Broken Pride
1249 Words
The air turned frigid as I stood my ground, my hand still gripping the edge of the hood. The Alpha’s aura was a crushing weight, a silent roar of dominance that usually would have had me baring my throat in submission. But that part of me—the wolf that feared the Alpha—was dead. Ivy’s silence was finally a gift.
"Don't do it, Lia," Beta Peter muttered, his voice a low warning as he tried to step between me and the cars that were still lingering at the gate. He was worried about the pack’s reputation. He was worried about the Alpha’s image. He wasn't worried about me.
I looked him dead in the eyes, ignoring the way his pupillary response flickered with the instinct to strike me for my insolence.
"You stayed outside, Peter," I whispered, the words scraping against my raw throat. Something clogged my throat and I swallowed loudly.
He flinched, his scent spiking with a sharp, metallic note of guilt. He had no right what do ever to demand anything of me.
Alpha Logan jaw clenched and his thumb stroke his nose once, twice. "Play is over. Whatever plot you've written, the guests are gone",
My eyes glistened and I took a step back as if I had been punched. He thought this was a scheme to fight for myself.
He is making it seemed like I was throwing tantrums. My life is over, and he calls it a plot. His confident eyes gazed into mine taunting me to pull the hoodie off my head. He knew I couldn't, wouldn't do that. I was still too scared to let any pack member see me this way.
But why was it that I was the one hiding while the perpetrator walks around freely. Why was it me in agony while he stands before me accusing me of writing a plot.
What is it that is left for me to lose. All those things I held dear have been washed down the drain. What can I lose by pulling the hoodie off.
He saw it the shift in my eyes- the dilation and determination that made it lighten up. He didn't look away, but I knew he was planning something when his eyes gazed over.
Pack warriors- two were on standby ready to bundle me the moment I misbehaved. A short sardonic laugh left my throat.
Yet, I persisted with my grip on the hoodie. The warriors approached me, there eyes worried but stance determined to carry out Alpha's orders. They feared they would have to hurt me-Caleb and Collin. We grew up practicing together.
They flanked me even when they eyes turned apologetic.
The two warriors, Caleb and Collin, stopped a hair’s breadth away. I could smell their conflict—a mixture of old loyalty and new, terrifying duty. Caleb’s hand hovered near my shoulder, hesitant, as if he expected me to shatter like the glass he surely heard in my voice.
"Lia," Caleb murmured, so low only a wolf could hear. "Please. Just go inside. Don’t make us do this."
I didn't look at him. I kept my gaze locked on my father. He stood there, the picture of composed leadership, his hands clasped behind his back as if he were merely watching a stubborn child refuse to eat her vegetables. He was banking on my shame. He was betting everything that the girl who used to preen in front of the mirror, the girl who loved her status as the future Alpha, was still somewhere inside this hoodie, too vain to be seen as a "freak."
He was wrong. That girl died the moment the first layer of skin was stripped away.
"You're right, Father," I said, the rasp in my voice cutting through the tension. "The guests are gone. Felicity is gone. There’s no one left to impress except our own blood."
I felt the Alpha’s pressure spike—a physical blow intended to drop me to my knees. It was a command to obey. Caleb and Collin both buckled slightly, their heads bowing instinctively to their Alpha's wrath.
But I stood straight. The void where Ivy used to be was a cold, empty chamber that the Alpha’s power couldn't fill. You can't command a ghost.
"Get her inside," Logan didn't shout. He never do, but his soft tone seemed to worsen the stale atmosphere . "Now!"
As Caleb’s fingers finally closed around my arm to lead me away, I didn't fight him. I didn't scream. Instead, I gave him a small, sad smile that he couldn't see.
"You need not worry. I have two functional legs", I jerked my arms out of their grips and they let me. As I turned to leave, I saw her- Summer cladded in black outfits. Camisole, jacket and shorts. Nothing different except for sharp eagle eyes seemed to soften with a little bit of worry.
Shame gripped my inside at the thought that she had seen me in my humiliating moment. I wasn't that golden girl everyone envied- the girl they dreamed to be. I was just a girl whose father is hellbent on ruining. I help my chin up not wanting her to pinpoint any ounce of weakness. But the situation she caught me in was already weak.
Summer didn’t move. She stood by the edge of the porch, the moonlight catching the silver rings in her ears. To anyone else, she looked like she was merely observing the departure, but I saw the way her fingers curled into the fabric of her jacket. She had seen the heir of the North hauled around like a stray. She had seen the "plot" my father spoke of.
Her presence was a mirror I wasn't ready to look into.
"Lia," she breathed. It wasn't a command or a plea like Caleb’s. It was just my name, stripped of the titles and the reverence I no longer deserved.
I didn't answer her. I couldn't. I felt my father’s gaze boring into the back of my skull, a silent promise of the hell that awaited me once the doors closed behind us. He had won, hadn't he? I was going inside. I was "tidying up" just as he’d asked.
I reached the first step of the porch, my boots feeling like lead. Logan moved to follow, his stride confident again, the master of his domain once more. He thought the silence meant I had finally broken.
I stopped.
With my back still turned to him, I looked at Summer. Her eyes weren't filled with the "wilted lily" pity of Sarah, or the terrified guilt of Peter. They were just… waiting.
"You should go home, Summer," I rasped, the sound loud enough to carry through the dead air of the driveway. "Before you see something that can’t be 'tidied' away."
Summer's brow curled softly in question- question I could not answer.
"Cerelia. Inside. Now," my father’s voice was a low vibration of pure threat.
I didn't move. I slowly reached up, my fingers hooking into the soft cotton of the hood one last time. The shame was there, a hot, suffocating pulse in my chest, but beneath it was a cold, hard realization: He could take my wolf. He could take my face. But if I hid, I was helping him bury the body. But, I chose pride over courage.
I adjusted the hoodie, covering what shouldn't be seen.
- Writer
