The Selected

Strike Two

Five Years Ago

Nine months. Nine goddamn unrelenting, infuriating, painful months of training and pushing myself more and more every day and putting up with Michael's bullshit. My skin crawls every moment I see him, every second that I don't have my hands wrapped around his throat and choking the life out of him makes my body itch with the need to do just that.

Connie insists that I'm still not ready, and after that last incident several months back, he's been keeping an extra careful watch over me, always giving me warning glances and small shakes of his head.

Every time he looks at me like that I can't help but feel like the world's biggest goddamn disappointment despite the fact that I'm at the top of every category in training, topping even those who have been a part of this pack for a good amount of time.

But I've lasted this long, so long that my eighteenth birthday had come and gone like nothing, and nothing had changed. Conrad still shakes his head, and Michael still ignites a burning rage within me.

At the very least I've gotten a little better at tuning the pale bastard out whenever he tries to provoke me, to egg me on and attack him again so that this time he might actually be able to kill him. While I've managed to hold back, he knows damn well that I would like nothing more than to kill him, that I hate him with my entire existence. For whatever reason, he seems to hate me too, which is fine. It makes it easier to envision all the ways to kill him in my head when he treats me like shit.

Six months of dealing with him pushing me into the mud at training, insulting me incessantly, into picking at everything that I say or do, and I've been able to resist the overwhelming urge to bash his face in with my fists but today, today felt different.

He strolled into the dining room of the pack house grinning like a maniac, unusual for him, especially under the circumstances that the sun still hadn't fully risen yet. I thought he was a psychopath normally, but that's nothing compared to who or what he is when it's early in the morning. His grin expanded even further when he spotted me sitting there and plopped down in the seat directly across from me.

Michael turned to Sebastian, a newer recruit who had joined the pack when I had via the "selection", who looked immensely uncomfortable. But Michael just had that effect on everyone.

The pale bastard gave his smarmy smile to Sebastian, "You know, I had a dream last night, and it reminded me of this positively splendid memory I had. Would you like to hear it?"

"Yes, sir." Sebastian's response came immediately, because any other response to Michael when he was grinning that wide would be stupid and borderline suicidal.

"Excellent," he all but hissed. "It was over ten years ago, I don't remember exactly when or where because, well, it really wasn't all that important. But it was in this gorgeous forest, and there was a cute little family there, mates and their little girl."

I froze.

He couldn't... He never gave any indication that he knew who I was...

I stared down at my plate, my fork clutched tightly within my fingers, so tight that my knuckles turned white as he continued.

"The male, the idiot, thought he could take me down. I had his throat ripped out in seconds. The female, she screamed and cried and shouted. She put up one hell of a fight, I remember that, but she lost in the end, too. Pity, though, I'm sure with all that fire she would have been fun in bed."

The fork bent in my hand.

"The best part, though, was their little girl, sobbing over her parents' dead bodies. It was pathetic really, and it would've been kind of me to kill her, too, but I decided to let fate take care of her." He paused for a drink and I could feel his beady malicious eyes on me. "Come to think of it, Adelaide, you look remarkably similar to that little girl."

I can't do this. I can't take it. I need to rip his head off.

My mind ran a million miles a minute, and I was about to lose it, I knew that much. I also knew in that split second that Conrad was right, that if I went after him right now like this, I would lose-- again.

So I did the only other thing, I slammed the fork down on the table and stood, knocking my chair back as I stormed back to my room, slamming the door shut before I fully let go and embraced the rage. I knocked everything off my dresser, my desk, ripped the pillows and blankets off my bed and tore into them, shredding them.

I had to get it out, I had to get all of the rage and the destruction out of my system before I turned it on Michael and got myself killed. I screamed again and stormed into the bathroom, only to stop short at the sight of myself in the mirror.

Tears streamed down my face, and I didn't even realize I had been crying. But the fear and anguish in my eyes, I felt exactly like that scared, miserable little girl that Michael had been taunting me over and I screamed again, slamming my fist into the mirror and shattering it.

He knew. The whole time the sadistic bastard knew who I was and how he killed me parents. The fact that he was just bottling up the information for the simple fact of goading me, of hurting me, only made the ache in my chest worse.

I heard the door open. I heard footsteps and the crunching over every broken thing on the ground. I felt Conrad's hands grip my shoulders as he turned me to face him. I sensed all of this, and yet I didn't. I felt numb, like I wasn't there.

"I'm proud of you," He finally whispered after searching my face for a few moments, and I looked up at him. He held sorrow in his eyes, not pity, as he spoke again, "I heard what he said, and I'm proud of you for walking away."

I gave a stiff nod.

"You are so close, Addie, so fucking close to being ready to kill him. But these emotions, this rage within you? It doesn't have a place in this. Understand?"

I nodded again. It was all I could do.