I woke to the darkness of my cellar. I didn't have to see to know that that was where I was. The smell was always the same. Mold, wetness and despair. It figured they'd drag me here.
Whatever they stuck me with left me feeling foggy and ill. It took all my strength to roll over before the retching started. While at this point I did not fear death, dying from choking on my own vomit didn't sound like any way to go. I felt the spot on my neck where I was stuck with he needle, it was sore but I there was no way of knowing what was injected. Probably a sedative, but none of them I'd been shot with before made me feel this sick.
I felt like I'd been hit by a car. I had no clue how long I'd been out for. I could tell it had been a while because I desperately needed to pee but I didn't feel like I could stand up.
After humiliatingly crawling into the tiny freezing bathroom I was permitted to use I crawled back to my mat using whatever I could grab to cover myself, I was freezing. I just wanted to sleep and had dozed off for only a few moments when the door flew open.
"YOU FUCKING WRETCH! YOU DARED TO ATTACK MY MATE?!?" it was Luke. I wanted to scream at him that I was his mate, I was supposed to be who he was protecting, not hurting. But of course, outside of himself, myself, the current alpha and luna, Natalie and her cronies no one else knew.
I was the shameful secret. The dirt smear on his otherwise impeccable breeding and standing. I was never meant to exist in any world, let alone his. I was the freak, the unknown. We know that I am not simply human, that was clear by my eyes, hair and a strange marking on the back of my left shoulder that sometimes pulsed and changed from a silvery pink to a brilliant magenta. They found it on me when I was found. I wasn't born in this pack, I was found along the borderline at the edge of a forest. I was placed into the pack orphanage but no one wanted to adopt me because of my strangeness. So all I did was sit there day after day until I turned what they assumed was twelve then I was moved to the packhouse. At first it wasn't so bad, I was fed more regularly, I wasn't accepted, but I was tolerated. I was given only small chores at first, easy tasks. Until around my first year there ended and small things started to happen. Power flickering, things moving, and occasionally a glass exploding. I had no idea what was happening, just knew it usually happened when I was being scolded or was particularly angry.
I put it together around that time that my birthday was in winter rather than spring. I was so tiny when they found me they assumed I wasn't very old at all. Just a few months old, when in fact I was nearly six months old.
When I turned fifteen, I should have shifted, all shifters do by their fifteenth year or at least have some inkling of their wolf's presence. I felt nothing. No other presence, no other soul. Just myself. There was a brief glimmer but nothing close to another entity in my body.
Everyone assumed I had no wolf and that was why I was abandoned in the woods as an infant. I never knew anything but pack life so I assumed they were correct.
Afterwards, I was given more work, fed less, and over the years it became that I got one meal a day and triple the workload.
I suppose that's why I am so small and thin, poor nutrition and constant work. My bones are brittle and I've broken a few of them falling down the stairs carrying heavy loads of laundry, or once some of the pack boys chased me up a tree taunting me and I fell out and broke both bones of my arm and had to be in a cast for months. Chores were difficult that way but I managed.
A sudden slap brought me back to my reality. Luke was furious and now we were joined by Natalie. She sneered down at me shriveled and shivering on my cot. I was pale as cotton and felt like my entire body was drenched in ice.
Natalie made a face like she was looking at a disgusting rat on the floor rather than another living being as she wrinkled her nose and whined to Luke that clearly, I was faking this drama to make him feel sorry for me to get out of my punishment for attacking her and Chloe. She was being so pathetic it honestly made my nausea worse.
Luke ordered two guards to haul me into the center courtyard of the packhouse. Punishments in this pack were held publicly when it involved slights against high ranked members. I had no idea what was waiting for me in that square, but I knew it probably wouldn't be good. People were often broken into confessions then whipped and thrown in the dungeon for weeks, months or years until they had served their time and been released. Often, they chose to leave the pack, and the few that stayed, were shunned and lived in houses deep in the woods of the territory and rarely came around the pack businesses. Some, who only had slight discretions managed to come back into society, maybe not as shiny as they'd been before, but certainly still accepted among crowds. I wasn't accepted or tolerated now, I had no doubt the pack would rather see me locked away.
Once we reached the square I was dragged up the stairs to the post in the middle, I was chained to it, my thin rag dress was soaked in my sweat and I shivered more from sickness than fear. In all honesty I really didn't feel any fear. Whether it was being so sick from whatever they shot into me, or just finally not caring at all anymore, I felt no fear.
Luke stepped forward and stood in front with his back to me. He cleared his throat when the last of the pack gathered and addressed them with a severity that told me he was going to make this as dramatic as he could.
"Valued pack members! You've been gathered here today to witness what happens to those who don't belong try to harm a ranked member of this pack! This useless, wolfless slave bitch," he snarled at me "DARED try and harm your future Luna! This will not be tolerated! Her punishment is to receive 100 lashes with the whip, then to be locked away in the dungeon for the rest of her days, however many she has."
I didn't believe my ears. 100 lashes? No one could survive that! And if I did somehow manage to survive it, I'd be locked away in the dungeon until I eventually died? Could he really hate me this much? Am I really that much of a thorn to him?
I didn't have much time to dwell on it as my dress was violently stripped from my body and I was left naked and bound at the wrists and ankles as Luke, Natalie and Chloe stepped onto the platform. They all wore leather gloves to protect their hands from the whip.
"I will begin with the first 40 lashes, then Natalie will get 40 and Chloe, as a victim, will get 20. If this wretch tries to escape, she will receive an additional 20 for each try." Luke said to the crowd. No one flinched, no one cared. Some were even leering at me and still others were taunting and jeering to give me more just for kicks.
CRACK! The whip clashed against my flesh. I nearly fell. But I held my footing. I won't cry. I kept repeating this to myself as time and again the bite of the whip tore at me. Then it was Natalie. I knew I was in for it then. She wouldn't hold back. She would enjoy this.
And she did. Three strikes in she accused me of trying to avoid the strikes and that I was trying to loosen myself to run. Which was honestly ridiculous. I was bloodied and my body was beaten. How could I have taken a single step, let alone run? But she got her way and I got 20 more. Somewhere around the time Chloe stepped up to take her swings I passed out.