Somewhere

POV Vanya:

The stench of stagnant urine, creeping mold, and dried blood forms the foundational reality of my existence. You can taste the metallic iron coating the back of your throat. A normal person might think they were trapped in a nightmare, praying to wake up in a warm bed with morning sunlight streaming through the window. Not me.

I regained consciousness in this freezing, pitch-black cell twenty minutes ago. A scratching sound drew my attention just before sharp teeth clamped down on my index finger. A rat made a fatal mistake trying to feast on me while I was passed out. I snapped its neck without a second thought. This vermin is my current meal—breakfast, lunch, and dinner rolled into one miserable raw bite. Ripping into the stringy meat is a grim task, made slightly easier by the fact that being a werewolf is the single perk keeping me alive right now. My eyes adjust to the dark without effort.

For fourteen agonizing years, this Goddess-forsaken, subterranean training facility has been my personal hell. I have been bounced from pit to pit. Poked, prodded, bled, and tortured.

Any fleeting memories of my life prior to this nightmare are scarce, reduced to fragmented, burning images. Red-hot flames licking up walls. Deafening screams vibrating in my ears. The sensation of a man frantically rocking me back and forth, his large hands shielding my face from the heat.

“Shush, Vanya, they cannot hear you cry,” he whispered desperately against my tear-stained cheeks. A loud crash echoed overhead. More shouting. Then a suffocating blackness swallowed everything.

My torment truly began at the tender age of four. Guards shoved me into a freezing mountain cell alongside fifty other shivering, terrified children. We were covered in soot and blood, our clothes shredded to rags. The thin winter air burned my lungs. Through a tiny, silver-barred hole in the stone, I saw snow-covered peaks and dense tree coverage.

This marked the inception of a brutal training regimen orchestrated by Vulkan. He was a sadistic tyrant, a mountain of a man who held the absolute power of life and death over us all. He decided who breathed another day based on their survival skills. Who expects a four-year-old girl to understand survival? I learned fast.

I recall the day he zeroed in on me. He yanked me up by the roots of my ebony hair and threw me into a steel fighting cage. My opponent was a significantly older and larger boy. Vulkan stood outside the bars, roaring at us to fight if we wanted to live. The boy did not hesitate. He relentlessly kicked and taunted me, treating my small frame like a broken toy.

"You’re weak!" He kicked my ribs.

"Pathetic!" A punch to my face.

"Bitch!" Another kick.

I curled into a ball, taking the hits. But instead of breaking, something primal and dark snapped deep inside my psyche. The fear vanished. A marvelous, bloody slaughter followed. I decimated him. I don't remember the exact mechanics of tearing him apart, only waking up chained and collared on the dirt floor, my hands coated in his blood.

Following that display of raw power, Vulkan made it his personal mission to break me down mentally and physically. He sought to forge me into a numb, emotionless, bloodthirsty fighting machine. He wanted a monster.

His punishments were barbaric. He used silver-laced whips with heavy metal hooks braided into the ends. I learned exactly what human skin sounds like when ripped apart. It sounds like a dog tearing into a raw steak—the distinct snapping of tendons and muscle fibers. He brutalized my back until the flesh hung in ribbons.

When I defied him, his goliath-sized fists came down on me. He repeatedly shattered my jaw. I remember the sickening crunch resonating through my skull, my ears popping from the sheer force. I stayed conscious just long enough to watch my own blood splatter across the walls, painting Vulkan in dark crimson streams.

Ironically, this extreme physical trauma backfired. My nervous system adapted. It stopped processing pain entirely. I became numb to the strikes. Despite the agony he inflicted, I silently vowed I would be damned before I ever let him break my fighting spirit.

During those dark years, my singular reprieve was a hybrid boy named Dex. He was a mix of wolf and bear, sporting one green eye and one amber gold. He was an egotistical jerk, but he gave me a reason to laugh when I wasn't fighting for my life. However, any shred of comfort vanished when he was sold off to the highest bidder around his eighteenth birthday.

It was precisely at this time that Vulkan’s sick interest in me underwent a horrifying shift. The beatings changed into lingering glances and unwanted grabs. Then, he summoned me from the pits up to the main house.

Guards scrubbed me clean. They rubbed honey and jasmine oils into my skin and forced me into a revealing, low-cut blue silk gown. The fabric plunged down my back, leaving my spine exposed to the cool air.

