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Star

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I felt each stair, the edges digging into my body, as I was dragged down them. When Uncle Howard flung me across the room I felt my left shoulder collide with the stone wall. Something definitely cracked.

“You keep your ass down here. Do you hear me? Don’t you fucking try to run away from me again.” He had walked right up to me, putting his face right in front of mine as he growled at me. “I’m being kind enough to wait until your eighteenth birthday, but I can stop being so considerate for you, if that’s what you really want from me.” His finger traced along my jaw causing a shiver of disgust to course through me. “Just over a week now.” He purred. “Soon, little Astraia, soon.” I shuddered at his words which was the wrong thing to do.

In his anger, Uncle Howard lashed out. His right foot flew forward, colliding with tremendous force in the center of my chest. All the air was immediately pushed out of my lungs which left me gasping for a breath as he kicked me a second time in the exact same place.

“Things will get better for you, if you just stop resisting me.” He said as he stalked out of the room.

The light from the top of the stairs illuminating my dark cellar was the last thing I saw before I lost consciousness. The gray stone walls, the damp stone floor, the lumpy cot that they so graciously provided me. That was all there was. One last thought passed through my mind as I slipped into oblivion. ‘They probably won’t come to feed me tomorrow, possibly even the day after that, so I could sleep away this pain and let my body heal.

I slipped into a fretful, uneasy sleep. Reliving my past, my horrible memories and the few good ones I had. There wasn’t much else I could have except nightmares about what Uncle Howard planned to do to me.

My dream started when I was two. Mom had just brought me to a new town, a relatively small one hidden in the trees. It really wasn’t much more than a scattering of houses in the forest. There were supposedly a handful of small shops where the residents could get things they needed without having to go into the city, but most people went into the city to work anyway.

I was happy, excited really, when we moved here. I was going to have cousins around to play with, people to help us. It was supposed to be fun. Too bad mom died a month after we got here.

The day after mom died I was moved into the basement. I cried endlessly. I didn’t understand what had happened, why I was alone all the time, why I was so cold and hungry. But no one answered my cries.

Eventually I learned to stop crying. Out loud at least. The tears still came from time to time, less now than they used to but it still happened when I was feeling especially down.

My extended family, Mom’s cousins, aunts, uncles, and other various relatives were no longer nice to me. Well, most of them weren’t.

I had a couple cousins who tried to help me and treated me nicely when they could, but they were often beaten for their efforts. My Great-Uncle Thomas once beat my cousin Reed right in front of me after he was caught teaching me how to read and write.

Reed wasn’t deterred by it though. He just continued to teach me in secret. It was him and my cousin Bailey that treated me nicely. They brought me encyclopedias to read because they were the only thing they could sneak away and give to me. Their pocket money was strictly monitored so they couldn’t buy anything new for me.

If it wasn’t for the two of them I would have grown up to be illiterate as well as a prisoner. But they were both older than me, Bailey was ten years older and Reed was nine years older. They didn’t live at the house anymore and couldn’t often come to help me. I missed them.

Reed and Bailey weren’t the only ones who were beaten. I received them regularly as well. Anytime I tried to run away, anytime I was caught reading or learning something, or just anytime that Great-Uncle Thomas or Uncle Howard felt like it had been too long since my last beating.

I had broken more bones than I could remember or count at the moment. If I didn’t heal faster than a human it would have caused me so many more problems. But I was technically a werewolf.

I remembered the night of my first shift. I was thirteen. It all happened so fast but it was a source of great pain and fear for me now.

I had felt the tingling and burning all over my body. Something I was not prepared for since my family hadn’t told me anything at all about being a wolf. Bailey and Reed hadn’t thought about it when they had the chance and so I was left to tremble in fear when the change started to happen.

After the burning got to the point where I thought my skin was going to melt off I felt my body curl in on itself and then extend again in all the wrong places. My body had exploded in a rush of fur and fear, my voice coming out on an endless scream.

I hadn’t spoken to my family in years, except for Bailey and Reed in secret. This was the first time that they had heard my voice in a long time. The door to the cellar had been flung open and light was flooding down.

I barely noticed the light colored fur around the edges of my vision as I tore up the stairs. I knocked over my Aunt Elyria as I rushed past her. This was going to be my big chance at a real escape. I had never made it out of the house before, but I could this time.

I thought I was big. I thought I was powerful. I thought I could take them on in this monstrous state. What I didn’t know was that they were wolves too. They immediately began to chase me down.

I hadn’t even made it a hundred feet from the house when someone slammed into my side. It was Liam, my cousin. He was big and stupid and smelled just like I remembered him, like dirt and old socks. But now he was a dark gray wolf. The gray was completely different from the normal shade of his dirty blonde hair. But I saw his eyes, brown yet devoid of any warmth.

I grunted in pain as he slammed into me.

“I knew this was coming sometime soon.” Great-Uncle Thomas didn’t seem angry, he was acting like he had fully expected this all to happen. “Now you know what you are and that you’re not the only one. So don’t get any stupid ideas.” He growled at me. “And just to make sure you don’t, you’ll be wearing this.”

At those words he grabbed my left front leg and pulled me toward him. I may have been a very large wolf but that didn’t make me less afraid of my family. I just watched on, frozen in fear as Great-Uncle Thomas wrapped something around my wolf leg, high up near the joint.

Whatever he wrapped around me felt like it was digging into me and it started to burn like I had been thrown into a fire. I started to howl in pain, and soon my body started to shift back.

It didn’t take long for me to be human again. I was thrashing around on the ground, screaming endlessly in pain.

As the pain began to subside and I was able to open my eyes and look around me I saw that they were all staring at me. Uncle Howard’s eyes seem to be piercing me with a different type of look than he usually gave me. That look made my skin crawl when I realized I was laying on the ground completely devoid of even the smallest scrap of clothing.

Not long after that night Great-Uncle Thomas died, mysteriously, and Uncle Howard took over the family.

I didn’t know how any of the relations in this family were actually related. There were a lot of people that were just considered family but weren’t actually family. Apparently one of those not really related family members was Uncle Howard. And now that Uncle Howard was in charge, he had decided that I would be his wife when I turned eighteen.

It has been almost five years since then now, and I spent most of my time either planning my escape or trying to actually escape. I wasn’t going to let that creep have me. I didn’t care if I had to die to stop him, I was not going to be his play thing.

Nearly five years of running, and just as long of them catching me and dragging me back. And in all those years tonight was the first time I had seen anyone who didn’t live inside this house of hell. And, nearly five years of me trying and failing to shift back into my wolf form. That one shift was the only one I ever had. Whatever Great-Uncle Thomas did to me that night had stopped my wolf from ever coming out again. But sometimes, I could hear a whimpering and whining coming from somewhere in the back of my head.

I had been told stories since the night I had shifted into a wolf. I didn’t know if any of them were true or not. They told me there were people who hunted weak pack members like me. That we weren’t wanted or needed at all. I knew there were other people in the family who had been beaten for reasons not associated with me so I figured that part was true. I suppose it was this inferior thing that had caused my whole situation. And Uncle Howard was willing to marry me to protect me, or so he said. But, ugh.

I was told to be weary of everyone, especially an Alpha because they hated the weaker wolves the most. My wolf must have been weak if it was able to be sealed away like it was.

Given that I had never lived in the world outside this house I didn’t know anything about life at all. I had only read encyclopedias and three children’s books in my entire life. I knew things, but I wasn’t capable of anything. However, that didn’t stop me from trying to get away.

And one day, I would succeed. I would get away from them. And soon!