A harsh slap landed on the cheek of a girl with long, black, curly hair. The impact was so great, it sent her sprawling to the floor. Her head bumped against the corner of a table and blood started to ooze out of her fresh wound.
"Arrgh!" The girl screamed at the top of her lungs when she touched her head and felt this sticky liquid smearing her hand before the pain came in a harsh wave until it blurred her vision. "Arggh! Blood!"
On the other hand, the girl who had slapped her stood still. Anger rolled off her body. Filling her eyes to the brim were unshed tears, which she tried her hardest to suppress. She didn't want to cry.
She didn't want to let them know how much she was hurting.
"What happened here?!"
The door to the bedroom was slammed open and a beautiful woman in her early forties appeared with shock written all over her face. She had the same black, long, curly hair as the crying girl.
"Emily!" The woman screeched, her face went very pale when she saw the blood on the floor and her precious daughter crying out of pain, curling her body into a fetal position. "Bitch! What have you done to my daughter?!" She crouched down next to Emily and started to wail as well, she sounded like a banshee in Dawn's ears.
On the other hand, Dawn, the girl who had slapped Emily, stood there without blinking her eyes. She watched the mother and daughter duo cry helplessly. She didn't feel an ounce of sympathy for either of them.
"Tony! Tony!" Now the mother invited another person to join the scene. "Tony, come here quickly! Look what your daughter has done!"
It didn't take long for a man to appear with a deep frown between his brows. He was the most respected figure in this pack and everyone was scared of him. After all, he was the Alpha of the Moonlight pack, but in front of this woman, he was nothing, but a mere man without any power.
Dawn hated it so much to see her father turn into a person she didn't recognize anymore.
"What happened?" Tony asked, but his eyes widened in horror when he saw Emily bleeding so profusely. She was a shifter, but the wound must be so deep if the bleeding had not stopped already.
Without a second thought, he immediately cradled the girl in his arms. "We need to take her to the healer!" He didn't even ask the reason for her to get injured in his panic.
Seeing her baby girl had been taken care of, Julia, Emily's mother, turned around and faced Dawn, her teary eyes filled with rage.
"How dare you hurt my baby girl!" Julia snarled at Dawn, her body stance told her that she was going to attack at any given moment.
Heavens. Emily was a twenty two years old woman and Dawn was just a year younger than her, but this delusional woman wouldn't stop addressing Emily as her baby girl.
"If you dare to lay a hand on me, I will make you regret it. I will send you to the healer with the worst injury possible, so that it will scar your face permanently," Dawn said in a low and dangerous tone, every word she said dripped with venom and anger, while staring straight into Julia's eyes.
At this point, she meant every word of hers and Julia must be able to feel it too, because she stopped in her tracks and only glared at her stepdaughter with pure hatred and unadulterated animosity evident in her teary eyes.
"How dare you threaten me! I will tell your father about this!"
"You are going to tell him anyway, it doesn't matter whether I threatened you or not," Dawn replied, her eyes were so cold and her tears had disappeared. She felt so much hatred for her stepmother. She had disliked her for years and now this was the last straw.
"You are going to regret this!" Julia stormed out of the room, but before she could slam the door shut, she screeched at the top of her lungs. "You shouldn't have killed your mother, no wonder you don't have any manners at all. After all, you don't have a mother to teach you."
Julia's words were another stab to Dawn's chest. This was not the first time she told her something like this behind her father's back, but the pain was still the same and Dawn would never get used to it.
Julia made a wise move by staying away from Dawn when she said that, because a second later, a pitcher could be seen hurling against the door. It broke into hundreds of pieces on the floor, as Dawn let out an angry and painful howl.
She hated her stepmother and her stepsister, especially when she believed what she said was true; she was the cause of her mother's death.
That was the most awful moment in her life.
She was only five when they were attacked by rogues and her mother died in order to protect her. For years, it was only her and her father. It was only five years ago her father chose Julia as the Luna of the pack and his second chance mate. That was also when everything started going downhill.
Dawn knelt down in front of the shredded picture of her mother and hers that Emily had destroyed. That was the reason she was enraged and injured her so badly. She couldn't care less about the consequences of her actions, because right now there was no punishment harsher than this, there was no pain more agonising than what she was feeling right now.
Dawn covered her face and cried silently. No one was there to console her and the only person she thought would be there for her, started to see her as a nuisance for his happy little family.
She was all alone and things would only turn worse for Dawn once her father returned.