Chapter 1:
That's for the memories even though they weren't so great.
This is my first festival. I stand at the kitchen sink and stare out the window fascinated by all the commotion. I've only been in Beacon Hills for a few months. Outside, the full moon's shine covers the town in a pale glow. The Festival of The Wolf has just begun and the streets are filled with vendors, entertainers, tourists, and beggars.
Two small boys run past my window, their laughter rings in the air. In their hands are sticks that spout colorful fire and make a hot whizzing noise. The fire showers the darkness in a spray of color I have never seen before. How wonderful, I think to myself.
Red light seeps in through the windows. It comes from the paper lanterns that people hang outside their houses in honor of the Alphas, the people (sortof) who protect Beacon Hills. The first street parade will happen tonight. The rich come down from the north part of Beacon Hills and are shown to the lesser community in the parade. The Alpha's will also make an appearance, or so I'm told. Around this time is when an Alpha begins searching for a mate, so in short, the festival is just one big breeding ground.
I wonder if this festival is like the ones back home where if you're lucky, somebody rich would take a handful of coins and throw them to the crowd. I don't know if this is even true, since I never went to festivals back home.
The plate I'm cleaning slips out of my hands and crashed to the ground. It splits in two and the sound of glass breaking is very distinct even with all the noise from outside. I drop to the ground immediately, and begin to pick up the mess. I dump the two big halves into the garbage and pray that my father hadn't heard the noise.
A second later my father is coming into the kitchen. He looks frazzled and stares at me from the doorway. "What was that?" I look up at him for a second before shifting my gaze back to the remaining pieces of the plate. I don't pause cleaning it up when he asks me again, "What was that?"
"It was an accident," I say to him. From my position crouched down on the floor, he looks like a giant.
It unnerves me, and when the plate is all put away I want to stand up. But, I don't. I stay on the floor.
"That was my favorite plate, Isaac."
I don't understand.
That plate looked like the other ones in the cabinet.
"I'm sorry, dad," and slowly I began to stand.
My father takes his glasses off his face and rubs the lenses against his sweater. A white tee shirt shows between the moth holes and mistakes of the stitching. He sighs, "I gave you a simple task and you screwed it up. Now I can't even enjoy the first day of the festival because I have to punish you." When I don't say anything back he makes a point to say, "You understand I have to punish you right?" He puts his glasses back on.
The ground suddenly becomes very interesting. So I avoid my father's gaze and stare at the tiles instead. "I said it was an accident. I'm sorry."
My father huffs and crosses the distance between us. I match his gaze just before he shoves his hand through my hair and pulls me forward. His expression is neutral but his mouth is set in a frown. He almost looks concerned. "That's not that I asked, is it?"
He jerks me and I stumble forward. The only thing keeping me not from falling to my knees is the hold he has on my hair. I almost yelp but instead I reach up and dig my nails into his hand. "Ah, no, I understand!" I say frantically.
"Understand what?"
"That you have to punish me."
My father releases his grip from my hair and lets me drop ungracefully to the floor. "Good," he says. "First of all, you're not allowed to leave the house until the festival is over. Now get up."
I stand.
I am both relived and saddened by this because the Festival of The Wolf only happens every four years and I was promised by my father I could go see the parade.
But, I know better than to argue. My relief from a non-physical punishment is short-lived once he says, "You can also clean the entire kitchen. I want it spotless." He picks up a vase that sits on the counter and throws it at the fridge. Water, flowers, and glass go everywhere.
"Dad-," before I get the sentence out, he turns towards me and slaps me so hard across the face I end up back on the floor. My vision swims in and out and all I can hear from my left ear is a high pitched stinging noise.
Outside the parade starts, drums lead the way with a steady beat. My father looks toward our open window before looking back at me and smiling. "You know," he says, "You could be out there enjoying the festivities if you weren't so incompetent." He picks up the toaster which is still plugged into the wall and throws it across the room. I watch him walk over to the counter and run his arm across it, sending all kinds of things flying to the floor. A pair of scissors land two inches from my nose.
