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Chapter 1
Louisa's POV
Stirring from the abyss of unconsciousness, I was greeted by the overpowering scent of liquor hanging heavy in the air.
What happened to me?
My body was unresponsive, every attempt to move my limbs or lift my head met with searing pain.
Good. Pain is good. Pain means that I'm still alive.
I told myself.
As my eyes slowly adjusted to the low light, the realization hit me - I was sprawled out on a bed in a tent.
This wasn't the run-of-the-mill tent I was accustomed to during my time with the Crimson Creek Pack.
It was adorned with intricate decorations, reminiscent of a royal abode.
With my mind kicking into gear, the pain coming from my back started to deteriorate.
Abruptly, a man's voice, dreamy and distant, echoed in my ears -
"Fuck it... I don't give a fuck... I'll kill them all."
I heard a man's dreamy voice next to my ear.
That can't be good.
Why am I lying on a bed with a man?
And why is this man showing attitude and swearing to kill everyone in his dream?!
Summoning all my strength, I managed to turn my head, revealing a face that was breathtakingly handsome.
What the heck?!
I have never seen this man before! I have never seen a man who looks so handsome.
His sculpted face, partially hidden by his tousled black hair, was as if it had been caressed by the Moon Goddess herself.
My nostrils flared and I recognized that he was the source of alcohol in the air.
He must have drunk a lot of alcohol to be hammered like this.
Other than being so effortlessly handsome even without opening his eyes, there was something very different about him.
But what is it?
My heart pounded in my chest, a wave of heat washing over me.
In an attempt to steady my nerves, I took a deep breath, only to be overwhelmed by his scent, sending my anxiety spiraling.
Just then, he shifted, his arm draping over my chest, sending me into a frenzy.
My heart was racing, my scream echoing in the air as I used every ounce of strength to shove his arm off.
I am not naked. That's a relief for sure.
But just as I started to feel relieved, something very disturbing happened -
He woke up.
His eyes, a striking blue, sparkled eerily in the dim light.
As our eyes met, I was completely petrified.
Frozen in place, our eyes locked in an intense gaze.
I had never been this close, this intimate with anyone before.
"Oh, fuck... I need a drink for this." He lowered his head and grumbled, rubbing his head in distress.
The tent was gradually filling with light.
He pushed himself up, sitting on the edge of the bed.
That's when I noticed his bare torso.
His back was a canvas of scars, fully exposed to my view.
I didn't know what to do.
My mind went blank.
All I could do was hold my breath, praying he wouldn't notice me.
He looked very drunk and in a very bad mood.
He stood up and poured himself a glass of wine.
He rose to his feet and poured himself a glass of wine.
For a moment, he just stood there, holding the glass, his muscular arm on display like a Greek statue.
But as he turned his gaze towards me, our eyes locked once more.
The wild cries of my inner wolf echoed in my ears, causing my knees to buckle.
A wave of heat washed over me, like a bolt of lightning, seeping into every pore.
My body began to tremble uncontrollably.
This tall, brooding, enigmatic man...
He is my mate!
Somehow, I knew he recognized me as his mate as well... Maybe in a half-conscious way.
I had dreamed a thousand times about this very moment in my life. Everything about this moment felt alright, yet everything was fundamentally wrong.
For every werewolf, meeting their mates for the first time is the most life-affirming and sacred moment in their lives.
But somehow, the expression on my mate's face made this moment very upsetting... even appalling.
Disgust and hostility were written all over his face.
"Lucian! Drag your lazy butt in here!" His voice thundered, deep and gruff.
I was taken aback.
A moment later, a gorgeous tall man with blond hair walked into the tent.
He took a glance at me and bowed slightly to my mate -
"Alpha Lucas, how may I assist you at..." he glanced at his watch before continuing, "...this ungodly hour of 3 am?"
Alpha Lucas?!
There was only one Alpha Lucas I knew of - Alpha Lucas Farrow of the White Walkers Pack.
The mere mention of his name sent chills down my spine.
Alpha Lucas Farrow was the most feared pack leader in the entire northern realm of the Kingdom.
