© Claimed By Him ~ Elektra Orfanos

That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

"LUNA!" My mother cried out embracing me tightly as soon as I slid off the horse.

"Mother you're suffocating me." I choked out. She pulled away and trapped my face in her soft hands analyzing my person for anything wrong. Her wild dark hair is unkempt and hanging around loosely down her back, her eyes are hazel and much lighter than mine, mine are dark brown almost earthy although she does say they're alluring and one of my best features. Her skin is light from lack of sunshine because she's always cooped up inside to do whatever a mother is supposed to do and today she's chosen to wear her grey blue dress with a few brown sewn on patches but using a white apron to hide them. She's the most unusual woman, we're wealthy enough to have our own servants but she is willing to do the chores with them.

"You're alright?" She asked checking my temperature.

"Yes."

"Good." She said then suddenly she cuffed my right ear. "What do you think you were doing out late on your own!?" She smacked me again lighter than the first time. "Out on full moon! Didn't I teach you better!" She smacked my head again harder Han both the other ones.

"You really think hitting me is going to..." Smack.

"Don't talk back to me. I was worried sick and no one would help me search for you! Your father had to keep me tied to the bed so I wouldn't travel down to your grandparents and run around the woods to find you." I looked around her and saw the carriage that was set up. She really was going to ride out and find me?

"I'm fine I'm always fine."

Her hand raised again but she dropped it to her side sighing heavily. "Yes I know but you shouldn't push your luck. Because the next time Lady Luck will be helping someone else more worthy of her time."

"Why thank you mother..." I growled and she cuffed me again.

"Watch your mouth."

Don't be shocked that she hits me.

Ever since I was a child and learnt to run I was always mischievous so to punish me she would smack me. I've been alright for the past seven years so I guess the devious devil inside of me has returned and made her frantic. I deserve the spankings I get but not this time. No this time I have done something right. I think.

"I have to tell you something!" I urged.

"You most certainly do! Now get inside before I cut off all your hair!" She's always scaring me with threats like that. The way she shows affection is strange to others but I still love her no matter what. It's father I have the real problems with... Anyway it's not the first time I've been missing for a couple of a days... Oh dear that sounds bad.

She forced me inside by my bruised wrist where our servants scurried towards me ready to help but mother sent them away enraged. The pastel green walls holding up the portraits of my father's fathers in the entrance way frowned down at me. I stuck my tongue out at my recently deceased grandfather.

They say respect your elders but if they're dead then what's the point? Especially if in their life they were nothing more than self-absorbed pigs. I hated the way he talked down to my mother all because she was just a simple peasant girl when father met her. I especially hated how he tried to turn me against her. I was ten years old and at that moment at dinner when he was arguing with my mother I decided his hand was better to chew on than the broccoli. I earned a proud smack on the head from her. I regretted nothing because I caught her laughing later on in the night.

I was forced down at the dining table next to my younger sister Ella. Ella is a chubby pretty thing with all the right junk in all the right places.

As my mother says and well wide chest and round stomachs are the latest fashion these days. She's really a complete perfection since she has a slender face and big brown eyes that match my own.

Recently she's turned fifteen and now she thinks she's old enough to make her own decisions. Not to mention she thinks she is a mature young lady and better than me in everything. Until she has fought a pack of stupid boys with a parasol and one of their own canes she has nothing on me.

"Where were you?" Ella hissed at me while mother rummaged around in the kitchen warning the staff about my father having been just woken up. Our place isn't as bad as others assume, it's nice and spacious on the inside and every room is a earthy colour like in here the walls are moss green. It's the outside that seems to trick a person's eye. We're in the city but on the outskirts of it. Our house is double storey, it includes French windows on the first floor, a deep front entrance porch with a projecting bay above, new siding of clapboards on the first floor and shingles on the second floor, and a balustrade at the edge of the roof.

"None of your business." I replied darkly. I don't mean to be harsh but I woke up on a bed of rocks. This isn't exactly my morning also to add on to my discomfort people in the village either think I'm a whore or insane. My grandmother literally bathed me in holy water then pressed her cross on my forehead until it made a print on the skin.

"What are you hiding?" She provoked looking smug. I may not be able to take on a werewolf but dealing with a little brat is my specialty.

"Why do you always have to know everything? Especially about me."

"Why are you always so secretive?"

"Because you're always so nosy."

"How am I nosy?"

"Can you shut you fu..." I bit lip as mother swirled around to face us her hands resting on the table almost like she's holding herself back from pouncing at me. I have no doubt she will if I say one wrong word, we are a group of very emotional, psychotic women with I'll tempers and ulterior motives.

Be good Luna.

"What happened last night!?" She finally asked with a voice as scary as thunder.

"I saw the wolf." They both stiffened but Ella gasped in shock before she asked me. "How are you alive?"

"Exactly." My mother added not believing me. "You would be dead. Did you go off to see that Richie boy?"

"What?" I asked stunned. I barely know the guy what's he got to do with anything?

