12. Problems: Xander's Pov

As of October 16, 2015- My Broken Luna is rank #183 in Werewolf

QOTC- socks or sandals?

"Guards are making sure that he doesn't leave." I say staring out the window. Dylan sits outside and smirks as he waits for the council to show up.

He may have been able to manipulate his pack elders, but these officials are much different. "I'm gonna dip the silver chains in wolfsbane." I continue to glare at my mate's former abuser.

"Why does this keep happening?" Charlotte's soft voice asks. It doesn't seem like she's talking to anyone in particular, but I can tell that she's frustrated. I turn around and see her trying to pull her finger out of the belt loops of her pants.

"I don't get why you keep putting your hands in there." I set her on my lap. "Your belt loops aren't even that tight."

"Ow." she winces when I put pressure on her hip. Her shirt is raised a little bit above her waistline and I can already see the dark purple bruise covering her skin.

"Sorry." I kiss her cheek as softly as I can. Her left eye is swollen, there's a big cut on her lip, and she walks with a limp. Luckily, she doesn't need any casts, but all of the marks on her skin clearly shows that she isn't okay.

Maxwell, Jake, Tyler, and their ladies have already left. No one wanted to be here when the council comes; it all causes to more drama and conflict.

"Did you really call for me earlier?" I stare into her baby blue eyes with admiration.

"Yes." she nods. "I called you twice and tried to mind link Brody... But then I got hit in the head."

"Can I mark you?" I keep my fingers on the exposed skin above her waist. I know that my touch makes her pain subside.

Her eyes slightly widen and her cheeks turn pink as she processes my words. "You don't have to say yes," I tell her. "But it would be great if you did."

She looks down at her lap, and then at the window. "I don't know." she shrugs, still not looking at me.

"Sweetheart, I couldn't protect you from Dylan because I couldn't feel your love pain. I couldn't hear what you were thinking or know if you were in danger or not." I explain. "Please?"

"I-I don't know."

"Don't be scared."

"Will it hurt?" I can tell that she's willing, she just doesn't want to experience any more pain.

"I'll make sure it doesn't." I press my lips to hers. "Just tell me when you're ready."

****

"You have the right to say anything you want, he will not be able to interrupt or harm you." Councilman Jared announces. Dylan, seven members of the supernatural council, Charlotte, and I are in the meeting room beginning Dylan's trial.

"You have no boundaries during this time." he adds. Pulling Charlotte into my lap, I trace circles on her arm in attempt to calm her nerves. "This trial is now in order."

"Charlotte Beck, sister to the Beta of the Lunar Shadow pack and mate of the Alpha; Taken at age eight, year 2007. Dylan Jones, Alpha of the Red Stone pack, is accused off kidnapping and torturing. We have evidence of his crimes and you are called today to state what he and his pack have done." After the little introduction, everyone's eyes are on Charlotte.

"Where do I start?" she quietly asks.

"Start with when you were first taken."

She looks at me then back at the council members. "I-I can't remember."

"What do you mean?" They all take out their pens and document everything she says.

"I was beat." she whispers. "I started to lose my memory and now I don't know anything about my past- Only a few flashbacks, but that's it. Nothing detailed."

"Why were you beat?" The female council member asks Charlotte questions as nicely as possible. Her voice is calm and steady as she speaks.

"Because I did everything wrong... I-If I missed a spot when I cleaned or when I didn't make the right thing for dinner I got punished." Tears gather in her eyes. "I w-wasn't allowed to have food anymore, or anything to drink. I had to sleep outside during winter because I didn't deserve heat and then I had to handle rogues."

At the same time I let out a growl, Dylan stands up and points a finger at my mate. "Liar!" he shouts.

"You are to keep silent until you have permission to speak." one of the men scolds. Dylan glares at the man, but keeps his mouth shut.

"Explain how you 'handled' the rogues, please." the woman nods for her to continue.

"A-Alpha made me go outside to m-make them and go away." her voice cracks at the end of her sentence. I know what she means by make them go away. Everyone waits for her to explain.

"They would t-take me for the night, just them and me." she sobs. Tightly gripping my hand, she looks Dylan straight in the eye. "Alpha did the same thing."

"Fucking lia-"

"KEEP YOUR SILENCE!" the same councilman as before yells. "Any other sounds that come out of your mouth without permission will result in a deeper punishment. Continue, Charlotte."

She cowers from Dylan's glare and tries her best to avoid eye contact with him. "He cannot harm you." the lady repeats.

"The men were allowed to use me whenever they wanted as long as they asked Alpha first." Every time she calls him Alpha I feel like punching things. The more she talks about her sexual abuse, I just want to get up and beat Dylan so hard that he'll wish he was dead.

