Back and Stronger: Alpha's Daughter

In the dark, dank basement that was her room, her torture chamber, and her escape all in one, Sophia lay on her old mattress and listened to the sounds from above. Blood was splattered on her nightgown. The brownish red of the dried blood blended with the strawberries on the front of her too small, flimsy nightgown; a reminder of her loss of control and rage on the basement wall the night before. She was eighteen, not twelve, she thought. When she got away from this hellhole, she would wear nothing that was too small again. Never again. She knew the full moon had started its graceful rise. Through the tiny, uncovered triangle of her window, she saw its beautiful beams gleaming a path.

Across the Lucian pack territory, the rituals had begun. Outside, young girls with silver or midnight blue ribbons streaming from their hair ran and squealed. The high-pitched laughter seeped through the thick basement walls. Sophia used to do that, she reminisced. Her mom would loop a long, glittery, silver ribbon in her hair so that it streamed behind her like a moonbeam. Around her right eye, she would paint the sun, and around the left, she wore the moon. Not all little girls got painted, but as the daughter of the alpha, it was an honor bestowed upon her. Every month, she felt like the luckiest girl in the world. In her pretty dress and painted face, she helped carry the Moon Pole to the center of their front yard. It stood ten feet high and had the same glittery ribbon that was in her hair. The wind always blessed the pole with a night breeze that sent the ribbon billowing in all its elegance. At the top of the pole was the face of the moon, surrounded by a bouquet of flora or fauna to match the month or season. Sophia knew they moved the pole to the pack headquarters after her mom’s murder. She did not know if anyone had taken her place in the rituals. But she could hear the laughing, merry girls running to pack headquarters.

After they paid respects to the Moon Goddess, anyone who wanted to leave her a gift would do so at the base of the pole. Sophia never knew what happened to all the gifts that were left, but she remembered seeing items under it that would later show up in her house, or the houses of other pack councilmen. The mentors would then get their pupil and go to undisclosed places and the preparation for their first shifts commenced. Sophia never knew what all that entailed, but there was hope and excitement in the eyes of all. Families would return home and dine on special feasts while they waited to see if their loved one was one of the chosen ones who, under the light of the full moon, would finally become. When the full moon reached its peak in the sky and the night shined under her glorious light, the howls would echo across the territory. The howls of the new shifts would be weak, but the rest would resound with strength and beauty. There was no sound on earth like the sound of the howls from the werewolves on a full moon.

Sophia knew her father would shift. Fear entered her soul, and she trembled just thinking about it. There was nothing more terrifying to her than being around him when he was at full power. His size was massive, his strength unmatched. His violent and feral tendencies would be loose, with no conscious or subconscious restraint. No, there was nothing more terrifying...

She listened to his footsteps above her head. After he left, she could go upstairs, but she rarely did. She was allowed to eat upstairs as well, and to use the washing machine once every other week, but she did not always. She had only ever taken breakfast upstairs if her father had not yet awakened, and washed her clothes or had supper when he wasn’t around. The walls were a prison, the spiders her companion. She was so used to the damp smell of mildew on her body and clothes that she stopped noticing it. She had been captured, tried, and found guilty, then sentenced to a life of pain, by the one man she thought would always be in her corner. Her mind drifted to memories of when her father would lift her up onto his shoulders and she would tighten her fingers into his thick hair. She’d laugh with glee, and he would ask her who his favorite girl was. “Me, me,” she would yell.

***

Her head pounded as if fists of steel had struck her temple again and again. She lay on her back and squinted her eyes against the yellow light from the only bulb in the basement. It dangled from the ceiling by a loose chain and swung under the thump of her father’s footsteps when he crossed the room. She heard him open the closet in his office. She knew he would leave soon. The back of her head throbbed; a pulsing jab shot to the front of her head. She needed to sleep. She closed her eyes and drifted into a restless sleep.

Several hours later, she woke to her mattress being soaked with sweat. Her ratty blanket had twisted around her legs and her nightgown was above her hips and bunched at her side. The light. The light hurts, she thought. She turned her head away from it. Streams of sweat ran down her forehead and neck. It pooled between her breasts and puddled in the palms of her hands. Her body ached. It started with a dull, persistent pain that no amount of repositioning could ease. Her stomach rolled violently, and she struggled to fight the nausea, though if she failed, not much would come up. Was she getting the flu? She thought. The intensity with which the pain in her head grew had her afraid it would explode. It got harder to breathe. Worse than when her ribs punctured a lung or when her father jabbed her with electric volts. She struggled to breathe and shifted to her other side. Her eyes were still closed, yet she couldn’t escape the dizziness. The black behind her eyelids became a spinning kaleidoscope of blues, purples, and black. She moaned loudly, and the tears came. First one, then another, and more followed. The pain was unbearable, and she was used to pain. If she hadn’t been wishing for death for most of the last five years, she would have been begging for it at that moment.

She flipped back over again, seeking relief from the ravaging torment her body felt. She rested her head on her hand and forced her eyes open...and that’s when she saw.

Her hand now had fierce, pointed claws growing out of the tips of her fingers. Hair was emerging from the follicles of her skin in a sleek, golden hue. She tipped her head back and a weak howl came out.

The door at the top of the stairs opened.

“Soph, are you okay?” her brother asked. He would never dare to come downstairs. He knew it was forbidden; She didn’t want him to see how she had to live. Knowing and seeing were two different things.

“Go away.”

“You’re okay though, right?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The pain was overwhelming. Her lips trembled, her teeth chattered, and her throat and tongue were as dry as a desert.

“Soph? Are you shifting?”

“Go.” Sophia growled deep in her throat. The voice that came out was not one she would have recognized as her own.

“Holy shit.” She heard him say and then the door shut. She heard him click the lock and drop the crossbar. In some distant part in the back recesses of her brain, she thought, good boy. An unsupervised new shift was dangerous. Not just for the shifter, but for the surrounding people. Until they learnt to control their feral instincts and knew their own strengths, it was a dangerous, dangerous thing.

She felt her tendons tearing. The pain was agonizing. Her bones broke inside her skin and melded together in a new form. Then they grew...larger, stronger. The muscles formed new masses around the larger bone and when she thought she couldn’t take a second more without her heart just stopping, her nightgown tore into tatters that lay beneath her on the bed. She jumped out of bed and rolled her shoulders. She rolled her neck, then tipped her head back and howled again. Like a wolf in body formation and structure, but larger, much larger. Sharper teeth, longer noses and claws that were more like that of a lion. She trembled in fear and pain. Sophia needed to move, to stretch the muscles and release the tension that had built to such an intensity it threatened to erupt like a volcano. She paced around her cage, from one wall to the other, but the pain did not subside. But she couldn’t stop moving. She went to the small part of the window and peered out at the moonbeams. She couldn’t see enough to find the moon. Sophia trotted to the bathroom and lifted her massive paws onto the sink, and looked in the mirror. She was beautiful. Gone was the physical proof of the abuse that she endured. Gone were the haunted eyes of a young woman who felt she had no reason to live. She dropped back down and went to her room where she battled and fought against a pain like none she had ever known, and reveled in the fact that for the time being, she wasn’t that tattered, defeated girl she started to despise.

When the sun and moon began their journey to pass each other, she was curled in a ball under the stairs, wreathing in the worst pain imaginable. Sophia had had her first shift.