Elara’s POV

The oppressive silence in the room stretched out, thick and suffocating, for what felt like an eternity. Finally, after thirty minutes of deliberate, calculated indifference, the Beta of the Moonlight Pack set his pen aside. He leaned back in his leather chair, steepling his fingers beneath his chin, and fixed me with a gaze that was as cold as a mountain stream.

“What I find truly perplexing, Elara,” he began, his voice deceptively soft and devoid of any immediate threat, “is your persistent need to make yourself visible. You act as if being seen is a virtue, as if you have some right to take up space within this pack.”

I had learned long ago that silence was my only armor in Thorne Elvyr’s presence. I stood perfectly still, my hands folded neatly in front of me, eyes fixed on a point just past his shoulder. I didn’t dare breathe too loudly.

“You should consider yourself profoundly fortunate that you are permitted to exist within our borders at all. You should be overflowing with gratitude that we afford you any level of basic respect.”

Thorne stood up abruptly, and despite my best efforts to remain stoic, I flinched. He began to pace the perimeter of the office, his polished shoes clicking against the hardwood floor like a countdown. Finally, he came to a stop directly in front of me, propping his hips against the edge of his desk. He leaned forward, supporting his weight with his palms, and loomed into my personal space.

“Last night, I was forced to step foot inside a human police station to retrieve my daughter.”

The mention of the previous night’s humiliation caused a crack in my resolve. My voice came out small and cracked.

“I didn’t want to press charges, Thorne. I told them it was a ”

The movement was a blur. I saw his hand arc through the air a split second before the deafening crack of his palm against my face echoed in the small room. My head snapped to the side, and I stumbled back, my left cheek erupting in a white-hot bloom of fire.

“Did I give you permission to speak?” Thorne asked, his tone almost pleasant, as if he were discussing the weather. “You humiliated my child. You nameless, spiritless nobody had the audacity to bring shame upon my bloodline. Why are you so hell-bent on causing a scene? Do you truly not understand the extent of what I can do to you?”

My ears were ringing, a high-pitched whine that made the room tilt. Before I could regain my footing, he reached out and grabbed a fistful of my long red hair, yanking my head back until I was forced to meet his eyes. His expression remained terrifyingly calm. To anyone passing by in the hallway, his voice would have sounded like a father giving a gentle, stern lecture.

“I told you when you were six years old back when you were finally old enough to grasp simple concepts that I expect you to live your life like a dead rat in the walls. Quiet. Unseen. Rotting. Do you recall that conversation, Elara? Or do we need to start from the beginning?”

When I didn’t answer immediately, his grip tightened, twisting the roots of my hair until a sharp gasp escaped my lips.

“I asked you a question, girl.”

Before I could formulate a response, he surged forward, dragging me by my hair toward the far wall. He slammed the back of my head against the plaster. Once. Twice.

I couldn’t fight him. I couldn’t even try. I raised my hands instinctively to protect my face, swallowing the whimpers of pain that threatened to break through. I knew from bitter experience that Thorne thrived on audible suffering; the more I cried out, the more aggressive he became.

The first time he’d truly broken me was when I was ten years old. I had spent months raking leaves and washing human cars to buy a bright pink backpack for school. The very one Seraphine had wanted but hadn’t received yet. He hadn’t just taken it; he’d shredded it in front of me before beating me until I couldn’t walk to class.

It was obvious that Seraphine’s cruelty wasn’t an accident; it was a carefully cultivated inheritance.

“I didn’t call the police!” I tried to shout, but the words were mangled.

His next blow caught me across the jaw, blurring my vision with a crimson haze and making my tongue feel twice its normal size.

“Your audacity is staggering.” He looked genuinely annoyed now, as if I were a stain on his carpet that refused to come out. “I don’t care who dialed the number. You should have stopped them. I don’t care that you didn’t sign a statement. My daughter was in a police station. My daughter. She had no business being in a place so filthy.”

The logical part of my brain screamed at me to be silent. It told me to nod, to apologize, to beg for his forgiveness. But there was a tiny, stubborn ember of defiance left in my chest that the pack hadn’t managed to stomp out yet.

“She wasn’t the one in handcuffs!” I wheezed, falling to my knees as a punch to my solar plexus stole my breath. I clawed at the floor, trying to find enough air to finish. “Only Flint was arrested! Seraphine just followed him there!”

Thorne crouched down beside me, his movements fluid and predatory. I saw something silver and slender glinting in his hand.

“It doesn’t matter, Elara. You are the catalyst. You are the reason she had to endure that environment. You still don’t grasp your own worthlessness, do you? Seraphine is my heart. You are nothing. You aren’t even worthy of licking the mud from the soles of her shoes. My child was traumatized because of your incompetence. She had to deal with human bureaucrats and paperwork, all because you couldn’t handle a little soup? If you’re too fragile for the job, then quit and starve in the gutters where you belong.”

As he finished speaking, he drove his arm downward. A high-pitched, ragged scream tore from my throat, vibrating in the small office. He had driven a sharp object directly through the center of my right palm, pinning my hand toward the floor for a split second before pulling back.

My vision swam with red. The pain was an oily, sickening wave that made my stomach turn. I looked down, gasping, and saw the ornate silver letter opener protruding from the back of my hand. The sight brought an immediate, overwhelming nausea.

Thorne stood up, looking down at me with utter disgust as he brushed an invisible speck of dust from his tailored suit jacket. I curled into a ball on the floor, clutching my throbbing wrist, my body shaking with tremors I couldn’t control. He made a sharp, clicking sound with his tongue.

“Give me that back. Now.”

In that moment of absolute agony, I wondered if it would have been more merciful if I’d simply died on that orphanage doorstep twenty-two years ago. Had my parents hated me so much that they wanted me to survive just to endure this?

“I haven’t got all evening!” the Beta snapped.

I squeezed my eyes shut, wrapped my left hand around the cold silver hilt of the letter opener, and pulled. I bit down on my tongue so hard I tasted my own blood, using the secondary pain to drown out the primary one. With a sickening squelch, the metal slid out. I managed to stagger to my feet, my legs feeling like lead, and moved toward his desk.

As I reached out to place the bloodied blade on the wood, Thorne recoiled, shaking his head.

“Don’t put that filth on my desk. Throw it in the bin. It’s covered in your tainted blood.”

A coldness that had nothing to do with the air conditioning washed over me. I had convinced myself that I was numb to the degradation, that the insults couldn’t reach me anymore. But in the quiet of that office, I felt like that abandoned infant again vulnerable, unwanted, and utterly alone in a world that only wanted to break me.

I dropped the letter opener into the trash and turned for the door. My gait was uneven, one eye swollen shut and blood trickling into the other. I stepped out into the hallway, my only thought being to find Mary. If she was at the clinic, she would help me. If not, I’d have to steal some supplies from the pharmacy in town.

Outside, the June heat was oppressive, the air thick and stagnant even as the sun began to dip below the horizon. Sweat mixed with the blood on my neck, stinging the open wounds. I desperately wished for a jacket, something to hide my mangled face from the other shifters.

In our pack, privacy was a luxury we weren’t afforded. Everyone lived in close quarters, and every beating I took became public record within the hour. As I walked, I saw the familiar mix of expressions: a few rare looks of pity, but mostly the cold, self-righteous stares of those who believed my suffering was a natural consequence of my weakness. They looked at me as if I were a diseased animal. I wondered if they were waiting for me to finally give up to just disappear or end it all.

But as I clutched my bleeding hand to my chest, I knew I wasn’t ready to give them that satisfaction. Not yet.