"I had to knock before I went into the pack house and if I asked at the wrong time, I got punished for it." Charlotte's eyes are distant as she speaks. "I saw rogues almost every night and they did the same things every time."

"What about your diet, sweetie? Tell us about that."

This is a topic that she's more comfortable talking about. "I got fed every two seasons. One time I got half an apple." she frowns as she recalls the memory. "Water every two months if I was good."

I know that the council members are trying not to show any emotion, but they start sending dirty looks to Dylan and sympathetic smiles to my mate. "I was allowed to take hand-me-downs from the pack ladies only because no one wanted to see my scars."

"Do you mind showing us some?"

Charlotte turns around to look at me and shifts in my lap. "You're beautiful no matter what." I whisper in her ear.

She slowly raises the sleeve of her shirt to reveal both little and long marks all over her skin. "A lot of them disappeared ever since Xander found me." she tells them.

"All of that came from the abuse?" a man asks in awe.

"Most of them did." Charlotte shakes her head. "I did these." she points to some jagged marks over her wrist and inner elbow. All of her self harm scars are directly over her veins; that's what I don't understand.

"What was everyone's reaction when they found out?" This question brings more tears to her eyes.

"I got laughed at." she says in a small voice. "They called me nasty and made more cuts for me... They even got me a razor to use."

Charlotte's Pov

'Mate is mad.' my wolf whimpers.

'He's mad at us.' I look behind me again. Xander looks straight at me with an angry expression and clenches his jaw. While we wait for the council people to write things down, I try moving off his lap.

"Stop." he wraps both of his arms around my torso. I tell everyone the things that I was told about my past and the filthy names that I was called; the entire time receiving glares from my former Alpha. For some strange reason I'm not afraid of him hurting me at this moment, I'm just afraid of what Xander will think of me after I'm done speaking.

I know that he felt repulsed when he first saw my scars on the hospital, then he found out about my self harm and started looking at me different. Because of that, Xander started hiding all razors and blades from me. His actions don't actually help though; I end up opening previous cuts that haven't healed yet and it gets even worse from then on. I pretty sure he thinks that I've been clean for at least a week. I've only been clean for a day.

"What other things were you punished for and what were the outcomes?" the nice lady asks.

"If I didn't finish cleaning fast enough, I got hit. It didn't matter if I stayed out of everyone's way, people were allowed to hit me whenever they felt like it." I explain.

"Is that the only punishment you were given?"

I glance at Alpha Jones before continuing. I just hope he won't take me back after this. "A few time I walked into the pack dinners..." I wipe away a few tears. "Gamma Mathews or Beta Shawn would pin me down on the floor. Alpha would run a knife down my side or use a whip on my back."

Xander lowly growls and keeps doing as the woman asks another question, "Can you show us the scars? Just the ones on your back."

I ignore Alpha Jones' glares and turn to look at my mate. Will he be okay with me showing my skin? "Go ahead," he says. "Face me, though." He's seen all of my scars, but doesn't know the story behind them.

I move my hair to one side and pull down the back of my loose sweater, Xander holds it up in the front for me. "Oh goddess." I hear the council members gasp.

They can only see the top half of my back, but that's where my major scars start off. "Explain a few, darling?"

Leaning on my mate's chest, I begin retelling a horrid scene. "The pink one on the left I got when I was twelve... Alpha caught me trying to escape a-and it was the first time I ever tried." I pause, trying to regain a steady voice. "H-He made sure that I wouldn't try a-again by making sure I would remember the punishment... He b-b-boiled water and y-yanked my shirt back. The entire p-pot was poured down my back."

Xander quickly moves me off of his lap and bolts out the door. I hear glass being broken along with many crashing sounds before he walks back in. "Let's take a fifteen minute break." one of the councilmen dismisses.

"Come here." Xander wraps his arms around me and deeply inhales my scent. "I'll calm down faster if you're near me."

"Do we get to go home after this?" I ask quietly.

"Yes." he answers, kissing my neck.

"Can I make brownies?" I think about the brownie mix I saw in the pantry. "I feel like making brownies."

"You mean eat brownies? If you're craving them, we could go to the bakery and buy a box."

"I like making brownies. It smells sweet too." I shrug.

"What about the taste? I know you used to like desserts and sugary things."

"I never tried brownies before... I don't remember it." Xander frowns when he hears this.

"We'll go buy ingredients after the trial is over." he says, not changing his facial expression. He always looks at me with an unexplainable face every time I ask to do something or hesitate to talk to him.

I've been trying to stop my stuttering because I know that it annoys him. Why else would he get angry so often?

