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I'd barely got in the door before Father came storming up to me; without a word of greeting - not that he ever had two words to say to me beyond insulting me - he slapped me across the face, sending me and my belongings sprawling. I had no time to recover; he kicked me in the ribs as hard as he could, and I gasped in pain as I felt several crack. Gambit leapt into the breach to take the worst of it, and I thanked her silently. 'I can handle this,' she told me firmly. 'You can't.'
Father didn't like that at all; his next kick caught me square in the face, and though Gambit took the hit in my stead, I still lost a tooth, and saw enough stars to rival the United States flag. By the time my sight cleared, I was aching all over, and I groaned as I rolled over and hauled myself up, bracing my weight on shaking hands. "You're a disgrace," Father snapped, glaring at me with murder in his eyes. "I should have drowned you when I had the chance. Get the fuck upstairs and out of my sight before I run you through like the misbegotten freak of nature you are. You're getting nothing for dinner tonight, and if you haven't come up with a suitable apology in the morning, you won't be getting breakfast either. Fuck off."
I climbed to my feet, retrieved my bag, and hobbled upstairs. My cousins and other pack members watched silently as I passed them by, and I read the condemnation in their eyes. Not a one of them would believe me if I told them I'd been against Faith's attempt to do a deep dive, that I'd been worried for her the whole time she was underwater, and that I'd feared she'd drowned when she took too long to come back to the surface. Faith, of course, would have spun a tale whereby I sat back and watched her drown, whereas in reality, I'd been ready to jump in and bring her out, even at the risk of her trying to drown me in her attempts to get up to the surface and breathe.
And Father hadn't mentioned the punishment - as he usually did after one of his sessions. For him to remain silent on the matter posed a dire situation, and I knew better than to believe no dinner tonight would be all the punishment I'd face for my supposed attempted murder of my sister. Father would have something else in mind, and as I closed the door behind me - grateful that my room had an ensuite so I wouldn't have to venture out to use the main facilities - I suspected I already knew just what he would do. He hated that I had a life outside the packhouse, and confining me was, in his eyes, the logical solution.
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The next morning, Father went above and beyond; he told me, as I stood before him in the dining room after breakfast, that I was being withdrawn from school as of Monday, and, furthermore, I was no longer allowed to go out, not even on errands. Mother would go in my stead, and I felt my heart sink. But then Father hit me with even more blows; I was banned from all use of social media, and he informed me he'd already changed my passwords, so I couldn't even contact my friends to let them know what had happened. My phone had also been shut off, and I grimaced, causing Father's eyebrows to lift. 85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPPp9NqZ8aR
"Watch your attitude," he warned. "I might find myself inclined to post on your social media and broadcast your shameful deed for all your 'friends' to see. What might they think of you then, I wonder? That is, if they even care about you in the first place. I suspect it's pity, and who would want to be friends with someone like you? You attempted to murder your sister yesterday, and if it hadn't been for her wolf, she would have died because of you. I don't know what you were thinking, but I can promise you, it will the last time you do such a thing. From now on, you will not speak to anyone in this house, and you will stay far away from your sister. Murdering her will not change your status in my eyes, and anything you try to do to her in a misguided attempt at revenge will be visited on you tenfold. Do I make myself clear?"
I forced my face to remain calm. "You do, Father," I said meekly.
He grunted. "See that you do," he told me. "Now go upstairs. You're to remain in your room at all times. Your meals will be brought to you, and there's ample space in your room to exercise. I've removed all the books from your bookshelf as well; I won't have you distracting yourself from your shameful deeds, and if you get bored, it's your own fault. You brought this on yourself. You are the only one to blame for your punishment. And you are the only person who can make this right. If you go on bended knee to your sister and apologise wholeheartedly for trying to kill her, I might see fit to lessen your sentence. Are you prepared to do that?"
I hated the thought of having to submit to Faith, but I could see no other way out. And yet, being an exile in my own home was, in some ways, preferable to knuckling under to my spoilt brat of a sister. "No, Father," I said honestly.
"I didn't think you'd see the right of things," Father said, shaking his head in disgust. "Go. I've nothing more to say to you."
Thus dismissed, I left the dining room, only to be ambushed by Faith. "Serves you right," she snarled, slapping me across the face and making me see stars all over again. "That's what you get for trying to kill me, and if there was any justice in this world, you'd have got worse."
Remembering Father's edict, I slipped past her without saying a word, but she grabbed my hair and almost yanked me off my feet. "I didn't give you permission to go," she spat, her hand twisting painfully in my hair as my back protested being bent over in such a position. "I decide when you leave, and I don't want you to go."
"Faith!" Father snapped. "Let it go. It's of no use to you, unless it sees the error of its ways and apologises."
Faith did as she was told, and I scurried upstairs as fast as I could, tears streaming down my cheeks as I realised the full extent of Father's disdain for me. I was now "it" to him, and probably everyone else in the packhouse, and once I was in the safety of my own room, the door locked behind me, I threw myself across the bed and cried until I had no tears left, bitterly regretting my decision not to apologise to my sister. Not that I had anything to apologise for, but if I'd unbent a little, I'd still have a name. 85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8VgmKMM5BX
But my stubborness had won through, and now I had no name and no identity. It was almost enough to make me want to go back downstairs and throw myself at Faith's mercy, but when I reached out to Gambit to get her advice, I ran into a blank wall. I stiffened, horrified, before letting out a long scream of anguish. 85Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsSBhDnpl5Q
This wasn't the normal block when a link between the wolf and their human was temporarily snuffed by an outside influence - Gambit had been forcibly separated from me, and was now dead. Coach Jo had told me that a wolf never survived being parted forcibly from their human, and he cited himself as the authority on that; the same thing had happened to him when he was a teenager, and as I lay there, I knew exactly how he felt. I still had all my gifts, but they were less potent now that Gambit was gone, and I curled up in a tight ball, fresh tears trickling silently down my cheeks for a very long time. Now more than ever did I regret not doing Father's bidding, but at the same time, I knew I still had my integrity intact. Father, Mother, Faith - all my pack had treated me like a lesser being, not just for having a runt wolf, but also for not fitting into the mould of what an heiress should be. I'd never cared overly much for their disdain, and now, even as I was sunk in the grip of a loss deeper than anything I'd ever known, I vowed to keep my integrity intact, no matter how bad things got. They could try and break me all they wished, but now that they'd done the unthinkable and killed my wolf for no good reason at all, I vowed to never bow down to them. If I was dead to them in every sense of the word, then they were dead to me.
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