Beonnie

Werewolves never run. Or, well, to be honest, we love to run. We run all the time—for fun, to hunt, or on full moon nights together with our pack. We run in all ways but one—we never run away. When the "fight or flight" adrenaline kicks in, we never choose the flight option. Just fight. Always fight.

I sighed, not this time, though. This time, I was in full flight mode, cast away like I was nothing. The last three days had been life-changing for me. And they had ended in the most expected yet the most agonising way.

"I exile you."

Alpha Brett Carson had been unforgiving. I was an innocent bystander, but my affiliation, family, and, more specifically, my father were not. The shame of being exiled made me blush. Werewolves were pack creatures. That is how we lived, defended ourselves, and were. To be banished from the pack was not just humiliating; it was a loss of everything I knew and a plunge into isolation.

 I'm sure people would argue that death was worse, but I don't know. The pain was like drowning. Slowly. I was now a rogue, easy prey for anyone I came across. I guess, in a way, it was like dying.

However, I could not say that I was surprised. My family had never engaged in the pack life per se. My father was from some faraway part of the world, Northern Europe. He had only ended up in our territory by mistake when he, as a lone wolf, strayed into the Dark Moon territory one day. He managed not to get himself killed as the first patrol he stumbled upon happened to include my mother.

She had convinced the alpha to let him stay and join the pack. They fell in love, of course, but for the many reasons that all started with my father, they ended up building a small cottage on the outskirts of the territory rather than living with the rest of the pack.

In our tiny house we lived, well, had this been the fairytale I would have wished for – I would have liked to say that we lived peacefully, but the looming darkness that never seemed to leave my father made peaceful the wrong word to use. 

And now, I needed to leave a little over 17 years after my father crossed the border.

I hurried back to the cottage and put what I thought I needed in my backpack. I found the hiding place my father had directed me to, where I found some money, a leather pouch, and some photographs. I grabbed it all and put it in my bag with some personal things. My hand flew up to my neck, and the unusual feeling of the jewellery reminded me of his last words.

"Beonnie. Take this! Please take this. You'll need it!"

A necklace was hardly something I expected to need at some point. But he was my father. I still loved him.

I looked around.  I didn't want any traces of me remaining here, in this house, in this pack, when I left. I was humiliated and ashamed, and the layer of shame was not only because I was exiled but also because I felt like a coward. I ran away. I ran away not only because I was forced to. I also did it because I didn't want to stay for the execution of my father. 

His death sentence was being effectuated later tonight, and he had begged me to leave before it happened. I knew that had I been the strong daughter I should have been, I should have stayed and supported him. Fearing for my safety after his death, my father had urged me to run instead, to sneak out before anyone missed me so that I could live to see another day.

I had had an internal debate about it.

Should I stay and try to save his life?  Should I try to break him out? I didn't know if I was strong enough. I didn't know if I had... it... in me. The berserk that overran my father when he was enraged, an unknown force that overtook even such a strong wolf as my father's. He had once called it an ancient power inherited through the ages from his ancestors. The ones with the funny language he had insisted on teaching me.

It's not that I was the most attentive student, but some words were stuck in my brain after all those hours of language lessons. Berserk was always at the forefront of my mind, as this brutal force or state of mind caused many, if not all, of my father's and, consequently, my problems.

The berserk turned a bad judgment situation into a killing frenzy in a matter of hours.

Ultimately, my father had convinced me not to stay but to run.

 I quietly closed the door and took one last look at my home. The red door, the dark logs that made up the walls, and the moss-clad roof that Mom always worried about. Not anymore, though. Not since... well, let us not dwell on that now.

One last look. Red door. Log walls. Moss roof. Never again.

Now run.

---  Hild ---

There is something about running away that stays with you—so much so that you still feel like a runaway even when you stop running. You never stop looking over your shoulder. You never stop feeling hunted. Until one day you do, the day when you stop caring. The day you realise that maybe you were never hunted, to begin with, and perhaps your running away was the best thing for everyone involved. Maybe they even wanted you to run.

