Prologue: Orphan Child

She watched it all burn.

Everything turned to bright red fire and then dark smoke and ash that reached towards the burning sunset, searing into her memory the smell, the sound of the crackling wood and fire. Tears stung her bright violet eyes and her face was smudged with soot and her short, wavy red hair was singed from where the fire had eaten it away. She sobbed and her lips trembled, watching everything burn away in the fire. Her kimono was burned up to her knees, and her legs had blisters and bled where the fire had eaten at her skin. Her hands also bore blisters and wounds from trying to drag burning lumber from her families bodies, though they were dead long before she reached them.

"Momma…Papa…" she sniffed, her body trembling, "Sister… brother…" she sobbed and hiccup, then wailed into the sky, "Momma!!"

The sun would fall and no one would come. The fire would eat everything, leaving nothing but charred ruins of the mansion that was once her home. The little girl sat alone and watched the dying embers of the fire that engulfed her home and family, her face silent now and void. Her eyes were blank, like the dead, as she stared at what remained of her home and remembered the burning smell of flesh as her family died.

She heard the trees around her rustle, but didn't move. She didn't flinch or even turn when she heard the foot-fall. She didn't look up or show any sign of life as a foreboding presence loomed over her, as she felt a gaze on her that would normally make her hackles raise. She would continue to stare at the burning remains of her home.

"Tell me," said a deep, strong, commanding voice, "What happened here?"

She said nothing. Somewhere, the fire snapped as it ate at the wood still.

"…was this your home, pup?" he spoke again.

This time, she slowly nodded.

"Hm…" There was another pause, and wood snapped and dissolved into ash and ember. The interloper moved away from her without a word. His form stepped into her line of sight. He was tall, enormous, really. He gave off the air of a great and powerful man, dressed in armor with long, flowing silver hair held up high on his head. He wore a white pelt over his shoulders and three swords on his person. He walked through the ash and dying fire without any care, it seemed, about the black ash and soot that covered his white clothes.

She watched him walk to what small place was still piled together to resemble a small building, like a skeleton. He peered in, now standing to the side, and she saw his face. Stern, handsome, she supposed, though she was too young to truly think of these things, and he had a jagged dark navy stripe below a golden eye. She remembered what her father told her about such marks. They were the mark of his tribe.

He reached out with one hand and ripped away easily a chard beam that blocked the only entrance and gazed in. What he saw, she didn't have to know. That small area was where she had spied the dead bodies of her three siblings, now burned, no doubt. Her elder brother and sisters were in there, and her parents' bodies were somewhere off to the farthest east part of the remains, piled under the ruins of the roof of their bed-room, if their bodies were not completely devoured by now.

The stranger backed away and lowered his eyes for a moment, seemingly deep in thought. Then he stepped away, returning to stand in front of her. Now, she found that she couldn't look away from the man. His appearance, watching him move about in the burning remains of her home, and brought back the memories of watching it all.

She began to cry again.

He looked down at her, and knelt in front of her now. "What happened to your family, little pup?" he asked her as gently as possible with his deep, gruff voice.

Her lip trembled and she tightened her hands on her lap, making her little claws bite into the blisters and opening the healing wounds. "…k-killed…" she muttered, "All of them…they killed them all…I saw them!" she began to cry again, louder and harder than she had ever cried before as she remembered all the screams, all the blood she had seen. She told the stranger everything she remembered.

Her mother had tried to save her, her youngest child, but grabbing her and running. She was already covered in blood, her's mixed with her other children's. She had tried to run, tried to seek protection with her mate, only to find that he had been murdered while he slept in bed. She cried out in her anguish, then the murderers came. She told her daughter to flee, and she had, and she had listened to her mother scream in pain as she died. She had hidden, and then the fire started. She tried to find her siblings, but they were all dead. She ran back to her mother and father, but they were already dead too. All the servants, her friends, everyone in the mansion had been killed. She was the only one left.

She almost couldn't finish her tale, she was crying so hard. When she did, let out a deafening wail of sorrow that, though she didn't know it, pained this outsider's heart. He put a strong hand on her head and pulled her to him, allowing her to rest her head against him. She gripped his robe without a thought about it, leaving ash and blood stains there, and cried. He stayed with her, saying nothing, barley moving, until she fainted from her emotional exhaustion.

He lifted the little orphan up. She was so young that she easily fit in one arm, and he wrapped her in his pelt. He took her away from that place, her home that became her hell, and prayed that this poor, innocent little one would not be tainted by her experience.

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A/N:

The name "Akane" means "deep red" in Japanese.