Losing my Aunt

Chapter 2 Katrina’s POV Blood Claw Pack I returned to the kitchen and with the cast on there was not a whole lot I could do, but I still tried. I could see Abigail looking over at me and taking the heavy things from me to take out herself. She has to work a lot harder than she should, and it is all the Alpha's fault. I think back to what Amanda said to me earlier, and I think I agree with her. I think any place would be better than where I am currently at. I will tell her the next time I see her, that we will need to plan on getting me out of here. I am not allowed to leave the packlands. That was per Alpha James, so she would have to smuggle me out of here in her trunk. I could not phase and run to the pack border to get away, and he knew it. But no one knows that Amanda and I are friends, so she might be able to pull it off. I have started praying to the Goddess about it now, as we will definitely be needing some help here. Abigail sighs and then says, “Katrina, you can go on up. There is nothing else you can do here tonight. You can’t wash dishes because of the temporary cast and the injury to your other hand. Just try to rest and heal tonight, and we can try again in the morning”. “I am sorry Abigail,” I told her, and she nodded at me. She knows that it isn’t my fault and then puts a small baggy into my apron pocket. I am allowed water, but not much food. He only allows me to eat 1 meal a day, and he gets to pick which meal, and what I can have. When he gets really mad at me, he restricts that too. I am way too skinny, but I am not going to beg him for food. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and headed up to the attic. It is cold up here in the winter, but then really warm up here in the summer. Spring and fall are my favorite seasons because they are bearable. The view is nice all the time from the one window that I have, and in the winter, I have to put a towel on it to keep the draft out, but it is the only place that I feel safe in the packhouse. They forget about me and don’t want to have to walk through the dusty attic to get to me, so they just catch me when I am in the main part of the packhouse. I lay back on my mat. It is a sheet with old clothes folded underneath it so I can lay on it and not directly on the floor. All of the clothes had been thrown away, and I just got them back out of the trash. It was a perk of taking it out to the dumpster. I would just wash them and then take the pieces up one at a time, with the rest hidden in the baker's pantry in the kitchen. Sometimes I would put them on me, and then cover them up under my clothes, so no one saw them, and then fold them to where I have a semi-comfortable bed underneath me. I ate my food in silence, then washed my face, and brushed my teeth. Amanda was responsible for that too. She gave me a bag with items I needed in it. I got new underwear, a new pair of leggings, a t-shirt, and shoes each Christmas, and on my birthday. She also had a new toothbrush in there and personal hygiene items. She tried to help me after she found out that I had nothing. No one was allowed to help me at all. She has been helping me ever since she found out. She waits for the Alpha and his minions to leave the packhouse, and she gets Abigail to bring them to me inside the supplies on the cleaning cart. She hides my bag in the middle of the supplies, and I won't lie. It is the very best gift. She won't take a chance on the Alpha finding out, he will punish them both too. She is right, the abuse will never stop, as I lay down on my mat and thought back to that terrible day. Flashback I arrived here at the Blood Claw pack at 13 and a half, with my Aunt Nina. She was a pretty she-wolf and she always took care of me. She had blonde hair like me, but she had blue eyes instead of my green ones. She was a strong warrior, and she brought me here because, after my parents were killed in a car accident, she was all I had. I had no pictures or memories of them, and that was the saddest part. I have no memory of them at all. I don’t know who I looked like, or their smiles, nothing. My Aunt said that was because the same car accident that killed them, caused me to hit my head, and that I just had amnesia. Hopefully, my memories will return one day, and I would remember them both. I do remember arriving and being greeted by the Alpha and Luna though. Alpha Fredrick James, and Luna Victoria James, were a handsome couple. He had dark hair and grey eyes, at 6’3” tall he had a strong and imposing figure. He was fair to his pack members and was a nice man, at least when I first arrived. Luna Victoria was always nice to me. She had a sweet smile that lit up the night. She was a beautiful she-wolf, standing at 5’10 just like my aunt, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She had a trim figure, and she would have me and my aunt with her on picnics quite frequently after we had arrived there. I made friends quickly with their son, Timothy, who was my age, a month older than me, and he was blonde like his mother, but with his father's grey eyes, which looked like a storm was coming. We played a lot together, and I enjoyed his company. He liked me too, and one time he told me that he hoped I would be his mate because he loved me. He was my first kiss when I turned 14, and I really hoped that we would be mates, as I felt butterflies in my stomach whenever he was around. My Aunt Nina and Luna Victoria liked to talk with each other every day. They were old friends and they would allow me to play while they spoke and laughed. Sometimes they spoke quietly, but I didn’t mind. Especially if we were by the south lake, I enjoyed swimming while they spoke, and I really enjoyed getting to do that with each trip. It was my favorite place for me to go and I spent time collecting pretty rocks that I dove down to get. I had turned 14 in May, and it was now July. We had only been here about 8 months at the time, and I liked the pack, I was treated fairly. My Aunt and I shared one of the cute little cottage homes near the packhouse. I remember hearing something and turning to see Aunt Nina and Luna Victoria arguing with 4 men that I didn’t recognize. I got closer to the shore to see what was going on. They didn’t smell like rogues, they were members of a pack, but not the Blood Claw pack. Before I could get close enough to hear what was being said, the men attacked them. Both women phased into their wolves, and my Aunt and Luna Victoria did kill the four men, but the cost of it was their lives. I ran to them both and Luna Victoria told me that she had mindlinked Alpha James and he was on his way to help me. She told me to climb a tree and wait for our pack members