Back and Stronger: Alpha's Daughter

Sophia’s mind tried to wade through the thick fog that hovered in her skull. She tried to move but couldn’t tell if she did or not. The drum beating in her head and her inability to open her eyes made her feel nauseous. Something kept bouncing against her back and pain was just outside of making her cry out. She felt it, but she couldn’t express emotion. She tried to focus, but just couldn’t get there. Her eyes watered behind her eyelids, spinning spots flashing. She needed to throw up. She forced her head to the side and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Jarring after jarring, sharp object smashing into her back before it smashed into the back of her head.

She became acutely aware that her hair was being pulled away from her scalp with a strong force. Breathe, she told herself, breathe and focus. After a few minutes of centering her breathing, she was able to open her eyes a sliver. Matthew stood above her head; his hands gripped in her hair.

He was mumbling, nearly incoherent. The vacant look in his eyes told her he was beyond insane. She winced at the pain and tried to gain purchase on the ground with her heels. She didn’t have the strength, not yet, but she felt the fog in her brain lifting and the haze in front of her eyes fading away.

“Fucking bitch.” Matthew mumbled, as he continued to drag her by her hair.

Sophia didn’t want him to know she was conscious yet. She wouldn’t have the strength to fight him yet. Her head tilted to the side, away from Matthew, she tried to figure out where she was. She used her senses, focusing on sight, smell and sound and stored them in her memory. If she got away, no, when she got away, she would need it to figure out how to get back. Matthew let go of her head and she had to let her head fall. She swallowed a wince and yelped when her head struck concrete.

“Fucking bitch, I’ll show you. I’ll show you and show you and show you...” His voice sounded in her ears, but the rest of his words made no sense. She heard a door creak open, yet she remained silent and still. Her head still pounded, along with her back, face, and feet. Her legs still felt heavy. She knew that he had underestimated the amount he needed to give her. Her regenerative powers of healing sped the process up and it was leaving her system much faster than it should have been.

He leaned over her and put his hands under her and rolled her through the door, still lost in his own crazy mind. She concentrated on keeping her body dead weight and her eyes shut. She couldn’t react to anything. She heard the door shut and he grabbed her under her armpits and pulled her down the stairs. She prayed he didn’t lose his balance going backward, or they would both tumble to a broken mass at the bottom.

Thump, her heels hit a step. Thump. They hit again. Her Achilles tendons were on fire. She separated her mind from her body, blocking out the pain. That was one skill she had mastered. Oh, she knew she’d feel it later, but in that moment, she’d escape it. She focused on the smell. The metallic stench of dried blood assaulted her stomach and it rolled.

At the bottom of the stairs, he dragged her to the side, then stepped away. She opened her eyes a sliver, giving them a second to adjust to the room. Matthew disappeared through a doorway on the side of the room. She strained to hear.

“So, you brought her to me,” her father said.

“As you ordered, sir.” Matthew said. He wasn’t mumbling when he spoke to her father. It was like he was only enraged to the point of mental incapacity when he was near her.

“Well, for being a good soldier, she’s my gift to you. Do with her what you wish.”

“Anything, sir?”

“Anything.”

There was silence, then Matthew shuffled back into the room. His eyes were on her, but she had placed her head in a way that he couldn’t see the sliver that she had opened. The look in Matthew’s eyes was worse than she had ever seen before.

He grabbed her by the waist and slung her over his shoulder. She briefly wondered why he had dragged her if he could carry her as if she weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. Regardless, she preferred this, as she could open her eyes and take in her surroundings.

Sophia knew from the shackles that suspended from the walls, that this was where her father had kept the females he had kidnapped.

Matthew went through a different doorway and around the bend into a room that had a low-lying cot on the ground. Dried blood colored the dirty mattress.

Sophia had to buy her time now. She couldn’t shift, she knew she would have to fight him in human form. To do that, she needed him close. The pressure points and the lessons that Scott and Connor had taught her flitted through her mind. She would need to take him by surprise, and she would need to attack when he was close enough that she could gain the upper hand.

“Oh, you’re awake, bitch.” Matthew, from across the room, glared at her. He had finally noticed that she was no longer unconscious.

Matthew looked at her lewdly and Sophia knew without a doubt that she would hold nothing back and fight with everything in her before she let him touch her again. He stroked himself through his pants, and she was disgusted.

“I never got to finish with you before. But I will this time. You’re still my mate, bitch. Tearing the mark from me changed nothing. Did you think that I would let you go that easily?” He continued to stroke himself through his pants as he moved closer to the cot. When he stood next to it, he gripped her by the throat with one hand, and used his to pop the button of his pants free and pull the zipper down.

