Back and Stronger: Alpha's Daughter

The feeling of sheer carefreeness, and being something close to unstoppable, had finally completely left her now.

In fact, once that heady high had vacated her system, it had left Sophia with the sort of void and desolation of which she’d hardly ever felt the likes of before. Not even on some of her worst days had she experienced such arrant hopelessness.

Having successfully switched her and Matthew’s tests, and the blissful consequences of it that had followed felt very distant now. It felt more like it had happened to another Sophia. Some other version of her she was too familiar with.

It was as though she had been possessed by a spirit of vengeance, and that this energy was what had enabled her to do anything in the world while she had been in that state.

Sophia wished she could have been filled with that feeling all the time. She could then have done whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and not care about a thing. But she had been starkly reminded this day just how quickly such an intense new energy could plummet her back to ground level again.

Like a missile it had exploded when it came to its inescapable end, kicking up dust and sending shockwaves through her body – her soul. Which only left her more tired and deflated than ever before.

On the other hand, Sophia was glad that this spirit had left her now. It made her reckless, unpredictable, and dangerous. Selfish…

Like when she had gone around the school earlier, with her stupid little hall pass, prancing around like a buoyant fucking show pony, looking for Neil. It was embarrassing and made her internally cringe just thinking about it.

She had actually been proud of what she did to Matthew. Satan had fallen by her hand, though be it temporarily, she wanted to go and tell the security guard all about it. Her security guard.

Sophia so badly wanted Neil De Boule to see the version of her where she wasn’t the weak and frail creature he’d gotten used to seeing her as. She wanted to find him and show him that she could be strong and take matters into her own hands too, but she didn’t find him. Instead, she ran into his friend, Scott, if she remembered his name correctly.

She had been severely dejected and disappointed when she realized that she wasn’t going to get the chance to find and show him the new Sophia, and had felt that static energy starting its inevitable descent.

Later, on the bus ride home, Sophia had felt it falling even further when she started to feel bad about what she’d done. She had taken something extremely important from someone, thinking he deserved it and that she was getting revenge.

Didn’t that make her exactly like her bullies? Doing bad things to others to feel better about themselves? She thought it was justice being served, but the more the bus’s wheels turned, the more Sophia started to feel guilty and ashamed.

You got back at Matthew fucking Ballen! her subconscious seemed to be yelling at her in an attempt to still justify her actions.

The intoxicating high train of righteousness she had been on today, might have felt good, but it had put her on a track to doing things that were wrong. Just because she hadn’t known moral treatment for so long, didn’t mean that there were no consequences.

Sure, Mr. Silvino might have encouraged her to take the leap, and she knew he only did it to help her get back at Matthew. Maybe the teacher had even heard or picked up on what the vicious male planned to do with her when the big match with Aolith High came around, and wanted to show her a way to get out of that particular predicament. But still. The fact remained. Sophia had willingly done something malicious to someone else. Even if he deserved it ten times over, she just knew it didn’t make her feel good about herself in hindsight.

In fact, something similar could be found written in the Goddess’s Scriptures:

Revenge is more damaging to the Avenger than to those that had been avenged upon…

One thing she was grateful for, only much later though, was that she hadn’t been able to find Neil. Sophia would have told him everything with a prideful smile, thinking he would admire her for her courage. However, she knew now that that wouldn’t have been the case.

It would have been more likely for him to have looked at her in disgust for what she’d done, and would have been even more repelled by the pure joy that would surely have been identifiable in her face, her eyes, and her voice.

She wasn’t sure if she would have been able to handle that. If those brooding, bronzed eyes had looked at her with the shame she felt for herself at that moment, Sophia might just have run right back to that cliff where they’d first met that day. This time there would have been no hesitation.

But from the very moment she arrived home, and her father had given her the order, with clear malicious intent in his cruel eyes, to go to her room and wait there for him, she regretted not having done so anyway. Shameful looks from the one male she cared about or not, she should still have just gone to that bloody cliff and got it over and done with.

