I didn’t wince.
I didn’t flinch.
I didn’t let a single flicker of expression cross my face.
If I did, if I gasped, if my eyes watered, if I showed even a fraction of the agony ripping through my chest they would win.
They would take a sick, pleasure in my pain and hurt me even worse.
Monsters thrive on tears, and I had learned years ago to starve them of the satisfaction.
So I didn’t move.
I braced my bare feet against the freezing concrete floor, locked my jaw until my teeth creaked, and took the impact.
I was, quite literally, their fucking punching bag.
“You are useless…”
A heavy fist collided with my ribs.
The force of the punch sent a dull, splintering crack echoing inside my own ears.
Breath flew out of my lungs in a sharp, silent puff.
“…worthless!”
His boot swung into my thigh, the leather cutting deep, knocking my legs out from under me.
I hit the ground hard, the rough stone scraping the skin off my elbows.
“…weak, pathetic omega!”
Alpha Richard screamed the words, his face twisted into something monstrous.
Before I could slump to the floor, his massive, calloused hand snatched a fistful of my hair, violently jerking my head back until my neck strained to the breaking point.
He held me suspended there, forcing my face up toward the dim light of the storage unit.
He stopped.
His chest heaved with heavy, aggressive breaths as he squinted down at me.
The brutal rhythm of the beating paused because he was finally realizing, after minutes of relentless force, that he wasn’t getting a single reaction out of me.
No tears.
No begging.
Just a hollow, dead stare.
The thick, copper taste of my own blood pooling under my tongue was the only thing keeping me awake.
If I let myself faint, I wouldn’t be able to protect my throat.
Richard scoffed, a low sound of pure disgust rolling around in his chest.
He spat on the floor right next to my face, then used the back of his hand to wipe a bead of sweat that trickled down his temple.
“Hmph.
You fucking bitch,” he yelled, the words hot and foul against my skin.
He delivered one final, crushing punch straight to my cheekbone.
The world spun sideways in a flash of blinding white light.
He let go of my hair, and I dropped like a stone, my face smacking against the cold dirt floor.
I lay there in the dark, my breath wheezing through my nose, knowing with absolute certainty that my left eye would be completely swollen shut by the time the day finally broke.
For the hundredth time, my silence had worked.
As long as I kept the pain tightly locked inside the cage of my ribs, they got bored.
They wanted a show; they wanted a whimpering, submissive creature to validate their own twisted power.
When I gave them nothing but a wall of stone, they eventually gave up and left me alone.
But it wasn’t as if the beating didn’t hurt.
Fuck, it drained everything from inside me.
It took every single ounce of my human soul just to hold the screams behind my teeth.
Some days, when the dark hours of the early morning felt too heavy to bear, I prayed I would just die.
I prayed a blow to the head would finally stick, or that I’d go blind, or be left permanently limping so they would have no choice but to throw me out of the territory completely.
But so far, I hadn’t had such luck.
The Moon Goddess had dealt me a hand made entirely of bad cards.
Sometimes, as I lay in the dark listening to the wolves howling in the distance, I wondered if she hated me too.
I wondered if she, just like the rest of the Silver Ridge pack, blamed me for the death of my parents.
It had happened nine years ago, but the memory wasn’t a memory at all, it was a scar that bled fresh every single day.
I could still clearly see it.
It was the absolute worst day of my life.
The day the world ended, the day I became an unranked Omega, and the day I lost everything.
I had been eight years old.
I remember how the bright summer sun filtered through the thick forest canopy, looking like shiny gold coins scattered all over our red plaid picnic blanket.
The world back then didn’t smell like bleach, copper, or wet dog.
It smelled completely of the sweet strawberry jam Mama had packed, and of my mother’s own warm, comforting vanilla scent.
The kind she wore whenever we baked together in our old kitchen.
“Happy anniversary, Mama.
Happy anniversary, Papa,” I had cheered, my small hands proudly holding out a slightly squished yellow wildflower I’d picked down by the running creek.
Papa had laughed.
It was a deep, rumbling sound that came from the center of his chest, a sound that always made me feel like nothing bad could ever happen to us.
He reached out with his big, scarred hands and pulled both Mama and me into his chest, wrapping his thick arms around us like an unbreakable fortress.
“Eight years of loving your mother, Pumpkin,” Papa murmured, his voice soft against my hair.
“And the absolute best part of it was getting you.”
Mama leaned her head against his wide shoulder, her eyes bright and filled with something so soft it made my heart feel full.
“Let’s make a wish before we cut the cake, okay?”
I had closed my eyes tightly, squeezing my eyelids until I saw colors.
