Luna Revealed

Chapter One

I sit and watch my brother drink from his bottle of cheap rum. Today, he uses an intricately etched glass, filling it again and again. That bottle always seems to last forever. Unfortunately, this one is running low and there isn't another within reach. I ball my hands into fists in my lap. I know what's coming soon. My brother doesn't like it when his alcohol runs out. He gets angry. Very, very angry. Furious, even. If he were a sane person, he would go get another – we have plenty – but no. He will let his anger consume him yet again. He will explode and take out that fury on the ones closest to him. That person, most times, is me.

I stand abruptly and lower my head in respect towards my brother. He looks at me, cloudy eyes burning with disgust and dismisses me with a rough hand gesture. I turn and quickly run towards and up the stairs to my bedroom. I shut the door behind me as quietly as possible, desperate to avoid bringing attention to myself.

As soon as I'm alone in my room, I let out a long breath and collapse onto the thin mattress laid on the floor. The room is small, but it is the only space in this hellscape that I consider mine. Though the door does not have a lock, it is solid wood, meaning I have some semblance of privacy during my time in here.

I roll onto my left side and look at the small, white flower in a drinking glass full of dirt on my windowsill. I uprooted it a few months ago after Viktor took me to the safe house in the woods. I saw it outside of the tiny window in the bathroom every day and just had to take it home with me. I smile at the memory of the flower, petals crumpled from being in my pocket, on the day I brought it in here. Very few things spark warmth inside of me anymore, but this was definitely one of them.

The flower also reminds me of my mother. Before she died, she used to take me into the pack garden and teach me all of the names for the flowers. I know that the one in my room is just a weed, a tiny scrap of nothing, but every time I see it, I see her face, and hope blossoms in my chest.

My mother was killed – murdered – when I was only eleven years old. Her death is what led me to the situation I currently live in. My father, the Beta of the wolf pack Aurora, is convinced I played a part in her death. I was never tried for the crime – no one was – but that never stopped him from punishing me for it.

For the last ten years of my life, I have endured the abuse of our pack. It started with just my father. He would come home from long days of burying himself in his work and beat me until I could barely breathe. Over time, my only brother, the upcoming Beta, also began to beat me. My father would frequently call in Viktor to finish what my brother couldn't – and wouldn't. From there, the abuse spiraled out of control until almost everyone I saw in the pack house was involved.

Aurora is a medium-sized pack. Due to its growth in recent years, not everyone can live in the same house. Our Alpha left the main pack house to my father to manage while he focuses on the training of new pack members. Our family lives here – the Beta's son, three youngest daughters, and me, the eldest daughter – and is supposed to handle any and all pack responsibilities. This includes finances, cooking, and maintaining the home. Most times, these tasks are left to me to care for.

I take in a deep breath and reach for the petals of the flower, gently stroking them. But this is all coming to a pause for now. The beatings stopped as of last night. Since I'm the only one capable of handling our finances and taxes, I have to enter the real world to attend community college classes. I haven't attended a real school since I was a pup, so my mathematics skills are no longer strong enough to keep up with the massive amount of spending the pack house does. All that I've learned about money and law has come from the books in our small library.

Because no one else is willing to handle the financial aspect, my father has no choice but to toss me back in school and hope for the best. Luckily, this means I can no longer be beaten, at least until the bruises on my face heal. As a werewolf, I have accelerated healing, but I have been so malnourished and neglected for the last decade that it doesn't work properly. The current black eye I have will likely take another three or four days to completely go away.