My name is Elowen Grieve, and I am standing in my family's root cellar with a jar of money in my hands.
The dirt down here smells cold and sweet. Nobody comes down here but me and the spiders.
Two hundred and forty dollars. I saved it one bill at a time, out of the grocery money Hesper never counted close.
It took me a year. A year of counting pennies so I could count myself.
The bag goes behind the pickle jars, the ones my mother keeps and nobody eats.
Two shirts. My boots. My mother's wool socks. That is everything I own that Maddox did not pick out for me.
This morning I was carrying coffee into the dining room at the pack house, and he did not even wait for me to set it down.
Maddox: Look at her. My Luna, serving like a fucking maid.
Hesper: She likes to be useful. Don't you, Elowen.
I said yes, because yes was the safe word. My hands did not shake, because they were done shaking by then.
He caught my wrist and pulled until the bone turned under his thumb.
Maddox: You keep looking at the door lately. You think I don't see you looking at the door?
Elowen: I don't.
Maddox: Don't lie to me, bitch. You think any man wants you after I'm done? You're nothing but the hole I keep warm.
The men laughed, and I felt the laugh on my skin like spit.
Then his hand came off my face and my lip split against my tooth, and the blood was hot and tasted like pennies.
Maddox: If you walk out of that door, I'll find you. And I'll make sure nobody wants what's left of you. Say you understand.
Elowen: I understand.
And I did understand. That was the awful thing. I believed him all the way down.
Down here in the dirt, the cut on my lip has already scabbed over. My hands still shake, but this time it is not fear.
This time it is hope, and hope is so much worse.
He never hit me in the beginning. That is what people do not understand. It was small things, and small things are how a wolf gets tamed.
He told me my laugh was too loud, so I laughed soft.
He said my hair looked better down, so I stopped braiding it. Then he said down was for whores, so I braided it again.
I did whatever kept his voice low that day.
When I said a thing he did not like, he went quiet for three days. Then he would hold me and say he was only trying to make me better.
And I thanked him for it. That is the part that makes me want to be sick. I thanked him.
Then I heard boots on the cellar steps, and every warm thing in my body went cold, because I know that walk.
Maddox: Elowen. What are you doing in the dark, love?
I pulled the empty jar in front of the bag and he came down slow, the way he does when he already knows he has won something.
Maddox: You've been hiding from me.
Elowen: I just wanted quiet. My head hurts.
Then his mouth was on mine, and God help me, I wanted it. My hands went up into his hair and I pulled him close like I used to, back when I still thought the bond meant something.
He tasted like coffee and mint. My lip hurt where he kissed it, and I did not care.
Maddox: There she is. My good girl.
Maddox: You don't get to hide from me. And you don't get to leave me either, so get that soft little dream out of your head.
His fingers squeezed until I made a sound. I will have his fingerprints on me purple by morning.
I did not pull away again. I stood still and let him hold me there like a thing he owned, because that was the only way to keep him from looking at the shelf behind me.
Maddox: Remember what I told you this morning. Nobody wants what I throw away. You're mine until I say different.
He went up the steps, and the light at the top closed behind him like a lid.
I sat in the dirt in my mother's root cellar and touched my arm where his hand had been, and I did not cry. I have done enough crying in that house to fill this cellar.
I put another five dollars in the jar.
I thought, I am leaving you, Maddox. I am leaving, and I am not asking.
The air down here was cold and it was mine, and I breathed it like it was the first air I had taken in a long, long time.