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Chapter 1
Beth’s POV.
Silence. Finally.
I press one of my thin palms to my chest, closing my eyes and taking in a deep breath. I try to place the scents of the pack members, a ghost of a smile appearing on my face when I realize that they’re all going to school or to their jobs. Even the little kids are gone, sent off to the pack’s babysitter.
I frown a little when I remember how careful the pack is to clear out the whole house before they leave me alone in it, locking doors to all of the bedrooms and the kitchen. They don’t trust me. Not in the slightest. All because of the mistakes my father made.
I sigh, crossing my arms over my chest and hugging myself tight, trying to stop that train of thought. I don’t need the negativity. A familiar pang of hunger slams my stomach, and I step out, away from the wall I was pressed against, and into the hallway.
Holding myself even closer, as if I am about to fall apart, I begin the long walk from my room down to the main floor. My room was moved to the third floor, the farthest isolated from everyone else. No surprise there, but it still hurts more than anything.
I wonder if they left the kitchen unlocked today? I wonder as I cling to the banister and slowly go down the stairs. Hunger burns my torso again, and I know that they must have. They don’t want me to die; oh, no. That would look bad. You know, ruin their reputation and all of that stuff. The neighboring packs would soon find out that I died out of malnutrition, and all of the questions would be turned to our Alpha. He doesn’t want to have to make up an elaborate story and hope people believe him. He’s far too lazy for that. I’m not worth the effort.
So, they feed me. But not much. Only enough to keep me going. To make sure that when I die, there are no physical signs of their abuse.
I sigh, reaching the second floor. I know that I shouldn’t be thinking about my own death so lightly, but I honestly can’t bring myself to be afraid of it. I mean, it’s an end to everything that is going on, all of the pain I’m in, so why should I be afraid of it?
My wolf disagrees, though. The alpha blood running through my veins and pounding through hers makes her refuse to give in so easily. Other wolves would have cracked a year or two ago. Mine? She’s struggling, but still pretending she’s strong. She doesn’t talk to me anymore, however. She hates that I am so ready to leave this earth.
In all honesty, I want death. I just want it to end. The pain. The torture. The abuse. Hell, I want just one day without having suspicious, weary eyes following me everywhere I went and glares burning into my soul constantly.
I step onto the first floor, tearing off to the kitchen as fast as I can without hurting my body.
I sigh in relief, a ghost of a smile tilting the tiniest corners of my lips, when I realize that the kitchen is unlocked, the door swung wide open, inviting me in with the strong scent of cinnamon and cookie dough.
I walk in, stepping up to the counter. The room is a large rectangle, stretching immensely to fit the whole pack, but even with the insane length, it’s still a tight squeeze during pack meetings.
Or, so I’m told. I haven’t been allowed to one in years.
After shoving down a peanut butter sandwich, my shrunken stomach is full and I feel queasy. Tears brim at my eyes, noting how little I can eat now. How small my appetite is. I can’t help it though; after years of only being allowed food twice, maybe three times a week, I can’t handle much.
I head back upstairs, hugging myself once again, as I get a cold chill. My wolf paces restlessly inside of me, frustrated that she can’t get our body temperature back up as she should be able to, but I shake it off. I’m used to it.
I shiver, holding myself tighter, and rush up the stairs quicker, deciding to get a hot bath to help. Why am I so cold? I haven’t gotten the chills like this before. I feel the cold settle into every bone in my body, making my teeth grit together and my body shake slightly. My hands tremble as I run my palms up and down my arms, to no use.
This must be it, I think to myself. My body must be starting to deteriorate. My final days, though probably still months away, are drawing nearer.
“Thank God,” I whisper to myself, turning on the tap. I know, I know. It’s morbid. But you don’t understand. You don’t know what I’ve been through. No one can understand.
Tears begin to roll over my eyelids as I feel the pain of everything that has been done to me, the years of pain at my pack’s hands. Nobody can know. Nobody can understand.
As I undress, I can see the affects that they have had on me, like a map of the last eleven years laid out on my body. My bones are prominent, sticking out at weird angles from my body. My stomach is a sickly kind of flat, sinking into my torso, and I can’t count each individual one of my ribs through my shirt. My hair is a dull, mousy brown, thin because of my malnutrition, hanging in greasy sheets to the middle of my back. And my eyes, oh my eyes. They are dull and lifeless, with dark purple bruises under them from my insomnia. Nightmares flash back into my mind the second I lose consciousness, drudging up horrifying scenes from my childhood and making sleep nearly impossible.
