Chapter 2 - Elle
Elle stood on the stage with her hands tied in front of her, as she tried not to reflect on how she had found herself in this situation.
Tried and failed.
The warehouse was full of people who stared at her as if she were an object. A thing to be purchased. Their eyes trailed up and down her body, determining her value in dollars and cents, and Elle felt like screaming at them.
But screaming wouldn't help. Fighting didn’t help either. She learned that three days ago, when they picked her up from the street in broad daylight.
So, she stood there with her chin raised high as her mind drifted back to a different life. Back to the days when she had had a home and family and a brother who loved her.
Back to when it all went wrong.
Her parents had taken her in when she was 6 years old.
Elle recalled how excited the director of the orphanage was, telling her that she was going somewhere.
The director had presented Elle as being a shifter child—one of the few instances when shifter parents had passed away and left their children with human beings.
In retrospect, Elle did not know whether the director lied on purpose or it was an actual mistake. Regardless, the Jones family had embraced her with open arms, thinking they were adopting one of their own.
August had been eight, already showing signs of the serious, intense person he'd become. He was a good big brother, educating Elle on the workings of the pack life, on how to shift, and what it was like to be a wolf.
For years, it had been perfect. Elle had a family. A home. A future. Then puberty hit.
Other shifter children started shifting at the age of thirteen or fourteen. Elle turned thirteen without shifting. The pack was tolerant initially, thinking that people develop at their own speed. There were also shifters who were late bloomers.
Elle turned fourteen. Still nothing.
The teasing started small. Conversations in school corridors. Giggles behind her back. “Still human, Elle?” they would taunt her.
She'd endured it. Held her head high and awaited the change that would make her feel at home.
Fifteen came and went. Then sixteen.
At seventeen, the patience of the pack had been exhausted. The taunting had now taken an uglier form. It was now bullying. They would grab her and push her down in the corridors, bump into her during training, avoid taking her to pack meetings.
And, more frequently than not, on the forefront of it had been Silas Weston.
The Alpha's son. August's best friend. The golden boy that could not do wrong in the eyes of the pack.
He'd been merciless.
Elle recalled how he had stared at her across the training grounds with a look of disgust on his face.
She remembered the scathing comments that he had made to her about her weakness, her humanity, her inherent wrongness.
He never touched her, at least not with his hands, but his words had carved pieces out of her soul.
The worst was the fact that he was worshiped by all. Silas Weston, future Alpha, a strong, capable man destined for greatness. When he made fun of Elle, others laughed and followed suit.
August had tried to intervene, but what could he do? Silas was his closest ally, his future Alpha. Their relationship was strong.
So Elle had endured. She had lived day after day hanging onto the belief that she would one day get her chance to prove them wrong.
Then came the day when everything changed.
Elle had been seventeen, almost eighteen. She used to go to the pack library to borrow or return some books when she thought nobody would be there. But Silas had been there, and he was lying on one of the reading chairs, as if he owned the place. Well, he actually did.
The minute she entered the room, the air changed, thickening with something Elle didn't understand.
Silas looked up, staring at her, and for once, there was no mockery in his green eyes.
Just with the kind of intensity that caused Elle's heart to race wildly.
They had looked at each other across the room. Neither speaking. The silence dragged on like a live wire until Elle felt like she might snap from the tension.
Then it happened.
The vision slammed into her. One minute she was standing in the library, and the next she was in another dimension, seeing something else—a golden thread between her and Silas binding them together in a way that was beyond the pack, beyond friendship, beyond anything Elle had ever known.
Fated mates.
Only a few seconds into the vision, and Elle dropped to her knees, holding on to a bookshelf, her mind struggling to process what she'd seen.
Silas stood up. “Are you alright?”
His voice had been different. Softer. Almost concerned.
Elle had seen him, this boy who had harassed her all her life. The vision burned her heart.
Forgetting where she was, forgetting who she was addressing, forgetting everything, the words poured out before she could stop them. “Could we be fated mates?”
