--Luna POV --
Before I met Master, I was nothing. I was less than nothing. I had no parents. No friends. No family. From the day I could talk, I was beaten. If I said something somebody did not like, I was beaten. If I cried, I was beaten. If I made a mistake, I was beaten. I slept on a stone floor in a room with 20 other girls just like me.
For 10 years after I turned 2, the slave house taught me how to be a maid. They sat us down, explained what a maid needs to do, told us to demonstrate, and then beat us. After they beat us, they would tell us to repeat what we were taught, and as soon as we made a mistake, we were beaten again.
The slave house's method was simple. Do what you are told, when you are told, and exactly how we want you to do it, or get beaten. Accept the food, clothing, conditions, dirty water, and the smell of the other unwashed slaves, or you will be beaten.
Until I was 12 years old, pain and maid services were all I knew. That's when master Llewelyn bought me. At first, he was indifferent to me, and for the first 6 months in his house, he barely interacted with me, only when I brought him tea or served him food did he look in my direction.
One night, he came to the slave quarters, grabbed my arm, and dragged me out of my bed. I had heard stories of how masters would force themselves on slaves, even though the kingdom forbids it.
But what I feared did not happen, instead, I was thrown into the back of a cart and taken on a journey into the night. We arrived at another big house similar to master Llewelyn's, and I was made to walk barefoot to the back of this new manor.
There was a crowd of about 10 people there, and I could tell they were all rich, fat, and drunk. My master pulled me by my arm and presented me to some of the others. 'I will enter this wolfkin tonight, put me down for 10 gold.'
The other people looked at me with disgust. And then my master dragged me into the gardens to where there was another large group of people waiting, all standing in a circle.
My master made a big stink about how he had a 'ringer'. I didn't know what he meant at the time, but he threw me into the middle of the circle, where I saw a catkin girl with yellow hair. She looked at me like she wanted to kill me, honestly, I was kind of hoping she would do it right there.
A man walked out into the middle of the circle, raised his hand, and shouted, 'Begin.' The cat girl immediately started attacking me. I was so confused about what was happening that I just curled up into a ball and put my hands over my head. The people watching were all laughing and jeering at me. I felt humiliated. She kept on hitting and kicking me until I heard my master shout 'get up and fight her you damn mutt!'
I stood up and tried to fight back, but she was hitting, kicking, and scratching me so much that I couldn't do anything. Eventually, I just collapsed on the floor after passing out, I could barely retaliate.
My master woke me up by throwing cold water over me. When I gasped for breath, he grabbed me by my neck and lifted me off the ground. He looked straight into my eyes and said, 'Next time you lose, you die!'
I was covered with wounds from the beating, and when I returned to the manor, the other slaves tried to console me. They misunderstood and thought that I had resisted when the master tried to force himself on me, and I was punished with a beating. They didn't understand.
The master was planning on taking me to the beastkin fighting pits and forcing me to fight other beastkin slaves. Because wolfkin are not so common, he got the idea in his head that we were stronger, even though that isn't true at all. He was humiliated in front of those others when I lost; they laughed at him, so when I recovered a little, he came and beat me again.
2 weeks later, I was back in a fighting pit with a cowkin girl. She was just like I was in my first fight, she seemed so confused about what was happening. She had no hate or anger in her eyes, only fear. We stood there looking at each other for almost a minute before my master walked into the pit, kicked me between my shoulder blades, grabbed my neck, and said, 'win or die!'
This time, I decided I didn't want to die, I wanted to live so I could get away from this place. One day, I wanted to be free, but that could never happen if I were dead. So I decided to fight. I turned savage.
I attacked that poor cowkin girl without mercy. She did the same as I had done before, and she curled up in a ball. It didn't matter how much I hit or kicked her, she kept covering her head. To make her stop covering her head, I bit into her hand, and she tried to punch me away. As soon as she did that, I kicked her in the face and she fell on the floor. Then I hit her until she couldn't move anymore. Maybe I killed her, I don't know.