I mostly recognize him as my mate, the man who will love and protect me; but there's still a voice in my mind telling me that everyone in the world is repulsed and disgusted by me. It keeps telling me that Xander and Brody are as dangerous as the rumors about them and the rest of Lunar Blood. The more I try to accept my new home, the more I remember what my life with Alpha Jones used to be like.

I don't get yelled at anymore, but I still fear that I'll make someone mad and they'll take it into their own hands to punish me. I have to carefully think before I say or do things to avoid it; that's why I stay quiet most of the time.

"Sweetheart," Xander gently shakes me. The world seems to shake as he does this. "You zoned out, the trial started ten minutes ago."

"Sorry." I apologize. I close my eyes for a few seconds to regain my composure before looking at the lady council member.

"We need one more backstory of one of your scars and then we can move on to the next stage of the trial." she takes out a pen and some paper to write on.

Turning around again, I slightly pull down my sweater and reveal my unflattering back. "This one," I say, reaching behind me to point to my left shoulder blade. "Is a burn mark..."

I think of how I can bluntly explain this; the scar is one of the most painful ones that I've ever received. It no longer looks like the Red Stone symbol that it's supposed to be, it's now just a five inch long/wide smear. "Everybody got mad at me for d-dropping a tray of f-food at Alpha's feet."

I close my eyes and wrap my arms tighter around Xander. "They took the metal stick with the Red Stone sign and started hearing it up, it was the kind of tool they used to burn letters into wood."

"What happened to the design?"

"Everyday they opened the wound so it never got to heal." I say. "If I did something horribly wrong, they would heat up the stick again."

Xander lowly growls and wipes away a stray tear that fell down my cheek. "Thank you for sharing." the woman now turns to Alpha Jones.

"Dylan Jones, you are hereby stripped of your title as Alpha of the Red Stone pack." she announces.

"You can't do that." he nervously laughs before jumping to his feet. "It's all her fault!" He points at me and glares. If looks could kill, I'd be six feet under already.

The crazy look in his eyes never disappears as he shouts, "You can't take away my title!"

"Yes we can." one of the men shakes his head at the angry Alpha. "We will do more questioning to figure out who else was involved in this case. Xander Reynolds will receive full control of your fate and others who were involved. Brody Beck will share a percentage of the control."

***

"What's Xander doing?" I ask, even though I already know the answer.

"He's beating the shit out of Dylan." Brody answers. After we escorted the council off the land, we stayed at the house for a bit before he called Brody over. All I know is that he's at the cells right now.

"What's gonna happen?" I stare up at my brother.

"We're going to get revenge on Red Stone. They'll regret everything they did to you."

As I check the temperature the oven is set on, I ask one more question, "They were right, weren't they? About me being sold."

"N-Well... Yeah." Brody takes a deep breath. "If we had payed more attention, then Maddie wouldn't have gotten away with it."

"You couldn't have stopped it." I shrug, trying to get him to stop blaming himself. None of it is his fault, he was only twelve at the time.

"We could've. Dad, mom, and I; we could've kept you with us." Brody shakes his head. "Everyone made mistakes with you. No one knew how to prevent Maddie from sending you away or killing you herself. The two of you had attention problems."

"Really?"

"You two had different versions though," he says. "Maddie needed everyone to only focus on her and her only. She had to be the center of attention. The problem with you was that you were perfectly fine without attention. You didn't ask for toys like all the other kids your age, you didn't ask for food when you were hungry, or tell anyone if something was wrong."

"Oh." I take a seat on the stool next to me.

"When mom and dad stopped tucking you in at night, you didn't tell anyone. They thought that you weren't into it anymore when you were actually waiting for them to come into your room every night. Same thing goes for your school plays and stuff; you would hand them the invitation, but it always got lost in dad's paperwork." he explains. "Each time our parents would have a talk with you so that you would remind them about your upcoming events. You used to think that no one wanted to waste their time on you."

"I thought that I was a normal kid." I whisper.

"You were, you still are. But you got teases by your classmates because they realized that you wouldn't tell anyone about it." he smiles at me.

Brody's Pov

QOTC- socks or sandals?

I watch as my little sister constantly checks the oven and pokes the brownies with a stick to see if they're done baking.

As I retell the problems we had when we were younger, it brings back a lot of memories; I remember on her eighth birthday, we were getting ready for school and I was sitting on her bed waiting for her to leave the house with me. She was standing in front of a mirror, looking at the new outfit that our parents bought for her to wear. I saw her frowning and asked what was wrong. Her exact answer was, "Mom and dad wasted their money. Only pretty girls deserve nice things, I'm not pretty. And I'm okay with that."