My eyes sting from the slap and I can already feel a bruise form over my aching jaw. When we moved to Beacon Hills, a strange part of me thought that maybe things would be different. I was wrong. My back is still sore from being thrown against an open drawer for getting a D in physics class.
After Camden died, my father started punishing me. He wasn't always like this though. I remember when I use to idolize him and look forward to father son time. Every now and then I see the father I once knew. Every now and then he comes into my room late at night and sits by my bed and tells me how sorry he is. How sorry he is that Camden is gone and now there's no one here to stop him when he loses control.
Or maybe he never had control. Camden always sheltered me from my father when we were young. Father favored him greatly but I didn't mind because to me, he was the Sun and the Moon.
"Don't go home unless I'm there." He said to me once, knowing that I was too small to get away from father if he decided to punish me.
Most nights I would sleep in his bed with him. Dad had a habit of storming in my room at odd times late at night. But, Camden was a teenager and like most teenagers he wasn't always at home. He stayed out late and when I couldn't sleep next to him I'd stay awake in my bed until I knew he was home.
Now that he is gone, died in combat, things have gotten worse. My father is right when he says there's no one here to stop him from kicking the crap out of me now.
I'm still on the floor when my father opens up the fridge and throws everything out of it.
He places his boot under me and rolls me to my back. "Get up," he snarls. "I didn't even hit you that hard. It was your fault"
I don't move.
"Isaac, I said, get the fuck up!" He reaches for me and hauls me to my feet, his hands grabbing the fabric on the collar of my shirt. "Or do you need to be punished a little more? How about we see the boys?"
I shake my head no furiously and try to pry his hands from my shirt.
"Yeah? I think we'll do that." He starts dragging me across the kitchen.
"No! No, no, no. Dad, stop," I wriggle out of his grip only to trip over my own feet and clip the door frame.
He's on me now, pressing me up against the wall, "Isaac, Isaac, calm down. You're only going to make it worse for yourself if you don't cooperate."
We struggle down the hall. I fight him and he fights back. Pictures fall from the wall and the stand by the door gets knocked down. "Come on son, lets go see the boys. How about it?" He runs me into the door and my spine goes numb. "Isaac," he coos, inches from my face. "Don't you want to make some money? How about helping your old man out. Besides, you owe me for all the things you've broken over the years."
"No," I say loudly, then quieter, "I don't want to go. I'll clean up the mess in the kitchen."
He chuckles, "See, no. It's not just the plate I'm talking about Isaac. It's the D on the report card and forgetting to clean your room." He looks directly into my eyes, "I've given so much for you. It's time you give some of it back. We'll start by having you make some money that I can use towards all the shit we now have to replace in the kitchen."
"But, I already went this week."
He pressed me harder into the door, "Well, you're going again. You don't really have a choice, see, I have a couple of high end buyers waiting for an opening. Hell, I bet they'll even pay extra since it's the festival."
Nights that start with a talk about "the boys" usually ends with me in a stranger's bed; trying to separate my nightmares from my hellish reality of being rented out to men who can't get ass and have to pay for it. I've learned to focus on other things, the color of the walls, the sounds outside, what happened in school that day. In the morning, no matter how long I stay in the shower thinking about an alternate reality the gross truth always catches up to me.
I was fourteen when it first happened. Now three years later when I lie awake in bed I can still feel the weight of someone above me, the groan of the mattress, teeth on my skin, and fingers on my hips. Oh, and the bloody pain.
Now my back was really starting to hurt. I found the door knob and twisted it in one fluid motion. The door flies open and I go with it. I tumble out into the street, literally. My foot misses a step on our walkway so I literally fall back-first into the noisy street. Before I can hit the ground I collide with something hard.
I hear a grunt and know it's a human.
The force takes us both to the ground.
And everything stops.