He was also my father's arch-nemesis, Alpha Jacob of the Crimson Creek Pack!
My mouth fell open in shock, and I couldn't seem to close it.
Everything was happening too quickly for me to comprehend.
"Why is this fucking woman on my bed? Why is she still breathing?!" Alpha Lucas pointed at me and asked.
"For the simple reason that you brought her into your tent, Alpha," Lucian replied nonchalantly.
"And you watched me do it but didn't intervene?!" Alpha Lucas downed another glass of wine.
Lucian didn't answer him. He took the glass from Alpha Lucas and replaced it with a glass of water.
"You look like shit," he said.
"Much obliged. I know I say this all the time but I just don't say it enough, but you're a heck of Beta," he said.
Then, their gazes both fell upon me.
Out of nowhere, I found myself the center of attention of two strikingly handsome men.
There I was, stretched out on the bed, completely paralyzed, not knowing what they would do to me.
One thing was for sure -
At least one of them wanted to have me killed.
A pounding question emerged in my head -
How did I end up in this place?!
Chapter 2
Louisa's POV
Flashback***
I was born to be the daughter of Alpha Jacob of Crimson Creek Pack.
My mother's life was tragically cut short in the process of bringing me into the world.
The official reason was labor exhaustion, but I had my suspicions about my stepmother Rosalie's involvement.
She used to be my mother's maid and the source of my predicament.
As soon as my mother passed away, my father married her consecutively, which was very suspicious.
However, Rosalie had her own twisted version of my mother's untimely death.
She was busy weaving tales about me, warning the pack to keep their distance as if I was some kind of a curse.
She would say, "Anyone who interacts with that girl will be doomed, just like her mother."
Since my birth, I've been an outcast, shunned by our pack.
Even the Omegas in the pack wouldn't talk to me.
I had to work very hard to get my ration of food, which was always not enough.
And I had to look for food in the trash.
But sometimes there just wasn't any scrap of food in the trash.
That was why I had been malnourished.
At the age of 19, I still couldn't shift into a wolf.
And everyone laughed at me in our pack, calling me "retard".
As days went by, I found myself grappling with self-denial.
I started to think that I was really cursed... That I was abandoned by the Moon Goddess.
All of this ended at the Masquerade Ball on Full Moon Day.
The day when I turned 20 years old.
The day I discovered that my father had made a deal with the devil, planning to hand me over to Alpha Lucas, the most feared and bloodthirsty beast in the Kingdom.
He had a reputation for killing all of his breeders as soon as he consummated with them.
I overheard my father's conversation with Rosalie outside his tent.
As soon as I heard this news, I decided to run.
At the masquerade, I put on a mask and tried to sneak away, but my plan of escape failed because of my half-brother, Zion.
As the only offspring of my father and Rosalie, he constantly labeled himself as "the virtuous successor of the pack".
But in fact, I was supposed to be the leader of our pack, because I was the firstborn child of my father.
I didn't want to inherit anything and I knew there was no way for me, an 80-pound she-wolf, to be the leader of a wolf pack.
But I couldn't change the fact that I was my father's first-born daughter.
And that was why Zion had been picking on me all the time.
At first, it was mere mockery with his gang of boys.
But as we aged, it escalated to physical torment.
He either pushed me into a frozen lake or forced me to hold charcoal.
And at the Masquerade Ball on Full Moon Day, Zion caught me while I was trying to sneak away.
"Where do you think you're going, you stinky rat?!" He ripped off my mask and gloated.
"Let go of me!" I struggled to break away from him.
"Who do you think you are?! You're not the Alpha of the pack! I don't need to take orders from you!" He said and pulled me up in the air, shaking me like a dead rabbit.
I screamed in pain.
"Yeah, scream as loudly as you can! Everybody is at the Ball. No one is going to come and save you!" he grinned.
I thrashed about, desperate to break free.
"Yeah, keep doing that." His eyes, filled with malevolent delight, bore into me."The more you struggle, the more excited I will become!"
Tears were pouring down my cheeks as I struggled in vain.
"Beg me to put you down, you skinny rat!"
"No!" I used all my effort and shouted.
