Ellen.

I laid on the cold ground, my body battered and broken from the relentless torture inflicted by my pack members. Tears streamed down my face as I tried to catch my breath.

Footsteps approached, and I felt a wave of fear wash over me. Derek Stones, my main tormentor and future Alpha of the Crimson Pack had stepped into the hall and loomed over me, his eyes dark with malice as he spoke in a rude tone.

"No wonder it's a useless Omega. The others just hit you a few times and you can't take it anymore? If it was me to hit you, maybe you would have died right away?" He said with a smug grin, while stepping on my already scarred face with his foot.

All his weight seemed to be concentrated on the soles of his shoes. I could feel my eyeballs almost squeezed out by his shoes.

I still wanted to live. I can't die here. So I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth trying to push his shoes away with my hands while begging him for his mercy.

"Please, Derek," I whimpered. "Don't do this."

Little did I know that my behavior would once again annoy him.

When he moved his foot away from my face, I thought I was saved, so I took a big, hard breath. But before I could catch my breath, he yanked me up by my hair and pulled me off the ground.

My scalp hurt like hell. But he chuckled at my pained, distorted expression.

"What are you going to do to my shoes with your dirty hand? Do I need to remind you who I am? You weak bitch, I advise you to be motionless like a dead body while I touch you."

Other pack members gathered around us as Derek tightened his grip on my hair. Fear struck deep in my heart as Derek began to torture me again while the others watched with cruel amusement.

"Watch closely everyone," he announced loudly. "This is what happens when an Omega tries to defy their Alpha."

With that, he kicked the side of my stomach and exited the hall.

Connived by the future Alpha, the pack members immediately gathered around and gave me a new round of abuse and beatings.

My entire body ached badly. My wolf was almost unconscious and my bones felt like they had been trampled upon countlessly.

This time, I didn't bother getting up, I let my body stay still. I was lying on spoilt and expired food, on stones and rocks, and the many other things that had been thrown at me. My nose caught the pungent stench of onion pus that had been thrown at my face and I could only grimace in my weakness.

"Ow! She's such a weakling!"

"Smelly Omega!"

"Why don't you just die."

That and many more followed as they vacated the hall.

In my morbid state, I thought of my life so far. My cursed life in the Crimson Pack.

It started from my birth. As though informing members of the Pack that something forbidden had been birthed, an intense earthquake struck the Crimson Pack the day I was born. Lives, properties, and businesses were destroyed in the disaster and my mother, Mabel Oliver, lost her Life birthing me.

From that moment on, I was considered inauspicious and a bad omen.

Dwayne Oliver, my father was the famous Beta of the Crimson Pack and it angered him to know that his first offspring turned out to be an Omega. He would constantly tell me how my existence brought shame to him and how he wished I was never born.

After all, he lost his precious mate because of me.

They mocked and abused me whenever they had the chance and my father made no attempt to stop it. I was tagged a cursed wolf and they believed any wolf who got involved with me, would share in my accursed fate. Hence, I had no friends.

But that part of my life changed in my fifteenth year when I rescued a gray wolf who somehow got stuck on a cliff. She had hurt her shoulder and couldn't lift herself to the land. I was running an errand when I met her and I helped her up the cliff and treated her injury with some medicinal plants I found. One surprising skill I possessed.

Her name was Natalie Wales and since then we became friends. Slowly, our relationship blossomed and we were soon best friends. She was the only one who didn't see me as bad luck or a tool for others convenience.

Just when I felt like I was about to lose consciousness,Just as my strength started to fall in, the door burst open and footsteps rushed up to me.

"Ellen!" Natalie's voice drove into my ears, " Are you beasts planning to kill her? !" Her mezzo-soprano voice was echoed in the hall.

Maybe these wolves didn't want to kill me in the pack either. After hearing Natalie's yell, they left the hall one after another, yet cursing me as they went.

Natalie tried to argue with the wolves who scolded me, but I didn't want her to get into trouble because of me.

"N-Nat.." I breathed out, proving to her that I was alive.

Natalie helped me properly to sit up, a part of my weight falling on her body.

"Stay with me, Ellen. I'll get you to the doctor."

Natalie kept talking to keep me from slipping out of consciousness.

"Nat? We're going to leave, right?"

"Yes. We'll get out of here alive. Both of us. So, for just one more day, El. Let's endure their shits. Just one day." She assured me like she always does. I found myself smiling despite the pain reverberating in my system.

In two days, I will be twenty. An age of freedom. Natalie and I are planning to leave the Pack to find a real home. Somewhere without pain and torture. Somewhere where I am not considered a curse. Somewhere without Derek, my previous mate...