1
I was finally allowed out after two years, but I had permanently lost my ability to shift because of the abuse. My brother went crazy when he found out.
……
On my eighteenth birthday, rain poured down as I was finally allowed to leave the rehabilitation center.
My brother didn’t come to get me.
“Selene isn’t feeling well. Come back on your own,” he said over the phone, his voice ice cold.
I silently packed my things.
In the isolated center, the handlers claimed we disobedient children were possessed by demons.
They tortured us daily—burning, electrocuting, and forcing silver-laced potions down our throats under the pretext of “suppressing the demons within us.”
Each act of resistance was met with even more brutal treatment.
The daily torture left permanent damage on my underage body. I discovered I’d lost my ability to shift into a wolf, so I could only slowly walk toward what I remembered as home.
The day my brother brought me here, the journey seemed so short.
Too short for me to explain that the burns on Selene’s body weren’t my doing.
Too short for my brother’s anger to cool before he pushed me into that lightless cage.
But now, I walked for hours in the rain, my clothes completely soaked, and still couldn’t find home.
Perhaps I no longer had a home.
Our parents died when we were young, leaving just my brother and me to rely on each other.
And now, for Selene’s sake, he’d abandoned me too.
During my year at the center, he never visited once.
One time, when a silver whip damaged my spine, I desperately wanted to go home, desperately needed my brother.
But when I called, he hung up before I could finish speaking.
