Savage Mate

4. Hurting

Mark

I wake up to someone kicking me, and it doesn't surprise me to see it's John.

"What the hell did you do?" he screams as he grabs me by the neck and drags me to where the open cage is sitting. I notice that I left a trail of blood from where I had been before to the front of the cage. "Do you have any idea how hard it was for my men to catch that cat? What do you expect me to do now?"

"I didn't..." I try to lie.

"You think I'm a fool?" he lets me fall and kicks me some more, he then grabs the belt that I used to open the cage and starts hitting me with it. I feel the buckle cutting my face, but with my already swollen eyes, it's hard to know just how bad the cut is. 

"You're going to kill the kid if you keep going, and then you will have a double loss," Trevor says in a bored tone, but it works, and John stops hitting me.

"I don't have time for this, I have a cat to catch. This is the last time you do something like this, do you hear me? You will obey me in everything, and you can't go against my orders. If I bring a person, shifter or animal, then it's mine to do whatever I want with it, you included," he then storms out of the place, but I see Trevor is still standing there.

"You shouldn't make him angry, you know? It will be much easier if you just do as you are told. I'm sure you are in pain, so I will try to bring you some painkillers, but, I can't promise I will be able to," he says in a bored tone.

I hear him get out, but I'm in a world of pain, my face feels wet, and when I bring my hand to my brow, I feel the blood flowing. Going to the sink to wash the blood is a titanic task that uses all of my strength. I try to clean it up, but I get sick watching the water turn red, so I just leave it alone and go back to lying on the floor, wishing I was somewhere else and thinking of the kitty. I hope she is safe, hopefully back with her family. Part of me wishes she could come back and get me out, but I know it's not going to happen. John is my legal guardian, and everyone thinks he is such a nice guy. When he told everyone we were moving because being in the house that my mother died was too painful, everyone believed he was doing this for us, because he was a good person, but he is not, he is a monster.

When I next wake up, I'm being dragged away, and thrown into one of the bigger cages by one of John's followers. John is holding a bag, and something smells bad. He gets something out of the bag, and at first I don't get what I'm seeing, but then I realize that whatever it is, it resembles a cat.

"Do you see what you did, boy? We could have made a lot of money out of this cat, but you had to go and try to set it free, now it's gone, and it's all because of you!" he throws the broken body inside the cage with me, and I can barely recognize the cat, the head is all smashed down, but the colors look similar to the little I saw of the kitty before the lights went out.

"Kitty?!" I don't know why I reach out to the broken body, but it's cold, and limp, even if it wasn't obvious by the mess its head has become, just by touching it I know it's dead. "What happened?"

"No one gets away from me! By trying to get away, it died, and it's on you, boy. Think of this the next time you want to help someone."

I can't believe what I'm seeing, I feel sick, she was just a little girl, is she really dead because of me? Should I have let her in the cage? Did she suffer? I grab the broken body and hug it, and I cry, fat, ugly tears. I couldn't help mom, and I couldn't help Kitty. I can't help anyone, I'm so useless.  

I can hear John yelling and throwing things, but it's just white noise at that point, I'm locked on my failures. I never even got to ask her name, to know where she was from or what she liked. I thought I was setting her free, and I doomed her. I know the kinds of dealings that John has, and I'm not sure that being alive and under his control would have been better, but maybe with more time her parents could have rescued her. I don't know, death is so final, and she still had a lot to live for.

By the time I stopped crying, I was exhausted, and numb. In a way, it wasn't just Kitty I was mourning, but my mother all over again, and my life before this hell John had put me in. I am aware of time passing because of the movement around me, and by rumbling stomach. I'm pretty sure that I had been locked here for more than a day. People keep coming and going from the room, they even brought a few other animals, dogs, mostly, but no one moved near me or even acknowledged me. 

More time passes and I was pretty sure I have a fever going on. "Take this, you need to eat," Trevor, John's friend told me, offering a bottle of water and cookies. I ate them, they had no taste, but the water felt good in my parched throat.  

Trevor came another two times to bring me something to eat and something to drink, but eventually John came again. I was numb to his yelling and cursing. I wasn't paying attention to his words, and when he opened the door and took Kitty away, I was too weak to try and fight them. I might have protested, not sure about that, but I know that I was dragged out of the cage and that I passed out again.

I woke up confused. I wasn't cold, nor in the cramp space of the cage, I was in a bed, in a room. Once I get used to my surroundings, I finally understand that I'm in some kind of clinic or hospital, recovering from my wounds. A nurse walking inside the room only confirms my suspicions, but there is something odd about the nurse, is the haunted look in her face.

"Good, you are awake. You have a few bruised ribs, and the cut on your face is quite bad, it required stitches, and I'm afraid is going to leave a nasty scar. There are also a lot of bruises, I'm sure you are in pain, but there's not much we can do at the moment."

"Where am I?" I ask, and she looks troubled for a moment.

"This is the hub," she says, her voice trying to sound casual. "Since the boss is moving operations, they brought you here until they set a new location for the fighting pits."

I go silent, I don't want to think about fighting, I don't want to think about John's businesses. I hate him and I hate what he is doing, but there was nothing I could do. My mind went back to the Kitty and I hated how weak I was. If I had been stronger, then maybe I would have been able to protect her. She was a kid, younger than me, she didn't deserve what had happened to her. I didn't deserve what was happening to me either, but I had no family to mourn me anymore, she did. Would her parents miss her? Would they even know what happened to her?

"I see you are finally awake," Trevor's voice broke through my thoughts. I turn to see that the nurse was in a corner, trying to make herself invisible. "Your father went a little too far," he commented, looking at me.

"John is not my father," I say through clenched teeth.

"Step-father, it's the same," but it wasn't. He was my mother's partner, he had nothing to do with me, and I hate that I'm at his mercy. "Look, you are big for your age, but you lack any training. If you want to survive, then you need to get better. Throwing punches and kicking like crazy can only take you so far."

"What's the point?" I ask, but my mind wanders back to the Kitty. What if I had been stronger? Maybe I would have been able to save her.

"Just think about it. You won't be going anywhere for a while, but once you are better, I can help you," he tries to sound friendly, but I don't trust him.  

He walks away, and I think about his kind of help. Do I really want it? I'm not sure, I hate the idea of becoming on be of John's fighters, but then, the alternative is most likely death.