to arrive. She also told me to tell him and Timothy that she loved them both and that it was not my fault this happened. I nodded at her and told her I would tell them. She smiled at me one more time before the light left her eyes. In the distance from the direction of the packhouse, I could hear several mournful howls in the air, and I knew that they knew the Luna had passed. I was crying pretty hard. I had just turned 14. I don’t have a wolf, and I could not shift yet. This was too much to bear losing two women that I looked up to so much. I loved them both and was scared that there might be more men on the packlands that weren’t supposed to be there. I could tell I was about to lose my Aunt too. She had a tear coming out of her eye, and blood all over her from the many cuts and claw marks she received. She took my hand in hers and said, “Katrina, you need to find your mate. I am so sorry that I failed you. This was not supposed to happen. We have been betrayed by someone” before her head fell back, and I knew that she was gone too. I cried for a little while longer and then did what Luna Victoria told me to do. I climbed a tree near me and waited for Alpha James and his men to arrive. They arrived a few minutes later. I started climbing down the tree as Alpha James gathered Luna Victoria in his arms and held her bloody body to him. I emerged from the tree line, and I knew the moment that he saw me, that it wasn’t going to be good for me at all. I hung back while he continued to hug Luna Victoria's body before he gently laid her down on the ground and then started to give his men orders. He walked over to me, and before he said anything he slapped me on my face hard enough that I heard ringing in my ears, and I could not hear what he was saying. He slapped me again, knocking me down to the ground, and was about to attack me when his Beta, Arthur Mitchell, stopped him. “She is just a child Alpha. She had no wolf yet. There would have been nothing for her to do to help them. They were outnumbered and did their best”, Beta Mitchell told him. “She is the reason that my mate is dead. Tori never had picnics until they came. I don’t know what they were even out here talking about. Obviously, Katrina wanted to come swim, and my wife, being nice, accommodated her. She is the reason that my mate lost her life. I will make sure that she loses hers too if it is the last thing I do” Alpha James hissed out at me, before turning around and walking away from us to go hold Luna Victoria again. “I know this isn’t your fault little one, just give him some time. He is grieving now, and he will need time to get past his loss. I don’t think he meant any of it” Beta Mitchell said to me. I know it was because I was young and crying so hard. There had been nothing that he could do to protect me, as it was the Alpha causing so much of my abuse. Timothy came running up and wanted to hold his mother too, but Alpha James refused to release her. I saw exactly when Alpha James told Timothy that it was my fault, as his eyes went from upset, to furious and he walked over to me too. “You killed my mom?” Timothy said to me. “No, I swear, I was in the lake swimming and then heard a commotion and looked over to see four men with my Aunt and your mom. I got closer and the men attacked. It happened so fast, there was nothing I could do, by the time I got to them it was over”, I told him and grabbed his arm in supplication. I wanted him to believe me. No, I needed him to believe me. I cared for him so much, I needed him to know I had nothing to do with this. He shook my hand off his arm and told me, “I will never believe the word of a girl who let my mother die. As far as I am concerned, you killed her”. I felt the sting of being slapped again and then pushed down hard, with Timothy then turning and walking away from me. Tears ran down my face as I watched him walk back to his father, who was glaring at me like he wanted to kill me right then. I shuddered, as the tears continued to stream down my face. Luna Victoria was loaded into the back of one of the SUVs and taken to the pack hospital morgue, in Alpha James' arms. My Aunt was thrown in the back of a pickup truck to take to the morgue as well. I was left there, still wet from swimming, with no one to help me. I walked back to our cottage alone. At the funeral, I was treated like I had killed the Luna myself. Adults and children alike were all glaring at me, like I had done this horrible act, and not the four men who were on our land. The rogues were burnt, and no investigation was done because Alpha James said it was my fault for us even being out there. He didn’t listen to me when I told them that they were not, in fact, rogues, and he slapped me down to the ground. That was the day that I was told never to speak to him unless he addressed me and that from now on I lived in the attic and was now an Omega. I would not be trained, and I would need to work every day. That I now had a debt to pay the pack off, for killing their Luna. Since then, it has been almost 6 years of abuse that they all say I deserve. No one backs me, or supports me, in front of the Alpha. They all know that he hates me, and no one here will ever protect me from him. I have Abigail and Amanda as my only friends here at Blood Claw. That is only because they have seen what gets done to me on a daily basis. They both acknowledge that there was nothing that I could have done to have helped them, but neither of them can go against the Alpha. End of Flashback I felt a tear slide down my face and I wiped it off. I hate that I lost my Aunt and my Luna on the same day. I feel like if just my Aunt died, that the Luna would have taken care of me, and I wouldn’t have lost my best friend, because his mom would still have been alive. It has been hard seeing him deliberately ignore me or hurt me for the last several years. He had never broken a bone like his father had. With Timothy, it has been emotional and mental abuse. Which hurt me more than the physical abuse. His dating other girls, and now dating Fallon. She has been the very worst of all of his girlfriends. She was jealous of me and him being close when we were younger, and she still won’t let it go. That was a long time ago. She acted like he would decide to choose me after all like he said he would. I know that he doesn’t remember the promise that he made me, that he would marry me, as he was sure that we were going to be mates. I know that he will never forgive me. I have made my decision. I will see if Amanda was serious about getting me out of here. She is right, if I stay, Alpha James will eventually end up killing me. I can’t take the pain anymore, I will take my chances elsewhere.