"Ella saw you with him yesterday and those three tarts. They are a bad influence Luna!" Ella is spying on me now? I shot a quick glare at her as she avoided looking at me. Richie? Really you couldn't have picked a handsomer bachelor so make me whore around with? It had to be Richie?

I'd rather sleep with the wolf.

"Those three tarts are my best friends!" Marylin, Satine and Valerie may be 'promiscuous' but that's why I love them and they're not even that bad they're all still 'pure' as far as I know and care. Women only gossip about them because they make men go weak and use them to do what ever they want and the bastards are willing. They hold a strong influence over them that other women are envious of. Some times they don't even do anything but breathe in a certain way that gets a guy excited.

"Those girls will get you into trouble." She said. She's only saying that because she's upset, I know she loves my friends and they adore her.

"They won't I'm the one that comes up with these twisted ideas not them!"

"What twisted ideas?" She questioned.

"I wanted to go out to kill the wolf!" I shouted aggravated.

She ran a hand down her face. "I knew I shouldn't have let you stay with your grandparents. I should have chased after you as soon as you had disappeared from the house."

"It's not like it was their idea and don't blame them how are they going to stop a raging female without snapping their spines like twigs!?" My grandparents on my mother's side live out closer to the woods. She hates me going there because there's no control over me when I'm out in the forest. No one to trap me inside. But if I don't visit them who will? My mother has kind of abandoned them only because dad doesn't like them.

"Your grandparents let you go out on a full moon to hunt the beast we're all trying to hide from!"

"They didn't know! I climbed out the window but there's nothing to worry about because I'm still alive."

"I don't believe this."

"Yes neither do I our brother did the same thing, our brother who died from the wolf. I think you're hiding something." Ella said suspiciously.

"Of course you would you're an idiot." I spat at her.

"Don't call your sister that!" Mother snapped now pacing up and down the room.

"I'm sorry. But you have to believe..." Soon I'm going to turn to begging just to get someone to listen to me.

"Where were you last night Luna?" She leaned forward on the dining table to glare down at me. She looks vicious but not as scary as Alpha.

"I just told you." I whined.

"So you're saying you killed the wolf."

"Well no... He just let me live." I can tell I'm not getting through to her and I'm not surprised. This all sounds ridiculous if I was her I wouldn't believe me either.

"He just let you live. Oh well that explains everything!" She yelled out sardonically throwing her arms up in the air. I feel all the servants all crowding around in the kitchen listening in. Don't ask how but I always can feel the presence of people within the house it's just something I have learnt.

"What is with all the yelling?" My father groaned stepping downstairs.

Uh oh.

Everyone went silent as he stared directly at me with his auburn coloured eyes right through the doorway.

Why me?

He's wearing an unbuttoned white shirt showing his grotesque hairy flab, his face is the same shape as his stomach and his neatly trimmed brown hair is so short you can see that his skull is almost square shaped. God made it too easy to make fun of his austere features.

He stayed on the steps.

We are all thankful.

See there is one flaw in my little ability, I can never sense where he is. "Are we not in mourning of our long lost blood?" He questioned referring to our brother. "Your brother." He added making me teary eyed. "My son." He only died a month ago but still I can control my tears. He did the exact same thing as me, he went after the wolf and never came back. "Enough with this behaviour. I will not have misbehaved women in my house." He said as threat to all of us.

I gazed up at mother as she glared away from everyone looking as if she has a sour taste in her mouth. That's how she always is when father enters the room and she is using the wall to hide herself from him.

"We're sorry daddy." Ella being a seeker for love and acknowledgement whimpered frowning innocently at him. He nodded without a word to her then directed his eyes back on me.

"Where were you last night?" His voice sounds like a low growl. It irked me how similar it is to Alpha's.

"She was with my mother and father." My mum said for me surprising me but I kept a straight face as she kept her sour one, staring at the withering white roses from our neighbours in the corner. They're for my brother and they're as dead as he and my father is.

"I'm asking her." He said venomously.

"What's the difference?" I pushed immediately regretting it.

"What?" He growled.

Not worth the risk, not worth angering him. I bit back my sarcastic remarks. "Nothing." I muttered holding his cold gaze.

"SPEAK UP!" He bellowed making me shiver.

"I was with grandma helping her with the loss of Michael." I said louder staring at the table. My thumbs are fidgeting in my lap and my heart is drumming so loudly in my ears. How is it possible that I'm more afraid of my father then I am of Alpha? Alpha could kill me if he really wanted to and maybe that's just it.

Father tolerates me because he has to, I would be an idiot to think he loves me. Alpha truly wanted me by his side for the entire night, my own blood can't stand me for five minutes, since it's unfair to be comparing these two monsters when one is family I shouldn't be making judgments. Alpha has really murdered and probably eaten people and that's way worse than eating at people negative emotions. Yet there's still that annoying gut feeling that forces me to trust Alpha more than I could ever trust my father.

"I'm going out." He suddenly declared walking back upstairs. "Keep it down."

"Yes sir." Ella and I said in unison.

Mother said nothing.