The Rancher's Hired Hand

Prologue

Why does an abuse survivor - or victim - stay with the abuser?
Amber Pieloor explained it this way in a post on social media: "Everything a domestic abuser does has just one objective: Making it so their partner can never leave them. The psychological abuse, controlling access to money, getting them pregnant (to create more hostages, essentially) is to keep her there because abusers believe that nobody would ever stay with them of their own free will, so they use every dirty trick in the book to make her believe that she can't leave. Abuse victims are the focus of psychological warfare at close range. Most of the time they're never given a moment to think about what's being done to them and examine it logically, let alone the opportunity to organize anything like an escape attempt. The ones who do leave do so usually after years of having their self-esteem and personal identity broken down. They go back because they've come to believe that nobody else would want someone like them. The abuser's been telling them that for a long time, after all. It's not easy to break the conditioning of an abuser, which is all geared toward keeping her there in the relationship."

Guinevere knew that her mother had been a victim, never really given the chance to survive. Her mother and father had met when they were mere children, almost three hundred years ago. The mate bond had formed at such an early age that they hadn't really had the chance to grow up. All the normal things, facing life, and experiencing trials, and developing a sense of character - they were faced head-on by these young people. He'd never learned to control his anger as a child, and so he would take that anger out on his mate.....who stayed with him because it was just the "done thing". When they had their first child at 245 years old, they'd been so very happy. That child didn't survive the father's misuse. They had their second child at 279; Guinevere was that child. She was 12 when the third child was born and her mother died. Left with the responsibility of her family's pack and her sister's care, she lived the next six years knowing that she would turn out just like her mother if she didn't make any changes.