If she had just done that, then Sophia wouldn’t have been sitting in her dank basement on the cold floor, against the wall with her arms tightly hugging her legs that were pulled up against her chest, staring unblinkingly at the opposite wall in terror.

It had started to rain a while ago, the clouds having darkened the little light she had in the room, which just added to the feeling of doom and gloom that had been there in abundant amounts already. It had also brought more cold with it.

Sophia knew it was going to be another frigid night spent shivering, but she doubted whether the cold would be the only reason for it. Her trembling. Her sleeplessness.

If she had just gone to put herself out of her misery already, then she wouldn’t have been waiting for over two hours to find out what was going to happen to her now.

The waiting for her punishment – oh the waiting – was the worst part. It did all kinds of things to her mind and her nerves, which were both shod and worn out already. Another torture tactic, Sophia knew, but she couldn’t help falling for it, nonetheless.

She was at her lowest. There was no denying it. And she had the foreboding feeling that things are about to get worse. Much, much worse.

Did her father know about what had happened with Matthew? Did he suspect her? Was that what her beating was going to be about?

Around and around her thoughts went in a torturous swirling vortex. Falling for the trap her father had intentionally set for her when he had told her to wait for him. But she couldn’t help herself. It worked. Point for dad.

Goddess, please help me through this… Whatever is about to happen… Help me get through this…

Even as Sophia prayed for help, she knew that it was futile. If there had been one thing she’d learned in life, was that the Goddess didn’t seem to be on her side, or simply just didn’t care about what happened to her. The supposed benevolent Being never did, and she didn’t see how it was going to change now.

Absolutely defeated, she could still feel that there was still some part of her that wanted to fight. A very feeble and dim part of her, which might just be completely swatted away this time, she realized.

Sophia felt like she wanted to faint, but fear kept her lucid. Or the shattering of her teeth and the shivering of her body did. Whether it was from terror or the biting cold in the basement, it didn’t exactly matter at that point.

Especially not when she heard the heavy footsteps coming from the room above her. She had gotten good at identifying and differentiating between the sounds her father and her brother made. Those had definitely been her father’s just now.

Holding her breath, and listening, she knew immediately that he was on his way to her by the direction he was traveling in above her, then down the stairs, and then…

Sophia heard the door to her basement door open. She still held her breath. At the back of her mind, she vaguely thought to keep holding it until she passed out from lack of oxygen.

Would her father beat her while she was unconscious? She wondered, but the answer that usually came when Sophia pondered on how far Thorin would actually go with his ‘punishments’, was that she wouldn’t put it past him. Especially not lately. He had kicked the tormenting up a notch recently, so she really couldn’t say anymore.

His descent down the stairs was slow and harrowing. He knew exactly what he was doing to her. He even put his feet down each step with more weight and force than was necessary, making the sound of it shoot through the small damp room like bombs being dropped not too far away. Surely, he must have been aware of the effects it would have on her nervous system. And Sophia knew that was exactly why he did it too.

He had turned into a full-on predator. Her father had become a feral beast taking pleasure out of inciting fear in his prey before he toyed with it. ‘It’ being her, his own daughter, of course.

And when he came around to face her where she still sat against the wall, curled up into a shivering ball, Sophia could see it there. His dark eyes shone with delight at seeing her like that, and she hated herself for giving it to him. Giving him that satisfaction of knowing that she was terrified as hell. Of him. Of the pain he inflicted. Was about to inflict.

“Sophia,” he drawled her name softly, as though it was a caress, and she felt those rotten tacos she’d eaten at lunch swirling precariously at the pit of her stomach. “I brought you a gift.”

Sophia was no expert on gifts, but she was sure as fuck that a long thick leather-covered handle extending into dozens of leathery strands, tipped with silver talons at each of its ends, wouldn’t exactly be considered as a gift.

