You are the light of my life

Chapter 2:

It was my worst fear coming to b***h-slap me. I tried to keep a part of myself, hold on to a bit of strength so I didn’t come off as a loser like my father but it ran in my blood. I couldn’t succeed. Whatever I did had to be wrong.

Everything I laid my hands on failed. It was the truth. A truth I ran from for eleven years. A truth I welcomed now. If it didn’t get better for eleven years, it wouldn’t get better now. I’d never lead a better life. I’d let them win. I couldn’t be strong and they’d won before I even joined the game.

“That’s enough.”

Alpha Zavier called. The sounds of whips coming down one at a time stopped. It became obvious then that they weren’t the sounds filling the room.

No, those were my screams, my pleas and apologies because while I tried to be strong in my mind, I failed to be strong in reality.

Who’s wouldn’t cry if they got beat up every day? Who would endure as I had? I’d exhausted my strength. I’d cry and beg and feel sorry for myself as I tried not to. When Skylar asked me to kiss her feet, I would fall on my face and slobber all over her feet. When Lucian asked me to take off my clothes, I would rend them in a minute. What good was resistance? What good had keeping my spirit brought me all this while?

They broke me. They won.

I didn’t have it in me to care anymore. They left me in the cold cell room with me huddled into myself. The pain in my back warmed me. Blood trickled out of it to soak into my clothes, Tears didn’t stop streaming down my cheeks. My nose was blocked with snot that ran down my chin. I closed my eyes wishing everything would stop. I tried running away once and the torture I endured when they found me was not worth the initial excitement I had of freedom. Hell itself had to be better than this pack. The devil must be nicer than Alpha Zavier. He hated me. Oh goddess, how he hated me.

I looked too much like my father for his sins not to reflect against me. I think when he looked at me, he saw the person who stole his world- killed his mate.

‘I wish I hadn’t killed your father, ’ he once sa id to me.

‘I should have kept him around to make him see what I’d do to you. To deal with him more than I could ever do to you.’

Hatred didn’t begin to describe what he felt for me. He loathed me, anchored me – he spat on the ground I walked on and hated the air I breathed. The sounds of approaching footsteps made me break out in cold sweat.

When the key to the dungeon cell the Alpha kept me rattled, I closed my eyes, a chill going down my arm and spreading goosebumps. Back so soon? He’d kill me this time and I would welcome death with open arms at this point.

“Goddess, it stinks in here.” I froze even more when I heard Lucien’s voice.‘I would welcome death with open arms but he would make death even more painful. Lucien, as hard as it may be to believe, had been my friend. As a child and even after the pack ostracized me. Everything changed a few years ago in an unfortunate turn of events that I wished never happened.

“Keep your voice down. She may be sleeping.” When I heard Celeste’s voice after his, some of the knots in my stomach loosened. I didn’t dare move as the pain on my back and sides intensified with every small twitch of a muscle.

“What did they do to her?” Was that pity I heard in Lucien’s voice? It couldn’t be. This man made my life worse by simply being in the same room as me. Skylar would come for my head if she found out we were in the same room without her present. Half the curses I endured from this pack that didn’t come from the Alpha came from him or his gang. I hated him.

“We’ll get you out, Aysel.” I flinched from Celeste‘s touch on my face. Everyone felt like my enemy in this state, even my best friend.

“How do we get her up without aggravating her injury?” I heard her ask Lucien. How would he know? Why would he care?

“I’ll carry her.” From my weakened state, from deep within a mind hazy and delirious from pain, I knew nothing good could come from him touching me. I didn’t want his hands on me. I didn’t want him near me. I didn’t even want him in the same cell as me!

“You’ll have to be careful.” Celeste took a step back. All their movements registered from a faraway land, a land I didn’t inhabit with them.

“What could she have done?” He whispered. He’d come too close to me. I felt him reach out a hand but halt when I started to shiver violently. I didn’t have the strength to run but I didn’t want him touching me.

“The same thing she did to you. You held her down while Bethel belted her just yesterday.” Celeste didn’t sound impressed with the softness of his voice.

“That’s - that’s different. It was only six strokes we gave her.” Six? It felt like something between twenty and a hundred. Six!?

“Whether it’s six or sixty, you’ve been a part of this. You’re only helping her because I’m blackmailing you so don’t try sounding as if you’re a saint here!” Her sharp voice pierced my eardrum.

“The lot of you are disgusting. You, your stupid girlfriend and your stupid best friend. I hate all of you!”

“Leave Sky out of this. You don’t know what she’s suffered.” I didn’t want them fighting in my cell. I had enough on my plate without adding loud sibling spat that they would make my fault again.

“f**k you and f**k Sky. She’s using you but you’re too blind to see.”

“She loves me.”

Zavier returns.” Celeste ran her hand through my hair again and I felt myself being pulled up. I gasped as pain bit into my skin from numerous open wounds.

“I’m so sorry.” She kept whispering until they somehow got me on Lucien’s back. I still trembled, my tremors now accompanied by soft whimpers. I feared Lucien would drop me despite his hands clasped on my thighs so I tightened my hands around his neck. This could be another cruel joke of his.

“We’ll get you home.”

I loved Lucien once. Along with Celeste, he’d been my best friend. His parents always quarrelled with him so he would stay away from me but he never listened to them. Things started to change when we entered high school six years ago.

As we are older than Celeste by a year, it left the two of us as high school friends and Celeste still in middle school. It was around that time his infatuation with Skylar started. She’d been the hottest girl in our high school. I didn’t blame him for abandoning our friendship and choosing her.

They made a golden couple – the Beta’a son with his mop of curly black hair, lean muscular build and long legs and the Alpha’s daughter with the perfect figure eight and shiny long hair. Lucien couldn’t be friends with me while dating Skylar who hated me from childhood. She abhorred me even before she had a reason to. I let him choose his girlfriend before me but he wouldn’t let me go. He gave me false hopes that ruined what little reputation I had amongst my peers.

“Are you okay?” I could only nod at Celeste’s question while her brother cleaned my wounds. I assumed Skylar sucked out all the niceness from him through one of their many public kisses but he proved me wrong by coming to my aide and patching me up.

“These will scar.” He sounded disturbed. Scars were nothing new to me.

Scars decorated my back in their numbers, a map of whips, belts, canes and everything else I’d been beaten with. The scars in my back were nothing; the scars in my mind a telling of the pain that would never fade.

I could cover my back and pretend I had nothing but smooth skin behind me but my mind lay bare to me, a constant agonizing torture.

“It doesn’t matter.” I pulled away from his lingering touch.