I was never loved as a child. I was never wanted.
My parents abandoned me on the doorstep of the Moonlight Pack's orphanage when I was just a month old.
It's bad enough if you're an orphan in a wolf pack, but if you don't have a wolf spirit, you are at the bottom of the pecking order.
Growing up, I was told I should be grateful I wasn't killed when the head of the orphanage found me.
I was raised alongside the other orphans, but once they picked up on how I was being treated by the adults, they too found a target for their abuse.
Wolf shifters value strength and power. Even when it comes to picking mates, they prefer to choose those who are strong, who can bear powerful offspring.
I probably would have been handed over to the human authorities if I had not displayed the other traits that my kind has. I may be slower than a wolf shifter, but I'm faster than a human. And I am pretty strong.
Milo, on the other hand, has only the strength of a human. He has shifter blood in his veins, but he has never displayed any characteristic that would force the Moonlight Pack to focus on him.
He has been allowed to live as a human, the pack never interfering in his affairs. It's almost as if he doesn't exist as far as they're concerned. Nobody is rude to him. Nobody treats him like a pariah.
However, he has been denied treatment from a healer for his mother.
Humans who sleep with wolf shifters and give birth to their children have a very low survival rate. Human bodies are simply not meant to host foreign DNA.
Milo doesn't understand my position in the pack since he has never suffered the treatment I receive on a daily basis. Like I'm sure I will today.
As I walk over to Thomas Whitmore's office, I'm trying to prepare myself for what's to follow.
His daughter got taken to the human police station in the back of a cruiser yesterday. It doesn't matter that I refused to press charges against either her or Adrian. The humiliation alone is enough.
As the beta of the pack, Thomas is the second-in-command after Alpha Patrick Black. And he's very protective of Zara.
He once watched his daughter punch me in the throat as a child, and he just chuckled. He's well aware of the abuse she doles out on me, but he has never intervened to stop her.
What he did do was tell the principal of our pack school not to allow me to be part of a local mathematics quiz tournament, simply because his daughter, who is several years older than me, did not make the team.
When Zara complained that a teacher had praised my performance in a play that all the grades participated in, Thomas had a talk with the drama teacher, who then proceeded to make my life a living hell till the end of the term.
That had been the one class I actually enjoyed. All because Zara did not like that I was doing better than her.
As I knock on the door, and a voice calls out for me to enter, I take a deep breath.
The first thing I see after stepping into the office is a gray-haired man sitting behind a desk, holding a sheaf of papers.
He glances up at me before returning his gaze to the pages in his hands. He doesn't tell me to sit, simply ignoring my presence entirely.
I take the time to study Thomas Whitmore's face in an attempt to gauge how angry he is.
His expression is passive, and as the minutes tick by, the silence that fills the room has my insides churning.
I hate this intimidation tactic.
Finally, after a full thirty minutes has passed, the beta of the Moonlight Pack sets down his work and leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers together and studying me.
"What I find hard to understand, Emery," he begins, his voice soft and non- threatening, "is why you are so insistent on making yourself visible within the pack? It's almost as if you think being seen is a good thing."
I know better than to open my mouth in front of Thomas. Standing still, I look at him silently, my hands folded in front of me.
"You should consider yourself lucky that you're allowed to be part of this pack. You should be grateful that you are treated with some level of respect." Thomas gets to his feet, and I flinch.
He walks around the room before coming to stand before me.
Propping his hips against the desk, he supports himself with his palms on the edge of it and studies me. "Last night, I had to go to the human police station to pick up my daughter."
This is when I make the mistake of speaking, unable to help myself. "I didn't want to press charges—"
I see Thomas's hand lift in the air, and then I hear the loud smack just before I stagger backward, my left cheek burning.
"Did I say you could talk?" Thomas asks pleasantly. "You humiliated my daughter. You, a nobody, had the audacity to harm my child. Why are you so determined to cause a ruckus? Don't you know what I can do to you?"
My ears are still ringing from the slap when he grabs a fistful of my long, red hair, forcing me to look up at him.
All the while, his expression does not change. If someone were listening in from the outside, it would seem as if he's not attacking me but rather reprimanding me gently with his words.
"I told you, when you were six years old and able to understand basic conversation, that I expect you to live like a dead rat. Do you remember that? Or we do need to have that conversation again?"
When I take too long to answer, his grip on my hair tightens, and I let out a gasp.
"I asked you a question."
Before I can reply, he drags me over to the wall and slams my head against it.
Once. Twice.
I can't stop him.
My hands lift defensively as I try to swallow any sound of pain.
Thomas tends to get even more aggressive if I cry out.
The first time he beat me up was when I was ten; I had saved enough money from cleaning yards to buy myself a pink backpack for school, the Miloe bag
Zara had had her eye on. The backpack was taken from me and destroyed.
It's clear where Zara gets her sadistic streak from.
At least Thomas only beats me if I've upset his daughter, whom I try my best to stay away from.
"I didn't call the police, Thomas!" I try to tell him, but the next blow has my vision blurring with blood, and my tongue now feels thick in my mouth.
"You have some audacity." He looks annoyed. "I don't care who called the police. You should've stopped them. I don't care if you didn't press charges. My daughter was at the police station. My daughter. She had no reason to be there."
I should keep my mouth shut. I should agree with him and apologize.
But even though this pack has been quite successful in breaking me, there is still some spirit left alive within me.
"She wasn't the one arrested!" I manage to say before I get punched in the throat and fall to the ground.
But I'm not done yet. "Only Adrian was arrested!" I gasp. "Zara just went with him."
My head is spinning as I try to get to my feet.