The Girl with the Wolf Tattoo

Abandoned Again

Sun filtered through the window. Alex woke with a start, remembering the night before. She rolled onto her side, but her smile quickly vanished when she saw the other side of the bed was empty. Her heart beat faster as dread filled her. A quick look around showed that he had gone. Her heart broke as the realization sunk in. He'd sneaked out sometime in the night. She felt used and dirty. Abandoned. Most of all, she felt embarrassed. She had let herself begin to like him. She'd given herself to him only for him to leave before morning light.

A shower would help, she decided. She let the water run over her, hot and steamy. She wanted to scrub the feeling of him off of her, but she knew she couldn't scrub her memory. Instead, she sank to the floor and sobbed. She hadn't cried in years, but today she allowed herself to feel everything. To cry like a lost child, because that is what she felt like.

When she finally crawled out of the shower and dressed she decided to pack her things, quit her job and go home. She'd be Griff for her job back and return the money. She'd work on forgetting this whole thing happened. Clearly, David wasn't interested in her enough to spill her secret. He got what he wanted and left.

The drive back was a long one. She couldn't help but think about what had landed her here. Her childhood had been a rough one. She couldn't remember a time before the abuse. Maybe they had started when she was a baby. She thought back to her first memory. She was tiny, maybe three years old. She was standing on a chair. Her mother hadn't gotten up yet. In fact, she hadn't seen her mother in two days. She was so hungry. There was very little food in the house. The bread was moldy, she didn't know how to open cans and jars. But there were eggs on the counter. She had gotten a pan out, stood on a chair and cracked the eggs in the pan. She got shells in it, but she didn't care. She turned the stove on and mixed the eggs with a fork. Her mother came out of nowhere and knocked her off the chair. She was screaming, but Alex didn't remember what she was saying. In the end, her mother threw the eggs on the floor and made her eat there. She didn't care, she was eating, and that was all she wanted.

Her parents put on a very different face in public. They were highly respected. Her father was a surgeon and her mother was a housewife running in the highest social circles. Alex didn't know what their problem was or why they hated her, but she went to school covering bruises and making excuses for losing too much weight as the years went on. She learned to keep quiet, eat when her parents weren't home. Be invisible. She got good at being invisible. Even her teachers barely noticed her.

Halfway through high school the Alpha noticed her. He seemed kind and made her feel safe. She wondered if he would believe her, but she didn't dare say anything. Not yet. Not until she came home from school one day to find her mother drunk and trashing Alex's bedroom. Her mother had been reading her journals. She snatched her precious books from her mother's arms only to be met with an umbrella stick to the head. It cracked sickeningly against her skull. Blood ran down the side of her face. With her head bleeding she ran to the packhouse. The Alpha was in his office. He did listen, but not with kindness. "Do you know how valuable your father is? How close your mother and my wife are? My hands are tied here." She hung her head and walked out of his office. The Alpha's son met her in the foyer. He invited her upstairs, it was obvious she didn't want to go home. She went with him, not exactly trusting him, but she pushed that aside. When they got upstairs he pushed her against a wall and tried to kiss her. She avoided it and told him off, but he didn't take no for an answer. He kept trying to put his hands up her shirt. She pushed him away and tried to leave, but it was no use. He took advantage of her on the floor. When he'd finished with her she left, went home and packed what little she had, took money from her parents bedroom and hid out on the pack grounds until night fall. When it was finally the dark of night, she went to the border, denounced the pack and ran for it. She felt the tie to her pack sever and she knew the Alpha and her parents would feel it too.

She made it to a town and began to look for work. She was hired a diner and began right away. She slept in an alley behind a dumpster until she earned enough to pay for a hotel room. One day, when the diner was slow she was at the front counter drawing on napkins. A large man with kind eyes sat down and admired her work. He offered her a job on the spot. He made her feel safe. A feeling of calm washed over her in his presence. She accepted. He trained her to be a tattoo artist and she never looked back.

She stood in Griff's office apologizing and handed him the wad of cash back. He assured her she'd never lost her job.

"Thank you," she said sincerely with tears in her eyes.

"Don't mention it. But next time? Don't run. Talk to me. I'm here to help you."

"I'll do that..." she said. She did not intend to ever be that stupid again. No more trusting anyone.

She set up her tattoo station again and went back to work like nothing happened.