Born of Blood

Chapter 8

Her body healed itself slowly.

Her skin reconnecting, thick purple tissue bubbling where it mended together again. Her wrists were still seared, that skin taking the longest to grow and cover the exposed bones and tendons, she couldn't move her hands or the fresh flesh would snap and the injury would return to its horrifying, original, state. The whip mark along her face was hard to heal. She cried so much the skin would keep splitting and have to repeat the healing process. She found herself, most of the time, laying there with silent tears running down silent cheeks.

No movement made her healing easier, so she wouldn't move.

Her eye slowly became less swollen, the relief of pressure the best thing Scarlet could have asked for. No vision had returned to her left eye, she feared it never would, though her right was getting better. She could see The Death Room with perfect clarity once she managed to peel away the blood crusted through her lashes, glueing them together.

Her blood was everywhere, she had to fight not to cry.

It had mostly gone down the drain in the center of the room, right underneath where she had been hanging from the opened chains, though, a good portion of it had gone to the walls. The whip was in the center of the room, where Apollo had thrown it before he stormed out. Brown gloves were tossed to her left, the nurse had ripped them off her hands after she got her out of the silver chains. The nurse had left her here, alone, in a torture cell. She remained curled in a ball, unable to move, for fear of disrupting the healing process, waiting for her to come back. To help her, oh Goddess please, to help her. She feared every moment would be her last, would she blink her eyes and never be able to open them? Would she greet the Goddess or would she become a hollow carcass? There was too much blood around the room, too much blood coagulating in the drain, she shouldn't be breathing. Though, she hardly was breathing.

Would Apollo come back and end her? His ramblings of a mad man whispered through her mind- he had gone crazy. He had gone mad, his wolf turned feral, that had to be it.

Her lungs were too scared to take in air, a deep breath would rip her back wide open. She didn't have enough skin to allow it to heal quickly. She was all ribs and a thin layer of flesh to drag over them like a fitted sheet. Her spine rose and fell as mountains along her back, though she never thought her vertebrae would be so exposed as this, the tips of the white bones exposed as her cells slowly regrew tissue to crawl over them.

Scarlet was scared.

She was really scared, tears flowed as rivers ran down her cheeks.

She had stuck to her duties; she delivered the meals, shoveled the snow, cared for the plants. She delivered meals to winter-lazy werewolves residing in the pack house, cleaned their laundry, their home. She took their punishments without so much as a whimper! What had she done so wrong to be whipped and left for dead? She hadn't spoken a word out of turn since she was young, she had done nothing to deserve this. The burns along her chest were completely healed, she noted, as she remembered the weight of the wolf pressing her into the boiling food and glass bowls. Just a thin layer of rubbery, reflective flesh that glinted in the light streaming in from under the door.

A lot in life hadn't ever made sense to Scarlet- her punishments, the hatred this pack exposed her to on a daily basis, the slavery and abuse she was subject to- but this was terrifyingly confusing. She could do nothing more than lay there. Lay there and weep, heal, cower from the world outside that steel door.

Her birthday had come and gone while she remained locked in that prison. Scarlet didn't know, she never knew the date of her birth. The only people that seemed to know her birthday was Apollo and his father, the Alpha- though, soon, Apollo would take his place. They never threw her parties, never gave her gifts like the others would get. They, instead, would lock her in her room.