Page 12 of Tamed Wolf

And they’re trying to throw that away. And I’m fucking pregnant.

“Don’t do this,” I beg them. “It’s not too late. We can just go home and pretend this didn’t happen. I swear, I’ll never even mention it! I’ll make that pasta dish you like so much, and we can crawl into bed and—"

“We reject you, Lark.”

There goes the final dagger.

My knees collapse and I fall faster than anyone can catch, smacking my face on the metal doorstop that’s cemented into the ground. The cement is cold against all my bare skin but the bonds in my chest are ripping to shreds, and screaming is the only thing I can rightfully handle.

I start clawing at my chest, just wanting it to stop, but it doesn’t.

The place where our bond sat when they claimed me feels like it’s embedded with razor blades, cutting through all the muscles and sinew in my chest and slicing me to ribbons, sending me to my own version of hell.

Someone touches me but then there’s a skirmish of some sort that I can’t track, because my head is so loud, and my body feels like it’s on fire. I’m on the ground thrashing, and someone drags me inside and shuts the door, separating us completely.

The bond snaps completely in two, emptying me out.

Chapter Five

Lark, After

I wake up screaming, as usual, the room around me too dim to matter. I roll over and throw myself off the bed while protecting my stomach, letting the rough, scratchy industrial carpeting press into my face until I can feel the indents all over from it.

Sometimes I have to do stupid things to remind myself that I’m still real.

“Sorry, bean, hope I didn’t scare you. At least one of us gets to sleep.” I sit up and watch my hands press against the pale flesh of my distended stomach, stretched over the tiny being that was the only good thing to have come from my brief stint at being a respectably mated wolf.

The baby is pressing firmly against my bladder so that’s my first stop, then I figure since I’m already awake, something useful might be done.

So, I drag myself down the hall after slipping a sweater on, aiming towards the computer lab that’s somehow decent, with the aim of finishing some more online schoolwork. There’s no one anymore to care how well I’m doing, so I’m trying to do good for myself. To prove to myself I can still become something even if Ivan and Trevor tried to ruin me.

It’s not comfortable to sit in the hard molded plastic chairs with my belly pressed up against the desk in there, but that’s only more penance to keep a hold of reality.

Online high school isn’t at all the same, but I’m determined to finish my diploma, even if I have no idea how it’s realistically going to benefit me in a tangible way.

The shelter comes awake slowly around me while I work, lights flickering on up and down hallways as doors start opening, the shuffling of feet permeating the stillness I’ve been working in for hours now.

I’m supposed to be on rotation in kitchen today, so after logging out of the online portal, I head that way, grateful to have something that’s going to occupy me for the next four hours. It’s when I’m not on rotation that bad things happen.

The second I try to relax and do something fun, all the pain rushes back in with a vengeance, stealing every bit of happiness my body tries to create. I know if I’m not actively exhausting myself, I’ll sit and dwell on every interaction I’ve had with Ivan and Trevor, trying to look at it from a new angle so I can determine what I did wrong.

I don’t think I did anything, not really, but the mind games make me feel like maybe that’s not really true.

They put the new girls here on dish duty because we don’t have to talk to others in order to function. The different duties are all assigned to best help the rejected women in their different stages of grief and recovery, which is a sick kind of science that I hate that someone had to figure out.

I’m given breakfast and then I get to work, scrubbing pot after pot, plunging my hands into the hot, soapy water, hoping each clean dish blesses someone else later.

By the time the shift ends my back is aching something fierce, so after grabbing a sack lunch to bring to my room with me, I decide a hot shower might make me feel slightly better.

The sight awaiting me in my room nearly makes me laugh. There’s this strange phenomenon that happens these days; when I’m triggered, my heart becomes so elated by the familiar idea of mates, but the rest of me that remembers the severing of those bonds retaliates something fierce, and I end up laughing in a very morbid, over-the-top way.

There is a myriad of reasons why there are counsellors on staff to help guide us.

There’s a gift basket sitting on my side table overflowing with expensive bath products. This isn’t the first time they’ve sent me gifts, and it’s not the first time I’ve set them aside to donate them to the free shop in the basement.

Why Ivan or Trevor think I would want to touch anything they try to provide again is a mystery, even if the thought of exfoliating my tired skin with a lush smelling body scrub sounds like literal heaven. I will suffer extra if it means spiting them.

This is my existence now. It’s hard for me to grasp that this is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life; living in this dingy room that can’t be bothered to look clean because it’s so worn, constantly battling mental fights against myself, and always looking for some reason to think about them just so I can remind myself that they don’t fucking matter and that I hate them.

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