Well, that concludes a quick step-by-step guide to running away and growing up, turning out exactly as everyone expected. Not that there was anyone who expected anything. I was, after all, not missed by anyone. I had no family, no affiliation, and no friends but the current ones I had. Uhm, none that was.

Reflecting on my 32-something-year-old life, I couldn't help but laugh. I was such a cliché.

Such.

A.

Cliché.

If anyone was writing a movie about a "troubled teen turned trailer park trash," they could call me, and I would have the perfect cliché background story ready for them in five minutes. I had been there and done all of it. I even looked the part. Black long hair. Too much makeup. Too much skin showing. It was an act I had played for so long I had become it, and the original me was now the act I never played. The only thing that needed re-appliance was the black hair dye to cover my light blonde hair colour.

Or, like today, a wig.

I checked the mirror one last time; the heavy makeup made me look like someone glamorous or cheap, depending on the eye of the beholder. The wig's long red hair cascaded down my back as I got up from the chair, took one last sip of the drink and walked towards the door. Mr Marlowe stood at the entrance to the stage and gave me an annoyed glare as I passed him.

"Look a bit more alive, please," he muttered but gave me a crooked smile with his customary toothpick sticking out on the side. 

I stuck my tongue out towards him as I entered the stage through the curtains. It took a few seconds before my eyes got used to the light, but it didn't matter much. I tried to avoid looking out on the crowd anyway. Don't make eye contact. Grab the pole, and dance.

Just dance.

The music blasted, and I moved my body in perfect sync, glancing throughout the bar to see how generous Mr Marlow would be with the tip afterwards. At least moderately generous, judging from the number of men scattered around the catwalk-shaped scene, where I was now slithering around a pole, trying to make them all want me. Badly. 

It wasn't me dancing anyway, just Hilary. Not Hild. Not me.

Somewhere in my subdued mind, I knew that if I ever met with a shrink, they would say that this was all part of shielding the real me from my life. Like it wasn't Hild who was the white trash biker bitch. It wasn't Hild with a drinking and smoking problem. It wasn't Hild who had been used and abused. It wasn't Hild who.. lost her voice. It wasn't Hild who.. anything. It just wasn't Hild. Hild was gone. Now, I was craaazy Hilary! Up for anything.

I had no sentimental feelings about it; a long time had passed since my body was my own. The first time I lost my body, it was to some guy in high school who promised me the world. As a love-starved, dreamy 14-year-old girl, I believed him. I believed him so much that I thought what he gave me was true love—that being dragged into classrooms to perform all sorts of things was love. It wasn't. It isn't. 

It also led to the first time I ran away. I was subsequently found and returned to my foster family, number five in a row, where I stayed for another couple of years to finish high school.

I lost my body involuntarily several times after that, but I also learned that people, men, would pay for just being allowed to look at me naked. Having no feelings about my own body, I used it, fed from it, and nurtured it into an art. Stripping became a way of life, and I made sure to stay in each small town just long or short enough never to get tied down to anything. 

Men were always willing to share their bed or house if only I played the part well. Kurt, being the latest victim, was more than eager to have the new stripper move in with him after seeing her dance for a while. That was two years ago.

A man sitting to my left reached for his wallet, and I smelled the one-dollar bill from up the stage. I gave him a sultry glance and tossed my hair generously as I crawled towards him, making him believe he was the only man in the world.

"Mmm, don't you look... big," I purred and rolled over on my back, tilting my head to make sure he knew how to fasten the bill on me. 

He opened his mouth to say something, but he had already paid, and I gave him what should be interpreted as a longing glance as I focused on finding the next victim.

I turned around and froze for a split second when I saw the local top dog drooling over me from the other side of the stage. Laverne. He was a hard pill to swallow, and my acting skills needed to be on the level of an Academy Award. But there was nothing to it.

Now dance.