Five

In the entrance of the tent sit two members of the Royal Guard–a man and a woman. The man is the main focus, telling stories about the capital, as that’s where he was born and raised. He has olive colored skin and cropped dark hair. It’s almost too short to tell, but looking closely one can see that it has a curly texture. He has a large smile and bright white teeth, his eyes twinkling in the sunlight as he talks animatedly. 

Beside him, also sitting, is a woman with amber skin and dark hair cut at her chin. She stays quiet unless asked a direct question, though she’s obviously engaged in the conversation as her eyes dart around and a smile tugs at her lips. 

Around dinner time, elders begin bringing food to the Guard and ushering the youngers away to give them privacy as they eat. Morrigan hadn’t even realized hours had passed as she forced herself to her feet. As she makes her way home, she reflects on everything the man had said.

The capital sounds like a beautiful place, where the sun shines brightly onto gigantic and intricate structures. She can’t even begin to imagine it. A five story building made of stone? Everything in her pack is made of wood and the Pack House is the tallest at just two floors. 

She’s still trying to picture it when she enters the house and immediately gets pushed to the floor. Landing on her hands and knees, she’s quickly kicked in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her and pushing her onto her side. She looks up to see her uncle, Oskar, standing above her with a furious look on his face. Before he begins speaking, Morrigan realizes that she hadn’t made dinner.

“Where were you?” he growls. At least he doesn’t yell, but that’s only because others would hear him. 

Morrigan doesn’t answer his question. He knows where she was and any attempt to explain herself would be seen as her making excuses. She clenches her jaw as she tries to make her way to her knees, but she’s promptly kicked in the stomach again, keeping her on her side.

“Your brother and I are starving. Get in there and make us something,” he orders.

He walks away into the living room, leaving his niece on the floor with bruises forming on her ribs. She takes a moment before getting up, trying not to take deep breaths. She makes her way into the kitchen, thinking of what she can make quickly.

Half an hour passes, and she’s serving the food onto two plates for her uncle and brother. She hears footsteps enter the room behind her, and she knows it’s Ander.

People say he’s the spitting image of their father, Aleksander, for which he was named. He’s five and a half feet tall with his long black hair tied up in a similar fashion to Morrigan. He has harsh facial features and sharp yellow eyes. He’s two years older than Morrigan, making him twenty.

He walks past where Morrigan is and pushes his body into hers, pinning her between and the counter. Morrigan bites her tongue to keep from yelling out as her bruised ribs meet the wood, and Ander walks past to the fridge like nothing happened. When he closes the fridge door, Morrigan keeps her head bowed as she hands him his plate. Without a word, he walks into the living room to eat with Oskar.

After handing Oskar his plate as well, Morrigan retreats to her bedroom in the basement, her stomach empty. She lifts up her shirt to look at her injuries in the bathroom mirror, but she determines that they’re only superficial and nothing was broken. 

Ander wasn’t always like this, she remembers. When they were kids, before they moved in with Oskar, he was an incredibly caring and protective older brother. He doesn’t remember their parents either, as he was just a toddler when they passed. The two of them were raised alongside Erwin and Amira by the Gammas. That all changed when Oskar’s son Hanta died. Only then did Oskar suddenly take an interest in his niece and nephew and forcibly move them into his home. 

Over the years, Oskar’s constant berating of Morrigan got to Ander. She’s really not sure why, but Oskar has always tried to convince the pack that she’s weaker and less than, and even though there’s no basis for it, people began to believe him, and being the Beta helped with that. 

Though Oskar didn’t say it, Morrigan knows what her typical punishment entails. She would have been beaten more if she had tried to take food from the kitchen, and it’s in her best interest to not try to leave the basement for the rest of the night. 

She takes a deep breath before cringing in pain. Luckily, she thinks to herself, with her werewolf healing, the pain and bruising should be gone by morning, even without having dinner. 

Closing her eyes, she figures she might as well sleep before training tomorrow.

- - - - -

She’s woken up naturally by her internal alarm clock, the clock on her nightstand reading half past three in the morning. Idris had told her that training starts at dawn, so she has just enough time to get ready. She nearly leaps out of bed and into the bathroom to get changed. 

Unbeknownst to Oskar, when she snuck downstairs after dinner the night before, she had grabbed her boots as well. She puts them on in her room so that she doesn’t have to spend as much time upstairs, where her uncle might try to stop her. She creeps quietly up the stairs, surprised to not hear anyone else awake yet. Shrugging it off, she slips out the front door.