"Beg me right now or I swear I'll rip off your arms!" Zion shook me more violently.
"No!!!" Tears streaming down my face. "You're nothing but a bully! And I'll never beg a bully like you!"
Just as I felt that my arms were about to be ripped off by Zion, I fell to the ground.
At almost the same time, I heard the scream coming from Zion -
"No! My arm! You... You cut off my arm!"
I saw an arm rolling on the ground.
It took me a while to realize that it had belonged to Zion.
As I was wondering how I managed to cut off Zion's arm, I looked up and saw a tall man with a monstrous black mask covering his face and a long blade knife in his hand.
There was blood dripping off the blade.
Feeling panicked, I was completely petrified.
The man lowered his head and stared at me.
I could see his sapphire blue eyes behind the mask.
At that moment, I felt the whole world stopped spinning.
The sight of his mask and the blood-soaked blade was horrifying.
Fear clutched at my throat, stealing my voice.
I knew I was supposed to run away from him, as I was supposed to run away from death.
But I just couldn't move.
The moon came out of the clouds.
White moonlight poured down on me.
My body started shivering violently.
A sharp pain radiated from my back and I saw white fur growing out of my arms.
Am I... Shifting?!
I couldn't believe what happened to me, but at the age of 20, my wolf finally surfaced...
And it was all because of this strange masked man who had cut off my stepbrother's arm and saved my life.
My wolf stood in front of the man and shook her fur.
Then, she took a few steps forward, trying to get closer to the man.
The man just stood there, tilting his head while looking at my wolf with curiosity.
"Don't get any closer!" I warned my wolf. "He has a knife and he will cut off your head!"
"No, he wouldn't. He smelt so delicious." My wolf licked her lips, taking one little step forward.
I tried to stop her, but it was too late.
The man gripped my wolf by its forelegs and held her up.
"You get caught!" I roared in panic. "Now he's going to kill you!"
"Stop barking in my head," my wolf said to me. "Watch and learn."
Then, she licked off the blood stains on the man's hand.
The clouds gathered and the moon was gone.
All of sudden, my wolf shifted back into human form.
I, completely naked, was lying in the man's arms.
I wasn't able to feel ashamed, because I had passed out because of exhaustion.
End of Flashback***
Chapter 3
Louisa's POV
Lying on the bed, being watched by Alpha Lucas and Beta Lucian, I felt so desperate.
"Alpha Lucas..." I said in a low voice, barely louder than a whisper.
"Is she trying to talk to me?" Lucas frowned.
"She's calling your name. So let me take a wild guess," Lucian shrugged.
It seemed that he had a very passive-aggressive way against his Alpha, and Alpha Lucas didn't have any problem with that.
This kind of fair and intimate Alpha-Beta relationship was something that I had never heard of.
My father's Beta would never dare to look at my father in the eyes, let alone throw him a big fat attitude.
"Do you have anything to say or do you want to keep staring at us like that?" Lucian asked.
"I... I want to go home..." I murmured.
"Home?" Lucas narrowed his eyes. "Do you call that shithole a home?"
I felt crossed.
My father's pack was not as advanced as those packs in the north, but it was a clean, decent place.
It was not fair to call it a shithole.
I wanted to talk back to him, but years of subordination shut me up.
This wasn't the place and the time for a person like me to talk back at a person like him.
I cleared my voice and said, "If you could please let me go home, Alpha Lucas... I have to see my family. My father will get upset if I'm gone for a long time."
Lucas chuckled with disdain.
"Is she seriously saying this or her head got bumped into something while I was dragging her into the tent?" Lucas said to his Beta.
Lucian gave him a dark look.
Lucas rubbed his head and said to me, "Your father sold you at 30,000 bucks to me over a poker table. I was at the Masquerade to collect you and saw your stepbrother trying to tear you into two halves. Why would you call someone who abandoned you and hurt you as your family?"
I opened my mouth and closed it.
I couldn't think of anything to justify myself.
I didn't have a family.
The family I had in my mind was nothing but an illusion.
My father wouldn't even notice that I was gone.
Maybe with me being gone, he would have one less thing to worry about.
I wept silently.