I didn’t wish for toys or dresses.
I wished that we could stay in these deep woods forever, far away from the noisy pack.
I wished that when I grew up, I would turn into a fierce warrior just like Papa and Mama, strong, brave, and unbreakable.
Then, Papa froze.
The comforting warmth in his arms vanished in a split second, replaced by a sudden, terrifying rigidity.
His muscles turned to stone beneath his shirt.
All at once, the birds in the high branches stopped singing.
The happy chatter of the forest died.
The sweet smell of strawberry jam and vanilla was instantly choked out by a foul, rotting stench that made my stomach turn.
The sour, heavy smell of decaying meat and wet, filthy fur.
“Rogue,” Papa whispered.
The word stripped away every trace of the laughter from a second ago, leaving his voice flat and deadly.
Before I could even blink, a monstrous, scarred gray wolf burst through the green bushes at the edge of our small clearing.
Its jaws were parted, dripping with thick, yellowish saliva, its crazed yellow eyes locked dead onto me.
Another wolf, even larger and as black as charcoal, slid out from behind a massive pine tree, effectively blocking our only path back to the safety of the pack territory.
“Ella, run,” Mama said.
Her voice didn’t shake, but I could feel her hands trembling violently as she grabbed my shoulders and shoved me completely behind her back.
“But Mama…”
“Run, Ella!
Don’t look back!” Papa roared.
His body was already expanding, his bones cracking and snapping into new shapes as his clothes tore away.
His massive brown wolf forced its way out in a desperate explosion of fur and muscle.
He didn’t even finish the shift before he threw his weight directly into the teeth of the gray wolf.
The sound that followed was terrible, a wet, tearing crunch of flesh mixed with a feral, agonized snarl that echoed through the trees.
Mama shifted right beside me, her beautiful, snow-white wolf instantly standing between my small body and the second rogue.
She snapped her jaws at the charcoal wolf, her chest vibrating with a low growl, but her wide, frantic eyes were locked onto mine, delivering a desperate, silent command: Go.
Panic seized my throat, choking out my air.
My small eight-year-old legs felt like they were made of heavy lead, stuck to the dirt.
But the raw terror in my mother’s eyes forced me backward.
I stumbled, fell hard into the dirt, and then, I ran.
I sprinted blindly into the dark, thick briars, sharp branches tearing at my bare skin and ripping the skirt of my favorite yellow dress.
Behind me, the forest erupted into a nightmare of bone snapping, heavy bodies slamming into the earth, and a final, choked whimper that sounded exactly like my mother’s voice.
I didn’t stop.
I didn’t look back.
I kept running until my lungs burned like hot fire, sobbing into the empty, uncaring woods.
When I finally broke through the tree line near the pack house, covered in mud and blood, I told the adults what was going on in the woods.
The Alpha sent warriors out into the forest immediately, but by the time they reached the clearing, the worst had already happened.
My parents were gone, lying still in a massive pool of their own blood.
I might have escaped the monsters in the woods that day, but when the warriors brought me back, I realized a different kind of monster was waiting for me right inside the pack boundaries.
The Silver Ridge pack couldn’t forgive a weak, wolf-less eight-year-old girl for surviving while two of their finest warriors died protecting her.
They made me pay for my survival every single day with blood, starvation, and a lifetime of bitter blame.
In the very place where I was supposed to be safe, I became a ghost.
A ruined, broken thing existing only in the dark corners of the packhouse.
It took me two long years of constant crying to finally get used to the reality of it.
By the time I turned ten, I was already a pro at being a loser.
I learned the art of following orders without a word and keeping my head down so low my chin touched my collarbone.
That routine was the only thing that saved me from daily beatings.
“Why didn’t you answer the first time I called you?”
The Alpha’s sharp, demanding voice snapped the thread of my memory, violently dragging me back to the cold reality of the storage unit.
I kept my chin tucked tight against my chest, staring hard at the dark spot where Richard had spit on the concrete floor.
Keeping my eyes down wasn’t just a sign of submission anymore; it was the mechanics of survival.
Alpha Richard was pacing.
Circling me like a wolf testing a piece of meat.
“Look at me when I speak to you, little bitch,” Richard rumbled.
The sheer volume of his voice hit me like a physical blow, a wave of dominant Alpha power that made my shoulders flinch downward against my will.
My pulse spiked instantly, a frantic, trapped-animal rhythm drumming wildly against my ribs.
I forced my gaze upward, but I knew better than to look at his eyes.
Direct eye contact from an unranked omega was seen as a challenge, and I didn’t have a single drop of strength to back a challenge up.
