CHAPTER TWO: BITCH FROM HELL

I was dead. 

Utterly and inherently ruined. 

My chest constricted painfully when I heard the sound of our door bang shut at the entrance of people. A shiver went down my spine as I paced around in absolute fear in my room. I was dead. Ivy would kill me and disguise my murder as an accident. 

“Venus!” She called out loudly in her sickenly sweet voice. “Venus, honey! Come down here for a minute. We have so much fun things to talk about.”

My heart thudded and I was certain that they couldn’t beat any louder. As I gradually left my room with cold fingers and trepidation, I met Ivy downstairs, seated cross-legged on the couch and waiting patiently for me. The devious look in her eyes contradicted with the sweet little smile painted on her lips and for the nth time, I couldn’t help wondering what my Dad ever saw in marrying such a cruel woman like her. 

“Good evening, Miss Ivy,” I said, bowing slightly like she’d always told me to whenever I saw her.

“Good evening? I’m curious, Venus, what exactly could be good about the evening? The fact that you willingly disobeyed my instructions or the fact that you went out there to embarrass our household? Which is it, dear?” The smile had left her lips then and the ire in her eyes were the very same I’d seen at the banquet; they reeked of pure displeasure. 

“I-I…I’ve never been to the banquet before and I was curious. Father had always told me how he’d met my mother there, and I guess…I was- I just wanted to see it myself?” My fingers trembled ‘cause the more I spoke, the more I could see her eyes darken - her wolf was on the surface. 

However, she laughed yet nothing about it comforted me. Instead, it dug at the possibilities of what this crazy woman would do to me. The last time I’d been in trouble like this, she’d almost left me to die in the well behind our house. She’d pushed me into it and using her gift of controlling waters, the magic associated to Whitefang’s wolves, she kept filling my lungs up with water to the painful extent that I went unconscious. I hated water now. Renee called it hydrophobia. 

“And you had the audacity to wear my dress? My dress! Do you even have the slightest idea how much it cost? I swear to the moon goddess, I’ll make you pay!” Winnie, who’d been here all this while, made an attempt to dive at me with her sharp claws protracting. But her brother, Grayson, pulled her back, a smirk on his face as he winked at me. For some reason, it made me shudder. 

“I’m sorry, it’d never repeat itself. Never! It won’t, ever again.” I swore vehemently, feeling myself take gradual steps back as Ivy rose from her seat, emotionless eyes set on me. My heart pounded into my chest. Before I could take another step backward, she was before me in a flash and sent a severely deafening slap to my cheek.

My ear winced but before I could recover from that, another came and then another, followed by a truck load of brutal hits to my face. The pain shook through my body, like a spasm of unending hell and suffering. Ivy showed no mercy as she dug her claws into my cheeks and forced my bruised and battered face up to stare into her cold eyes. My eyes stung and I knew by then that my face was streaming with hot tears. 

“Now, listen to me you little ungrateful brat, your father is dead, which means you’re my problem. Do you know how shameful it is already to have you bear the family name when you’re basically just a waste of space? You’re under my roof and you will do what I say!” She spat to my face and dug her claws even deeper.

I cried out in agony. “Please, stop! It hurts. Please!” 

“Oh, does it? That’s how much it hurts me everyday I wake up to see that you still exist. Did you really think you could live a fantasy life for one night? Did you think you could be Cinderella?” She laughed without mirth in her eyes. “Well, this is your life and you’d always be the useless little wolf from Whitefang who was an embarrassment to her father, to her mother, to her stepmother and to her pack. You deserve nothing but filth and agony for being this much of a disappointment.”

I sobbed painfully, my heart splitting into a million pieces by the second. In that moment, Ivy’s words dug deeper into me than her razor-sharp nails. They pierced at my vulnerability and I wished, prayed furiously, that this one time I could fight back. I could shove her backwards and claw at her face for being the worst mother in history. But, as usual, I was left to her wiles - defenseless and alone. 

I took more hits after then but ofcourse, Ivy wasn’t done until she used her favourite number on me, that is making my blood boil from the inside. It was the worst form of torment she’d always put me through. After the number of times she’d done it, you’d think by now I’d be used to the brutality of it all. Yet I didn’t. I cried every time. Hated myself even more every single time. Why was I this way? Did the moon goddess hate me so much that she couldn’t give me at least one thing to make me special? No wolf. No magic. No nothing. 

By the end of it all, Ivy locked me up in an empty room and as routine called, she left me without food or water for the next hours that followed. It was impossible to count the number of times I’d cried. However, at some point, I know I stopped. My tears stayed dried to my cheek and I played with the Yin and Yang necklace my Dad had given me when I was younger. It was the only thing left that reminded me of him. As for my mother, I never met her. Father told me she died of an illness after she gave birth to me. 

Sometimes, I wondered what life would have been like if they were both still around. I wondered what life would have been like if I wasn’t such an atrocity. I wondered bitterly. But what had wondering ever done? Afterall, if wishes were horses, even beggars would ride.