I grimace as I slide my shorts off, revealing my damaged legs. There’s a long, pink scar running down the back of my calf from three weeks ago when I walked downstairs at the wrong time, and straight into a pack meeting. The alpha, Joe, held me to the ground as another boy, Tom, dug his long knife into my leg.
I sob as I remember the pain, the humiliation. Crying and screaming, trying my best not to writhe, as they pin me to the floor of the living room. The way that the carpet scraped at my face, rubbing it like sandpaper. The cruel sound of the pack’s laughter, no one even trying to stop the boys. They were entertained by it.
“I don’t deserve this!” I cry, tears making my body tremble. “I don’t deserve this. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m suffering dad’s mistakes. I need this to end.” My eyes burn, and I rub at them, glancing hatefully back at my body.
My arms are cut countless times, by my pack members as well as myself. I’ve never tried to kill myself, but I’ve cut before. Not deep. I was careful about that. I just wanted to know that I still feel things. There’s a long scrape on the back of my right shoulder. Purple bruises blossoming on my left. And there are yellowing bruises along my torso.
I wipe the tears from my eyes, even though they are quickly replaced with a fresh wave. I shiver again, and step away from the mirror, pulling my eyes from my disgusting body. I lower myself into the tub, covering everything from my collar bone down in scalding hot water and yelping slightly. I shift, trying to become comfortable in the water, and put my hands in to tight little fists to stop myself from getting out.
“Just think.” I whisper to myself, the words echoing in this big, empty house. “It’s almost over. My time’s fleeting. I can feel it.”
I’ll be dead soon enough.
Chapter 2
Beth’s POV.
I slip out of the bathtub, my body feeling too warm as blood pools against my skin. The water was scalding, and it stayed super hot the whole hour or so I sat in the bath, but I know that the calming effects of the heat would wear off quickly. I’ll be shivering and freezing again in no time. Sighing, I wrap my ratty, old towel around my body. God forbid the pack spare me a warm, clean towel. No; they left me this worn scarp of fabric. It’s a little thing, and not really a big deal, but when you’ve dealt with it for eleven years, the tiniest things effect you drastically.
I draw the towel tighter around my body, my hair dripping all over my face, and walk as quickly as I can to my room. I close the door behind me, feeling safer when I’m locked in my own little space, even though it’s not much.
My room is simple – the pack couldn’t spare any expense on me, so it’s a lot less elaborate than the other rooms. The walls are a light cream color, I have a tiny window high up on the wall directly to my left, and I have a shallow, half-finished closet in the far wall. A bare light bulb is hanging off of a cord attached to my ceiling. My bed consists of a mattress laying across the floor, with two thin, blue blankets covering it. There isn’t even a pillow.
I sigh, ignoring the lack of furniture and decoration, and peel my towel off, throwing it to the side and hurriedly pulling on my underwear and bra. I throw on thick sweatpants and a slightly ratty sweater with the word “Hollister” printed across the front. Knowing that these clothes are the warmest in my sparse wardrobe, I glance down at the beaten-up clock propped on the floor beside my bed. It’s only eleven thirty, leaving me with enough time to sneak in a quick nap and wake up before anyone gets home. I don’t want to leave myself vulnerable to them.
With that thought in mind, I pull back my blankets and slide onto the mattress, pulling the covers back around me tightly as the first round of shivers makes my hands tremble and my teeth chatter. “Ughhh,” I groan, burying myself deeper in the mess of blankets, and curl into a ball, trying to instill some warmth into my bones.
Why am I getting so cold lately? I wonder to myself for a moment, before shaking it away. It’s just another sign of my body deteriorating. I guess that I’ll be dead sooner than I thought. .
‘Stop that,’ my wolf sighs, clearly trying to muster the energy to be mad at me, and failing.
‘It’s not like you can’t feel it,’ I think, like I’m saying it, but only inside of my head.
‘We’ll get stronger. Better.’ She growls this time, but it’s a million times weaker than what she used to be able to achieve.
‘Face it. We’re dying, and even your alpha blood can’t save us for much longer.’ I curl my arms into my chest, shivering once more. The morbid thoughts don’t bother me as much as they do my wolf – I take comfort in them, actually. To die would be a blessing.
‘It’s your alpha blood too, damn it! You just need to acknowledge it!’ She screams, clearly getting frustrated with me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that anything with alpha blood hates to give up. My wolf included. Which means that she will keep trying to save me, keep fighting for me to live, until she breaks.
