Chapter 1: Shadow’s scars

WHIP!

The sound of the snakewhip divided the damp air of Nightfang great hall, and then almost instantly, the sound of ripping leather into my skin. It was a white searing brand of pain that branded itself across my back, reopening yesterday's barely scabbed welt. I didn't scream. No longer did I scream. Screaming was a luxury that only bought more pain, more laughter. Borin, Kael's head enforcer, lived for the scream. My silence was my only defense, flimsy and weak as it was.

Blood, hot and thick, welled up at once, coursing down my back beneath the thin, scratchy burlap they'd clothed me in. It mingled with the wine I struggled so hard to wash from the flagstones, the source of the lash. Copper-colored, metal-tasting blood mingled sickeningly with sour ale, fat-cured meat, and the thick musk of unwashed wolves feasting close by. Their laughter scraped over my nerves like shattering glass.

"Useless Shadow," Borin sneered. His breath washed over me, a foul cocktail of cheap ale and decaying meat. He nudged my ribs with his boot. "Spill the  Alpha’s wine again, and I’ll flay the skin from your back. Maybe use it for a new saddle blanket."

I focused my eyes on the grimy stone ground, the patterns of old dirt and fresh blood mingling. My fingers, trembling uncontrollably, scrambled for the jagged shards of the crystal goblet I'd sent crashing. My own carelessness, my perpetual weakness. A shard bit deep into the pad of my thumb. A harsh hiss escaped me before I could suppress it.

Borin laughed, a harsh, grating sound. He dropped down suddenly, his massive form blocking the swirling light, his face lowering to my height. His eyes were not only cruel now; they were weighing, too long resting on the slope of my neck above the tattered burlap collar, the concavity of my collarbone visible through the rag. A spongy, calloused finger reached out, a whisper from my weeping cheek. I froze, each fiber drawing tight in a stiff lock, the breath catching like a piece of ice in my throat. Don't touch me. Oh, Moon Goddess, don't make him touch me.

He didn't. Not quite. His finger hesitated half an inch from my skin, dancing across the air just above the raised welts. "Such a waste," he breathed, his voice dropping low and rough and for me alone. The leer in his eyes was a physical sin all on its own. "Got the face of a Luna, you do. Pale skin like moonlight. Eyes like silver coins. shame they belong to a traitor's whelp. Shame there's nothing but weakness and cursed blood beneath that pretty skin." His warm breath swept across my face. "A good woman, a real she-wolf, she might have tasted what I have. But you?"He sneered, the sound heavy with contempt. "You're not even fit to lick the dust from my boots, Shadow. You're just blood and venom and broken things."

Bile erupted, hot and burning, into the back of my throat. I gagged, shoving it down, shoving my face into cold emptiness. Showing disgust was an invitation. Showing anything was dangerous. I focused on the chill of the stone beneath my knees, the rough sting of a shard in my hand, moorings against the churning sickness and the colder, greater fear his words ignited.

Finally, the last shard was gathered onto the dented metal tray. Borin delivered one last, careless kick to my already throbbing ribs. “Off to the kennel. Don't make a mess in the hall with your blood."

Later, locked in the kennel, a dirty, stone box half the size of a grave, with wet, piss-soaked straw reeking of desperation, I curled myself up into as small a ball as I could. Each motion caused new pain searing from my spine. The collar throbbed its cold poison, heaving my hollow belly. Beyond the rusty iron bars, the scene of the feast spread like a sickly tapestry. Wolves mated with coarse, animalistic sounds against the far wall. Others fed on greasy bones, ripping flesh with feral bites. Drunken howls broke the relative hush, anthems of violence and decadence. Borin's voice echoed in my head amidst the chanting growls surrounding me: "Not even worthy to lick the dust,  only blood and gall.". I was beneath furniture. Beneath a specter. Below nothing. Revenge incarnate, a flesh and blood manifestation of sin I had not done, guilty by the damned blood running through my veins.

My parents. The names were a curse spoken only in the darkness of my mind. Traitors. Murderers. They'd betrayed pack secrets, sold pack members to human hunters. For gold? For power? I never found out. Their final abomination, slaughtering Kael's precious mate and their newborn pups in their den, sealed my fate. Their slaughter a half-dozen years back, dragged screaming and defiant before the assembled packs, was my sharpest, most ferocious memory of this blasted place. Kael, whose eyes were cold and whose face had been devoid of anything even remotely similar to mercy, had looked down at me, a scrawny, terror-stricken child. His voice, colder than a tomb, had etched itself into my soul: "You'll pay for every drop of blood your parents shed, whelp. Every cry. Every scream. You're Nightfang's now. You're Shadow. You're nothing."

Sleep had never been a refuge; it was another type of combat zone. But tonight, the crushing weight of Borin's words, the sneer in his eyes, the relentless, grinding misery, it pressed upon me more than my painful back. A cry surged up to choke me, wild and useless. I buried my face deeper in the filthy straw, inhaled the reek of rot and my own fear.

‘Please.’ The word moulded itself silently on dry lips, a breath of silence within the suffocating darkness. 'Moon Goddess. Mother Moon. If you hear me.' My silent voice shattered in the prison of my mind. ‘I can't… I can't go on like this. The hurt. The shame. To be nothing… to be Shadow.' Flashing back, the lash, Borin's smirk, Kael's frosty stare, blood on stone beneath.

‘I’m so tired. So tired of the hurt. Of the cage inside and out. Is this all there is? Just blood and bile until they finally break me?’ A tear, hot and traitorous, escaped, tracing a path through the grime on my cheek. ‘Please,if anyone can hear anything, just make it stop. Save me. Or kill me. Just end this.’

The plea hung in the rank air, consumed by drunken cries and the insistent throb of the collar. No answer. Bare stone, reeking straw, and the echo of my own silent scream within. The nightmares, when they did come, were colder yet: silver chains, Borin's grasping hands, and my mother's final scream, a cry that now seemed to channel my own despairing, voiceless prayer into the uncaring darkness.