After I won that fight, the master said, 'Not bad for a mutt', and gave me a huge portion of cooked meat. After we returned home, I cried myself to sleep that night.
He told me that if I kept on winning, he would keep feeding me lots of good meat, but that if I lost too many times, he would chop me up and feed me to the other slaves. I didn't like that idea, so I did everything I could to win my fights. I threw dirt in their eyes, I kicked men in the groin, I clawed their eyes, and tore chunks of their flesh with my teeth. Anything to stay alive.
After 6 months of that, I even began to develop a little pride in my fighting. I started to care about things a little more. I was good at something, and that made me feel good too, even though I know beating down other slaves is nothing to be proud of.
My master hired a man to train me to fight. He taught me how to block, punch, kick, grapple, and use my knees and elbows as weapons, too. He even taught me how to kill with just my hands and feet if I wanted to.
One night, I was fighting a tigerkin girl, and it was going like normal. She didn't know how to fight, and I was viciously stomping on her when suddenly men in armour came and pinned me to the floor. They beat me using their steel gauntlets, so to avoid losing my teeth, I made sure to face the dirt. They were there to stop the illegal pit fights, but even though I was being forced by my master, I was beaten, and he just got fined gold coins.
The master sold me to a slave trader to cover the payment he needed to make, and I liked it there in the beginning. Nobody beat me at first, and I was fed jerky and wheat gruel twice a day. I even got to sleep on a bed with a mattress.
After a while, I noticed that the wheat gruel was bad. I could clearly smell that there was sawdust mixed in with it. Maybe they bought it from the wrong person and got scammed, or maybe they wanted to save money by making us eat something that isn't food. But I couldn't bring myself to eat it. I might have been a slave, but I was a living breathing person; people shouldn't eat sawdust. Even a slave has her pride.
One of the slavers noticed I was refusing to eat, and when I explained there was sawdust in it, he told me to keep my mouth shut and eat. I refused again, and he hit me. The beatings had started again.
They threw me into a cage, and every day they would come with gruel and try to make me eat. Again, I refused, so they chained me to the cage using my collar and beat me. They wouldn't let me out to use the bathroom, so I had to relieve myself just across from where I slept. The smell was terrible, but I got so used to it that I stopped caring.
The only thing keeping me alive at that point was my desire to be free. I refused to eat, but I also refused to waste away and die. I just sat there trying to force time to pass in my head.
That was when he appeared.
That boy with the shining blonde hair and the dazzling blue eyes. That boy who saw my situation and made a face like he was going to punch the merchant. That boy who told the merchant to shut up so I could talk to him. I wanted him to take me away right then and there.
When the merchant hit my hands with his cane, the boy immediately agreed to take me. He made them clean me, put clothes on me, remove the chain and iron collar, and give me something comfortable. Then he and his stepmother took me to eat at the restaurant.
They allowed me to sit at their table. They fed me so much food. They even gave me their leftovers. I was so hungry after refusing the sawdust gruel that I ate 1 and a half bowls of stew, almost 2 baskets of bread rolls, and countless roasted potatoes. I had never eaten so much food before, and I had never eaten food that tasted that good before.
Then, mistress Adeline told me about how he family has rules about buying slaves, and how when Master turned 18, I would be freed, given money, and could choose for myself what I wanted to do with my life. I cried! I screamed and cried for almost half an hour, and then Master Cass held me in his arms to comfort me.
No free person had ever done that for me before. Free people used their hands to beat me, restrain me, imprison me, and force me to go with them. The master used his hands to comfort me. I wanted to cry even more.
After that, he took me shopping and bought me new clothes! I was astonished. In the slave house, they made me wear a potato sack dress, but they gave me some simple stuff so I could accompany the master and mistress Adeline outside. But my master bought me new clothes, and he made sure they were the correct size too. I left the city feeling so grateful.