Sang knew going against her step-mother was useless. It would only bring more punishments- more bruises to hide and more questions from those who seen them. But still, she can't see the old Sang Sorenson that looks back at her through the mirror any...
DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Academy series (Ghost Bird or Scarab Beetle) All rights go to C.L. Stone.
RATING: K+ for language and violent themes. Mentions of abuse and drug addiction
WARNING: May contain triggers for some readers- read at your own risk. Nonagon-ic relationships between Sang and her nine boys (Owen Blackbourne, Dr. Sean Green, Nathan Griffin, Dakota 'Kota' Lee, Gabriel Coleman, Lucian 'Luke' Taylor, North Taylor, Silas Korba, and Victor Morgan)
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
~~
"You are such a disappointment!" My stepmother screamed, lashing out at my bare hip with her slippered foot. She held a cup of soup, one filled with the dinner I had just finished making, and the other a bottle of water. She grumbled incoherently under her breath as she made her way out of the room.
When I had gotten home from school earlier, I'd quickly started on my chores. Cleaning the kitchen, making dinner, cleaning up Marie's mess in the bathroom, and doing laundry. I hadn't seen anything from my mothers room while doing my first load, so I had gone to ask her if there was anything she needed washed.
And then she was screaming. Yelling, raving about how I did nothing around the house and that I needed to be punished for being a mooch. I ended up on the kitchen floor with nothing but my chest wrapping and a pair of old boxers- she had yelled something about how I was taking advantage of their kindness through wearing their clothes too, and ordered me to strip.
I was used to the hard kitchen floors, but the stripping had only happened a few times since moving to Charleston, so it was really the cold that got to me first. When I was sure my mother was asleep, I got up to put dinner away and went upstairs to find something to wear the next day.
My homework finished, I had nothing to do but head back downstairs when I was ready for bed and kneel back on the kitchen floor.
I slept there through the night.
~~
I woke up kowtowing the floor- something I was used to doing when being punished. It would have been much worse, though, if she hadn't found me there. Most of the time, she didn't leave her room, but there was other times in middle of the night, that she would get up for another bottle of water to wash down another mouthful of medication.
I didn't want to risk it.
When the sun came up and the time for me to start getting ready passed with no signs of my mother waking up before noon, I jumped up and started my morning routine. I got into a quick shower, dressed in a button down and jeans, and thought screw my hair when the bus pulled up in front of the house.