I tried to lift my arm to wipe my tears, but it was just too painful to move.
"They are the only ones that I have got..." I said in a quiet voice.
Lucas stood up, looking vexed -
"Now she's crying. Fuck. Lucian, help me out here. Why is she crying?"
Lucian replied, "Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you told her the truth?"
Lucas looked confused, "What else should I tell her? Do you want me to lie to her, telling her that her father loved her more than anything in the world?"
Lucian sighed and said, "That girl has just been sold by his father, Luke. You really should have got some common sense."
"Please let me go home... I don't want to stay here..." I mumbled in tears.
"Oh, fuck, shut up, will you?" Lucas said impatiently. "Your father is dead and your pack is gone. There is no home and family for you to return to!"
His words were like sharp knives, stabbing into my heart.
I looked up into his eyes, trying to look for a trace of evidence indicating that he was joking.
But there wasn't any.
He was... telling the truth?!
My head was so painful that I felt it was about to explode.
"No... It can't be it..." I said in despair, struggling to get up from bed. "I need to see them... I need to go back to my pack..."
All the muscles in my body were giving off shooting pain at the same time.
My spine must have been raptured, which was why I couldn't move my limbs.
Nevertheless, I still persisted, trying to sit up.
Tears were like running waterfalls, pouring down my cheeks.
Deep down in my heart, I knew he was telling the truth.
My pack was gone.
My father was dead.
But I just had to see it myself to confirm.
At that time, Lucas started to get agitated.
"Fuck! Lucian! Stop her! Stop her from moving! Strap her on the bed! Chain her up! I don't care! Just stop her from moving around like that!"
Lucian, who looked a bit surprised by his overreaction at first, stepped forward and pinned me down against the bed.
I could feel the warmth and scent of cigarettes in his hands.
"You have to stay put, she-wolf." He stared into my eyes and said in an assertive voice. "If you keep moving like this, I have to be forced to take action to tranquilize this situation. Do not force me to do anything."
His words were like cold surgical knives, cutting into my flesh and bones.
I looked over Lucian's shoulder and saw Lucas, who was walking back and forth in the tent, looking agitated.
I felt deterred. I knew it must be the bond between me and him.
Whenever I felt pain, he would feel it. And that was why he asked his Beta to subdue me.
So I stopped struggling, lying in bed, crying in silence, and eventually choking on my own tears.
Lucas covered his head with both of his hands and roared at his Beta, "Lucian! Do something! My head is about to explode! I'm drowning in grief! Oh, fuck it! That's it!"
He rushed forward and pulled me up from the bed, holding me in his arms while walking out of the tent.
The pain coming from my back almost killed me.
My head started spinning.
I could feel something bitter in my mouth.
I didn't know what it was, but I tried to swallow it back into my throat.
The night wind was blowing and I could see millions of stars in the dark night sky.
I had never been held like this by a man.
I was in my mate's arms, which was supposed to bring me overwhelming happiness.
But I just couldn't feel anything else but tremendous fear.
His body was without any temperature.
There was not a single dash of warmth coming from his embrace.
He was as cold as death.
Even though I leaned against his chest, I couldn't hear any heartbeat.
It was as if I was being carried by a living dead.
Where is he going to take me?
Is he going to hurt me?
The smell of burning was getting more intense.
Then, his cruel voice echoed in my ears -
"Now, take a look at it by yourself, you fucking she-wolf! Are you convinced?! Can you stop fucking around with me?!"
I looked up and saw the direction of my father's pack.
Old Crimson Creek was on fire.
The fire ruptured the darkness by burning it up as if the whole night was bleeding.
And that was what I smelt in the air.
The burning of my home, my family, and all the werewolves in my pack.
"No!!!" I growled under the night sky with all my efforts, but my voice was smothered down by the howling wind.
The swallowed bitter thing in my mouth surged at the back of my throat again.
This time, I had to let it out by coughing violently.
"Oh fuck!" Lucas dropped me to the ground. "She's fucking coughing blood now! She's a fucking plague!"
As my back hit the ground, I passed out into oblivion.
The last thing I saw was the burning night sky.
The stars were weeping blood.
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