Female ✔️

23: for now

The first contraction came in like summer's first heat wave. There was nothing subtle about the rippling pain, or the way that the hours, minutes, and seconds rolled into one another. My body taking all the hits and staggering lower and lower until my cheek pressed against the cold floor. I inhale, expecting to smell the outdoors, but instead suck in the sterile scent of bleach. It's as if time has blurred for me to travel between places.

I lay in a cot, not sure how I got here, a similar room to the ones I had been in after numerous training injuries. There was a pulsing ache between my eyes and fog in my head. I could barely keep the heaviness from my eyelids as they tried to go shut.

My body is trying to rid itself of everything it has, including the very being it worked so hard to create. I know I shouldn't be attached, but it can't be helped. My pup will never know me. I will never know him. Yet we might exit this world together if I can't keep my eyes open.

Shivers wrack my body, a dryness in my throat. I try to grasp at things out of reach like words. My stomach is shattering, bursting, my contents spilling out.

There's a numb aching emotion gnawing at my brain; loss. For what or whom, I can't remember.

"She's losing too much blood." The Healer's smooth voice riddled with fear, followed by assertive shouts. A hand in mine. The scent of pine tree and salt.

"Just keep her alive." Alpha, speaking low in a vicious growl.

"Fuck!"

A low moan escapes me, colors swirling round and round beneath my eyelids that peek open every few moments before slipping shut again. Tears on my cheeks. "My pup..." I cry. I cannot feel him any longer, the connection is severed with another stab to my middle. There is no memory that I will never hold this little wolf, this new life. So small, he will grow so fast. He will be such a strong male. I wonder if he will look anything like me.

My head is suddenly filled with the image of a strong male, sharp nose peppered with freckles from the Sun, lips cracked in Jack's grin, a head of tumultuous dark black curls, eyes pure lupine gold just like mine. The picture dissolves, my hands go to reach for it, as if to hold to this life that could never be. But it dissipates like fog in a warming field.

More shouts erupt into the sterile environment, the hand no longer in mine. The sanctity and peace I may have felt is now foreign to this wasteland of pain and confusion. Jack has left, replaced by a latex grip on my forearm and a needle in my veins pumping warmth into my system. All things vital and physical slip from any possible embrace and I am left...

Weakly whimpering, crying out, until everything slips into nothing at all.

---

"What have you done!" The shriek of my mother is a trill note that hurts my sensitive ears. She's looking at the pink sundress that I ripped to shreds in a shift. I slump against the bed, exhausted, the walls are littered with claw marks, a puddle of vomit to her left. My nails are bloody messes. I shifted without control and was trapped in my room while they went out to meet with their friends and left me alone.

The room full of a forced puphood. There are woven dolls and pink walls and frilly bed covers I have no interest in. I blink at her, a little disorientated because I am still drawing out of the haze that comes with losing control to your nature. I shake my head as she calls in my father.

The two of them stand in the door momentarily before disappearing. My room in shambles I don't really have an opinion on.

Some seconds later, my mother returns and helps me into the bathroom. Soothing words of "It's okay," flow over by limbs like warm sunshine. She bathes me in the way caring mothers do. Nine years old and a disgrace but she still treats me like a good female. Every inch of me is clean when she bundles me in a towel and sits me on my bed. I watch her clean up the things I spilled and tore and destroyed. The walls can't be helped tonight.