Hearing my little sister say that was one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed. She never let anyone's words get to her, yet, the way she accepted the insults that came her way was horrible. She got in trouble all the time for punching people who talked shit about our family, but she didn't even try to stand up for herself.

I listened more carefully to her conversations during recess and lunch after that. I figured out who was insulting her, why they were doing it, and what they were saying to her. My baby sister never walked home alone again and she never had to go to school with a lunch that didn't have a note inside.

All the parents would write little notes in their kids' lunches, but ours were always at work. Ten years ago, Betas and Alphas barely got to spend time with their children. The Luna and Beta female worked just as hard as their mates in order to keep the pack in order.

Lunar Blood wasn't a very powerful pack until a few years ago. We're still considered new since there has only been three generations of Alphas running. "I think they're done." Char wobbles off of the stool and makes her way over to the oven. And by wobble, I mean that she almost tripped once her feet touched the floor.

"It smells really good." I move to the side a bit so that I can see how the brownies look like.

"I put marshmallows in the batter." she tells me. "They melted."

She takes out a tub of white sugar and a big spoon. Sprinkling a bunch of it over the blazing hot brownies, she pours a little bit of fudge syrup over it all. "You're good at baking." I watch as she adds toppings to the brownies.

"It should be cool enough to eat in a few minutes." she walks back over to the stools and takes a seat next to me again.

"Did you and Xander do the nasty yet?" I ask.

Her eyes widen at my question and her cheeks turn bright red. "No." she quickly answers.

"Good." I smugly smile. "You two should always be at least arms length apart; if your fingertips could touch, then you're too close. And wear condoms as gloves so that you don't get pregnant."

Blushing even more, Char moves her hands up to cover her cheeks. "You can't get pregnant by holding hands." she mutters.

"Yes you can! Touching leads to kissing, kissing leads to groping, and groping leads to sex. And you know what happens when you have sex?" I pause for dramatic effect. "You get pregnant."

"Brody," Char smirks at me. "You know what sex is, right?"

"Of course I do." I scoff. "It's when a man sticks his-"

"I'm just testing you." she giggles and gets up to cut the brownies into squares. "You don't have to get so defensive about it."

"Put that knife down." I watch her like a hawk as she puts down the blade. "Hold out your wrists."

I haven't been able to check her for cuts since the other packs came in for the Luna ceremony. It had me worried that there was a chance that she was cutting or skipping her pills. "Why haven't these healed yet? It's been over a week." The marks that I saw last Tuesday look longer and more red.

"I'm a slow healer."

"Don't lie to me, Char." I give her a pointed look. "I can tell when you're lying."

"I didn't cut, I swear."

"Char." I continue to stare at my sister. "Why do these look longer? They're in the same spots, but the cuts are deeper."

She pouts and tries to retract her wrist. "What happened?" I ask.

Ten minutes of silence pass and all we do is stand there. I'm just waiting for her to tell me why her cuts look worse than they did before. "I opened them." she whispers.

"Why?"

"Because I didn't have a razor." she confesses.

"Why do you do this?" I find some gauze in the medicine cabinet and start wrapping her entire forearm with it.

"I need release." she tells me. "It makes me feel better."

"Does Xander know about this?"

"Yes." she nods. "He hid all the blades from me. I'm not allowed to use knives either."

She didn't stop her cutting, but at least she's telling the truth about what she's been doing. "How do you open your cuts without a blade?"

"I just don't let them heal completely."

"Since I'm not near you twenty-four-seven, I want you to either talk to Xander or mind link me every time you think of hurting yourself." I don't want my baby sister to end up in the emergency room because she cut too deep or loss too much blood.

Her weight is already too low to be healthy, I'm trying to bring her back to be her normal self. "I want to stop." Char whispers. "But it's hard."

"You'll get through it. You just have to let Xander and I help you." I pull her into my embrace. "Talk to us, okay?"

"I'll try."

While Xander's been researching how to get her to become more comfortable around us, I've been searching up why people commit self harm and what other habits it leads to. I haven't seen any head banging or hair pulling from Char, but I'm a little bit concerned about her burning herself. It was listed as one of the habits that she had a possibility of having.

"How about we talk about it right now while we eat the brownies?"

/$;&/$:@";&;$-//(""$(/$:$/$

QOTC- socks or sandals?

I just wanted to say THANK YOU guys sooooooooo much!!!!!!

My Broken Luna is officially rank #183 in Werewolf! I wouldn't have been able to get this far without the help of my lovely readers!

Originally, I thought that the most My Broken Luna would get to is a few thousand reads and maybe fifty votes;

October 16, 2015 this book has 18k reads, 633 votes, and 120 comments.

All of this is incredible! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

xoxo Priscilla