They left me in a lavish bedroom. Standing in front of a full-length mirror for the first time in countless years, I finally looked at myself. I stood five-foot-five. My cold gray-blue eyes, flecked with sharp green, stared back at me. My ebony hair cascaded down to my knees, pulled into a loose braid. The silk gown clung to a distinctly curvy body, endowed in the chest and hips, yet covered in jagged battle scars from a lifetime of combat.

The door clicked shut. Vulkan approached me from behind. I watched his massive reflection in the glass. He reached out and trailed his filthy finger up the line of my bare spine. His repulsive touch made my skin burn with revulsion. My stomach churned.

Operating purely on instinct, I spun around. I planted my feet, twisted my hips, and smashed my closed fist directly into the center of his face.

The impact cracked against his nose. He staggered slightly, his head snapping to the side. Silence stretched in the room. He reached up, casually wiping the blood from his newly split lip. He stared at the crimson smeared on his finger, then licked it off. He turned his gaze back to me, his face twisting into a smile of pure, lust-filled evil. His chestnut eyes darkened into pitch-black voids.

I held his deadly stare. I never back down in the pits, and I was not backing down now.

Without warning, he struck. He delivered a devastating iron backhand that launched me through the air. I crashed hard onto the sprawling mattress. Before I could scramble away, his massive weight dropped on top of me. He pinned my limbs down, driving his heavy knees into my legs to trap them against the bed.

Knowing perfectly well that screaming for help in this facility was useless, I gathered a massive amount of spit in my mouth. I launched it directly into his face.

“Fuck you, Vulkan,” I hissed venomously. I squirmed desperately, throwing my weight from side to side to free my trapped limbs.

“Aw, Vanya, how feisty you are,” he whispered back. His sinister smile widened as he wiped the saliva away from his cheek.

He lowered his head and ruthlessly crashed his lips onto mine. I locked my jaw, refusing him entry. He shifted his grip, freeing one hand to tangle his thick fingers into my hair and yank my head backward. I gasped from the sharp pull. Taking the opening, he attempted to slide his whiskey-tainted tongue into my mouth to deepen the violation.

I clamped my teeth down violently. I put all my jaw strength into the bite, aiming to sever the muscle completely.

He roared in sharp pain. He jerked back, ripping his bleeding tongue from my mouth, and immediately slammed his heavy fist directly into my stomach. The brutal impact knocked the wind out of my lungs. Another iron backhand struck my face, bloodying my lip.

“You fucking bitch. I’ll teach you a lesson,” he growled.

He aggressively flipped me over onto my stomach, pressing my face into the mattress. I frantically thrashed and kicked against his oppressive weight. I threw my elbows back, fighting with every ounce of my strength, only to be met with a solid, agonizing punch directly to my kidney. The blunt force sent a sickening shockwave through my torso, paralyzing my muscles for a crucial second.

Using his heavy leather belt, he bound my wrists together, securely restraining my arms above my head and immobilizing me. He grabbed the fabric of the blue silk gown and brutally shredded it right off my body. The material tore with a loud rip, exposing my bare, scarred skin to the freezing air of the room.

“Now you will learn why they call me VULKAN,” he roared triumphantly into the open air.

A searing, skin-tearing pain shot through my nervous system as he shoved his penis into my vagina, raping me with brutal force. He slammed his hips forward, ripping through my body without an ounce of mercy. One single, initial scream of pure shock and agony managed to escape my mouth. The violation burned like hot iron, tearing at the core of my being.

But then I caught myself. I tightly clamped my jaw shut, grinding my teeth together, and forcefully swallowed the rest of my agonizing pain. I vehemently refused to offer him any tears. I refused to let out any further sounds of distress to fuel his sick, sadistic pleasure. He wanted a broken toy. I would give him nothing but a corpse-like silence.

Under the brutal assault, the pain peaked. Every one of my physical senses began to shut down. A protective darkness crept in, attempting to take over my mind to shield me from the trauma. Yet, I remained tragically awake. I lay there, trapped in my own body, fully conscious of the blinding physical pain tearing through my core with every thrust. The nightmare stretched on, an endless cycle of degradation and agony.

Just as the torment seemed endless, a strange, distant voice suddenly caught my undivided attention. It echoed from somewhere deep inside my own mind, bypassing the physical horror of the room.

What the Hell?