It can’t be that much longer, I reason to myself, looking for some reassurance. She’ll crack soon enough, and then I can give up. I can just surrender to the blissful silence of death.
‘I’m not going to ‘acknowledge’ it or whatever. I have given up, and it’s about time you do the same. Things will be a lot easier that way.’
‘What about your mate! Do you think he’ll ever want you like this?!’ She screams, drawing on the one weak spot I had when it came to my death. My mate. Your mate is supposed to be there for you. To love you without any boundaries, accepting you for who you are. At least, that’s what I heard.
But I know the truth. The amount of werewolves that reject their mates. That find their mate, only to have them killed moments, days, months later, ripping their hearts to shreds in the process. Even worse, are the werewolves who’s mates die before they can ever meet, and have to spend their lives searching for someone who doesn’t exist anymore.
Mates are supposed to be a beautiful, fairy-tale ending, but that’s rarely true. And while the fraction of a romantic side that I still possess makes me want to hope for things to be different, for my mate to be the exception, the one-in-a-million, fairy tale kind of perfect that he’s supposed to be, I know it won’t happen. Ever. I don’t deserve it.
‘Who says I’ll even get a mate? Let’s be honest, I don’t have the best of luck. I’m ugly. I’m scarred. My own pack hates me. So, why in the world, would I ever deserve a mate?’ Even as I think it, pain rockets in my chest, and I curl tighter to myself. I desperately wish that I could have a mate. I just don’t believe it will happen.
‘Ugh, Beth. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I guess that I … I just want something to hold on to. I want to believe that there’s a reason to stay alive. Can you really begrudge me that?’ My wolf asks, although her voice is soft and shaky.
I guess I can see what she means. We both just want to believe that there is something left for us. I don’t think that there is. Not at all. I just want to die.
Despite my thoughts, and my argument with my wolf, I go to sleep with a slight smile on my face. The first genuine smile in years.
Why?
My wolf’s finally giving up. I can hear it. I can feel it, deep inside. She’s cracking.
And I’m that much closer to getting my wish.
I wake up in my dark room, panicking, Another nightmare had penetrated my dreams, and while I can’t remember what it was about, all of the tell-tale signs are there. I sit up, my covers a tangled jumble around my legs and constricting my movements, as my pulse races and my breathing comes in short, raspy gasps.
A cold sweat covers my body, making the cold chills running down my back even worse and matting my hair to my forehead. I wrap my arms around myself, blinking in the darkness, and taking longer than normal for my eyes to adjust. I sit up, pulling the sheets with me and clutching them to my body, looking around as I try to fully wake up.
I look at my watch, my fading werewolf abilities kicking in and enhancing my eyesight. 2:00pm.
Wait, what?! I sit up, flinging aside my sheets. School ends in five minutes, and the pack will be home in fifteen minutes. I run out of my room as fast as my frail body will carry me.
It’s my job to have a bunch of food prepared by the time the pack comes home every day after school. And I don’t want to see what will happen if I don’t.
With that thought in mind, I do my best to ignore how cold I feel and begin sprinting towards the kitchen.
Chapter 3
Beth’s POV.
“Beth!” I hear Joe’s voice rip through the air, his cold Alpha tone making my wolf whine and my knees buckle. I shakily turn away from the stove, where my fourteenth batch of cookies are baking, and look towards the hallway.
“Answer me, girl!” He growls, storming in through the kitchen’s open door, his eyes black and his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles are white. He’s pissed, and, as usual, he’s going to take his anger out on me.
“Y-yes, Alpha?” I stammer out, head bowed and not daring to meet his gaze. My eyes drift back to his hands, and I flinch at the memory of all the pain those large hands have caused.
“One of the stupid pups broke Grace’s arm,” he snarls, getting even angrier as he says it. “Set it for her before it heals wrong. She’s in your room.”
With that, he storms off, probably to go beat up whoever hurt his precious mate, Grace. She’s a bit ditzy, to be blatantly honest. She’s never fought for herself a day in her life – and she’s never cooked a meal, either. She’s failing most of her classes, but she has this strange quirk to her.
