Chapter One

@SpeakComedy: Me: "Dad can I go to a 50 cent concert?" Dad: "Here's $1, take your sister too." Me: "He's a singer, not the price of tickets."

>>>>>

After opening her eyes Ella found herself back in her small little room, the broom closet of the house. There was no comfortable bed instead she was covered by this one small little blanket. One which she only had to keep warm at night while sleeping on the floor.

Ella quickly found her stepmother, more like wicked stepmother Edna, grabbing her by the hair and evilly pushing her face down into a bucket of ice-cold water.

“Wake up dammit!” Edna angrily shouted, not having noticed that Ella was already awake. She continued to cruelly push her face down into the water.

“Please stop…” Ella pleaded, now holding her breath as she was pushed again into the cold water.

“Good, you are finally awake, you lazy BRAT!” Her wicked stepmother shouted while finally stopping.

Cruelly Edna then continued to tip the bucket, causing the water to drench both Ella and her only blanket. 

“Clean that up will you. And come see me in the next ten minutes!” Edna commanded, with an annoyed look before harshly turning and leaving the broom closet which Ella called her room.

Ella first sighed in sadness while wrapping her arms around herself to keep herself warm. This as she had now started shaking from the cold of being drenched in ice-cold water.

Ella could not help but also think about the dream she had just had, before being woken up by her stepmother. How it had felt so real. She quickly shook her head, wondering why she was even dreaming about sex, considering she had never had sex before in her life, she was currently a 17-year-old virgin.

Still, Ella could not help but wish that the dream was true, that comfortable warm bed, cozy cabin, getting to have a mate who loved and made love to her like that. She was currently desperate for anything that would save her from this nightmare she called life.

With a sigh, Ella quickly got up, to grab a mop, and start mopping the floor. Once done, she also took her only blanket needing to go dry it outside. If it did not dry soon enough, Ella knew that she would be sleeping on the cold hard floor with nothing to keep her warm tonight.

Because of her bad luck, it even started raining outside, drenching the blanket more.

Ella made sure to also count her minutes, doing everything in a rush. She knew how her stepmother could get if she was ever late.

Ella quickly ran to her stepmother`s huge master bedroom where she was waiting.

“You are late by a minute!” Edna yelled, giving Ella a hard slap on the face. Ella`s head almost turned as her stepmother used werewolf strength.

But still, Ella just stayed silent, while holding her palm to the now red throbbing area of her cheek and she apologized.

“I am so sorry, I will not be late next time,” Ella mumbled with her teary eyes cast down.

“Step on it,” her stepmother then ordered while pointing to the rectangular object on the floor.

Ella tentatively moved and got on it.

“You lost a kg!” Her stepmother yelled looking enraged.

Ella closed her eyes with tears now trailing down her face as she knew what was coming next.

She knelt on the floor, helplessly shaking. Soon the whipping belt lashed against her skin, with Ella biting into the sleeve of her blouse to keep from screaming.

Another followed, the hard leather ripping through her skin.

After three more lashes, her stepmother Edna finally kicked Ella out to go get cleaned up.

Shaking in more tears, Ella first knelt down on the floor in her little room, using a cloth to clean up her scarred back.

All this is just because someone once commented that Ella was more beautiful than her own daughters when they were kids. From then on her stepmother made it her mission to make Ella undesirable, whether it was giving Ella bad haircuts, making her wear old people's clothes to fatten her up, or scarring her skin.

Right now Ella was not allowed to lose any weight, and her stepmother wanted to make her overweight by forcing her to eat junk food until her stomach would hurt. If she even dared lose any weight, this was the punishment.

Ella always wondered why this woman hated her so much.

“It’s because of my husband, my mate! Neo cheated on me and brought you the ugly bastard child!” Edna had once bitterly told Ella.  

As for her father, Neo Oliver, he went missing and never came back a long time ago. This happened ten years right after bringing Ella as a baby to the pack. That is when the cruel treatment of her stepmother started.

Tears immediately started falling as Ella thought of her father Neo. She wished that he was here; he would have protected her from his mate and wife. She would have grown up with a better and happier childhood, not this.

Her stepsister Freya had also made it her mission to spread around rumors throughout the pack, that Ella was a murderer and the one who killed their missing father Neo. To Ella`s shock, everyone had all believed it. She was hated everywhere she walked. All the pack members hated her.

Life was hell for Ella here in Redwood pack.

“Hey slave, wash these clothes.” Ella looked up as a swarm of dirty clothes was thrown onto her face.

It was another pack member. Ella kept her eyes down, she was ranked the lowest in the pack, and she was an omega. Ella was also thought of by the Alpha, Alpha Fern as a disgrace because she was the only one who had not yet shifted and seemed to be wolfless in a pack of werewolves.

“You are a waste of space in the pack,” Ella recalled the Alpha`s words when the day of her shift had arrived and she had not shifted. She was ranked omega after that.  

