Scarred

Chapter 1

"Thank you Alpha" I say through gritted teeth, I will not give him the satisfaction of having me beg or seeing my tears anymore. All I have to do was make it through that door. I wait for permission to be dismissed, and he is having fun making me wait, if you had told me two years ago that my alpha was in any way cruel or sadistic, I would have tried to kill you myself. But that was two years ago, two long years ago. No. No more thinking about the pain, I have to leave, he will only let me leave once he is bored of me, and as long as he senses my pain, I have no chance of leaving.

 "Breathe, just breathe" I say to myself and my wolf, who is howling inside me. She always takes the brunt of it, the physical pain, she no longer tries to get me to submit to my alpha, she stands tall and proud while he beats us. To make the scars last, he has to do it while I am in my human form, my wolf would have been able to heal them almost straight away. I learned a long time ago to soothe my wolf enough to not let her come to the surface, the last and only time she did it was at my first scarring, we barely survived.

 I stay perfectly still, I do not look anywhere but at my bare feet, I think of nothing but a brick wall, I do not whimper, I do not try to wipe the blood off my wounds. I stay that way for 10 minutes until, through the pack link I hear my alpha "GET OUT! And clean yourself up you miserable excuse for a wolf." I walk towards the door slowly, many times before now, after I had been dismissed, my alpha decided he hadn't had enough fun yet, and letting me walk away, and think I was free, only to be dragged back and beaten all over again was the icing on the cake. So I keep my head down, and as I get to the door I turn the handle slowly and pull the door open.

The sunlight burns my eyes, but it feels so good to be outside again, he kept me in for longer than usual, the sun is lower in the sky, I must have been in there for 5 hours. But I was out now, I could go to my hut and bathe, somehow there was always a hot tub of water in my hut on the day of my scarring. I have running water, but it’s not always hot, I have shelter and I have a bed which is more than I had last year. But the bath is only ever filled by me, except on the day of my scarring, someone always fills it before I get home, and my scarrings are at different times every month, I have no idea who does this for me, but it may be the sole reason I have not lost my mind and gone feral yet.

 You see, I am not to be spoken to unless it has to do with work, no one sees me on the street and stops to say hello, not anymore, the alpha put a stop to that. It is punishable by the same scarring I go through if any member of the pack tries to be pleasant to me in any way. That’s why the bath has always seemed the strangest thing to me. It may not seem like much, but if whoever is doing this gets caught they will be scarred like me. For the first few months I tried to seek out my secret helper or guardian angel or whatever you want to call them. I wanted to thank them of course, but I needed to tell them to stop, yes it keeps me sane knowing that I'm cared for by someone, but if they got caught, and were punished for helping me, I don’t know if I could cope. It was not fair that they be punished alongside me. So I searched for them, trying desperately to warn them, but I was informed one scarring, through a private pack link by one of the alphas guard " if you can find them, so can your alpha!" I don't know if it was a threat or them trying to protect my secret helper, or even me, but I stopped searching that day, and continued to be ever grateful for my hot bath. I tried to leave some sort of gift beside my tub, be it a flower or pretty stone, anything I had of value. It was never taken, though sometimes it had moved and my wolf could smell a hint of a familiar scent, but never enough to pinpoint the owner of that scent.

As I am making my way home, the other members of the pack ignore me as usual, in the beginning it hurt, I'm sure if my family were still alive they would not have followed the alpha's socialization rules. They would have fought their alpha to the death before they would allow him to do all he has done to me. But my parents are gone. One morning when I was 6 my parents left me with their best friends Ivy and Ronan. My parents never came home. Ivy told me that they were lost and couldn't find their way back to me. Though when I was older I was told the truth, they were killed by poachers. When they told me what really happened, I was only 13 years old, but I almost went feral, I wanted to find the bastards that took my parents away from me, and rip their throats out, but my pack held on to me, using touch to soothe me they refused to lose me too, it took hours for the rage to subside, my pack stayed with me, holding me the entire time, even my alpha came to me, he put me on his lap and held me, I was still seeing red but then he whispered in my ear, " Your parents murders did not go unpunished, I took them out myself child" I heard what he said, I finally heard it. My parents death had been avenged, the poachers did not get away with it. I calmed down, and looked at up at my alpha, then the tears fell, and I don't know when they stopped falling, I was carried to bed by my alpha, my alphas mate Aine stayed with me that night, she held me when I cried. When I woke up she was gone, but my parent’s best friends were there for me.