I spit the blood that was in my mouth.

The male before me is waiting for me to give up.

Submit.

I sway, feeling darkness flicker in my vision. The instructors hated me. The people of this pack hated me. I was something that should not have been allowed to live.

The male before me is older than me by 3 years. In another year he will shift. He is so close to taking on the soul of his wolf.

He is powerful.

It makes me see how much he had been holding back whenever I attacked him. I had never had a chance. Not now.

But the male before me does not hold back. He waits for me to fall.

I blink.

It was that sense of being able to let go, that gave me the advantage over them. They had a life that they clung to. It made them have a weakness in the fact that they had something they needed to protect every day. Every second. It was the life they had.

But me? I laughed at such a thought.

I would think every day anyway that it should have all ended that night. That first night when it had all started.

So in the end...it did not matter what day I fell. What day was the end for me. Because the first day should have been the last and any other was just an additional piece that I was lucky to obtain.

I look up at the male and smile.

I see him shiver at the sight. The blood is still in my mouth. I feel it on my teeth. It didn't matter who it was that took me away. If it happened then it happened, but I had come to the conclusion that I would not be weak when it did.

So I ran. I ran to the male before me and watched as he took a visible step back from the wild craze he could read in my eyes.

I ran and jumped, launching myself to him, reaching and grabbing, itching to have my fingers around his throat.

He falls, as he thought I would have done, and he fights as he thought I would have not done. And I laugh. I hit him and the heat of blood makes me realize that we are all alive. We are all creatures who could be taken down. And it gives me energy because it made me see that even he, even the leader, could one day fall.

The male is stronger. He pushes up, switching the positions we are in and it soon is his fists I feel. His strength I am at the mercy of.

I snarl at the action, violently moving and trying to shake him off. My vision is turning black. My mind is growing unaware of what is. I find his arm and bite it. I bite it and taste blood and hold on, knowing I would die with my teeth sunk into his flesh.

He is pulled off.

I lay there, blinking in lazy surprise that the instructors had done such a thing.

But my gaze finds the leader.

"What the hell is this?" he is shaking the male. The male before him is avoiding his eyes, looking at anything but his furious stare.

I laugh, causing both of them to look down.

"I'll kill you all."

The male seems frightened as he takes me in, but the leader only shakes his head and rolls his eyes.

He drops the male and leans as if he is going to pick me up.

"Don't you dare," I hiss.

"Be quiet. You need to go to the clinic."

"I don't want your help. I'll go there on my own."

He rolls his eyes again, "I'm not above knocking you out to take you there."

"I'm not above biting your neck and making you bleed."

He smiles at my words, laughing as he easily carries me away. My head hangs down, staring at the observers. Some shake their head in exasperation, while others do not even bother to turn and look. It causes anger to renew in me that they think this is something that is common. Something that does not cause alarm. Our interactions are a joke, and no one is taking my threats seriously.

The clinic is nearby. I close my eyes and avoid talking or looking at him as he makes his way there. The doctors do not even say a word. They are used to the heavy damage I incur from others.

"She has her own room," one jokes.

He sets me there and I wait for him to leave. But he doesn't. I hear the scrap of a chair against the floor and the sound makes me open my eyes to watch him.

"Go."

I point to the door.

He shakes his head. I know he is doing this on purpose. He is tormenting me, and I have to show that he cannot affect me in that way. That he cannot use me to gain humor or amusement.

Instead I only glare at him. He matches my stare and we do not break eye contact.

The doctor enters the room and pauses. He clears his throat causing both of us to look up at the same time.

"I can always come back if this is a bad time Alpha Kaseem?"

I laugh at those words, "Why would this be a bad time?"

The doctor hesitates before moving forward. The leader is watching him, his arms crossed, and body leaned easily back, but I see his eyes trailing the male.

"A broken rib it seems...and you have a bad cut on your cheek...is that a loose tooth?"

Before the doctor can prod it to see, my hand is in my mouth pulling the annoying thing away. I put it in the doctor's hand, "It's not loose anymore."

The leader laughs at the stunned look on the doctor's face as he stares down at the tooth. I ignore them both and speak, "I have a cut on my side that will need stitches."

I raise my shirt, unaffected by the mild protest the doctor attempted. I needed to let the leader know that I thought nothing of him, and his presence did not affect or bother me. He wanted to get a reaction from me, and he wouldn't receive it.

I point to the bleeding wound on my shoulder, "I think four."

"Yes..." the doctor slowly pulls up his tray, picking up the material he needs to clean the wound.

While he does so, the leader looks me over, a smirk on his face, "I would say at least a week of no training."

I do not even bother to look at him. When we were out of the training grounds, I ignored him. I did not want to look at him if I was not fighting him.

"These stitches are ready to come out also, but Vera don't-,"

Before the doctor can finish, I am pulling the stitches that are on my side out.

"I hate when you do that..." he inhales deeply, his eyes flickering to the leader before going back to the new cut that is on me.

"Who cares."

My tone only causes him to shake his head. The doctors here were all used to my behavior.

He is done with his work soon. He pulls back to look at me. I can see the nervous look in his eyes. I was something wild that he did not want to encounter. I was a broken animal that he had no training to fix.

"Please don't go back and train right after you leave. At least rest for today."

"Of course she is not training today."

The doctor and I both look at each other. I can see the wide eye stare of the doctor as he meets my gaze, his thoughts so easy to read. I knew he was thinking that the leader did not know me at all.

"She...she's done it before..."

The leader's head snaps to my direction as I stand and put my shirt back over my head.

"Why would you do that?"

"Does it matter?"

I walk away from them, intending to go back to the training grounds, but he stops me. I look behind to see that he has grabbed my wrist to prevent me from leaving.

The doctor sees something spark between us. He must have read the snap that happened in that split second as I looked down at his hand on my skin. He quickly gets up, exiting the room as fast as he can.

"Get your hand off me."

"Don't be an idiot," the leader shakes his head and looks up at me, "why would you go back to the training grounds?"

"To kill you?" I stated it in an obvious way. Because he should have known. He should have never doubted me.

He rolls his eyes, "Vera, you can hold off on that dream for one day-,"

I take a step near him, tilting my head at him, "what did you say? Hold off on my dream? You think my dream is to kill you? You think that's what I want my dream to be? That's not a dream. You fucking serious? You think you are my dream?"

I take my other hand and forcefully pry his own away from my skin.

"My goal is to kill you. I don't have a dream. You took that away. I'm going back to the training grounds. I don't even know why you had any fucking idea that you had a say in this at all?"

He tsks at me, shaking his head, "your way of speaking is so crude. You're only 13."

And he was only 23. A ten-year gap that would never decrease. I had to make up for the time he had ahead of me. For those ten years he had been able to train. The ten years he had put in to work towards the day when he came into my life and took my parents, my people, and my land away.

He stands then, taking another step closer. I don't back down. I meet his eyes and give him the same look that I had given him a year ago. I hated him. I hated him so much and the only thing he did in return was smile.

"Maybe that's why I like you Vera? Why I let you live?" His hand reaches to grab my hair and I snap, my teeth almost grabbing his fingers that were just inches away. He pulls back, laughing, "it's because you fight without holding back. You hold nothing back."

"I hate you."

He seems delighted by the words.

I turn around and walk away. 

I think next update will be Wednesday, ja? Thank you for reading ♥