The first thing I noticed when I regained consciousness was that it was cold.

Strangely cold.

My head felt heavy. All of the muscles on my body were screaming in agony from my last beating of the night as I tried to move. My body was pressed against a hard surface, probably the floor of the stone dais. I groaned and opened my eyes.

Yep, I was right. I was still on the dais.

Great.

I looked around, careful not to move my neck a lot so as to avoid any more pain.

My brow furrowed slightly. I sat up cautiously, sending all the snow that had been piling on top of me falling on my back.

And apparently everyone else was gone even the two idiots who'd been assigned to carry me to my 'comfy cell' whenever I lost consciousness.

I sighed a bit happily for a wolf in my circumstances but in reality, there was nothing to be happy about but this didn't bother me at all. I was happy I was alone.

It was probably because they'd felt lazy to remove my chains and haul my half dead arse to the dungeon or they thought it would be a sick joke to leave my lifeless self here in the cold with all this winter snow piling on top of me and go attend the festivities tonight. A sigh escaped me. I was supposed to be used to their kind of treatment. After all, this was and had been my norm for quite a long time.

Plus, the joke was on them, because I loved snow. I sneered at the trees surrounding me as if it were them. I even made a show of sticking out my tongue to catch a flake.

Nevertheless, I had to be jinxed because my joy didn't even last that long. As soon as a couple of snowflakes fell onto my tongue, the heap of snow that had be gathering on my head fell onto my legs, causing the stinging burn of pain to come alive again. I winced.

The night was still young with the new moon shining high in the sky, even brighter than usual, the Moon Goddess' blessing to the wolves on every Winter Solstice, I mused, for them to find their fated mate on such a beautiful night.

I scoffed. Real cheesy mills and boon stuff and I should know. She was supposed to be this gentle, caring badass deity who protected all wolves. She supposedly watched over all the wolves with supreme authority, fairness and justice. Well, almost all of them.

Don't get me wrong, I believed in her the same way I believed in the Boogie Man, which was not. She was a fraud, a sneaky, evil devil who only associated herself with high-ranking wolves. Look, I knew I was playing a dangerous game by openly discriminating her on one of her special nights with her children but if she was half the deity, they said she was, she would have saved me from a life's worth of scars, suffering and pain. There were many times when they beat me when I was still a fragile child that I thought that it was going to be the night. The night she'd take my pain away and make me all better. The night she'd take my soul and put me to rest near my mother but like always I made it through the night. Through every single one of those excruciatingly painful nights. Even the ones with the silver. Those ones particularly haunted me. I closed my eyes, each scream ringing in my ears at the mere thought of those awful memories. The child in me shuddered.

All it took was a little fire, loads of silver whippings and a shitload of iron shackles and any belief of her that the little child in me had before died next to the flame of hope that I would die. All in all, those bastards did a thorough job of breaking me so I would know. My mother always said the Goddess had my back but my life begged to differ. Where had she been? Hadn't she heard my screams, my freaking cries and prayers for help? Hadn't she seen the scars because Goddess-kill-me-now those stuck out like a sore thumb. Even with our advanced healing only a few of them faded but the rest never did.

I was scarred.

I was broken.

I was barely holding on to my sanity.

And she hadn't stepped in yet.

The sound of shuffling leaves behind me cut my long bitter reverie short. I took in a deep breath to see if it was one of the pack guards but this was an entirely different smell.

Probably a rogue wolf.

Before I could shrug it off, my nostrils flared up. This scent was bitter and putrid like burning sulfur and flesh. All in all, it was awful. Like someone-peed-in-their-pants awful.

I gagged in my mouth. No wolf could possibly smell that bad!

My wolf perked up and growled faintly in my head. She didn't seem too happy that I disturbed her but her growls stopped as she took a whiff of the air. Then it was back to the low, menacing growls.

That isn't a wolf, or a witch, I heard her say through all the growls.

I frowned at her. Before I could ask her anything else, a hiss reverberated in air around me. A chill crept down my spine. I felt the goosebumps erupt all over my body. Soft footfalls I hadn't heard before began making their way towards me and then I lost it. My flight or fight sense kicked in and all I could think about was running away. Whatever was behind me wasn't good, I felt it in my gut. I frantically pulled at the silver shackles holding me to the ground until my wrists were screaming in agony. A sharper hiss echoed a few feet from me and I stopped unwillingly. The hairs on my nape stood straight. A cold, rough hand touched my ice-cold skin, setting off all the warning bells in my head. I felt it moving stealthy to my right cheek, making me see its black, charred and somewhat scaly skin and razor-sharp claws. It took me great restraint to not scream there and then when it ran a long claw on the same cheek, leaving nothing but blood in its awake.

I winced in pain.

It hissed again. I felt its cold breath blow against my face as it hovered above me, its claws still lingering on my cheek. My wolf quietly whimpered for the both of us. The next thing I did was completely stupid in my situation, probably the most least expected. But hey, I was a wolf. Summoning all the faux courage I could muster, I looked up.

No.

My jaw trembled.

No.

I scouted as far as I could to the edge of the stone dais to put some distance between us. It followed eagerly. Too eagerly. My wolf whimpered again and she disappeared from my mind. Panicking, I began to pull again at my restraints, its red eyes never leaving me. A knot of anxiety tightened in my chest, the pressure building up there overwhelming me. The feeling was intense, unlike anything I'd ever felt before. Pure, genuine fear.

NO! I tried to scream but my throat was clogged with too much emotion. The pressure became too much. I needed release. I needed it to all go away. I threw my head back and screamed into the night.