In addition to being super-model-gorgeous, with her long, straight blonde hair and almond shaped green eyes, she has a knack when it comes to caring for others. And I don’t mean that she can handle feeding a kid – well, she can, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
She has this thing about her, almost like an aura, that is welcoming and kind. She smiles at everyone –including me, but only when Joe isn’t around – and you can’t help but feel loved. She is warm to everyone, and keeps a steady, comfortable conversation going when other packs visit that doesn’t seem forced. She’s even civil to me –which never ceases to surprise me. She doesn’t engage in conversation with me or keep her mate from hurting me, but she doesn’t injure me herself.
In short, Grace is a people person. While Joe is the strategy and tactics part of our pack, Grace is the hospitable one that makes sure all of the packs that visit are cared for and comfortable. She’s not going to be a brilliant Alpha female, but she could certainly be worse. And Joe knows it.
Sighing, I pull out the stack of cookies from the oven and set it on the counter to cool, before heading out into the hallway. I know that Joe will be immensely pissed if he gets back to Grace before I do, so I rush to grab the first aid supplies out of a closet along the hall.
After grabbing a few fabric wraps and a thick towel, I head off up the stairs. I’m shaking and cold again, but I try my best to ignore it, knowing that Grace has to be my first priority.
I reach my room as quickly as I can, and walk in, finding Grace sitting cross-legged on my bed and cradling her arm.
“Grace,” I whisper, bowing my head in acknowledgement and drawing her pretty green eyes away from the floor and to my eyes.
“Oh, Beth. My arm…” She trails off uncertainly, clearly embarrassed. “I thought I’d help train the pups today. And I guess I underestimated them,” She whispers, laughing awkwardly at the end.
Not surprising, I silently muse. As I’ve said, she’s never fought a day in her life, and I’m pretty sure that she’d be way too cocky and confident for her own good. She’d probably think that being mated to an Alpha gave her automatic fighting superpowers.
It totally doesn’t, though, in case you didn’t get my sarcasm. But hey, Grace is definitely not the smartest person in the world.
I only shrug in response, timidly sitting down in front of her on my mattress. “I can’t fight to save my life, so don’t worry about it. Those pups are stronger than they look.”
Of course, the only reason that I’m so pathetic in the defense department is because I’ve never been allowed to train with the other wolves, and both Grace and I know it. We fall into an awkward silence, and I begin unrolling the large fabric wraps. There are a few reasons that I’m not allowed to train; one being that the pack, especially Joe, like to keep me weak. I’m easy to manipulate because I can’t defend myself.
The second reason is that they simply don’t trust me. After what my dad did, all of those years ago, none of the Ewing family can be trusted. And, seeing as I’m an only child and my mom died years ago, that only means me.
They assume that I’ll learn their defense tactics, their strengths and weaknesses, all of the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of our defensive skills. And it’s not safe to have me know that information. I wouldn’t do anything to them; I swear I’d never hurt this pack. But they don’t see that. When they look in my eyes, the brown ones I inherited from my father, all they can see are his mistakes.
That’s why they hate me so much. Because of my dad, and his stupid mistakes. I know that they were infinitely more than stupid, and I hate him for them. But so does the pack. And, rather than ignoring that hatred, the way I do, they take it out on me.
I shrug off the sadness and ache-y feeling filling my heart, and concentrate back on Grace. The wraps are now completely unrolled, laying around me in thick white strips, and I shuffle closer to her, bringing her from her thoughts.
“Move your other arm, please, Grace,” I whisper, knowing to be as polite as possible as I try and look over her injury. She slips her right arm away, letting it hang beside her, and tenderly rests her broken left arm on her lap.
I wince when I see her forearm sticking out at a strange angle, showing off the break about two inches above her wrist. I gently move my fingers over the swollen area, knowing that under the thick layers of skin are cracked and splintered pieces of bone, which are probably already starting to heal.
I frown as I touch a part of her arm and she sucks in a sharp breath, cringing. Shit. Her wolf powers have already begun to heal her arm – and it hasn’t been aligned properly.
“You’re bone has already started to set, Grace,” I whisper, recoiling at the thought of what I have to do next, and not daring to meet her gaze. “I have to re-break it so that it heals properly.”
She whimpers, and I keep my eyes down. If I see how much pain is spreading through her eyes at the mere mention of re-breaking her arm, then I know that I’ll never be able to do it. And no one else in the entire pack knows how. Literally. I’m the only one trained enough to help her.
She takes a shaky breath, before sliding a little closer to me.
“Do it.”
I blink, looking up at her.
“You heard me. Do it, please,” she whisper the last part, her jaw set and her eyes weary but determined.
