2: Back to the Past
1200 Words
Elara’s POV
I woke with a gasp, my lungs dragging in air like I had just surfaced from drowning. My entire body jerked upright, my heart slamming against my ribs like a wild animal trying to break free.
My hands clutched at soft fabric beneath me...sheets.
Sheets?
Confusion twisted through the pounding ache in my skull. My fingers gripped the bedding tighter, my breath coming in shallow pants. When was the last time I slept on a bed?
The air around me was still and quiet, carrying the faint scent of burning candles. A cold draft snuck in through the cracks in the walls, brushing against my skin in an eerily familiar way.
Something was wrong.
I shut my eyes for a while and snapped them open again, blinking against the dim glow of the candlelight. My gaze darted around the room, my stomach twisting violently.
No. No, this isn't possible.
Wooden walls. A dusty old dresser in the corner. Thin, tattered curtains shifting from the gentle breeze slipping through a cracked window.
I knew this place.
I had lived here.
I was in my old room at the Nightwind Pack’s packhouse.
Everything looked exactly as it had before. Before Darius. Before the marriage. Before the torture.
But that can’t be.
My pulse roared in my ears as I ripped the sheets off my body, my hands flying over my skin. My fingers trembled as I searched, my arms, my stomach, my legs, the places where I knew the scars should be.
But there was nothing.
My breath caught in my throat. No burns. No wounds. No claw marks. The deep, ugly scars that Darius carved into me, that I felt rip me apart, they were gone.
This isn’t real.
I pressed my hands to my chest, my fingers splayed over where his claws should have torn me open. But my skin was smooth. Whole. Unscarred.
A tremor shot through me. My breathing turned ragged, frantic.
I had died. I felt it. I felt the pain, the cold, the darkness swallowing me whole. I remembered my body giving up.
So how was I here?
My head snapped up, my wild gaze sweeping across the room again.
Maybe this was another nightmare. Maybe I was still in that room, bleeding out on the marble floor of Darkfang Pack’s hall, my mind slipping into some feverish illusion before death finally took me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to wake up, to shake free of whatever cruel dream this was.
But when I opened them, I was still here.
Still breathing.
Still alive.
A chill slithered down my spine.
And then...the whisper returned.
"You have been given a second chance."
My entire body stilled.
The voice was soft yet powerful, wrapping around me like something both familiar and foreign.
"I'll explain more later, but for now...run. Run before the same fate claims you again."
A shuddering breath slipped past my lips.
That voice… I knew that voice.
The same voice I heard in my head before Darius’s final strike. The voice that whispered to me in the last moments before I died.
My wolf.
The wolf I never had.
My chest constricted painfully, my hands curling into fists.
What is happening to me?
A thunderous knock shook the wooden door, rattling the fragile walls and sending a violent shudder down my spine.
“Elara! Alpha Nightwind commands your presence!”
My body went rigid. My breath caught in my throat as the horror unfolds in my brain.
I knew exactly what day this was.
The day of my step sister’s wedding. The day of supposed peace treaty with Darius's pack.
The day my father would trade me away like a piece of livestock.
A sickening wave of dread crashed over me, curling deep in my stomach. My hands trembled as I pressed them against my chest, feeling the rapid pounding of my heartbeat.
I was here. I was alive.
But for how long?
The walls of this room had once been my prison. They were about to become my coffin.
I knew what awaited me beyond this door. Darius. His cruelty. His sadistic pleasure in watching me break. The endless torment. The agony. The complete and utter loss of myself.
I had seconds to decide.
Stay and accept my doom? Or run?
Run to where?
This pack had been my entire world. I had never stepped beyond its borders. I didn’t know what lay past the tree line. I had no allies, no home, no resources.
If I ran, I would be a rogue. A hunted, helpless Omega with no power, no protection.
Would I even survive?
Another bang on the door, harder this time, rattling the hinges.
"Move your filthy ass, you useless mutt!" the guard’s voice rang out, thick with disgust and contempt. The sound made my skin crawl.
I knew this voice.
Greggor. My father’s most ruthless enforcer. A man who took pleasure in punishing the weak.
"Don’t make me come in there, Omega!" he sneered, his heavy fist slamming against the wood again. "Get out here before I drag you by your hair!"
I flinched. The sound of his voice, the threat laced beneath his words, sent a memory flashing through my mind...
The first time he hit me.
I had been just a child, no more than seven, when I accidentally spilled a tray of food while serving my father’s Beta. I had apologized. But Greggor didn’t care.
He had grabbed me by the hair, yanked me off the ground, and backhanded me so hard I couldn’t see straight for minutes.
I was treated with scorn here, worse than a slave but today... I would be finished, discarded like a used tool.
That was what I was to them.
Another bang.
"You have three seconds before I break this damn door down!"
My heart raced. My body felt frozen, paralyzed by my own fear. If I left this room, I knew exactly what awaited me.
I could already see it...my father’s cold, indifferent stare as he handed me over. Darius’s hungry smirk and anger of not getting my step sister and being tricked by my father. The way he would grab my wrist like I belonged to him. The way I would be dragged away from my home, from everything I knew, thrown into the nightmare that would become my life.
But this time… this time, I knew.
I knew exactly what fate had in store for me.
I knew how it ended.
A sob built in my throat, but I bit it down, squeezing my eyes shut. My entire body shook with my own indecision.
Images from my past replayed in my head.
The burns. The lashes. The nights I spent chained like a slave, trembling from pain, r***d by Darius and many men. The men watched, laughing, as Darius used me. The moments I begged. Screamed. Sobbed.
And no one came.
No one cared.
The pressure of those memories crushed me, suffocating me.
Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
No.
I would not go through that again but escaping this fortress would be a nightmare!
- Writer
