3. Dying with dignity

His fist flies fast like the wind towards my cheekbone, and I can hear how it crunches. I don’t make a single little noise; all I can do is keep defending myself. I won’t allow my tears to fall; I manage to get a punch that makes him fall backward on the ground. This time I don’t have time to react until I can feel his foot against my knee fold. Now it’s my turn to fall back and hit my head against the ground. He doesn’t hesitate a second before he straddles me and gives me punches after punches in the face. When his hands are around my neck, squeezing away all my oxygen supply, he screams, “SUBMIT!” at me. I get pissed off by his words and elbows him hard at his temples. He flies off me with a roar of anger, and I can see him prepare; like lightning from a clear sky, he transforms himself into a wolf. As I mentioned earlier, fighting a wolf is quite different from fighting a human being. We continue to circulate each other; both of us are tired. To my advantage, he is more drained than I am because he is both older than me and weighs more than I do. I need to focus on how he moves and try to anticipate his next move. However, it’s in his favor that I don’t have as much experience as him and that I can’t shift. Suddenly, I feel someone take hold of me from behind, and before I know it, my alpha begins attacking me. I can both see and feel how the blood leaves my body as it flows down my leg. He bites me in the same place I have my injury, and I give him a smirk. I look at him, and I can feel the laughter bubbling out of me. The other pack members look at me as if I lost my mind and who knows, maybe I have. I will still die here and now because my alpha can’t even fight me without cheating.

“Is this all you can do, you creep?” I say and continue to laugh.

Whoever holds me down has now let go, and I can see that my alpha is preparing for the last bite. I close my eyes and embrace the pain that spreads throughout my body as he rips my throat. The blood circulates in my mouth; it isn’t a killing bite, which makes him shift and grab my hair.

“You will show me respect, you whore!” he screams and punches my face with his hand; my left cheek burns by the impact of his broad palm, I keep laughing at him. “What’s so fucking funny?” he roars while tears flow down my cheeks after all the laughing.

“You, your pathetic excuse of a man. You’re disgusting as a person, and I’ll never respect you,” I answer, and he’s staring at me.

“You used to...” he says, and I spit in his face.

“It’s possible that I respected you as an alpha once upon a time, but I have never respected you as a person,” I shout and can hear the others gasp; before anyone can stop me, I keep talking. “You’ve never cared about me, not even when my family was still alive. Have you told the others about the promise you gave my father?” I give him a knowing look while he begins to look nervous and looks anxiously around. “It’s self-evident that you haven’t; maybe I should do it, or what do you say?”

I take this opportunity and grab his throat before I throw him back. My reaction is lightning-fast, and I straddle him, holding his arms to the ground. I bend my head down and whisper:

“You deserve to rot in a cell; there is a special place in hell for people like you. Now I give you a chance to survive, submit!” I scream the last part.

Before I have time to react, my ankle is in the mouth of another wolf. My blood flows out of its mouth, and I immediately recognize who it is. It’s our luna. If anyone, she should know better than to interrupt a fight for the alpha title, primarily since she fought her way to her place as luna. While I’ve been trying to get her to drop my foot, Jonathan has taken the opportunity to take a firm grip on my hair. The luna releases my foot, and Jonathan pulls me while holding my hair towards the asphalt. He pulls me up and down the sharp path that, incidentally, leaves behind large amounts of blood. I look at the others in the pack while he continues to drag me back and forth. It’s not the pain nor the knowledge that I will die that causes my tears to fall. No, what drives my tears is Matt and Claire’s faces. Claire cries loudly, and Matt is trying hard not to let his tears fall. Jonathan gives me a look and throws my head into the asphalt.

“Big girls don’t cry!” he yells at me.

