Under The Alpha's Claws

Chapter 3

He blinks at me. "Wh-what? What does that mean?"

I sigh. I have to tell him. There's nothing to lose I could do, so I may as well. "Three years ago—after a year of dating—when—when we—" He looks impatient. Spit it out, I tell myself. "He beats me."

Unmoving, he stares at me, his mouth parted.

I hold my breath. I'm not sure if it's in apprehension for his reaction or because of the pain that hits me in sharp jolts with each breath I take.

"You're lying," he says, an intensity sharpening his stare. "He would never do that." 

A lump forms in my throat. I shouldn't have told him. He's the Beta wolf. The Alpha's second in command. He's sworn his loyalty to Cassian. Of course, he wouldn't believe me.

"He loves you," he continues. "He wouldn't hurt you."

"But he did."

He leans down to get in my face. "He sent me to find you the moment you left. He never gave up. He wanted you to come back to keep you safe. Why would he do that if he was going to hurt you?"

"Because he's controlling," I reply, pausing to wince from my movement. "He wants me back so he can control me."

"He's not like that!" His jaw clenches. He grinds his teeth down on each other.

"Why do you think he wants to be Alpha so bad?"

He straightens up. "Because he's an amazing leader."

"No," I say. "Because it means he has control over an entire pack."

In a swift movement, too fast for me to react, he plunges down and digs his fingers into my wound.

I release an agonising cry. Tears fill my eyes. The scream rips at my throat until it's raw.

When I loose all my breath and go quiet, he speaks. "He's taken care of me since I became a wolf five years ago. He would do anything for the pack. And most importantly-" He pushes his fingers in further, forcing a strained cry and whimper from me. "He would never leave the pack!"

He releases me and I flop back and relax into the couch; heaving in long, painful breaths of air.

This wound will probably take at least two days to heal as it is, but if Luca continues to worsen it, it's going to take a week.

His angry glare make me shrink back and feel small, but I hold sadness for him. He doesn't see it.

"He abuses you too," I say.

His arms cross over his chest that he puffs out more. "What—What are you talking about? He doesn't—he doesn't...abuse me. Don't change the subject. This isn't about me, it's about you."

"It's about us. Both of us. And others too, I'm assuming."

"You don't know what you're talking about." His face begins to redden.

"I know exactly what I'm talking about. You may not really know it or want to believe it. I certainly didn't want to for a long time. He makes it easy to look over everything."

His eyes soften, and I continue with more confidence. "It starts out small. Things that can be brushed off or ignored, but after a year, it—I realised how bad it had gotten. Even then, it took me two more years to finally find the strength to do something about it."

He hangs onto every word I say; taking them in and evaluating their meaning. Whether he believes me or not hides behind his guarded manner. I hope I can open his eyes to the truth.

He opens and closes his mouth, wanting to say something but coming up with nothing.

I wait for him to speak but when it becomes clear he gives up, I continue. "I don't know about your abuse, but mine started as more emotional and verbal than physical."

He breaks eye contact, disappearing into his thoughts. His memories.

"Eventually, he laid a hand on me, but he told me it would never happen again, and I believed him. Every single time, I believed him. But it was never the last time. It only got worse."

I find myself slipping into my own memories. A place I've suppressed for a while now. A dreaded place. A painful place.

"He controls everything. My feelings. My decisions. My thoughts. My actions. My entire life. If any mistake was made, even if I had nothing to do with it, I would get the blame."

A twinge of guilt hits my heart from his falling expression.

"Any time I tried to fight back, if I showed the smallest bit of defiance, he would threaten me with throwing me from the pack. And to make sure I would never leave he convinced me I could never survive without him."

I look up at him, but he keeps his gaze on the floor. As the seconds tick by, I wonder if I should say something to comfort him, but I can't come up with anything. I wait.

When he looks up, the sadness in his eyes almost kills me.

I did that to him. He's broken because of me. I opened his eyes to the terrible world around him, and he'll never be the same again. But I wouldn't take it back. He's no longer blind to reality because of me.

Despite the pain and struggle, I pull my knees up to clear the end of the couch. He takes my silent invitation; sitting down, staring at the floor.

"I'm sorry," I say. I know that my world crashed and burned when I realised the truth, and my experience had been less sudden.

"But he..." He tries to argue back, but fails to come up with anything. "He...I...but...he..." He gives up.

Silence consumes us. It suffocates me. I search for something to say to him; I think about what I needed to be told when I realised the truth, but I can't find anything. So, we sit in the quiet.

A quiet so quiet that we can hear the barely audible tick of the clock on the wall, ticking down the seconds that pass. I watch the red hand make a full round before I finally come up with something to say. Something I wish someone had told me three years ago. "You don't have to stay with him."

He looks over at me, his eyes empty.

"You don't have to go back," I continue. "Stay here."

"No, I have to go back," he says.

"Why?"

"He's the Alpha. I have to follow his orders. If I don't, he'll kill me."

I try to sit up, but with a shoot of intense pain, I'm forced back down. "That's what he wants you to believe." 

"I've never lived as a wolf without him. I couldn't do it alone. I'm not like you."

"You've been a wolf since you were fourteen," I remind him. "You've had five years to learn. You can handle it."

His head falls so he can stare at the floor again, looking uncertain.

"And you won't be alone," I reassure him. "We'll have each other's backs."

He doesn't appear convinced, so I continue. "I've been a wolf for eight years now—since I was twelve." I stop to count on my fingers to make sure I have it correct. "Yeah, eight years. And I spent an entire year on my own before the pack found me."

He glances at me.

"I survived a year by myself during the worst time of my life, I know what I'm doing. We can do it."

He wants to say yes. I can see it in his eyes, but he hesitates to agree. "What if he finds us?" he asks, picking at his fingernails.

"We'll deal with that if the situation ever arrives."