Instead, I locked my eyes onto his throat, tracking the jagged white scar that ran along his collarbone.
Richard stepped closer, his heavy shadow completely swallowing me.
The air in the small room grew suffocatingly warm and impossibly thick.
My lungs squeezed, desperate for oxygen, but every time I inhaled, I only filled my head with his crushing Alpha aura.
Without a wolf of my own to shield my mind, the heavy pressure pressed down on my skull like a physical weight, making my knees tremble.
One hard push from him, just one more strike, and I knew something inside me would permanently snap.
He scoffed, a low sound of pure disgust.
“Useless.”
The word still stung, even after all these years, but it wasn’t news.
I clamped my jaw shut, swallowing down the bitter, hot taste of shame.
I tightened my fists inside the sleeves of my oversized shirt, hiding the way my fingers were shaking.
Let him think I’m nothing, I whispered to myself.
Let him think I’m a blank slate.
As long as he believed I was too weak to care about, he would eventually turn around and walk away.
“Save your breath, Alpha.
She ain’t worth the air,” Beta Jackson said finally, pushing his shoulders off the wall where he’d been watching.
He walked over to where I was kneeling and bent down, his face inches from mine.
“Do you really think I couldn’t smell you from your little hiding place in the kitchen earlier?” he smirked, his breath smelling of stale whiskey.
Of course he could.
Stupid, hyper-tuned werewolf scenting ability.
I had been a fool to think a piece of rusted metal could hide my heartbeat from a Beta.
“I couldn’t care less about you, you cunt…”
Before he even finished the sentence, his fist flew out, landing another heavy blow right against the opposite side of my face.
The impact knocked the wind completely out of me.
My head slammed back against the concrete, and for a long, terrifying moment, everything went black.
It took everything I had just to draw air back into my lungs.
“Well, while you were busy enjoying your little nap, I got a surprising call,” Alpha Richard interrupted, stepping over my legs as he paced.
He stopped by the cracked window, taking a deep,mbreath before continuing.
“Alpha Alexander…” he hissed, the name coming out like poison.
My heart did a strange, cold flutter.
Alpha Alexander.
The Blood Moon Alpha.
Even a wolf-less outcast like me knew that name.
He was rumored to be a ruthless, merciless tyrant who ruled the largest territory in the north.
“That bastard will be coming to our pack in three days’ time,” He snarled, his eyes flashing a dangerous, volatile wolf-blue.
“I expect you to start preparing for his arrival now.
Make sure you don’t do a single thing to embarrass this pack in front of him.
I won’t hesitate to snap your neck if you cross me.
Don’t push me, girl.”
Beta Jackson stepped up beside the Alpha, his eyes cold.
“I want the entire packhouse to be completely cleaned before the end of today.
You are relieved of your kitchen duties for the day.
Make sure every single guest room in the east wing is spotless.
I don’t know how many wolves he’s bringing with him, but I want every inch of this territory ready to show our strength.”
They both turned on their heels, their heavy boots clicking against the floorboards as they headed toward the small metal door.
“Clean up this mess and head to the main house immediately,” Richard thrown back over his shoulder before they both stepped out into the freezing pre-dawn air, slamming the door shut behind them.
Mess.I looked down at the dark, wet splatters of my own blood staining the gray concrete.
That was the mess he was talking about.
Slowly, agonizingly, I tried to push myself up onto my hands and knees.
My entire body erupted in a scream of protest.
A sharp, white-hot stab in my left side made my vision blur; I could actually feel the jagged edge of my ribs shifting uncomfortably beneath my skin.
They had definitely broken something this time.
I collapsed back down, taking a long, shuddering moment just to breathe, letting the cold air soothe the burning in my lungs.
Yes, my body was broken.
Yes, every muscle felt like it was on fire.
But the raw, paralyzing fear of them coming back for a second round was way bigger than the physical hurt.
Moving like an old woman, I dragged myself toward the corner behind the door where I kept an old, mop for situations exactly like this.
I couldn’t leave a trace of my existence on their floors.
I wiped my own blood from the concrete, rinsed the fibers in the bucket of freezing water, and then forced myself to stand.
I stripped out of the torn, blood-stained clothes I had just put on an hour ago.
They were completely ruined now.
My hands shook as I grabbed a toothbrush, scrubbing the taste of copper from my mouth until my gums bled, and changed into the last pair of clean, oversized sweatpants I owned.
I had to get to the packhouse.
I tried to sprint out the door into the morning mist, but the moment my foot hit the dirt, a blinding pain in my side nearly brought me to my knees.
My body was killing me, my ribs were definitely broken, and the sun was just beginning to peek over the trees.
Poor Ella.