It had all happened so fast before I could stop it.
Gale had slapped Amy so hard the imprint was left on her right cheek.
In rage, I put Amy behind me and without thinking, I grabbed Gale's arm and forced her to look at me before slapping Gale so hard my hand hurt.
Gale gasped in shock.
I felt my chest heave heavily as I stood protecting Amy behind me.
Gale's mouth dropped in shock.
"How dare you." She managed to say after a tensed minute of silence.
What had I done?
I had acted without thinking.
Hitting Gale back for hitting my sister.
But how dare she?!
The only reason why I never confronted Gale or anyone else in the pack, why I took the insults and humiliation was for my sister.
And now all my hard work had gone down the drain.
Goddess what was Gale going to do now?
I swallowed heavily. "If you're going to punish anyone. Punish me. I picked the leftovers and gave her. But don't ever touch my sister."
I could feel Amy trembling in fear behind me and my heart broke.
Gale's face twisted in the meanest way possible and there was something else.
Fear.
She couldn't believe that I had hit her.
Poor miserable Jackie had raised her hand against her.
She gently rubbed her cheek.
Just at that moment her mother Luna Elizabeth came in.
"Gale I've been looking for you and-
She stopped short when she saw how tensed the room was.
She narrowed her eyes and glared at me with hate.
You would never believe that she used to be my mother's best friend.
She turned back to look at her precious daughter.
"Gale did something happen?" Her mother asked.
Gale's eyes glowed with hate and then she burst into tears. "She hit me mother! They stole my food and she hit me!"
Luna Elizabeth turned to the both of us, her eyes blazing in fury and rage.
"How dare you whores!" She screamed.
And then she marched to us after picking up one of the large serving spoons in the kitchen.
She pulled me aside and with calculated intent grabbed my sister and began hitting her.
I screamed and used my body to cover my sister.
"Whore! Filthy whores! I'll teach you a lesson!" Luna Elizabeth screamed at me as she repeatedly used the spoon on my back.
Amy was crying and I cradled her in my arms as I felt the spoon hit all over my body.
"Your whore of a mother abandoned you here and left me to raise you! Ungrateful whores!" She screamed.
"ENOUGH!" A commandeering and familiar male voice said.
The beatings stopped.
My back felt like it had bruises all over but I managed to look up and saw it was Alpha Raymond.
He stood at the door and then grabbed the spoon from Luna Elizabeth and tossed it aside.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" He demanded. "Today is the day of the ceremony and the other pack leaders are here. What if they see."
"She hit our daughter!" Luna Elizabeth snapped.
"And we will handle it later." He assured her. "Do you know what would happen if they find out this is how she is being treated?"
And then Luna Elizabeth went mute.
Alpha Raymond had told the rest of the wolf council that they were going to spare my sister and I because they were merciful.
They were going to treat us better just so the rest of the world would see them as good.
But inside the pack, we faced an entirely different scenario.
She took a very deep breath. "They need to be punished."
"And they would be." He assured her. "But we have to be patient."
I still couldn't believe it.
How did my parents never see these people for who they truly were?
"We're not done with you." Luna Elizabeth said to us and she took a smiling Gale away.
Alpha Raymond looked over us, disgust written all over his face and left us.
As soon as they were gone, I hovered onto my baby sister.
She was crying and had some bruises.
"Shhh." I said gently as I cradled her in my arms. "I'm here. I'm so sorry."
She wrapped her tiny fingers around my neck and wept.
"Why do they hate us Jackie?" Her small voice said through tears.
My heart sunk.
Angry that my sister had to witness this.
"Oh Amy." I said and pulled her closer to me as she wept.
I took her to our small room on the last floor of the pack house close to the toilets and laid her to sleep.
The room was a tiny box and we didn't have a proper bed when we first moved in so we slept on the bare floor.
I had worked hard and done extra jobs to earn enough money to buy a bed.
Amy was asleep and so I put her to bed and gently touched her hair.
I kissed her before I left and gently shut the door behind me.
I looked at myself in one of the windows.
I looked like hell, and my hair was a mess.
I saw the single white rose that Amy had given me was now bloody.
I sighed, pulled it out from my hair and put it in my pockets.
I had to continue with the rest of my chores.
Especially now that today was the day of handing over ceremony.
We didn't know much about the ceremony except that there had been a Great War between the twelve founding wolf packs over a thousand years ago.
Eventually they had come to an agreement and there was a split separating our side of six to their side of six.
No one had dared to cross the border because it was only visible every two hundred years.
And that was when a virgin she wolf was handed from our side to the other side.
They said it was an honor and the she wolf would be handed over to be married to one of the Alphas.
But I didn't trust it.
One she-wolf out of the over 20 million people in our world would be chosen by the goddess.
The odds that it could be me was out of the books and question.
I was turning eighteen that meant my sister and I could finally leave the pack.
It was all I cared about.