Chapter Sixteen

Arielle’s POV  

After Lorenzo left,.I did as he asked me. I tri d to survive it was hard and some days felt worse than other days, but still I tried to survive, tried to be patient.  

Tried to believe in Lorenzo’s promise, even if I knew better than to rely on hope.The Hell’s Pit was not a place for hope.  

It was a place where the weak were devoured, where debts were paid in blood, and where freedom was just another word for death it was a place my uncle had sold me to so I could get my spirit broken but i wasn't going to let him do that to me . 

Because despite everything, I wanted to live, I did want to survive if only to throw it into his face. 

So, I did what I could.  

I ate when they brought me food, even when I had no appetite. I exercised in my cramped cell, trying to keeping my body strong and muscles  from becoming weak because I wasn't sure what could happen her. 

I memorized the layout of the Pit, watching the guards’ movements to know when Valerie was around and I had to lie low. 

She was still pissed that I wasn't fighting to my death, everyday I heard new that Alpha Lorenzo and Vicenzo were discussing.

So I waited.  

I fell asleep early that night almost immediately, my body heavy from dragging jugs of water along the corridor and cleaning the toilet. Since I wasn't a fighter in the ring Valerie would make use of me else where. 

I lay on my mat that was a thin excuse of a mattress.

And then the pain came.  

At first, it was a dull ache, like fire ants crawling beneath my skin. I thought maybe it was just exhaustion. Or stress.  

But then it grew, spreading from my hands and feet to my thighs and the deep burning heat that followed kept twisting my core like something was tearing me apart from the inside out.  

I collapsed onto the cold stone floor, gasping, my vision blurring, and my limbs convulsing as agony shot through me.  

What was happening?  

My skin burned and my muscles locked, in on each other immediately then the first bone snapped.  

I screamed loudly enough to have a guard calling out for backup and rushing to my cell as another bone cracked and reformed, I cried out again the sound raw and broken in my throat echoing off the stone walls.  

Something was happening to me and I didn't know what it was but I wanted it to stop. 

My hands curled into claws, nails scraping against the ground as another bone cracked, shifting, reforming—  

No. No, no, no—  

I wasn’t supposed to shift, I didn't have a wolf 

My entire life, I had been weaker than the others. Smaller, less aggressive I had no pack despite the fact that I lived in my uncle's place and I definitely had no protection, no purpose all because I had never shifted. 

I was a nothing, to everyone around me and I had accepted that and moved on because it would have been extra painful to believe that I didn't have a wolf because the goddess did not see me as worth having one 

But now the fire in my veins said otherwise my body was changing right before my very eyes and I felt my spine stretch, my ribs shifting, my skin rippling like something ancient had awakened inside me.  

I clawed at the ground, at my own body, trying to hold myself together, but it was too much.  

And then, suddenly— everything snapped into place, a surge of power flooded through me, my gut and all my limbs drowning out the pain so it didn't feel like I was drowning in it anymore but now I was different, I wasn’t human anymore.  

I was a wolf, I looked at my surroundings trying to gauge where I was. Is this what it was supposed to feel like being a wolf, like floating and yet like I was in a body that wasn't completely mine, I flexed my paws my gaze going up to the guard who had just entered the cell, he stood at the door, his hands flexing on the weapon at his waist and I growled low in my throat, it was a threat but the sound of it surprised me. I wasn't supposed to sound like that was i deep and husky.

I was an omega.

Valerie burst in through the door 

" What the hell are you doing" she hissed at the guard as she stopped in front of me. I growled louder and she pulled back gently 

" What the fuck is that " she hissed and I huffed. So I was different then but how different, 

I stood on all fours, my vision getting sharper with every second that passed my senses heightening. I could smell the sweat of the guards outside my cell, hear the distant footsteps of others moving through the Pit.  

I looked down at my reflection in the metal plate they used to bring my food and stared.  

I was still an omega, the star on my forehead proved that but something was different. 

I was larger. 

My fur was a shade of deep silver, that flickered over the metal plate in from of me as my eyes glowing an unnatural shade of violet.  

I wasn’t just a wolf.  

I was something else. Something more.  

That was all I had the chance to think before something crashed into the back of my head heavily and I dropped to the floor, Valerie was standing over me her eyes wide with distrust 

" Go tell Vicenzo what the hell is happening here" she hissed and that was the last thing I heard before I dropped.