So yes every part of her life sucked.

Silently Ella got up, wincing in pain from the injuries on her back. She took the clothes and got started with doing laundry and being a slave for the whole pack.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The moon palace,

A beautiful woman sat on an ethereal white throne made of ice, dressed in a magical blue dress with a glowing crown on her head.

“How long are you going to let my child suffer. For ten years of her childhood, that wicked woman has treated my daughter like dirt under her feet.” The moon goddess looked up at her enraged visitor. One who floated while entering in with her ghostly form.

“Did you really escape the afterlife, just to come and lecture me?” the moon goddess scolded back with a scowl.

“Yes I did!” the female ghost stubbornly replied causing the moon goddess to sigh from having expected this of her.

“You forget that she is my granddaughter too, but as my direct descendant, this needs to happen as part of her training. She has to go through everything, love, pain, rejection, betrayal. To be pruned so that she can one day blossom to be the powerful exquisite rare flower that we need her to be,”  The moon goddess spoke, defending her decision,

“There is a great war coming, I can feel the dark one, my archnemesis growing stronger day by day. So she needs to be ready or she will die as you did.” She continued,

"I…I understand. I do not want her to die as I did.” The ghostly form finally replied in defeat, recalling how she too had died on that fateful day.

~

18 years ago, in the past

The horrific stench of death filled the air. A fog of darkness seemed to cover the whole area like a blanket.

Reddest red the soil was as invisible unmerciful forces ravaged, extinguishing and squashing any signs of life.

"Are you sure they are all dead?" A deep cruel voice asked from the shadow of the darkness.

"Yes, they all are."

"Good, this is good news indeed."

The evil voice then faded just as it had swiftly come with the culprit, leaving to go celebrate. After all, this was a great achievement indeed…the successful royal assassination...of an entire Supreme Royal family dynasty.

~

As soon as silence befell the place, Queen Sophia immediately opened her eyes. Rousing from her fake pretense of playing dead and lifeless,

"No Sophia, this is not the time to cry or grief for everyone." she inwardly chided herself while moving from underneath the dead bodies of her two trusted royal guards. They were brave-hearted warriors who had sacrificed themselves to shield her with cover, so that "they" would not notice that she was not completely dead yet.

But it was hard not to cry and the tears just started falling down on their own. How could she not as she stared at all the dead bodies of her family? Her parents, in-laws, cousins, and relatives to everyone she had ever known and grown up with, her whole pack...all dead.

Their eyes which used to be full of life, were all now empty with life cruelly snuffed out of them all. Overwhelming emotional grief seemed to almost consume her.

Still, even though she felt like giving up, wanting to let herself fall down and drown in the pain, she could not. For there was one important thing she had to do first....before death could take her too.

If not for her strong bloodline, she was supposed to already be dead. Her blood was already boiling from the flames of pain slowly torturing and killing her on the inside. Her whole royal dress was mud-caked in blood. Most excruciating was the silver bullet lodged between her chest and how it was still moving closer and closer to her heart.

However summoning whatever energy she had, Queen Sophia sifted her hands through the blood-coated soil. This was as she dragged herself to the nearby tree, leaving a trail of her own blood. Upon reaching the tree she quickly sat right up.

She could feel the shimmering dark magic eating her up as it traveled through her veins.

"My baby, you are going to survive this and live. All their intentions to get rid of you will have been for naught. My little destined Queen."

Queen Sophia first said while looking down at her heavily pregnant stomach. Her whole focus went on directing most of her energy to magically create a shield around her womb. She was doing all this to keep protecting her unborn baby from being affected by the same burning deadly flames which were killing her body slowly.

"Are you sure you want to do this, I could run and find help?" A concerned voice spoke, while also gasping in pain and coming to sit next to her. It was another survivor. Only because he had arrived late and so the deadly fumes had affected him less.

"I am already at death's door. And will be dead by the time you return,"

"So let me save my baby while I still can," Queen Sophia stubbornly replied

She then continued, breaking off a branch for what she was about to do. She needed the branch to bite into and muffle her screams.

Removing the knife lodged onto her leg, she quickly handed it to the other survivor of this massacre.

"Do it," She commanded upon seeing the hesitation in their eyes.

Immediately her pained muffled screams followed as it started, the jagged knife painfully cutting through the flesh of her skin around the stomach. She was doing this, just so that her baby could come out into the world earlier than planned.

As the process continued, she could feel the life being sucked out of her as she bled heavily with blood gushing out. But it was all worth it as she heard the heavenly lullaby of her baby's cries.

"Neo...find out who did this. Protect my little Princess; treat her like she is your own daughter. They will all only know about her when it's time for her ascend..."

As she weakly whispered those last words while holding her baby, Queen Sophia`s voice faded, and then she was no more.

"I promise," Neo replied, eyes full of grief while closing the fallen Queen's lifeless eyes and picking up the little crying Princess to go take care and raise as his own.