Accidental Surrogate for Alpha novel Chapter 122

Trigger Warning: This chapter contains experiences of abuse and sexual assault – nothing explicit, but please take care reading!

Sinclair

Don’t shift, don’t shift, don’t shift. I think manically. Ella needs you.

Listening to Ella recount her childhood always makes me furious, but this time is worse than all the others. I’ve suspected that Ella suffered terrible traumas for some time now, but before this night I’d been able to pacify my outrage with the hope that I’m wrong.

No longer.

As Ella speaks, I wonder how she could ever imagine herself weak. I can’t even stand to listen to her story, but she actually lived it. She sacrificed herself for her sister, and she survived things I can only imagine.

“When the matron realized it was me, she smiled so cruelly that my stomach turned – she was only too glad to take me instead of Cora.” Ella continues, shuddering with the memory. Her unease gives my wolf the push he needed to put aside his own rage and comfort her. I finally manage a weak purr, and Ella presses her nose to my chest, breathing in my scent.

“She took me to her own room and put me in her bed, and then she got in with me and... started touching me in ways I didn’t like or understand. She made me touch her too, and she never stopped talking. She told me how pretty I was over and over, and kept asking me if I liked it. I said no, but she just insisted that this was a special, secret game I was lucky to play. She said everything I was feeling might be confusing, but it was good and right and natural. She said it took practice, but that we’d have plenty of time… Afterwards she took me back to the dorm with a reminder not to share our secret. Cora asked me what happened but I didn’t know how to explain.”

“The next day I went to the doctor in residence, and I told him what the matron had done. I’d never liked him much, but in my heart I knew what had happened was wrong, and I didn’t know who else to tell. I thought that since it was about my body, the doctor was the one who could help. There was no such thing as sex ed at the orphanage and no one else ever talked to us about our bodies. At first I was relieved to tell someone. The doctor seemed very concerned, and agreed that it sounded strange.”

“Then he told me that he needed to examine me…” Ella’s words are coming in starts and stops now, and her shaking is getting worse. The bath is still steaming around us, so I know she isn’t cold – and I know the worst isn’t over yet. “He took off my clothes and put me on the exam table… and then I’ll never forget the way he said, ‘now it’s very important that you be still, Ella. This is a different kind of exam than you’re used to, and if you move too much I could hurt you.”’

Tears stream down Ella’s cheeks as she quotes the doctor, and it takes all my strength to contain my wolf. “Then he said, ‘I know little girls can have a hard time staying still, so I have these nifty straps to help you.’ He pulled out restraints from under the table and strapped me down… and then he asked me exactly what the matron did, and when I explained he would touch me exactly how she had, saying ‘like this?’ and if I didn’t answer, if I cried or objected, he would only do it rougher and demand I tell him.”

“After the first minute or so I figured out what he was about, and I didn’t want to answer his questions anymore, but if I didn’t speak he would start guessing more and more abuses, always demonstrating them on my body. They were far worse than anything she’d done… So I answered… I told him how to hurt me.” Ella is interrupted by my ferocious snarl, and she looks up at me for the first time since she started speaking. Her eyes are overflowing, but she offers me a bitter smile and reaches up to stroke my jaw. “It’s okay, big bad wolf, it’s almost over.”

My snarl becomes a whine, and Ella determinedly forges on. “I was too young to understand why they did those things, but I knew how it made me feel: guilty, tainted, defiled… I never wanted it to happen again, but I was already broken, and there were other girls like Cora who weren’t yet.”

Oh no. No, no, no – tell me she didn’t! I have a horrible sick feeling in my stomach, and I wish I could go back in time and whisk Ella away from that horrible place before anyone could hurt her. Of course, that only would have meant other children would be hurt, which is how I already know what Ella did. My brave, brilliant little mate would never stand by and let another child be abused… even if it meant being abused herself.