All she could do was stare at the instrument he held in his hand like a trophy. Her eyes willed it to not be real.

This can’t be happening, Sophia thought as she felt her throat bob painfully at its attempt to swallow the sudden dryness away.

“We’ve been testing it at the Headquarters for a while now, but it hasn’t relinquished any of the expected results,” the Alpha said as if he was discussing a simple, harmless invention with her.

Testing at the Headquarters?

Was that why he was working down there so much lately?

Were they inventing torture instruments now? For what?

Or the more important question was; If they were testing it, who were they testing it on?

Had she just qualified as a test subject? Why now? Why her?

All these confounding questions shot through her mind at the speed of light, and it was like he’d caught them there within a single moment, and smiled knowingly.

He gave the whip a gentle stroke across its leather strands, as he said, “I know what happened. I know what you are, Sophia.”

So the news had reached him about Matthew, and somehow he had made the connection and was going to punish her for it?

But something in how he said ‘what’ had her reeling. She couldn’t begin to decipher what he’d meant by that. What was she? His daughter. A young werewolf female. Terrified of her own father. Abused. Take your pick.

Though what he said didn’t make any sense, what was abundantly clear to Sophia was that her father was about to go to work on her with that wicked-looking whip. For whatever he thought his reasons were. It didn’t matter.

He’s never really needed a reason to punish me in any case, Sophia thought and knew to not even ask or say anything about it.

She never said anything to her father before, during, nor after her beatings. When she had done this in the beginning, when she pleaded with her father to stop, or at least explain to her why he was doing such things to her, when all this had still been in its infancy, he had usually rewarded her with additional beatings.

In a sentence – Sophia had learned to keep her mouth shut and just simply take whatever came her way.

“Stand up,” he commanded her aloofly, but the tone of his voice still sent a chill over her already cold and trembling body.

By some miracle, Sophia was able to find the strength and balance to stand. Unable to look at him, she kept her head down. She even opted for hugging herself to try and hold her trembling at bay, but it was to no avail.

She figured to herself that the infection those talons would bring to her torn flesh in a moment would at least grant her body some form of heat for the night.

It was a sickening thought that bordered on a comforting one. Just add that to one of the many ironies in her life.

“Take off your clothes.”

Shocked, Sophia’s wide eyes shot up to her father’s. Had she heard him right?

“Take off your clothes,” he repeated more sinisterly now.

Without hesitation, she started stripping to her underwear, because the Alpha didn’t ask anything twice, much less a third time.

As she stood before him, still trying to hug herself, though not so much for warmth anymore, with only her flimsy bra and too-small panties to partly cover her.

Luckily, Sophia was a lot skinnier now than she’d been when she was twelve, so at least she still could wear them. But her hips had certainly widened since then, at times feeling like it would cut off some of her blood supply there. But her underwear size and fit were hardly any of her problems.

“Turn around and get on your knees.”

She did this, still praying secretly. Hoping that the Goddess would hear her. Just this fucking once. Please…

“Now take off your bra,” Sophia heard her father command from behind, already stroking those leather strings in anticipation again.

“Do you want me to ruin your only bra?” he inquired coolly, which was even more terrifying than it would have been if he’d yelled it at her.

Quietly she did as he’d commanded. Helplessly, Sophia held her quaking arms across her chest as she bent forward. With her back exposed to her father, she felt her eyes burn with the tears that threatened to spill at any moment.

The first assault came without warning, and Sophia bit down on her bottom lip, biting down the terrible scream that wanted to blast out from her throat. She heard the faint sizzle on her back where she knew open wounds had been made by the silver talons.

Silver was poisonous to werewolves. Was that why her flesh made that sizzling sound?

“You do not disappoint, Sophia,” her father said with something like excitement in his voice, but before she could wonder about this, or about anything else for that matter, he struck again.

And again.

And again.

After that, Sophia stopped counting. It was just excruciating pain and torment that occupied her thoughts for the rest of the night…