Omega's Tarnished Heart [MxM] (Moon Cave Book 2)

Chapter 18 - 'The Soup'

TOREN • POV

'Image is a fragile thing. It needs to be upkept, polished, nurtured. Once an image is tarnished, it's almost impossible to build it back up to its original standard. As an alpha, image is an important aspect to our lives. The way our pack wolves think of us, determine how willing they are to follow, to blindly obey. Our image is one of strength, one unbreakable, one that cannot, under any circumstance, be undermined.'

'Our image is perfect.'

'To back down from a challenge, to grant another wolf your submission, is a crack in the glass keeping our image together. It shows weakness, it shows fear, it shows that you are unwilling to put another in their place, to assert yourself as the dominant, powerful one. Any alpha who steps up into my position, will never back down from a challenge. He will fight and he will win.'

'If he does not fight, if he does not win, then he is not an alpha. Not to his pack.'

It was a harsh lesson, one I'd learned when I was arguably too young to comprehend the toxicity and the pressure behind such a hardcore mindset. But it was a lesson I'd never forgotten - couldn't bring myself to forget.

I remember fighting with another pup, around the age of thirteen. We'd had a disagreement over a minor misunderstanding that had been blown out of proportion because of communication issues.

Father had been starving me again due to the many large and small mistakes I'd continued to make throughout the course of my childhood. I'd been on the verge of malnutrition sickness when I'd come across a bowl of abandoned tomato soup, steaming in the kitchen of our packhouse.

I'd deliriously believed my punishment was finally up and father had decided to feed me after so long. The bowl and the spoon had held Daddy's familiar scent, causing me to believe that he'd surely left the soup and bread for me. However, it had been made for another pup, a submissive boy who's own submissive father was away and I hadn't known Daddy was taking care of him at the time.

The pup had walked in on me with my face buried in his soup, slurping it down ravagingly, crying it had tasted so good after going so long without the weight of food on my tongue.

He'd been so upset and hungry himself that he'd pushed me. I'd tried to explain that I'd mistakenly believed the food was for myself, confused, but he didn't understand sign language, and well... I'd been too weak to articulate myself in a way that could be understood. To him, I was a random pup who'd wronged him by stealing his dinner.

He'd pushed me again, yelling something that brushed past my deaf ears in a whirlwind. The bowl shattered. I'd retreated quickly, not wanting to fight, too exhausted, too hungry to do anything but mumble apologies. It had, afterall, been my fault and he had every right to be upset.

My father had been watching the whole interaction from the shadowed doorway of the kitchen and I hadn't seen him there, lurking, observing. After the boy had left, I'd been scolded harshly, made to clean up the soup while he yelled about image and backing down from fights - all of this made clear afterwards in a neatly written letter.

As an alpha it was the weakest, most pitiful thing I could ever do. He was more upset that I hadn't fought the boy who'd pushed me, than he was over the fact that I'd disobeyed his 'no dinner' punishment.

I'd spent the night, locked and tormented inside his punishment locker beside his desk inside his office, weeping in the terrifying dark and the next day, he'd arranged for myself and that same boy to fight so that I could fix my 'shameful mistake'.

I hadn't wanted to do it. Not just because I hadn't slept that night, standing for hours inside the claustrophobic space while monsters circled me in the darkness. Not just because I'd bruised my palms banging on the metal, trying to get out. Not just because the gulping mouthfuls of that soup hadn't done anything to satiate the clawing hunger in my stomach.