The silence she received from her dad in the house was the worst part.

Not the creaking walls, not the chill of the stone floors, not even the bruises still blooming purple and yellow across Aurelia’s back. It was the quiet. The kind that wrapped around her throat and squeezed every time she breathed.

The kind that meant he was still here.

She was kneeling in the corner of the pantry, the scent of stale flour and rotting onions thick around her. Her fingers trembled around the rusted edge of a soup can. She hadn’t eaten since the day before, not properly, anyway but her stomach was too knotted with fear to care.

The sound came first the familiar weight of his boots against the wooden floorboards.

“Aurrrreeliaaa,” he called, sing-song and sickening.

Shiver went down her spine and the irritation could be felt miles away , instinctively shrinking tighter against the wall.

“Aurelia, where are you hiding now, little mutt?”

The door creaked open.

His shadow fell across the threshold.

Her stomach clenched.

“There you are,” he said, stepping into the pantry. His smile stretched wide, teeth gleaming like fangs. “Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”

She didn’t answer.

He didn’t need her to.

In three long strides, he was on her, yanking her up by the arm so hard her shoulder nearly dislocated. Pain bloomed instantly, but she didn’t scream. She hadn’t screamed in a while. Not even when he beat her.

Especially not then.

His hand cracked across her face, open-palmed. Her cheek exploded with heat. The taste of blood coated her tongue.

“I told you,” he hissed, slamming her against the pantry shelves, “when I call for you, you come.”

She nodded.

“You think I do this because I hate you?” he sneered, brushing her hair behind her ear with mock gentleness. “No. I do this because I own you. Every inch. Every breath.”

She turned her face away, but he grabbed her chin.

“Don’t look away from me.”

His thumb bruised her jaw as he forced her to meet his gaze.

“Let’s remind you why you’re still alive, shall we?”

He forced his lips on hers and his tongue too while caressing her butt. She tried to resist but he held her down with his hand on her hair.

“Hurt… it hurtsss.”

“Lower your damn voice.” He said. He still had to be a good son to his dad if he wanted to be Alpha.

He tried taking her pants off but she resisted and with the alpha force in him he tore it and flipped her over.

While he was trying to undo his belt she got up and ran towards the door but a few seconds he caught and pulled her back.

He laid her and suck her titties as he forced her hand up and down his dick.

While he sucked one, he caressed the other as he kept forcing her hand up and down his dick. When he had came the first time, he was bent on making her squirt. So he forcefully sucked and bit her lips as she robbed her clitoris. She tried so hard not to moan but it kept coming out and she wanted to kill herself at that moment.

She had bruises on her pussy so he decided to have anal sex with her that day. As he forced his dick into anal opening, Her fingers twitched. Her heart galloped.

Something inside her snapped.

Glass.

Her eyes darted to the side a bottle of oil sat forgotten on the pantry shelf. Half-empty. Dusty. But solid.

His weight shifted, a grunt tearing from his throat as he forced her closer to the wall. She reached behind her, blindly groping for it.

He didn’t notice.

He never noticed.

Not until it was too late.

Her hand closed around the bottle’s neck.

And then she struck.

The glass shattered against his face with a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed, hot and sudden. His scream ripped through the room, animalistic, broken. He stumbled back, clutching his eye, shards embedded in his cheek.

“You bitch!”

Aurelia didn’t wait to hear more.

She scrambled over him, slipping on the blood-slick floor, and bolted through the pantry door. Her vision swam. Her ribs ached. Her legs burned. But she ran.

Through the hallways that had caged her. Past the cracked mirror where she used to stare at her reflection and wonder who she’d become. Out the back door where the night waited, cold and endless.

She didn’t stop.

Not even when she heard his roars echo behind her.

Not when her bare feet sliced against the forest’s thorns.

Not when the moon broke through the clouds and lit the path ahead.

She was free.

Bleeding. Breathless.

But free.

And she would never come back.