Those are the words I’ve heard all my life since I was a tiny pup. My father always said that he wanted me to be tough, which is not wrong in itself. But my mother wanted me to learn to be kind and show concern towards others; in the end, I became the best of both worlds, at least if you asked my parents. I became a tough girl who could care about others. No matter how much my dad always pushed me to become someone who can defend myself, I remained their princess; I was daddy’s little girl all the years he lived. Although we fought more and more often towards the end, I know that he will always love me; nothing in this world nor the next will be able to change it. I felt the love back then; I had more friends than there are bad covers on youtube. My grades at school were always the best. When they disappeared, my rank changed within the pack, and the moment it happened, it was just like I was horrible to be with. In the members’ eyes, I was the plague itself. Nobody dared to touch me or talk to me initially, not until Jonathan and Cathrine started treating me like a slave, like something dirty and undesirable. I was about ten years old the first time they beat me. It wasn’t a hard punch; if it had been now, I wouldn’t have reacted very much because it didn’t hurt as much as the blows I get today. But for a ten-year-old girl who hasn’t yet learned the basics of combat and didn’t have as high a pain threshold as the others, it was severe. Over the years, it only became worse and worse; I don’t know how many times they told me that I was a traitor just like my parents; that statement always baffled me. My parents were caring people, and everyone in the pack loved them. They were harsh but fair when it came to assessing situations and never mistreated anyone for no reason. And even if they would have, it doesn’t automatically give our pack the green light to blame me. I wasn’t involved in my parents’ affairs and had no insight whatsoever into what was going on outside our territory. So why was I the one who was punished for something I didn’t do or was involved in? Shortly after I reached the age of fifteen, I found out that my family’s business would be mine when I turned eighteen. It wasn’t a huge company, but it was something they left behind as they were so scared that they wanted me to have it. Their lawyer had even told me there was a small fortune that was mine to do what I wanted with. All these benefits would become mine in due course; the question now is only whether I will still be alive until then. I have planned everything to the smallest detail; on the same day I turn eighteen, I revoke my membership in the pack and see myself as a rogue. Over time, I can indeed find another pack that will gladly accept me. If not, there’s always the opportunity to create my own group; I’m an alpha, after all. I was born to rule and help others; unlike my alpha, I’ve always known how to treat others and how to help them. I will fight side by side with the warriors and make sure everyone is safe, into my last breath. Our alpha only cares about money and doesn’t take anything else seriously; so, I think I can do it.

“Submit!” he screams again.

I shake my head slowly and only now feel how tired my body actually is. It has become a physical effort to breathe and keep my eyes open. Because I’m a werewolf, my wounds heal faster than a human, but not as quickly as a regular werewolf; that’s what my wolf will help with when it appears if it appears. He roars and throws me into the asphalt. I can hear something creaking and then see how my blood spreads on the ground. All I can think of is that I will finally die and find peace, hopefully with my parents.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” I hear someone scream when Jonathan continues to drag me along the ground.

“She has to learn to behave!” my alpha screams.

“An alpha is supposed to protect the pack, not abuse them!” the voice says; his grip around my throat weakens, and I take the opportunity to bite his arm with my human teeth, hard.

“Ahh! Let me go, you filthy creature!”

He punch me over and over again; I can feel my head throbbing and blood pouring out on the ground. My tears are falling down my cheeks while I slowly can feel myself dying.

“Big girls don’t cry!”

I sense that someone has ripped him off me. But I can’t open my eyes properly after all the blows I’ve had to take; the only thing I can do is squint. Through squinting eyes, I can tell that someone is standing over Jonathan and yells at him. The blood splashes from his nose, and I wonder why no one from the pack helps him. I manage to move my head a little bit, and I get confused when I see a whole clan of wolves that don’t belong to us, who keep the others in place so as not to disturb the quarrel that is now in full swing between them. I can see Jonathan getting a neck stroke on the unknown man; he falls, and Jonathan hurries up to me. He lifts me from the ground by pressing his hand around my neck. With the last power I have left, I headbutt him. I hang and dangle about twelve inches above the ground; I hear many growls around us and feel how life flows out of me. He lets me go, and I fly down with a thump and hit the shoulder this time; somehow, I manage to get up. I balance on one leg and circulate Jonathan again; the battle is not finished no matter what he thinks, not until I say so.

“Submit!” he screams over and over again.

“Fuck you, you son of a bitch!” I scream back and twist his arm until it crackles.

He doesn’t react to the pain very long before he picks up something out of his pocket that he throws at me; it’s a direct hit in my stomach. I’m screaming from the pain; I usually don’t react to injuries anymore, but this pain is unbearable. I look down at my belly and freeze when I see what it is—a silver dagger; silver kills werewolves. I can hear how many of the people around us are yelling and gasping, yet I rise again. I shouldn’t be able to do that, but against all odds, I do. I stand and wobble. The unknown man fights with my alpha again, and I take this moment to escape; I run as fast as I can; given the damage my body has, it can’t carry me very fast. Unfortunately, I don’t get far before I hear many footsteps behind me; I turn around slowly. The unknown man stands there with at least thirty other wolves. He looks sad and says something; I can’t understand a word he says.

“Finish it because now I can’t take it anymore...” I say, and after that, everything turns black.