Chapter 9: Why Me?

Elena

SPLASH.

A deluge of ice-cold well water crashed over my head and back, violently invading every open wound. I gasped, my entire frame convulsing as agonized fire tore through my nervous system, dragging my conscious mind kicking and screaming out of the darkness. My eyelids fluttered open, heavy with blood and mud, my vision swimming in blurred shapes.

I was still pinned in the sand at the base of the iron post.

Above me stood Cassian. His massive frame blocked out the torchlight, his cold, crimson-tinted gaze staring down at my shuddering body with an unyielding, terrifying intensity.

"Weakling!" he thundered, his voice reverberating off the stone arena walls like a falling mountain. "You dare pass out on me when there are two whips left?"

His words stung deeper than the leather.

Hot, unstoppable tears spilled from my eyes, tracking pale lines through the blood and dirt on my cheeks. I couldn't move my arms. I couldn't lift my head. I just stared up at him from the sand, my chest heaving in ragged, shallow gasps.

"Why..." I rasped out, coughing as thick, dark blood splattered against the dirt between his boots. My voice was a shredded whisper. "Why did you save me from the rogues at the border... if you were just going to tear me apart yourself?"

Cassian's jaw flexed, his expression darkening into iron.

WHACK.

The forty-ninth lash struck.

A white-hot explosion roared through my spine, snapping my neck backward as my scream died strangled in my raw throat. My internal organs felt as though they were rupturing all at once. The world turned completely, blindingly white.

Sound rushed back into my ears like crashing waves. Gathering every last atom of strength left in my broken soul, I looked directly into Cassian's eyes, pouring a lifetime of hatred into three ragged words:

"I... hate... you!"

The silence that followed was instant and suffocating.

For a single, fleeting heartbeat, I saw it—his arm stilled in mid-air. A sudden, fractured tremor rippled across his hardened face. Guilt? Hesitation? Regret? A crack in the iron armor of the great Alpha. My words had struck a hidden nerve deep within his chest.

But the moment passed as quickly as a shadow.

His eyes hardened into pitch-black ice, stripping away whatever hesitation had flickered there.

WHACK.

The fiftieth lash came down with ruthless, absolute finality. Fifty was fifty. No mercy. No reduction.

Darkness clawed wildly at the edges of my vision as heavy hands unchained my cuffed wrists. I collapsed onto the sand like a broken ragdoll, my consciousness slipping away as the guards dragged my limp form out of the arena pit.

"Moon Goddess..." I whimpered into the freezing dirt, my whisper lost in the wind. "Why me...?"

THUD.

They dumped my body on the cold stone threshold outside my assigned servant's room, stepping over me without a second glance as their heavy boots echoed down the corridor.

Inch by agonizing inch, I dragged myself across the floorboards into the room, using my elbows to pull my useless lower body forward. Every movement sent fresh, blinding waves of agony screaming across my shredded back.

As I dragged my chin over the wooden threshold, I felt another presence in the dim light.

I forced my head up slowly.

Sitting quietly on the edge of the narrow cot was a girl about my age. She sat perfectly still, watching my bloodied entrance with a calm, unbothered composure.

"Who... who are you?" I choked out, my voice sounding like gravel scraping against iron.

She looked down at me, her posture refined, regal, and entirely unbothered by the bleak stone walls surrounding us. "My name is Galen," she replied, her voice soft, smooth, and perfectly articulated. "It appears we are to share these quarters."

I stared at her through my swollen eyes. There was something undeniably wrong with this picture. Her clothes were worn and dusty, but the way she carried her shoulders, the delicate line of her jaw, and the subtle, cultured cadence of her accent belonged to high court society. She bore the quiet, untouchable dignity of bloodline royalty.

It made no sense. The entire pack had been summoned to the arena for my execution. Disobeying an Alpha's summons was treason. How had a girl like her ended up tucked away in a servant's room?

"How... how did you get here?" I asked, curiosity momentarily overriding the dull, throbbing agony in my back.

"I was brought in only a few minutes ago," Galen answered softly, her eyes tracking the blood pooling beneath my hips. "Someone from the pack saved me from the northern road."

Saved. The word echoed strangely in the small room.

"Are you... a rogue?" I whispered.

The question hit her like a physical strike.

Something deep, dark, and fleeting flared behind her calm eyes—a brief glimpse of a terrible memory—before a practiced, elegant smile slid smoothly over her features. It was a flawless mask, but I had worn masks my whole life; I knew the cracks.

"Yes," she answered quietly, looking down at her neatly folded hands. "For now... I am."

I didn't press her further.

I didn't need to. I saw the same guarded, haunting shadow in her eyes that I saw every time I looked in a mirror. It was the mark of someone who had lost everything in a single night. Whatever story she carried, it was buried under miles of grief and survival.

People like us didn't share our pasts, because talking about the ruins never rebuilt the home. Something terrible had happened in her pack, forcing her out into the cold.

All I could do was pray she had the strength to survive this place.

Because in the Pearl Bridge territory, survival was a luxury dictated by status.

Omegas were at the bottom, but they were tolerated, pitied, and given simple work. Rogues, however, were not human in the eyes of this pack. Rogues were hunted for sport, chained to posts, and whipped until their blood soaked the sand to make examples for the rest. My broken, bleeding back was living proof of that rule.

A quiet, bitter laugh echoed inside my hollow chest.

How terrifyingly fast the world spins.

In less than a week, I had fallen from being the Beta's daughter of the Crest Pack to a nameless, disposable rogue, dragged through the mud and beaten until I was barely recognizable. My entire existence had been stripped away until nothing remained but pain.

And yet, as I lay on the cold floorboards staring up at Galen, I was living, breathing proof of how quickly a life could be destroyed.