Isla’s POV ~
“Papa… My head is bleeding. It’s dripping on the floor. I need a towel. Please, I’m making a mess… I’m sorry I’m shaking. I can’t stop it. Please don’t be mad that I’m shaking. I’ll stand still, look, I’m trying to stand still…”
I knew I shouldn't have spoken. The second those words left my lips, the air in the room changed. I saw his hand move, but I was too slow to duck. I am always too slow.
The hit rattled my teeth. His ring caught the corner of my mouth and my cheekbone. I felt my skin split open immediately. It didn't even hurt at first. It just felt hot. Then gravity took over. I didn't choose to fall; my legs just gave up. I hit the hardwood floor hard. My knees took the impact, then my shoulder, and finally my face bounced off the boards.
I lay there. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I just tasted blood that was filling my mouth while staring at a dusty scratch on the floorboard. I focused on it because if I looked at him, I would die.
I really do hate the universe. It is a cruel, silent thing. I have spent hours on this floor begging. I have prayed to every god I know. I asked for small things. I asked for a full stomach. I asked for a warm blanket. I asked for death. Just a simple death. A heart attack. A fever. Anything. But the universe never answers. It just lets him keep going.
"You," he said. He didn't shout. He sounded tired. That was worse. "Pathetic mutt. You think you’re special? You think you’re a person?”
He paced around me. I heard his dress shoes on the wood. “You were good for nothing. I wanted a son. I needed an heir and what did I get? A girl. A weak, whining girl who can’t even shift properly. You should have died. When your mother took those pills, she should have taken enough for you too. If you had died in the womb, my life would have been simple. I’d be rich. I’d be happy. But you lived. You chose to live, didn’t you? To spite me!”
Next, I heard the sound of the belt.
I stopped breathing. I curled my toes into the floor. I waited.
He raised the silver belt that had wolfsbane on it. My father knew this, and that’s why he never used leather belts. It never gave him the impact he wanted. He wanted me entirely damaged.
The moment he brought the belt down across my back, I screamed. I didn't want to, but my body took over. It was a sound I didn't recognize. It sounded like an animal dying in a trap. The wolfsbane immediately seared my skin. It didn't just cut me; it cooked me from the inside out. I could feel my wolf reacting. She wasn't just hurting; she was terrified. She was screaming inside my head, trapped and weak to save me.
The house shook with the noise I made. I was screaming so loud my ears hurt.
But he didn't stop. He didn't even blink. He just stood there, holding the belt, watching me thrash. He looked at me like I was a broken appliance he was trying to fix with a hammer. He didn't care about the noise. He didn't care about the blood spilling from my wounds.
I started begging the Moon Goddess. I didn't ask for help anymore. I asked for her to strike me dead. Please, just stop my heart. Make me vanish. Turn me to ash so I don't have to feel the silver again. I wanted him to hit me hard enough to kill me. I wanted the pain to be the last thing I ever felt.
He raised the belt again. I saw the silver buckle glint in the light.
He whipped me again. Right over the first mark.
I screamed until my throat cracked. I screamed until I was coughing. He just watched. He enjoyed tormenting me.
Why would he care? In the pack, I am a joke. I am 17, about to turn 18 sooner and I haven't shifted. Shifters my age had shifted right when they were just 16. I am a "late bloomer" to the world, but to him, I am a failure. I am broken stock. He does this every day to remind me. He hits me where it hurts most so I never forget my place.
Then, he stopped.
Silence rushed back into the room.
I was shaking. I couldn't stop. I was lying in a pool of sweat and blood. My back felt like it had been dipped in lava. The burns were deep. I knew they would scar just like always.
I tried to lift my head, but I couldn't. I looked at my hand. It was shaking on the floor. My hand was perfect. No cuts. No bruises there.
I looked at my legs. My clothes were shredded. I could see the angry red welts rising up on my thighs, my stomach, my ribs. They were destroyed. My skin there was broken and bleeding filled with old scars.
But my face was smooth. My neck was smooth. My hands were soft.
He made sure of it. He never hits the face. He never hits the hands. He only destroys the parts of me that are hidden. He wants me to look pretty for the world. He wants me to look like a normal girl so he can sell me or marry me off to one of his business partners. But underneath the clothes, my body was ruined.
"Get up."
His alpha command rang out and it bypassed my brain and went straight to my nervous system. My muscles locked tight, spasming with the need to obey. I hated that my body betrayed me even when my mind was screaming to just stay down and let him kick me until I stopped breathing.
I placed my hands on the floor. They were shaking so bad I almost slipped again. I pushed.
"Do you know why I keep your face pretty, Isla?" he asked coldly.
I nodded. I couldn't speak. My throat was swollen shut from the crying and the fear.
"Say it," he barked.
I flinched. A tear leaked out, stinging the open cut on my cheek. I choked on the words.
"Because... because I am only useful if I’m beautiful."
A slow, cruel smirk spread across his face. It didn't reach his eyes. "Smart girl."
He walked toward me. I backed up until my spine hit the wall. He stopped inches from me, towering over me.
"You might be a defective wolf," he said, reaching out to grab a lock of my hair and twist it around his finger, pulling just hard enough to make my scalp burn. "But you have your mother's face and skin. An Alpha daughter who can't shift is worthless in a pack. But a pretty face? That can still close business deals. That can still make alliances. And tomorrow is your birthday. You will shift. If you are not completely broken."
