The broken Alpha - Healed by innocence

I have never blamed my mother for wanting to run toward the majestic blues and lavenders that unfurl across the sky. She called it an adventure, but even at the age of twelve, I recognized it for what it was: an escape. The air was stiff with the kind of silence that precedes a storm. In our small, dimly lit hallway, my mother, with solemn precision, packed the worn carpetbag. "Take only what you can't live without," she whispered to me and Riley. Her hands trembled, betraying the calm she tried to project. Riley clutched his threadbare teddy bear to his chest, eyes wide with unspoken questions. "But why can't Rowan and Ryan come?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "They have their own paths now," Mother answered gently, her gaze flitting past us as if she could see the years stretching out before her eldest sons. The creak of the staircase under heavy boots cut through our hushed conference. Father appeared at the top of the stairs, his features twisted in a scowl, his breaths heavy with rage. "Where do you think you're going, Helen?" he bellowed, his voice a thunderclap in the confined space. I could feel Riley's small body tremble against mine as we retreated to the shadowed corner, as far from the brewing tempest as the walls would allow. "Joe Strongwolf isn't taking what's mine!" Father's words were sharp and jagged, cutting through the air like shrapnel. Mother's face was a canvas of shock and fear. She turned, perhaps to flee, perhaps to plead, but Father's hand shot out, gripping her arm with a vice-like intensity. "You thought you could fool me?" he sneered, his voice dripping with contempt. Then, with a violence that shattered the world as I knew it, he struck her. The sound of the slap mingled with the thud of her body on the stairs, an orchestra of horror that played a tune I would never forget. Her scream, high and haunting, etched itself into my memory, a ghostly wail that I would hear in the silence of many nights to come. In the aftermath, in the quiet that followed the fall, I stood frozen, clutching Riley, our breaths shallow echoes in the chaos. For a decade, I became the caretaker to the she-wolf who had once cradled me, her once vibrant spirit now trapped in a broken vessel of flesh and bone. Father would call it an accident, but in my heart, I knew the truth of that terrible night. And as I looked upon my mother, her eyes the only part of her that could weep, I understood the heavy mantle of sorrow and responsibility that was now mine to bear, just as surely as I understood that my own journey had only just begun.