REJECTED BY THE ALPHA, CHOSEN BY THE MOON

ELARA'S POV My heart skipped a beat... no... several beats. I thought my heart had stopped for a few minutes, but it was only for a moment. "Why is he doing this? I am of no use to him" I thought to myself. I guess my only option was to beg for my safety, for my life. "P...pl..please... Alpha.. Alpha Kane, I am of no use to you, I will gladly be banished from the pack and I will never set foot in here again, please let me go" i said to him, as I felt the anger rolling off off him in waves and I felt the weight of his alpha authority on me, pressing down on me, suffocating me. I hear footsteps walking away from me, and I am relieved, thinking the Alpha has listened to my pleas and decided to banish me instead of torturing me, but then the footsteps suddenly stop and with a thundering voice he says. "You have no right to make a request, no right to beg for anything"  "Please, I just want to be out of your life and let you be, I promise you will never see me or smell me around your pack again"  Smack!! The force of the slap pushed me back. I didn't even know when he walked back and gave me a slap that had me seeing double, he must have used his alpha speed. I lay on the ground, my mouth bleeding and my head banging from the force of the slap.  This was what it felt like to be slapped by an Alpha. "Take her away" he says, and I am led back to the dungeon by the guards. Back at the dungeon, my head reels from the pain but my mind keeps wandering to what the alpha has in store for me, I know it can't be good. "Why does he want to harm me?" I think to myself. My chest tightens with every heart beat. "I accept the rejection, what else does he want from me?" the thoughts keep on pouring in. Goosebumps... Goosebumps crawled all over my skin as I felt a chill in the air, the air suddenly seemed very cold and I shivered a bit. "But there are no open windows, " I thought to myself. "It must be fear, I have felt this so many times", but this time, it felt different, like a presence, watching me in the darkness. I decided to attribute it to fear, fear for whatever the alpha had planned for me. My mind drifted to how I came here and how I started living alone... It was about 5 years ago. I had been living with the chef that worked in the pack house, she was such a mean woman.  When I was found at the pack border, at least that's what I was told. I was told I had been found at the pack border and given to a chef to be taken care of until I was old enough to be on my own. She was no mother to me, she treated me as badly as she could, eagerly waiting for when I would be out of her house. She lived alone too, and most times I would come home after a long day of work at the palace, to no food and an empty kitchen, despite the fact she was a chef and there was always enough leftover.  She preferred to trash the leftovers or hoard them rather than feed me. I started feeding myself after that, I was ten at the time, and when I turned 13, she requested I be moved to a different place to stay alone, because she couldn't cater for me anymore. I didn't cry, I didn't beg, I simply packed what little belongings I had left and moved to the house designated to me, the shack close to the border. I've been on my own ever since. My thoughts drifted back to the Alpha. He was twenty four, he had been looking for his mate since he turned eighteen and he had taken command of the pack since he turned twenty. He was ruthless, and he enforced hierarchy in the pack, the more powerful wolves always preyed on the lesser wolves, that was the way in this pack. I was always the target, though I had always managed to be out of the Alpha's radar. But now, I was on his radar, not only on his, the whole pack had eyes on me, waiting to devour me. The Alpha had been harsh to me many times before, but I had never directly been in his sight, had never been the receiver of his ruthlessness. This was new to me, and not in a good way. I took in a deep breath, the air smelt like old blood, piss and dampstone. The dungeon was a dangerous place. I was trapped in this tiny cell. I was surrounded, and vulnerable. I had seen many people come here and never got out, and now, I wondered if I would be part of those people. I needed to be out of here. I needed to be out of this dungeon, out of this pack house, out of this pack. I needed to escape. But was that even possible? Everywhere was sealed tight. Locks on every door, guards stationed in every hallway. I'd be found before I even stepped a foot out of the dungeon, I couldn't even make it out of my cell. "Please, I just want to be free...free of this place...free of him" I didn't know when tears started rolling down my cheek. I wept at my fate. I don't know how long I cried for, but I stopped crying eventually for fear that the guards would hear me and scold me, or worse, report me to the Alpha. The last thing I wanted was to be face to face with him again.  I drifted off into a deep sleep, far from peaceful. I could feel as though I was aware I was asleep, it was a weird feeling.