Chapter 4

BROOKE I have been sleeping for ages. Well, for what feels like ages. I opened my eyes to the sound of a car speeding away. I looked at the ceiling again. My wrist is aching once again. Suddenly, the door opens, and someone is standing on the top step. I know that smell. It’s her. “Well, don’t you look cozy,” Aubrey snarls at me as she heads down the steps, staring at me. She grabs the blanket from me and throws it to the side. She grabs me by my hair and drags me to the corner. Oh no! I know what’s going to happen. The wall is where she tortures me; the corner wall has shackles where she wants to teach me a lesson. She loves torturing me as I can’t say a word or scream. I move around as she drags me over to the corner. I know what's going to happen to me. “Mother, what are you doing down here!” Shouts Austin down the stairs. I can hear him making his way down. “I’m teaching this b***h a lesson,” she says. She pushes me down to the floor, with me facing the wall. She grabs one of my wrists and places it in the shackle. She tightens it up. She grabs the wrist that I landed on earlier; the pain is getting worse. She shackles it to the wall. I'm now facing the wall and crying. I know what will happen to me; she likes using her belt. I already had a whipping from her last night. She rips my t-shirt, exposing my back. “MOTHER, DON’T DO THIS”, Austin shouts. “Austin, get back upstairs now, or I will hurt you,” she said, snarling at him. Austin takes a step closer to her, but Aubrey grabs something and hits him over the head with it. She holds a taser that she sometimes uses on me, and she tasers her own son. “That should keep him down for a little while,” she says and turns back around with her belt in her hand. She's not gentle about it, and she puts all her energy into whiping me. I close my eyes and let the pain take over. I don’t know what's worse, my wrist or my back. She hits me repeatedly; after the sixth time, she stops only to hear the doorbell. She looks up and then looks at Austin. She places her belt back around her waist. She looks upstairs, but before she makes her way, she grabs my hair and slams my head into the wall. I'm completely knocked out, and I am sent into complete darkness. ******************************* AUSTIN I heard my mother running back up the stairs. I opened my eyes and started to move, breaking what she tied me up with. “Beta Logan, you better be outside,” I snarled through the mind link. “I just got here,” he says. “Why? What’s wrong?” I opened my eyes. I looked over to Brooke; OH MY GOD. Her back is completely covered in slashes, her wrist is broken, and she has blood coming from her head. The woman tortured her. “GET THAT b***h OUT OF HERE. NOW,” I growled through the mind link. I shut the link down to him and opened a new one, “Alpha, you had best get the pack doctor ready. My mother has tortured Brooke,” I said. I hear a loud growl. “She did what!” he shouts. “How bad?” I got up and looked at Brooke. She is barely breathing but hanging on. “BAD, ALPHA. WE NEED TO MOVE HER NOW,” I said frantically. “DAISY AND REX ARE THERE NOW; BETA LOGAN JUST TOOK YOUR MOTHER.” He says in a roar. I break the shackles from Brooke's wrists as I hear two sets of footsteps come running down the stairs. Daisy gasps at the sight of Brooke. “What did she...” she begins. I growled. “We haven’t got time, Daisy. We need to get her out of here. Now,” I said through gritted teeth. I looked at my stepsister as she was unconscious and barely holding on. We can all hear her heartbeat, but it’s slow. “We need to kill that b***h,” snarls Daisy. All three of us ran upstairs towards the front door and straight towards the van. Rex slams the front door and presses a button to open the van. I went to the back with Brooke in my arms with Daisy next to me. Rex climbs into the front to drive. “Hold on tight,” he shouts, then he starts the engine, and we begin moving. I looked down at Brooke; I could feel blood running down my leg. Her wrist is broken; a bone is sticking out of the side. “She must be in so much pain,” says Daisy as she looks at her, feeling sadness and guilt for her. I looked at Daisy and gave her a weak smile. “She’ll be okay,” I said. “She has to be.” Daisy takes off her jacket and places it on Brooke. She moves the collar of her T-shirt away, revealing Brooke's huge scar. Daisy looked at it. I can’t help but look at it too. I know Rex is also looking in the mirror as we both hear, “s**t, how did that happen?” He looks between Daisy and me. I look at Daisy, who closes her eyes; she was there when they found Brooke. She was barely holding on then. A tear slipped down her cheeks, sadness, and heartache for her friend. “It happened the night her mother was killed; the wolf sliced her throat. We found her barely holding on. She was five years old,” she says quietly. I knew the story Jackson told me when I met Tasha. Danica, Brooke’s mother, argued with him that evening as he wanted them to move to the packhouse, but she didn’t think it was safe for Brooke. She left running with Brooke at her side. That was the last time he saw his first mate. “I never knew that,” says Rex quietly. Daisy looked at him. “She was my best friend.” He looked back at her and then back onto the road. We were in the van for twenty minutes as Rex took the roads fast. Soon enough, we pulled up to the packhouse. The pack doctor was standing by with a stretcher and three nurses waiting for Brooke. Jackson and Alanna look on with worried looks on their faces. Alpha Marcus runs to the van and opens the door. His face was shocked at the amount of blood covering the floor and me. “Give her to me,” he says. He takes her out of my arms and rushes her onto the bed, and the pack doctor shouts out orders to the nurses and other wolves. Brooke is white as a sheet. Both Daisy and I step out of the van, and Rex comes to Daisy’s side. She is now in complete tears. “What the hell happened?” Asked Alpha Marcus, looking at me. “My mother waited until Hudson left with Madison. She told me that she was going upstairs to find something. I went into my room, but she locked me in there when I was about to turn around. I broke down the door and fled to the basement stairs to find Brooke shackled to the wall. "My mother had her taser and belt out. She forced Brooke’s wrist into the shackle because I heard the snap as I was coming downstairs. Brooke was crying. My mother looked at me; she tased me with the highest voltage and knocked me out with a metal pole which I didn’t see coming. I came around when Beta Logan was banging on the door,” I repeated the night's events; growls could be heard in response to what I was telling them. “Also, Alpha, this is not the first time my mother has done this to her,” I said quietly. Jackson looked at me, anger sweeping through him. “What do you mean not the first time?” “She has scars all over her back, and there was a mark on her collar bone. It looks old but has been frequently opened. Looks like a taser mark,” I said, looking at him. He looks like he wants to kill someone. I know who, my mother. Many people are standing outside now. Wolves came from whatever they were doing, and they must have smelt the blood. “Austin,” says a sweet voice. I looked for where to come from and spotted her, Tasha, my mate. Tasha runs straight up to me and places a kiss on my mouth but quickly pulls away to look at me. I'm entirely covered from my waist down in Brooke’s blood. Tasha goes white. “Whose...” she tries to ask, but I shake my head. “Not mine, Brooke’s,” I say. She looks back in shock. “That's a lot of blood.” “I need to be with my daughter,” Jackson mutters. He turns and looks at me. “Austin, go get showered and change. You can come with us.” I nod. I look at Alanna as she is trying to comfort her mate. Rex and Daisy are heading inside. Alpha Marcus looks at me and nods. “I will let Hudson know; he wanted to come back anyway,” he says. Both Tasha and I walked into the packhouse and headed to our room. Tasha gets me a change of clothes as I walk into the bathroom and have a quick shower. It took ages to get all of Brooke’s blood off me, but I managed to. I got dressed straight away, and we both headed back to the pack hospital to wait to find out what was going on with Brooke. When we got there, everyone was outside, waiting. Alanna, Jackson, Alpha Marcus, Daisy and Rex all stand in a line, waiting patiently for the doctor to come out.