Virgin Sacrifice to the Last Lycan - Chapter 60: Chapter 60

Helen POV
My grandmother’s face is beautifully cascaded in a gold shine. She is an angel, literally and physically, but she looks like one right now, floating inches from my face.
I reached out, wanting to take her hand, but it moved right through the illusion. My heart sank knowing I couldn’t reach her, not even in my dreams.
Everything turned quickly, sending me to the floor of my parent’s kitchen scrubbing the floors and working on my blistered knees. I could see how small I looked then, how pathetically easy of a target I was to my relatives, but it still hurt, nonetheless.
“You are cruel!” my nana’s voice carried through our home. “You don’t see it yet, but I do! I see how you treat my granddaughter! She will make you rue your behavior one day.”
“The maid child? Please, Gertrude,” my mother’s voice heckled, “what a joke this is! She is a pathetic little runt. You should be happy that I’m even considering keeping her in this house!”
I scrubbed the floor harder at that casual threat. I didn’t want to get kicked out. I loved my parents and my sister, but it was starting to sound like they didn’t care for me all that much.
“Mother please,” my father barked, “stop trying to tell us how to raise our children.”
“That filthy, ugly mutt is yours,” my mother snapped.
“Whatever the semantics are,” my father snarled, “I am the future Alpha of this pack. I make the decisions on what to do with that child. She is mine, no matter the uselessness of her! I suggest you leave, mom. Right away.”
I sat up, panicked to hear steps coming into the kitchen. My nana was in her golden glow again, so precious and beautiful. I could hug her this time and not go through the sight of her. She held me tight and kissed the top of my dirty, tangled hair.
“You just wait, my darling Helen. You will show them all one day how amazing you are.”
She handed me a necklace, sporting two metal rings on the chain, and my heart leapt as I realized these were the rings I would go on to wear thought my life for comfort, their origin so fuzzy to my memory.
She laced it over my small neck and it hung to the middle of my chest now.
“This is—”
“Mother, leave!” My father barked. He charged into the kitchen, striking me to the floor while he tugged his own mother out of the house by her elbow. “I told you to leave the raising of that girl to me and my wife!”
“Nana, no!” I cried, begging.
She was shoved out the door, my father finding my hair into his fist. He looked down on me from a million miles above my head, disgusted with the very sight of me.
“You better hope you find use soon, otherwise I’ll sell you off to some damn rogue and make you someone else’s problem, Helen.”
He looked at my new necklace but thankfully he didn’t take it from me. With a harsh shove he threw me to the floor and I felt my young wrist bone pop in response. I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream, and I found no comfort in my parents.
They went back to their meal with my small sister, cheerfully playing family while I was left with table scraps and hateful looks.
The scene was thrown from me when I woke up abruptly, mid-scream and drenched in tears.
“Whoa, hey now, it’s okay!”
Justin’s arms found me, pulling me back into the soft bed. He pinned me there until I settled down, yelling for my nana even though she wasn’t coming back for me.
I broke in his arms, shivering in his grasp as I wept into his shirt, balling the fabric in my fists while I wanting to release my anguish over that memory.
“She didn’t—get to tell me—what the necklace—means!”
Justin brushed my hair back with his warm palm, wiping my tears while he was there. “Okay, relax, mate. Just relax. Everything is fine. It was just a dream.”
But it wasn’t. It was a shitty memory, a piss-poor nightmare of my actual upbringing.
I fled to the makeshift bathroom, curling over the toilet installed in the corner so I could throw up whatever was churning in my gut.
I screamed, feeling my father hit me, seeing him so angry with my mere existence at such a young age. It made me feel like I was the smallest bug in the world, begging to be squished under his boot.
“No! No, I’m sorry!”
Justin slid into the bathroom, pulling me off the floor where I had instinctively curled around the base of the toilet, trying to regain my footing but it was useless.
“Stop it, Helen, it was a dream, I promise,” Justin pleaded. He looked to his side, Randy in the doorway with a cautious look of concern. “Shh, it’s okay. You’re okay now.”
He patted his hand over my shoulder, letting me fall to the floor in my pathetic ball.
“My own damn family,” I panted between sobs. “Why would they hate me so much? What did I ever do to deserve that? Why couldn’t I be like Diana?!”
I hadn’t ever said it out loud, but it was a thought in my head my whole life, leading up to her marrying Scott. I was repulsed by the sight of him now, our bond gratefully severed, but even a mating pull wasn’t good enough to keep him around me.
“There is no comparison,” Justin grumbled. “You are my mate, my Luna, and she was a filthy attention seeker. That’s all.”
Part of rejected that idea.
Maybe it wasn’t her at all. Maybe it was my horrible parents. They taught me that I was nothing but trash in their lives, and that Diana was enough of a daughter to fill both roles in their lives.
The expectation she had to be better than me, to take up where I lacked in every position, was forced on her by my parents. She took my mate, or Scott had taken her; it’s hard to determine the logistics as I consider it in depth.
I was expected to be nothing but a useless daughter, hated by her parents.
Diana’s expectations were to fill the void I made in our parent’s cold, dark hearts.
“I hate my father,” I breathed aloud. It felt way too good to admit it. “I hate my mother. I hate what they turned Diana into. I hate what they did to me.”
Justin and Randy nodded in silent solidarity to my words.
“My own grandmother, the Luna of that pack at that point, scolded my father over how he treated me. he hated him,” I said, more sure of that now than I ever was before.
I held onto my necklace hoping some of her wisdom and power could still be reflected into the trinkets. I could feel her presence with me.
“His pack hates him for how he treated her,” I added, recalling how my grandmother would go on to tell everyone how horrible her son was to her grandchild. That hatred spread so fast my father couldn’t stop it. “He is a horrible, weak, Alpha. He relied on nothing but Diana to fill his empty heart and now that she’s gone, he’s probably so wounded from it that he is failing more as an Alpha.”
Randy and Justin exchanged a silent, knowing look that spoke volumes without a single word traveling between them.
Justin kissed my sweaty, warm temple as I laid on the floor at the bend of his knees.
“You make a very good point there, mate,” he said. “He is probably so weak that his pack is filling his inability to be a decent Alpha right about now.”
I knew what that meant.
“We will recruit his pack to join ours,” Randy said.
Justin grinned at how pleased that made me. My face lightened and I smiled at last.
“Let’s go make that weak father of yours pay for what he did to you, mate, and in turn let’s start building a pack with the most powerful Alpha and Luna to ever exist.”