Cam POV
“Don’t you talk about her like that, in fact never speak to her or about her again, you are not worthy to have her as a daughter. In fact I want her out of your house permanently.” Mateo spits, still breathing hard, his wolf is fighting to break free. “She can have my room here at the packhouse or stay with Sierra, anywhere but with you.”
“We all need to calm down, clearly there is more going on here and we all want answers.” My dad looks at all of us, lingering a little longer on Beta Daniel. “Kyle you seem to have information the rest of us don’t, please fill us in, then I would like to hear what you kids know.”
Kyle proceeds to tell us he noticed about four years ago that Skylar started coming to additional training with the little pups. He didn’t care much because they were always wild and help is help. It wasn’t until a couple years ago, he noticed bruises and marks on her arms and legs, that were definitely not from training. She wouldn’t say anything about how it was happening for a long time and he finally just started giving her a salve that would help the bruising heal more quickly because she was worried about getting in trouble at home for having bruises when she should be better at fighting as a beta. He looked shamelessly at Beta Daniel and told him the way she described her injuries at least confirmed that the abuse wasn’t happening at home. I hadn’t even thought of that. We all looked at Beta Daniel, silently letting him know what we all thought about his treatment of her. Beta Daniel did not waver in his stoic expression.
Kyle let her come to more and more training, as it seemed to make her happy and she had less injuries the more she trained. He thought she was getting better at defending herself. She was also a natural warrior, one of the quickest to learn and master skills he’s ever seen. Which also made him wonder about the injuries she did show up with. She almost never got hit in training, so what was she doing to get injured? He then introduced her to the Luna and her warrior’s training, hoping being around females would encourage her to confide in someone. He said there was a weekend last spring when she didn’t show up for training, like normal, but he also knew she didn’t talk to many people so there wasn’t anyone he knew to ask about her well being.
My heart sank and every part of my body froze, he did notice, but brushed her off like the rest of us. When she did return, she was pale and noticeably thinner, but trained just as hard as always and avoided any questions on where she had been. He only found the scars on her back because he was teaching her something new and his hand got caught in the very baggy shirt she was wearing and brushed the wounds. She cried out in pain and blood started seeping into the shirt. She refused to go to the pack hospital and the only way he would agree to help was if she told him what happened. With a lot of prompting she gave every detail of the torture, which he was not willing to repeat in front of my mother, except for descriptions of the people. She said nothing was going to be done about the bullies, it’s not their first time doing this and if they get in trouble, it would only make it worse on her in the end because they would retaliate.
“So, you see Daniel, she was not being dramatic.” Delta Kyle finishes.””What did she tell you guys? Clearly it was enough to light a fire under your asses this morning.”
We all relayed what Sky told us. Filling in things we noticed about her as she told her story. By the end Sierra was sitting on Sam’s lap softly crying, Mateo was pacing again, Oliver had his head in his hands, elbows leaning on his knees taking very audible, deep slow breaths. Dakota and I are rigid in our seats looking at our dad. We know he’s thinking the same thing that we are. She isn’t the failure, we were. The current and future Alphas didn’t notice the trauma happening to a ranked member of the pack. Someone who got so good at going unnoticed that we missed every sign for years.
“Oh my poor girl. How did none of us see this?” My mother is openly crying now. My father pulls her into his lap and holds her tight. “We knew it was not good, but this is so much worse, and she believes she deserves it.”
