(GILBERT'S POV)
My mother used herbs—bitter concoctions that she ground and mixed and made me drink every single day. They suppressed my scent, masking the sweet omega aroma that would have marked me as prey. They dulled my heat cycles, keeping them at bay so that I wouldn't draw unwanted attention.
They also made me sick.
I vomited almost every morning. My head ached constantly. My body ached. I was always tired, always weak, always on the verge of collapse. But I didn't complain. I couldn't. Because every time I opened my mouth to protest, I saw the fear in my mother's eyes—the desperate, all-consuming fear of a woman who had lost everything and would do anything to protect the one thing she had left.
Anyways, She told me that when I was five years old, she took me and ran away from the last pack she had been sold to.
