Moonstruck

𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓽𝓮𝓮𝓷 | Learned Helplessness

TW: intense physical and emotional/psychological abuse throughout this chapter

Seth couldn't remember how long he was hospitalized for after being brought back to Cardina by his father. All he knew was that he could barely move a muscle for days. It hurt to breathe, to be conscious, to stare up at the shifting shadows on the ceiling for hours on end to try to make sense of where and when he was in the midst of this all-too-familiar haze. Everything hurt.

Bit by bit, he became lucid enough to listen to the voices in the corridor outside his room. His father didn't come, yet his name and orders were ever-present upon the lips of the staff who guarded his door. His mother was the first to be granted access; she came quite often, and he let her hold his hands and leave some flowers on his nightstand. By the time he recovered enough to sit up in bed, he realized that the flowers came in a delicate glass vase and worried that Lucky would jump onto the table and knock it to the ground—only to remember.

Both Kiera and Mateo visited several times, but not once were either of them allowed into Seth's room. Mateo tried bargaining, bribing, even flat-out begging; when all else failed, he simply pretended there wasn't a door and tried talking to Seth through the walls until they threatened to throw him out of the hospital. Kiera, of course, actually had to be thrown out. Seth only found out about these incidents much later, once he finally managed to convince the nurses in charge of him that he wasn't going to run away. None of them were willing to disobey Caleb Reagan's orders and let in people he had explicitly told them to keep away from his son, but some of the more chatty ones could at least be convinced to drop a few tidbits of gossip here and there.

Jinto visited just once. Seth could hear him arguing with the staff outside—yes, he was a rogue, but he worked for the Beta now, didn't he? He was extremely close friends with Seth Reagan—Seth had always looked up to him, in fact—so let him in right this instant. Seth waited until Jinto went up to his bed; he listened in stony silence as a stream of sorries spewed forth from his lips, as his own heart rate spiked and set off the vitals monitor like a fire alarm. Then he seized the vase and hurled it at his former roommate with all his might. It didn't hit its mark—he was still weak, and the vase landed at Jinto's feet and shattered into a thousand pieces—but it sent the message across. Jinto didn't come back. Seth almost began to worry that Lucky would come bounding into the room and cut her paw pads upon the glass shards, until he caught himself again. Outside, the nurses began whispering about how cold, cruel, and callous the Beta's son was.

The one and only time his father visited, accompanied by both the Alpha and Luna, was several weeks after he'd been admitted into Cardina Medical Center. Though Seth didn't know it at the time, he would be discharged the very next day.

Zahra was the first to speak. "Who would have thought" —she laid a cold hand on his cheek— "that this ignorant pup would come to be the future of this pack. But here we are." Seth tried to squirm away, but she seized him by the chin and held him in place, studying him as if he were an insect specimen.

"I've always thought he would make a fine heir," said Asher, as if Seth couldn't hear them discussing him to his very face. "Better my own flesh-and-blood nephew than some strange orphan girl, anyway."

"I've always thought him stupid, spineless, and weak," Zahra retorted, finally letting go of Seth. "But we shall have to make do with what little we have."

Seth finally worked up the courage to clear his throat. "What are you talking about?"

That was when his father finally stepped towards him in between the other two, smiling with that same dangerous smugness Seth had learned to fear from a young age. "Congratulations, my son. You're going to be Alpha."