Sold To The Ruthless Werewolf King

3

Emily

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The room was completely silent except for that sound.

I was on my knees in front of her, my blood marking the floor of what used to be my mother’s house, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I was thinking about whether the stain would come out of the wood.

“I’m sorry, Miss Anna.”

Anna stood in front of me, and I felt the cold edge of the broken glass as she pressed it deeper into my fingers. I clenched my jaw so tight that my teeth ached. I bit down on my lower lip, sealing in the cry that wanted to tear out of my throat. Any sound, and she would take it as an invitation to go further.

“If you cannot obey me,” she said, her voice almost bored, “you will only suffer. That is all you are good for now.”

She pressed harder.

I breathed through my nose. Steady and slow.

“I hate your face,” she said. “I hate you, Emily. You made me suffer for twenty years.”

Suffer.

The word caught me off guard. I had grown up knowing a different version of this story. My mother had made sure Anna and Clara never went without. They ate well, were welcomed into our home, and were protected.

But I had not been there for Anna’s life outside these walls. I had not seen what it was like to grow up without a father’s name, to be the child people pointed at and whispered about.

“You had father’s love for twenty years,” she continued, her voice dropping lower. “While I was called every name, you can imagine. And my mother was called a w***e for having a child with no mate.” Her grip tightened. “You stole him from me.”

“Look at me.”

I lifted my head. Her eyes were blazing with rage. “This is only the beginning, Emily,” she said quietly. “I will make sure you regret the day you were born. I will make you suffer everything I ever suffered, and more.”

She let go of my hand and stood straight.

“Now get up and go clean my bathroom.”

I scrambled to the bathroom, my hands shaking and slick with blood. I turned on the tap and reached for the cleaning cloth, and that was when I made the mistake of glancing up.

The mirror.

I froze.

The girl looking back at me did not look like me.

She had my eyes, I suppose, but everything else had been slowly taken away. Her cheekbones pressed too sharply against her skin; her collarbones jutted out like the frame of something that had been emptied. The corners of her mouth were cracked and dry, with shadows under her eyes so deep they looked bruised. Her hair, my hair, which I had always kept carefully, was dull, thin, and falling out.

Is this me?

I whispered it to the mirror, and the girl in the mirror whispered it back, and neither of us had an answer.

I used to be the center of attention when I entered a room. Girls envied me, and boys were tongue-tied in my presence.

That girl was gone.

I wasn’t sure when she had left. It had happened slowly, like most losses do, gradually slipping away until one day you realize it’s gone.

I looked away, unable to bear the sight, and began to scrub the floor. Every movement sent a jolt of agony through my sliced fingers.

When I finished, I walked back into the bedroom.

“I’m done, Miss Anna.”

She was sitting on the bed, flipping through something, not looking at me.

I waited.

She said nothing.

So I turned to leave.

“It’s still dirty.”

I turned back slowly. She had not moved from the bed or gone to look. She was still focused on whatever was in her hands, not even glancing up.

“Miss—”

“Don’t question me.” She turned a page. “Go back and do it again.”

I went back.

I cleaned it thoroughly: every surface, every corner, every inch.

“Done, Miss Anna.”

“Still dirty.”

Again.

Again.

Again.

By the tenth time, my hands were trembling so badly that I could barely hold the cloth. My knees had gone stiff from kneeling on the hard floor. My fingers had stopped bleeding and started to throb instead, a deep, insistent pulse that matched my heartbeat exactly.

She finally let me leave.