying. It was never an if, it was always a when. At first, I didn’t tell anyone. Refused to because I knew at least my family I had built would be up in arms over the whole damn thing and I didn’t want that. But as more episodes came, I couldn’t depict the timeframe or if I needed to use my power that it was usually in front of at least a handful of people I didn’t want to know. So, I told a few and we started to plan for the eventuality.

There were…are…things I need to do still. Things that brought me back here. Maggie was the one who told me I should tell you who I was. She said it wasn’t right of me to withhold it from you. I had no real plan for this conversation and from the word vomit I just decided to lay on you, I probably should have. But here we are. Up to date, roughly speaking. The quick notes of it all over the years. Now, I’ve got less than a year left and I decided to spend my time enjoying the things I love. Drinking, my boys, and my family, even if they didn’t know who the hell I was.

It was never to punish you or even rekindle what we had lost. Frankly, we were too young. We lost too much time. I know that. Some things die hard though. I still have a sense of protection over you and Nate. One of the reasons why I am still here. It’s hard because part of the reason why I didn’t want you to know is because here I am, presenting myself to you after you had already accepted my death. Now, I’m just dying again in your life. I didn’t want to be that cruel but it’s also nice to talk to my Sil. Even if you aren’t mine anymore. Even if there won’t be anything between us. You can at least look at me past just the rogue persona and the first prince. Just as me, or what’s left of me.”