"On your knees, Hollow!" he ordered, using his Alpha authoritative aura to force her down.
Viola went down on her knees with a force that hurt her kneecaps, her head bowed as blood dripped from her eye to the floor, her body trembling under the weight of the Alpha's energy. "I… I am sorry, Luna," she said, hot tears mixing with blood as they rolled down her face.
"I would have killed you, but our pack is running short of Hollows to work and serve my Luna. Get out!" he yelled, dismissing the useless Hollow before turning his attention back to his mate.
"Where were we, pet?" Evan purred. "Let me blow on the finger for you."
Before Viola closed the door of the room, she turned over her shoulder and looked at the couple through her good eye with pure resentment.
For days after that, Viola couldn't see through her right eye, and her head ached constantly. She wasn't given food and was still forced to take the pill to conceal her scent while she worked, serving the Luna of the pack.
Many times she thought she would die from the stomach cramps caused by the pill and the lack of food, but she didn't. Death would have been welcomed, but the Moon Goddess didn't see a worthless creature like her as worthy of even that.
She crossed paths with her parents and former friends in the halls of the Alpha's estate a few times, but they acted as though they didn't know her as they walked past. They treated her like air, at least air was still acknowledged, because people breathed it in.
Her father could have saved her from this fate, but since she wasn't his biological daughter, she wasn't surprised he allowed her to suffer.
They had only tolerated her because of the benefits she brought them while she was still with Evan and because of her potential to become a Luna. Now that she had been reduced to a Hollow, they had no reason to acknowledge her or tolerate her any longer.
She had lived most of the nineteen years of her life training to be a Luna, making her adoptive parents proud so they would never regret their decision of adopting her from a nightmare, and they had happily announced her to everyone as their beloved daughter, until four years ago, when she became a disgrace.
And if she told herself that every single rejection didn't cut her down to the soul, it would be a lie she could never truly believe.
Starvation wasn't enough for the new Luna to torment Viola. Many times, Leni sent for her to serve her and deliberately found ways to complicate things in order to torture her further. All of Viola's old friends had now started to hover around the new Luna and joined hands to make her life miserable.
"She looks like a walking ghost, and she smells like sewers. Hey, Hollow, clean my heels with your tongue right now!" ordered one of the Luna's friends, who had once been Viola's own friend. They all laughed as they watched her do their bidding in the most humiliating way possible.
"Useless piece of shit. I hope she doesn't steal your food, Luna? She doesn't look starved enough for a Hollow," remarked Lilly, the daughter of the Beta of a neighboring small pack that sought the favor of the Moonwillow Pack, someone who had lived her life bootlicking Viola in the past and bad-mouthing Leni.
Leni glanced toward the skinny Hollow kneeling before her guest, the maid's uniform hanging on her body like a sack. She would soon turn invisible with how thin she was becoming, Leni thought with quiet satisfaction.
"She wouldn't dare steal, because every Hollow knows the consequence of such an action," the Luna said with a hidden smile, and with that, she continued to make Viola's life even harder.
"Ouch, she clipped off my finger!" Leni would cry, and the Alpha would appear in a blink, hitting Viola or ordering the Deltas to give her an overdose of wolfsbane and force her to kneel outside in the sun.
"She cut my hair too short!" Leni cried, and an enraged Evan would kick or punch Viola without any care for the damage he caused.
That night, Viola lay broken and in pain in the cold Hollow room, staring at the sliver of moonlight spilling through the window as silent tears rolled down the corners of her eyes. She couldn't help but wonder, for the hundredth time, what had made Leni, and the man she had given her everything, hate her to this extent, and why the Moon Goddess had chosen such a fate for her.
"Why me, Moon Goddess? Is it because of what I did years ago? I was just a girl drunk in love and I already regret it, isn't that enough punishment?" She whispered under her breath, feeling a huge lump rise in her throat. She had been a terrible person before all in the name of love, but that love had deserted her leaving her with a painful bitter present.
She had regretted many things she did in the past, wasn't that enough punishment?
Was this really her fate?
"I don't like my fate… take my life if you will continue to make me suffer for being a broken wolfless."
Viola was used to crying to the moon and never getting any response, never any comfort from anyone because she had nobody. For four years her days had been filled with suffering and immense loneliness that slowly eat away something in her soul. Having no one in the world was like a painful curse that would slowly break the heart and crush the soul.
But at that moment, she suddenly felt a strange stir of energy that started sizzling deep into her veins like a foreign power or being. She had never felt this way before.
What was happening to her? She gripped her head.
Just as that question formed in her mind, she heard a strange, distant voice inside her head.
'You are not wolfless. I am here. Make it right and find me. Find our fated mate and find Ivy, once you do that, I will be come to you.'
Viola jerked upright in shock at the sudden voice of her wolf.
Her wolf? She...had a wolf?
Her heart began to pound rapidly and she reached into the recesses of her mind, to that voice that just startled her and gave her sudden hope at the same time but met nothing but a quiet emptiness as if the being that had just surfaced within her had suddenly vanished. It was almost as if she had imagined it.
No matter how hard she tried to call out to her again, there was only silence that met her, nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. Had she imagine the voice just now?
Not everyone had the ability to communicate with their wolves; only Alphas were said to speak with their inner wolves.
What could this mean?
Her wolf hadn't surfaced, yet she had clearly heard her voice just moments ago. What did she mean by find her? And their fated mate?
That was impossible. Without a wolf, one could never find their true mate or even know it them. And without a mate, Viola knew she would rot here forever and die being a Hollow.
But Ivy…
Every muscle in her body went rigid at the name she had tried to erase from her life, failed to erase, and was still haunted by.
Ivy, her twin sister and the only person who had truly loved her in this world. Yet Viola had ruined everything and caused their separation, just as she had ruined her own life by trusting and loving Evan.
If Ivy and her fated mate were the only way for her to get her wolf and be free, then… Viola knew it was almost impossible. She would never be able to find her fated mate without her wolf. And her twin sister—
Was it because of her twin's absence that her wolf had refused to surface? Viola wondered, and her heart shattered into pieces as the thought settled in, knowing it was impossible to find Ivy now, not after what Viola had done to her years ago.
"I am doomed…" she cried to herself, curling into a small ball on the cold floor, arms wrapped tightly around her knees, and weeping herself into another nightmarish sleep, one of her twin, who had hunted her relentlessly for years.