Big day

A painful kick that sent Camilla falling from her thinly mattressed bed with a loud thud, thus waking her up made her yell in pain. She held her butts, rubbing all the areas that hurt, but a slap on her left cheek that resulted in her hitting the edge of the bed made her forget all the pains and pulled her back into reality.

"Good morning, Mother!" She quickly struggled to stand, biting her lower lip so she wouldn't cry out from the throbbing pain from her ribs. Her ribs burned, making her have the desire to just bend and numb the pain away. The pain throbbed, pulsating her blood in waves of sharp pain and making her dull brown eyes, which had lost their glint years ago, wet.

"Mother?" "Have you forgotten that I am not your mother and I'll never be?" The harsh reply came with another slap on her right cheek. She stumbled backwards, holding her cheeks, which burned to the extent that the tears she had been holding found themselves welling out of her well.

"I am sorry, ma'am." She bit her inner cheeks, looking everywhere but not at the lady standing in front of her. She knew looking at her in the eye would result in another beating of her life. 

Growing up, Camilla had only seen her mother as her only parent. She had never seen her father, and she never dared ask. Her mother always advised her to look carefully wherever she went so that she wouldn't attract attention. When she wanted to know why, her mother claimed her dad wasn't aware of her existence and that he would ask his mom to kill her when he finds out about her.

She was careful of her surroundings as she was told until two years later. She was playing in their little courtyard when two heavily built men driving a black car with tinted glasses drove to their gate. She ran inside, telling her mother that she had visitors, but the expression on her mother's face was something she didn't expect. Her mother was frozen for a whole minute, and all that while when her mother conversed with them she had her nails dug into her wrists until she bled. It's like her bleeding brought her mother back to the real world because she looked down at her with fear evident in her eyes and asked her to run and hide in the house.

When she came out, it was late because she had fallen asleep while waiting for her mother to call her out. Their house was empty, and her precious mother was nowhere to be found. She called out, and when she got no response but the echoes of her scared little voice, she cried herself to sleep, and she ended up sleeping on a hungry stomach. She was four anyway, and there was no way she could make a meal for herself, let alone boil a cup of water without burning her fingers. When the wolves howled in the forest, that mostly surrounded their cottage from the bad people out there, as her mother always said, a knock echoed at the door.

Happily, she ran to it, thinking it was her mother, but she was greatly mistaken. It was the previous day's guys who were standing at the door with cold looks on their faces. This time around, they were accompanied by a handsome-looking man with black eyes, whom she had grown up seeing in her mother's locket, which she always wore around her neck.

"She strikingly resembles you, Alpha Cameroon!" She had one of the two men gasping.

"I can't believe this witch kept her." "Take her!" The familiar man ordered, and in a blink of an eye, she was carried away towards the huge black car. The car never stopped until it came to a halt at a good-looking house that was bigger compared to the two-bedroom cottage her mom had rented for them in the forest. She was told she would be leaving there from then onwards because her mother was out of the pack on an important mission, and if the moon goddess pleases, she will one day see her. Those were the words she was told, even though her little brain never understood them.

Since that day, she had been living there under the harsh treatment of the woman called Karina, who was supposed to be her "other mother." She also had two big stepsisters who had never loved her since her arrival, and what they would do was just push her around. She had come to realise that the man who took her was her father, whom her mother had always asked her to avoid, but it was too late now. He watched every day as she was mistreated by Karina and her daughters, and he never intervened. According to him, she was the biggest mistake of his life.

All this time, she has wished to know when her mother will be coming back, but she has no one to ask that question. Her father, who was the only person who could give an answer to that question, never wished to see her.

"Did you just zone out on me again?" A sharp voice and a pinch on her red, swollen cheeks jarred her from her deep, painful thoughts. "What are you looking at?" "You have tonnes and tonnes of chores to do, but you are still here fantasising?" The question of disbelief came up. Before she could get to apologise for zoning out, she was roughly carried out of the food store she was given as a room and thrown out to the corridor. She stood from the place she had fallen, pushed all the pains throbbing on her body away, and faced the chores of the day.

It was still four in the morning; she was supposed to be sleeping but she was never allowed to. While her elder stepsisters slept, she was supposed to work. She was supposed to pay for everything she was given, starting from the tuition fees, water to quench her thirst, food to ease her hunger, the room she slept in, and the air she breathed! She wasn't allowed to sleep for more than three hours, and she was used to that.

Camila rushed upstair to clean all the rooms, scrubbed all the toilets, mopped the corridors, and rushed downstairs to prepare breakfast. When she was done, she put all the food into flasks so that they would remain hot and went out to sweep the compound. When she was done and was preparing to head back to her room to wait until she was asked to come back, a familiar soft voice called her from behind.

"What are you doing here, Ash?" You know my life would be more difficult if Mother Karina saw you!" She half whispered at the same time she was half yelling at the twenty-year-old boy with tattoos on his neck and right arm and long hairs that were pulled back to reveal a chiselled face with a long pointed nose, thick eyebrows, long eyelashes, icy blue eyes, and pink lips.

The boy was Ash Moon, the last-born son of his father's beta. Even though people always gossiped that he came with his mother, he was never treated differently. Ash was the only kid in their pack who had always wanted to play with her. While the others chased her away from their games, Ash would take her to play with him in their house. That was until they grew up and became best friends.

"No one will see us, Mil." Happy birthday!    He shot her one of his best smiles, closed the gap between them, and lifted her for a hug. 

"Huh?"  Cammila was shocked. She had totally forgotten it was her birthday. Or maybe she was just drowning in her daily chores until she forgot her big day. "Does it mean my wolf will be coming today?" she asked excitedly, feeling her heart race with happiness even her dull eyes twinkled a bit. Her father had always stopped her from going out of the house because she had no wolf. He had said when she turns eighteen and her wolf comes, he would allow her to go out as she has always wanted. Ash had told her what it would feel like when her wolf would finally come because his had come two years ago and she had been looking forward to it. "The first thing I'll do is go back to our house and see if my mom came back." She smiled to herself and then frowned at the bag Ash had shoved in her hands.

"What's this Ash?" she asked, but she was never answered. The next thing she saw was Karina popping her red head through the window panes from upstairs and yelling at her to take her ugly self inside if she was done with her morning chores while waiting for the afternoon ones. She looked beside her to thank Ash, but he was nowhere to be seen. She doesn't know how he does it, but he senses her stepmother from miles away and then disappears out of thin air before she sees them together. It would be much worse if Larissa did because she had a crush on him.

"I'll thank him later." She murmured to herself while limping towards her room.

"Now I'll wait for my wolf." I can't wait to get out of here! She smiled, opening the bag to see what was inside. She had already made up her mind that when her wolf comes, she will look for an excuse to get out of there and won't come back. Never!