The Escape:
Eliana's POV:
Oakland, New Orleans had secrets behind its majestic facades — none darker than mine. Princess by birth, slave by circumstance.
Fairy tales usually start with "once upon a time." Mine begins with death.
The night I came into this world, full moon aglow, my mother departed it. My first breath was also her last — a cosmic exchange that tattooed me before I could form words.
"The girl who killed her own mother," they'd whisper. Some said she died in labor, others before. The details grew indistinct with time, but the bottom line never changed: I had borne the mantle of murderer before I could walk.
My father, Gerald, was once the proud Alpha of the BloodHounds pack, but melted into a puddle the moment his Luna left the physical world. When he looked at me, he saw only her ghost — my blue eyes reflections of the woman he lost. The similarity that should have given me comfort became my curse.
"You have her smile," he said once, his voice cracking before it hardened again. "Please never smile in my presence again.
Gerald remarried quickly. My stepmother Sienna wielded calculated cruelty in our home. She bore my father two more children — good heirs, unaffected by death's shadow — while I fell from princess to prisoner.
My bedroom? A dungeon. My royal duties? Scrubbing floors until my knees bled and hands cracked.
"Look at her," pack members would crow when I went upstairs. "Handmaiden of death, walking among us."
The bolder ones would hit me — a slap here, a punch there — as if testing whether the pack outcast would be audacious enough to fight back. I never did. And where else was an omega rogue to exist, tormenting themselves in a place they so knew?
Tonight my body fell into the thin carpet over cold stone. I bled constellations from my feet after eighteen hours of service. As nightfall swaddled me like an old friend, I indulged in one forbidden pleasure: rest.
The door crashed open.
"Eli-aaaana," sang Jaxon, stretching my name into something queasy. My stepbrother's shadow danced in the doorframe, preceded by fumes of alcohol.
I crawled into the corner, wishing for smallness. The chain in his hand caught moonlight before it lashed across my back. Fire erupted along my spine.
"There you are," he slurred, eyes glittering like a predators'. "Thought you could hide?"
This had become a ritual as a part of the routine. Alcohol. Chains. Violation. Every time, it escalates — each incidence worse than the previous.
His hands climbed up my thigh like spiders. "Need something special tonight," he rasped, hot breath hitting my neck. "Been a rough day."
My stomach dropped when he unbuckled his belt. The bottle of vodka clinked as he put it down on the stone — this sound sliced through my resignation like a flash.
"No!" I had gasped when he ripped my bleeding feet.
"No?" Jaxon laughed. "That's new."
He turned me on my back and his pants fell hard. I pushed on his chest when he leaned in.
"Stop, Jaxon. Please." My voice sounded strange — more commanding than I recalled.
"Defiant tonight?" His eyes narrowed. "Should I get the ropes?"
Something snapped inside me — not breaking, but awakening. "Fuck. Off."
I hocked a big loogie right in his face. His grip crushed my wrists, bones protesting. He let me go only to fetch his restraints from across the room.
The vodka bottle glittered in the moonlight, a gravity I felt suddenly in my hand. I didn't plan it. Didn't think. My arm swung with two decades of pent-up anger.
A sickening crack as glass exploded against his temple. Blood — warm and viscous — painted my hands red.
Jaxon rotated slowly, a shard sticking out of his skull as if a grotesque crown. "What... did you just do?"
I stepped back, crunching glass underfoot." "Don't come closer."
"Or what?" He pulled the glass from his head and blood streamed down his face. And he smiled behind the red mask. "You'll scream? Who would believe the pack killer over the future Alpha?
Reality crashed around me. He was right. No one would believe me, not when I'd already stained myself with his blood. The pack viewed him as their golden prince, while I was still their darkest stain."
"Please, Jaxon," I whispered. "You don't have to do this."
His face contorted with rage. "Oh, but now I do. "You're going to owe me for this when I have you over my knee."
His hands seized my waist. I screamed — a guttural noise that felt like it came from another place.
"Shut up!" His palm smacked into my face, nails stabbing my throat as he shoved me against the wall. Something snapped within — a rib, maybe more. I crumpled, coughing blood onto the stones.
Jaxon's boot thudded against my stomach. "Shut up or you can be like your good-for-nothing mother!"
The world slowed. His voice reverberated through the haze of pain. *Like your mother. Like your mother. *
Death waited on either path. But one offered a choice.
Drawing on my last strength, I drew a deep breath in and kicked up toward him, my foot striking his shin. Jaxon slammed into the wall, dazed for a moment.
I clambered upright, limbs screaming in protest. Blood oozed from several wounds, but adrenaline kicked and pushed me onward.
"You fucking bitch!" he bellowed as I grabbed my few belongings. "If I catch you—"
You don't," I said, stumbling to the door, breathless. Each step was torture, fractured rib rubbing with every inhale. But the door was closer now.
Jaxon, thrashing against furniture, was behind me. "I'll kill you!"
I caught the scent of his wolf surfacing — musk and rage filling the small space. If he shifted, I was done for.
The door to the dungeon opened to castle hallways. The main gate was coming up ahead — too far away to focus on through a pain-blurred vision.
"Come on, Eliana," I whispered. "Move."
Every step was like walking on shards of glass. Jaxon's growls grew closer. I hadn't even realized when I started crying.
Freedom beckoned — the pack gates within yards. At that moment, I felt the weight of my decision. There was no going back once I crossed that threshold. No longer Princess Eliana, for however fallen. I would be truly nothing.
My knees buckled. Fingers closed around my ankle, yanking me backward.
In a furious fit of desperation, I twisted, clawing my fingers into his bloodied temple. My nails dug into the glass-ripped flesh.
His shriek of pain bought me seconds. I tore free, dragging myself through the gates and smashing the iron barrier behind me.
Jaxon was pushed up against the bars, blood dripping down from his shattered eye. "You!" His voice broke with hate. "You better never return to this pack or I will kill you myself."
I looked into his eyes for the first time in years. "I'd rather die a rogue than live a day as your victim."
The full moon lit the world beyond — land I'd never seen. The cold wind whipped through my matted hair as I turned away from the only home I'd ever known,
I ran. Directionless. Purposeless. Just away.
It was an hour before my strength finally failed. I fell down in a dark alleyway, my lungs on fire with the phlegmy gasping. Propped against rough brick, I looked at my blood-encrusted hands.
I'd done it. Escaped. It swept over me in waves that made me feel dizzy.
"Perhaps this is my beginning," I murmured to the night. "Maybe now—"
A shadow moved at the mouth of the alley. My heart pounded against my broken rib.
I scrambled to sit up, my eyes straining into the dark. The smelly thing that f
ound me not paca—wasn't even wolf.
Another watched from the shadows. Something ancient. Hungry.
And it was moving closer.