Silas froze. The look on his face was no longer one of concern, but one of shock and panic.
Then he laughed.
It was mean, vicious, piercing. All the softness in his face had disappeared, and in its place was the old sneering contempt that Elle was used to.
“You?” His voice dripped with disgust. “My fated mate? Don't be ridiculous. My mate could never be a pathetic human like you.”
Each word hit her like a punch in the gut, and something broke inside Elle. Something fundamental and irreparable.
She ran out of the library, and Silas’ demeaning laughter followed her into the darkness.
The following morning, the Alpha had called a pack meeting.
Elle stood amongst the pack, still feeling raw after Silas’ rejection, wondering what was so important that the whole pack had to be assembled.
Silas’ father—the Alpha loomed over them with the same stature that his son would grow into
“I'm proclaiming a new pack law,” he announced. “Hereby effective, all non-shifters shall be sent out of our kingdom. We are a band of shifters, and we will not be able to take in those who are not shifters anymore.”
Elle's world completely shattered into pieces.
She glanced at August, who looked horrified. He'd tried to protest and argue, but the Alpha's word was law.
Elle was given three days to prepare and move out.
Three days to say goodbye to the only family she knew. Three days before, she went out into the world where she had no idea what to expect, no money, no hope, and no strategy.
And Elle had known within her that Silas had planned it all. After she asked him about them being mates in the library, he went to his father. He told the Alpha to make this law in order to eliminate her—the embarrassment of a human daring to suggest they could be mates.
August had implored her to fight against it, but what could she do? The Alpha had decided. The pack had supported it. Her adopted parents, as nice as they were, had not resisted the ruling.
So Elle left.
The first year had been hell.
She went to a city where she had no friends, where the abilities she had were applicable in the pack, but not in the human world. She moved around homeless shelters, slept in her vehicle that she had been able to scavenge up enough money to purchase, and went days without eating decently.
She experienced biting cold, gnawing hunger, and the hollow reality of having no warm place to sleep. What it was like to be afraid of strange men following you down dark streets.
But Elle had survived.
She had taken up a job washing dishes in a diner. Then, a second job cleaning offices at night. She had scrimped and saved every penny, slept four hours a night, worked until her hands were bleeding and her feet screamed in protest.
Painfully and slowly, she had built something.
She rented an apartment—nothing fancy, a studio in a crime-ridden neighborhood.
She also climbed her way to the top of the diner, moving from washing dishes to being a waitress, and then was promoted to shift manager.
The human world didn't care that she was unable to shift.
Not that they knew of her world anyway. They were more concerned that she was punctual, worked diligently, and was helpful to customers.
Elle had made friends. True friends who liked her because of who she was, not because of what pack she was a part of.
Friends like Sarah, the other waitress who had taught Elle how to apply makeup.
The owner, Marcus, who had brought recipes from his family and made sure Elle ate good food.
Jennifer, her neighbor who assisted her in navigating paperwork.
She'd learned to be fierce, to stand up for herself. Not to be bossed around or follow orders.
The docile girl who had allowed the pack to stomp all over her had died the day she was exiled. That girl had been replaced by someone who had made her way to the top.
Elle felt stable and happy.
She stopped thinking about the pack or August. And she no longer dreamt of green eyes and cruel laughter.
She had made a decent life in the human world, and it was good. Life was good.
Until three days ago, when everything shattered.
Elle was heading home after working in the diner. It was late, almost midnight, but she had walked this path a hundred times. She knew what streets to avoid, what shortcuts were not dangerous.
She'd turned down her usual street, keys already in hand, when the van had pulled up beside her.
Everything after that was a blur of violence and terror.
A pair of hands grabbed her. A cloth was pressed against her mouth and nose. Her eyes turned cloudy as she had struggled and had failed to escape.
She'd woken up in a cage. Metal bars, concrete floor, smells of fear and unwashed bodies. Other women had been there too, terrified. They were all human.
Elle had tried to extract information from them. Where they were. Who'd taken them. How long they'd been there. The majority were too traumatized to speak coherently.