“Maybe we should wait, Grace, until Joe comes. He could help you-”
“No, it’s okay. He, uh, doesn’t like to see me in pain, and I don’t want to stress him out.” I furrow my eyebrows, but quickly agree with her. Joe gets pissed when Grace’s hurt – it’s the whole ‘mate’ thing. And when he’s angry, he’s pretty uncontrollable. He would never hurt Grace when he was mad, I know, but he would more than likely hurt me.
Being selfish, but not really caring, I nod. “Okay then. I’ll be as quick as I can, ok?”
She nods, looking terrified all of a sudden, and I pass her the fluffy towel I brought up with me. “You might want to bite on this or something. I’m not going to lie – it’s going to hurt.”
She nods, shakily grabbing the towel with her good arm and stuffing it in her mouth, before covering her eyes with her arm. I hear a muffled word that sounds something like, “Go.”
Not needing to be told twice, I grab her arm tightly with both my hands, one on either side of the break, and grit my teeth together. I yank her arm in opposite directions, twisting as I go, and she screams, filling the air with her cries.
I gulp, feeling sick, and quickly set her arm back into its usual place, going as fast as I can. I wrap one thick strip of the cloth around her arm, tying it and making sure that blood can still circulate through her whole arm, before doing another strip on top of it.
There is a sound of rapid footsteps on the stairs just as I finish, and Grace sniffles, looking up for the first time, her teary gaze going to the open doorway.
I slide back, away from her, and Joe runs into the room. He spots Grace in the room and drops to his knees beside her, taking her tear-stained face into his hands in a heartbeat, before I can even blink.
“What’s wrong, baby?” He whispers, and in that instant, transforms from the Joe I know into the Joe that only cares about his mate. His normally stone-cold blue eyes go soft, his whole body relaxing. He hasn’t even recognized that I’m in the room yet; that’s how entranced he is with his mate.
A small smile almost appears on my face. See, this is what I can only hope for. A mate, to share this kind of love with – the kind that blinds you from everything and everyone else and change you, but you don’t care at all.
“I- I – I had my a-arm re-b-broken,” she stutters out, trying to get her shaky voice under control as her tears dry up.
“Did she hurt you?” Joe growls, his eyes filling with anger as they snap to mine, and I quickly drop my gaze. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to never look a pissed-off Alpha in the eyes.
“No, Joe, she didn’t, my bone just was healing wrong,” she whispers, pleading on my behalf, which still stuns me. I should be used to it by now, but seeing as how she’s the only person in this pack to at least distract people from me, it’s still pretty weird in my mind.
“You all right?” He asks, diverting his attention back to Grace once he’s sure I didn’t go and take a chainsaw to her arm and somehow manage to tear open her spleen in the process. I almost laugh; he’s acting bi-polar, all angry and then all kind and caring, but he’s always like that with Grace.
“Yeah,” she whispers, burying her face in his shirt, and I look away, feeling like I’m intruding on a personal moment.
He only nods, before scooping her up off of the bed, carrying her bridal-style, and walks out of the room without another word.
Strange.
I shrug, looking at my watch. I have another hour or so before everyone will want to eat dinner, so I decide to go down to the kitchen and start cooking. I have to be fast; tonight there is another pack meeting, and I need all of their food ready and laid out before they begin. I shudder as I remember the last time that I was too slow, and was just taking the food out of the oven when they came in to start their meeting.
A long scar runs down my shoulder as a reminder to never do it again. I shiver again, but not because I’m cold, running a hand over the jagged line carved into my skin.
That night, a year or two ago, Tom, Beta of our pack, took the honor of digging one of his long switchblades into me. I can still remember it all, the sharp, metallic smell of my own blood, the heavy, warm liquid running down my back and onto the kitchen tile underneath me, soaking through my tank top as he tore through the fabric to make the cut longer.
The salty taste of my tears as I sobbed out my pain and desperation for the hurting to stop.
That night, like so many others in my short seventeen years of existence, I wished to die. But, the alpha blood that still runs determinedly in m veins is keeping my wolf strong, and more powerful than other wolves. It also means that, had I tried to kill myself, I wouldn’t die. I would be injured, and it would hurt like there was no tomorrow, but I would still heal. I wouldn’t be able to inflict enough injuries on myself to die – they would all start healing before I was damaged enough.
In short, until my wolf gives up, I’ll never be able to kill myself.
God, I hope she gives up soon.
With that thought, I stand up and head off to the kitchen, noticing that I only have forty five minutes now to make an entire meal for the pack.
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