SHE WAS REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA BUT CHERISHED BY HER TRUE MATE

Sinach It's another day, a day like every other day, one you will have to work, till you almost faint. This wasn’t supposed to mean anything to me anymore, after all I have been doing it all day, for the past years. But knowing that I have a sister, who is supposed to be lending a hand in some ways, and not getting that, is what really hurts. She is the queen of the house, she is too fragile to partake in anything domestic chore. “I, on the other hand, is more like a servant in the house”, that’s what I have been reduced to, one who has no place even in her father’s house. But that's fine, I need to live and to survive. It doesn't change who I am, I may be despised by my own family, I may not be worth anything in their eyes, but I won't let their perception about me shape my future. “Mom” has asked me earlier to make a bread for breakfast, which I”d set in the oven, while I turned to continue, tidying up the entire kitchen, trying to put everywhere in order, when all of sudden I started perceiving an odour, which smelled like something was burning.. “Ohh! My God, the bread I screamed”, rushing towards the oven, when mom just stepped in. She must have been somewhere near the kitchen, she must have perceived the smell too, I muttered. “Sinach! Are your nose and brain blocked this morning that you can't perceive this smell?" Do you really want me to believe that you didn’t know that those breads were burning?, Stupid girl”.. “I am… sorry mom”, it was a mistake, I was just about to put it down before you stepped in. “Sorry for yourself, you this good for nothing girl, she added”. Those abusive words are now more like comforts to me, it’s something that I had lived by receiving almost everyday, under this roof. Though they may sound like nothing new, the sound of it has always pierced through my heart like a sharp pointy arrow, each time they are thrown at me. I'd dropped it on the counter, with my bare hand, with heat from the tray’s handle nearly left my palms burned, which made me hiss. How lucky I was, four loaves of the bread were still good, only one was burnt half way, leaving a black spot at the bottom part of it. “Mom, “was still standing there in the doorway with her arms crossed, still staring at me like she'd caught me setting the entire building on fire. "Sorry ma..I'll fix it.. "You'll fix it," she mimicked my words, as if those words were bad. "That's all you could say, right?” Foolish girl!.. Better fix it now, before my daughter gets hungry, She’s upstairs resting, she had trained all night, and she might be hungry by now, so better be fast about that. She scolded, as she turned and walked away. There was nothing else to say at that moment apart from the word sorry, that wouldn't have worsened the situation, so I continued with what I was doing. I'd stash the burnt loaf into the bin and start plating the good ones. You're up early again, Zara said, stretching lazily somewhere beside my ribs. My wolf. The only one in this house who ever said good morning and meant it.. Bread emergency!, I said. Mm, Tragic. Are we still going tomorrow? Ohh! tomorrow, my free day. The only day in a month my father lets me leave the house without an apron over my shoulder, that's because he knows that there are pack laws that forbid a daughter worked up like a servant, and he wouldn't want the healer asking questions. I have been counting down since the last one. Sure! we are going, Zara!. I can't wait, she said. By the time I could get things sorted out in the kitchen, Dad was already seated on a chair in the sitting room, his hands rested on the table, and his eyes fixated on his phone screen, he was reading something I guess, because he never looked up. “Dad had not really looked at me for some days”. It wasn't about cruelty, I believed. It was something more like me having faded into one of those pieces of furniture lying there in the sitting room, that he didn't notice that I had been standing there. "Good morning, Dad." "Mmmm," he said. That's it, I never expected anything different anyway. Debu finally came down in that silk robe of hers, the one that is worth more than everything I owned. She grabbed one of the good loaves with no single sign of gratitude. She then looked at me over her tea cup, with her usual mockery smiles. "You look tired," she said. "Still weeping over Edwin?" That name was mentioned intentionally, just to see my reactions, but she was disappointed, because two practices on how to deal with the pains that came with the rejection have already been fixed. But she kept staring at me like I was one small pitiful girl, the one that nobody, not even her own Alpha wants. "I'm fine," I said. "Good!… "Because it would be pathetic to know that you are still sulking over a man who told the entire pack that you weren't Luna material. “Sinach!”. I can't believe you stood there while she took that bread, and yet made a mockery of you" I could rip her throat out, “Zara muttered, unpleasantly”. We are not ripping anyone's throat out before breakfast. Okay! After breakfast, then… I almost smiled, but I held it back.. I finished my chores in silence and went to see Old Mother Kesse, the pack healer, for my apprenticeship hours, because that was one part of my days that truly belonged to me. She let me set a break, mix a poultice, listen to a heartbeat that wasn't racing with fear or grief for once. She never asked me to bring anything other than to be careful and useful to myself, and those words were actually impactful. "Your mind is somewhere else today," she said, watching me as I measured those herbs. "Free day tomorrow," I said. “Free day, is that what it's all about?”. Are you sure?? “Yes Mother, I said?” If you said so then, but I want you to concentrate, okay! Alright Ma'am. I didn't want to go deeper than that, though she has always been so kind to me, but I needed not to bother her with my ugly stories. Two months ago, on a night I still felt so much in my body more than I could remember, I found out that Edwin Mongo, my Alpha, the man every girl in Amora Pack had spent years watching from a respectful distance, was my fated mate. I knew it, because his wolf caught my scent at a pack gathering where every wolf in the hall went still, but I found out, in the very same breath, that he didn't want me, when I walked over to him privately to talk to him about it, only for him to stylishly bring me before the entire pack members to announce to them, how I wasn't good enough for him. "Look!” This lady over here said, "she is my mate. Does she really look like Luna material?” No! they echoed no!. “As you can see you don't look like one, and so I can't have you as my mate. God! That moment, I felt like the ground could open and swallow me up, instead of standing there wearing such a garment of shame & disgrace, as I managed to pull my arms from him, and ran straight to the house, with my entire body shaking. His voice was loud enough that no one could pretend not to have heard it. So loud that two months thereafter, it was still living in my heart rent-free, like it had signed a lease therein. Crying before anybody is something I never do and is one thing about me I was always proud of. That night I lay in my narrow attic bed, drowning in sorrow as I let Zara, my only comforter curl up close in my mind. That night I made a decision that I have to stopped waiting for anybody, not for Edwin, not for the moon goddess to fix what has been broken. I decided that I would build something out of nothing on my own, that no one would ever again get to tell me how I wasn't enough for anything. Tomorrow, me and Zara, will run, far beyond the edge of everything that made me look so small, through the wide, empty and lonely forest. “But little did I know, that the forest wasn't really as lonely & empty as it appeared to be, because what I saw, terrified me!”…