He leaned in closer, his breath hot on my face. "And if your wolf ever emerges... nothing changes. I am an Alpha. I have killed rogues twenty-five times stronger than you without blinking. You will live under my authority. You will do what I say. Or I will put you down like a rabid dog."
He let go of my hair and stepped back, dusting his hands off on his pants as if I was dirty.
“Remember three months ago? When I invited the Beta and his friends over?" He asked.
Ice floods my veins. I remember. I remember being thirteen when it started. Being held down by men whose wolves made them strong enough that my screams didn't matter. Being too young, too small, too wolfless to fight back.
"You're eighteen now. Legal. Imagine how much worse it could be with you fully grown." His smile is a predator's. "Your wolf won't protect you from a pack of Alphas, sweetheart. She'll just make you heal faster so we can do it again. Now get out and clean yourself up. You're a mess. And make sure no one ever comes across the scars on your body ever. Or I will make sure your life is more miserable than hell itself.”
The door slammed shut. The lock clicked.
My legs gave out, and I slid down the wall to the floor. I didn't cry anymore. I was tired of crying. It didn't change anything. It just made my head hurt.
I dragged myself up by the furniture. My body felt heavy. I went to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror. My eye was swollen shut. My lip was split. I looked like a monster.
My eyes drifted to the cabinet above the sink. It was unlocked.
Inside, wrapped in a cloth, was a silver knife. It wasn't for cooking. It was for discipline. It was for pack members who broke the rules too many times. It was for werewolves who couldn't be controlled. One deep thrust to the heart, and the silver would burn the soul out of the body. A permanent death.
I stared at the handle. It was so close.
I could do it. I could drive it into my own heart right now. It would be so easy. Just a second of pain, and then the silence would be real. I could save my wolf from him. I could save her from being his slave, his punching bag, his breeding stock for the rogues he wanted to impress.
My hand started to shake. I reached out. My fingers brushed the cold metal of the handle.
I stopped.
I couldn't do it yet. Not yet.
I needed to know. I needed to see if my wolf was real. The part of me that was supposed to be strong. I had never felt her. Not once. But if I died now, I would never know if I was just a human mistake, or if there was actually a monster inside me waiting to wake up.
I just needed to see her. Just once. Before I ended it.
I pressed a cream, the only thing that helps wolfsbane burns against my ribs and remember the last time I saw my mother. I was eight. She was packing in the dark, moving with the unnatural silence only werewolves possess.
“Mommy?" I whispered from the doorway. She froze, her wolf-sharp senses catching my presence even though I'd tried to be quiet. When she turned, her face was a mess of bruises, one eye swollen shut, her lip split. Her wolf was there in her eyes, golden and desperate to shift.
"Baby, you need to go back to bed." That’s what she had said.
I recalled asking where she was going and if I could come but she had looked me a long terrible moment and said no, that I haven’t shifted yet. I couldn’t keep up.
Then she ran. Shifted mid-leap into a beautiful wolf and crashed through the window, disappearing into the forest.
I stood there for hours, my wolfless human nose unable to track her, unable to follow, unable to do anything but watch her scent fade on the wind.
I pressed the cream harder against my burns until the pain brought me back.
She's out there somewhere. Alive. Free. She found a new pack. A fresh start.
She got to escape and build a new life.
And she left me here to rot.
Not because she couldn't take me. But because I wasn't worth taking. Because I was wolfless.
Sometimes I wonder: if I shift tonight, if my wolf finally comes, would she want me then? If I showed up on her new pack's border, shifted and strong and worthy, would she claim me as her daughter?
The worst part is, I don't even blame her anymore.
Because I understand now. Weakness is unforgivable in the werewolf world. And I've been weak for eighteen years.
_________
The next morning, I stared at the calendar. Today's date is circled in red: EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY - FIRST SHIFT
In werewolf development, eighteen is the last possible age for a first shift. If you haven't shifted by eighteen, you never will. You're officially classified as wolfless.
This is my last chance.
I've felt my wolf lately. She's in there, I know she is. I feel her scratching at my consciousness, whimpering, trying to surface but unable to break through until the moon recognizes me as an adult wolf.
I've planned everything. The second I shift, I'll be stronger. Fast enough to break through the window bars. I'll run into the forest and never look back.
I just need to make it to midnight.
"ISLA!" Kagan’s Alpha bark made my bones locked up. Even without a wolf, I feel the command in my blood. "GET DOWN HERE! YOU'RE GOING TO BE LATE!"
I move automatically, my body conditioned to obey Alpha orders even without a wolf bond.
When I came downstairs, he was waiting, arms crossed, radiating Alpha dominance. "Spin." I turned slowly. He circled me like he's evaluating livestock. "Good. You look presentable for a wolfless embarrassment."
"Today is important, Lila. Do you know why?"
"My birthday?" I whisper.
His hand cracked across my face, hard enough to split my lip but not hard enough to bruise. I gasped in pain.
"Wrong. Today is the day you make yourself useful for once in your pathetic life."
He grabbed my jaw, forced me to meet his eyes. "You have a pretty face, Isla, and I suggest you put it to use! Make the werewolves in your school happy. I don’t care what miles you’d take to ensure their happiness but do it! You're going to make them want you. Seduce them if you want! Or else… And trust me, Isla, the buyers in the underground rings pay extra for a pretty girl they get to destroy themselves. I’ll let them use your face as an ashtray until you’re nothing but scar tissue and bone."
My stomach dropped.
