Chapter 2 Sydney's POV

Let me introduce myself, I am Sydney Varannon. I am 17 years old and I am a werewolf. I am what they call an omega and I live in a pack. And from the Blood Moon Pack. My parents are Robert and Julia Varannon, we live on the outer parts of our pack in a nice two-story home not too big but not real small either.

when you walk through the front door, the basement doorway is to the left. Along that same side is our refrigerator. On the Right, you'll find the stove, the kitchen sink, and plenty of counter space. Cabinets line the walls, and in the middle of the kitchen there's an island with four chairs around it.

Straight through the kitchen is a sitting room where are my parents used to entertain company and host dinner parties. To the left of the sitting room is the living room. When you look straight ahead, two large windows frame a beautiful view of the mountains in the distance. I think they're the silver ridge mountains, home of the Silver Ridge Pack. I've heard they're one of the strongest packs in the USA, and that their alpha is always angry, people call him the brooding Alpha.

Okay, back to our tour. Our living room is spacious. A big screen TV sits on the far wall, past the staircase. We have two sofas and recliner that's my dad's. The walls are beige, and green curtains cover the windows. It's a comfortable room. If you stand in the living room and look to your left, you'll see a set of L-shaped stairs leading up to the second floor.

At the top of the stairs, the bathroom is the first door in the hall. Just passed it is my bedroom. It's average sized, with a queen bed against one wall and my desk and bookshelf on the far wall. My closet is small, just enough room for a dresser and a rod where I hang my nicer clothes. The walls are pink and white, and it's my safe haven. Further down the hall is my parents' room. I don't go in there, so I can't tell you what it looks like. My dad wasn't always like this, when I was little, he was good to me and my mom.

I remember going on walks with my dad when he had to scout for the alpha, and I remember watching him during training sessions. He was so strong back then, he looked like a god to me. Then came the day everything changed. I was 12 years old when our pack came under attack by rogues. We were caught off guard. They struck during shift change, just the night patrol was coming on so there was no time to get a proper report out. My dad was the first to reach the border to try to fend them off, along with the patrol and the warriors who arrived around the same time he did. I remember hearing the Alpha howling in the night, ordering everyone to move to safety. My mother took me with her to the bunker my dad built for emergencies like this one. On our way, I could hear the fighting in the distance. I waited for my dad to come get us, it felt like forever. When he finally returned, he wasn't the same man. He became distant and cruel, a shell of the person I used to know.

At first, everyone said it was shock. That he'd seen too much, lost you many, and that time would soften the hard edges. The pack praised him for holding the line, forgetting warriors to the border before the rogues could push deeper. People brought casseroles, whispered prayers, and called him brave. I watched them look at him like he was a hero while I watched him pace our living room at night like he couldn't stand the silence.

He came back with more than torn clothes. There were bandages under his shirt for weeks, a deep gash that never seemed to heal right, and bruises that turned from purple to sickly yellow before they finally faded. Sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, he'd press his palm to his ribs and flinch like the pain was new again. The healer said he'd recover. What they didn't talk about was the way his hand started to shake whenever he heard a howl in the distance, or the way his eyes would go flat and cold the moment the house got too quiet.

It started small... Door's locked earlier, Windows check twice, my mother jumping whenever he barked her name. He stopped laughing. He stopped humming when he fixed things around the house. He'd wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, stalking down the hallway with a blade in his hand like he expected rogues to pour through the walls. If I made a noise ---if I drop the glass, if a cabinet shut too hard---his head would snap toward me like I done it on purpose. The air around him always felt charged like one wrong word can make him strike.

After the funerals, The whispers started. Rogues don't cross a border for no reason, they said someone must have been sloppy. Someone must have missed signs. I heard the adults argue in low voices about patrol routes in orders that came too late. My dad took every rumor like a bite he couldn't spit out. He'd sit at the kitchen table staring at nothing, jaw tight, and when my mom tried to talk to him, he'd cut her off with a look they made her go quiet. It was like he was carrying the whole attack inside his chest, and he didn't know what to do with it except let it rot.

The first time he laid hands on my mom, he apologized afterward. He brought her ice for her cheek and wouldn't meet her eyes. He said he didn't mean it. He said the noise startled him, that he thought---he thought it was happening again. My mother believed him because she wanted to. I remember standing in the doorway, my fingers clench so tight my nails cut into my palms, realizing that sorry didn't erase what he'd done. And then it happened again. And again. Each time the apology got shorter, in the space between the blows got smaller.

In our pack, strength is everything, and weakness is a strain you can't scrub out. My dad had always been proud that he wasn't an Omega---that he'd earned his place, fought for it, bled for it. After the rogue attack, it was like he needed someone smaller than him to prove he was still powerful. When the alpha gave an order, my dad followed it. When life scared him, he made sure it scared us more. His anger became a habit, then a language---sharp words first, and grabbing wrists, then the kind of punishment that left my mother moving carefully and left me hiding bruises under long sleeves.

I learned to read the house the way my dad used to read the woods. This lamb of the truck door meant he had a bad day. This scrape of his boots across the kitchen tile meant he'd been drinking. It's recliner faced the TV just so, I knew to stay invisible. My room became more than pink walls and a bed---it became a place where I could breathe, where I could press my ear to the door and count his footsteps, where I could whisper promises to myself that this wasn't forever. At school, I kept my head down. At work, I smiled until my cheeks ate and a home, I survived