I Fought For This

Arabella’s POV

The street was empty this time of the night and my heels were loud against the concrete floor but I didn’t slow down.

I had been walking for only God knows how long, pulled my coat tighter, purse strapped on my left shoulder, going nowhere in particular just away, away from that house and that face of that annoying woman standing in my living room like she had earned the right to be there.

I don’t know when my mind went back to the beginning but it did.

I was twenty-two when my father took me to the Blackthorn gathering. It was a routine thing for packs in the region to have formal dinner, the usual politics and pleasantries that came with being Alexandra Ivory’s daughter. I had been to a hundred of them and I had been bored at every single one.

And then I saw Luca.

He was standing across the hall talking to someone I couldn’t even remember. He was in a dark suit with an easy posture, and something about the way he carried himself made me stop mid-sentence and forget what I was saying entirely. I took it upon myself as a new duty to watch him for the rest of the evening from across the room like an idiot, waiting for him to look in my direction, and when he finally did I turned away so fast I spilled champagne on my dress.

I went home that night and I couldn’t sleep. I called my father for a meeting at six in the morning.

Daddy, I said, I need you to arrange something for me.

He laughed at first, thought I was being dramatic. He wasn’t wrong. But I called him the next day and the day after that and every single day for a month, and I cried during most of those meetings. Something about Luca had gotten under my skin and I needed my father to understand that.

My father did not beg anyone for anything, that was a well known fact across every pack in the region. He had built Blackthorn from the ground up through sheer will and nobody called in favours with the Lycan King on a whim.

He did it for me.

He went to the Lycan King himself, and asked him to arrange the marriage. And the King agreed, and Luca had no choice but to accept, and I got everything I had cried thirty days straight for.

The first year was something close to perfection.

Luca wasn’t in love exactly but he was kind, attentive in the little ways that mattered, and there were quiet moments, where I was convinced that whatever I had felt across that hall the night of the gathering he had felt some version of it too.

My father’s influence opened doors for him that his own name hadn’t managed to yet, the Blackthorn alliance strengthened his standing across the region, and when the Lycan King officially granted him the Alpha title I was standing right beside him, like a princess dressed perfectly, smiling like everything I had ever wanted was exactly where it was supposed to be.

That was the last good night I can remember clearly.

Something changed in him after that. Gradual at first, then not so gradual. The coldness came in slowly and then all at once the way bad things always do, and suddenly I was eating dinner alone three nights a week and sleeping on my side of a bed that felt like it had a wall running down the middle of it.

I started talking more because the silence was unbearable, I became the nagging wife, the irritating one, always complaining and cursing people out, the one who always had something to say and none of it was ever the right thing.

I loved him more with every month that passed and I have no explanation for that that makes any sense.

My father asked me once, quietly, across the breakfast table, if I was happy. I told him yes immediately and changed the subject.

I turned a corner without looking at the street sign.

Three years of trying to hold onto something that had already decided it was done with me. Three years of rearranging myself to fit into spaces he kept making smaller. And tonight he walked through the door with another woman in his jacket and looked at me like I was the problem.

I pulled out my phone to check the time and figure out where I was.

You think you’ll leave me and have peace, I said out loud to nobody but the empty street and the dark and myself. I will burn that house down with that bitch inside before I let that happen. I swear on everything I will go back there tonight and…..

“Hey.” A voice came from somewhere behind me.

“Stop right there.”

I turned around.

Two men, both in masks and dark clothes, came up the street towards me at a very fast pace.

I stayed where I was and watched them close the distance in no time.

They reached me faster than I expected and one of them looked me over immediately, his eyes going to the purse on my shoulder, the rings on my fingers, and the coat.

“It’s the Luna,” he said to the other one, not nearly low enough. “She’ll have valuables on her, jewellery, cash, everything.”

“Let’s just leave it,” the other one said, already shifting like he wanted to go. “Let’s just go.”

I looked at the second one. “Listen to your friend,” I said. “Walk away.”

The first one moved before I finished the sentence, his hand shooting out and grabbing the strap of my purse, yanking it hard. I yanked back, both hands on the strap now, pulling against each other.

“What is wrong with this girl,” he said, pulling harder. “Let it go, let it go….”

“Get your hands off me….”

He shoved me in a full force with both hands, directly into my chest, and I went backward fast with nothing to grab onto and the back of my skull connected with the large rock behind me and the pain came all at once, like nothing I had felt before and then….

Everything went dark!!!