The drums are far off in the distance but it seems that I single-handedly stopped the entire opening parade. Or at least a portion of it. The music slowly stop and the people close enough to see the collision gasp.
"My bad," I say and scramble off whoever I fell on.
"Jackson," someone says. I look up and see the face of Alpha Derek Hale. He's on a float shaped like a giant sphinx and he's looking towards my feet expectantly.
"I'm fine." Jackson seeths from the ground.
I look down and get my first look at the person I slammed into.
Oh.
That Jackson.
The one with all the money and a pretty face. Not to mention he's a star athlete, a beta, and has jaw bone chiseled from the hand of God. His father would own Beacon Hills if it wasn't for Alphas like Derek.
Out of all the people I could've landed on, it had to be Jackson Whittemore.
Jackson stands and doesn't bother looking at me. Derek jumps down from the float. He's wearing a long sleeve raglan shirt with the Alpha insignia on the front. Jackson on the other hand, looks like he's important in his expensive dark blue button up with the sleeves rolled up.
"What about this one?" Derek says and points to me.
I raise an eyebrow.
Jackson turns and openly looks me up and down before scoffing, "What makes you think I'd want him?"
Wait.
What.
Derek rolls his eyes, "If you keep up this pickyness then you'll spend your heat chained up in the basement. You know that right?"
Jackson gives me a second look over and cringes, "Did you not just see him smash into me Derek?" Offhandedly he adds, "I'd probably kill him."
I don't know how to respond. I don't even know if I should respond. So I don't. Derek looks past me and his face moves to a sly grin, "Lahey. Perfect, just the man I needed to speak with."
My father walks beside me and nods at Derek respectfully, "Derek."
"Is this your boy?"
"Yes," he places a hand on the back of my neck and squeezes almost painfully. "His name is Isaac."
Derek gives a lazy look at the crowd that's formed around them before looking back to me, "This is the one you've been whoring out? He's not even legal."
My father makes some appalled noises and rubs my shoulder, "I don't know what you're-,"
"Yeah, not buying it. Don't think I don't know your dirty little secret." Derek taunts playfully. This Alpha, hes is different from the others. Intimidating. "Oh and all the underground black marketing you do. That'll get you in trouble if you're not careful."
Jackson looks confused but stays by Derek's side.
Derek looks at the ground and stands with his legs shoulder with apart and his hands tucked into the front of his pockets. "So here's the deal. You find a way to pay back every cent you cheated or I'm going to rip your throat out," a pause, "With my teeth."
My father is flustered and on a whim he says, "Take Isaac."
Jackson's eyebrows shoot to his hairline and so do Derek's, "Take him?"
"Yeah. He's a hard worker. He can work for you and pay off my debt."
Oh fuck, no.
"No." Derek spoke my thoughts aloud. "It's your debt. Not his. Great idea though. You work on the reserve now until your debt is paid. You start tomorrow. Show up at the reserve at dawn." The string of orders went right in one ear and out the other with me.
"Did you just offer to sell your son?" Jackson asks my father. He looks uncertain and a little disgusted.
"Wouldn't be the first time," I say without thinking and as soon as the words are out of my mouth I want to grab them and lock them away.
Shit.
Derek looks at me. Just looks. So does Jackson.
Pity.
When Derek leaves, Jackson follows. Our eyes meet. His are a dull blue. The kind of blue that makes you stare a second longer than you should've.
The parade resumes but everyone around us is staring.
My father hauls me back in the house and for a moment I brace myself for a beating until he lets me go and walks to his room, muttering the whole time.
The food on my plate is cold. I haven't gotten the chance to eat it since my father is pacing in front of me yelling, "No fuckin' way am I going to that fuckin' reserve." He spends the next hours preparing me to go in his place.
I don't agree to this.
But he's my father and he's already spending an eternity in the lowest circle of hell so I don't argue. Truthfully, I want to desperately get away from him. But he is my father, and he wasn't always like this.