She lectured herself to not react, to not fight him. Stay calm. Stay calm and get him to let his guard down.

When he released her throat and kneeled on the cot, pulling his pants down at the same time, she still did not react.

“Hmm, you are awake, but still very weak. This might not be as fun as I’d hoped. I know your father wanted to hear you scream. But there’s time. There’s time.” He laughed.

She still did not move so much as a muscle. He grabbed her clothes to tear them off, his guard down, thinking she was still under the influence of the drugs.

Wait for it. Wait for it, she told herself. Now!

She shoved him off her with all her strength. He fell backward then stumbled to his feet, a look of shock on his face. She gave him no time to react. Thank you, Connor, she thought, as she used a hammer fist and punched him in the solar plexus, then came down hard on his instep. He flailed, reaching for her as he howled in pain, but she moved fast, not giving him an inch. She turned away from him and swung her arm up using the back of her hand to smash his nose. Blood poured from it instantly and he grabbed for his nose as he yelped in pain. Last, but not least, she faced him again, and grabbed his shoulders, bringing her knee up and ramming it into his groin. He howled in pain, but she wasn’t done yet. No, not yet. Scott would be so proud. She applied pressure to his carotid artery, breaking off the supply of oxygen then watched as he crumbled to the floor. She wasn’t sticking around to see if it had killed him or not. She went back out the way they had come in and slid flush with the wall along the opposite side of the doorway to where her father had been. When she cleared the entrance she breathed a sigh of relief. Relief she had felt too soon. One of her father’s men came into the room and howled an alarm. He lunged for her, reaching, but she side-stepped and dodged his hands. Frantically she looked for anything to use against him when she sighted a dirty glass pitcher on a stand. She ran for it, the guard chasing her. But she was quicker, more agile. She also had more to lose. She grasped the smooth glass between her hands then brought it down on the guard’s head when he tried to grab her around the waist. He fell to the ground with a moan.

Sophia had no time to revel in her success, as his howl had alarmed others and another guard ran into the room, a dagger in his hand.

Fuck, Sophia thought. Her eyes flitted around the room looking for anything she could use to defend herself. There was nothing. Her eyes landed on the shards of glass from the pitcher. She picked one up, holding it in her hand. They circled each other, with the guard swinging the dagger toward her midsection. She blocked one that came too close, and it sliced her forearm. Blood ran down her arm and dripped onto the floor, but she didn’t even feel it. They continued to circle, him slicing at her and her dodging it, but she had failed to notice he had slowly backed her up. When she smacked into the wall behind her, she knew it was do or die. Her front snap kicked at his wrist and thank the goddess she hit her target. The knife flew out of his hand, and she took that moment of surprise to step in and slice him across his throat with the sharp glass.

Slowly, even clapping she looked up, struggling for breath. Her father stood right inside the doorway.

“Well done, my dear. You manage to take down three of my fiercest. Very well done. But you don’t think you can take down your daddy, now do you?”

“Stay the fuck away from me!”

Sophia still held the bloody glass in her hand.

“Stay away from you?” he laughed. “Do you dare to think that you give the orders here?”

She didn’t say anything, just watched. Looking for any opening. Father or not, she would gut him and not think twice about it.

“Your mother couldn’t fight me, Sophia, and she was way more powerful than you. Now, you will have the same fate as her. Why, you’ll look just like her, bloody and lifeless on the ground.”

From some hidden fold in his clothes, her father pulled out a bowie.

“Do fight me as much as she did, it made it so much more pleasurable for me.”

“You fucking bastard!”

He laughed as he moved closer to her. He was as calm as if he was strolling through the cereal aisle at the grocery store. The crazed look in his eyes scared the hell out of her. She didn’t want to die, and not like this. Not at his hands.

“Tsk, Tsk, is that any way to talk to your daddy?”

“You’re not my daddy, or my father. You were a fucking sperm donor. Nothing more. But remember, daddy,” she taunted him. “I may be Lycan, like my mother, but there’s you in me too. Maybe I’m as fucking insane as you are.”

He laughed, not remotely bothered by her attempts to taunt. He continued to get closer and closer. He enjoyed watching her swallow her fear as each step took one step nearer to stabbing her to death. When he was at one arm reach away, she thought she’d fight every bit as her mother had. She’d fight harder because she’d be fighting for both of them. She shifted just as the door at the top of the stairs slammed open and a gust of air masked the metallic blood smell. In seconds, Neil, Scott, and Leo were at the bottom of the stairs. Neil howled in rage, his fury so intense the low lanterns shook and the ceiling above them crumbled.