CHAPTER 2: No Turning Back

SELENE

I crashed through our house’s back door; I was a mess of fur and panicked breath. My lungs burned.

Someone saw me beyond the border. And… and… he saw my naked body before transforming into a wolf.

I shifted back behind the woodpile, my bones popping, my human skin appearing slick with river water and cold sweat.

“Selene?” my grandmother’s voice called from inside our house.

I grabbed an old grain sack to cover myself, my hands shaking too hard to tie it properly.

I stumbled into the kitchen.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” my grandmother spoke, her hand flying to her mouth.

Lukas shot up from his chair. “Who did this? Were you attacked?”

“I have to go,” I gasped, the words tumbling out.

“Go where?” he demanded, his eyes scanning me for injuries.

“To the Alpha’s mansion.”

“What?” he snarled. “After everything we said? You want to go?”

They don’t understand. They can’t.

“I have to go now,” I insisted, my voice rising with hysteria.

“Selene, calm down,” my grandmother pleaded, trying to wrap a proper blanket around me.

“Tell us what happened,” Lukas spoke, his voice dangerously low.

I can’t tell them I was skinny-dipping beyond the border of our own pack territory. I can’t tell them the Alpha of the rival pack saw me naked.

Or was that guy the alpha? Or not? But his aura, his physique, and that cold authoritative demeanor, all of it was seen on his face.

“I was just swimming…”

“Swimming where?” my grandma asked.

“At the mystic river, b-beyond the border.”

“What?! Have you lost your mind? Why did you go there!”

I couldn’t answer. 

“I saw someone,” I confessed, breath hitching and eyes at the brink of tears. “At the border. On the other side.”

“Who?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know… but he looks like a high-ranking wolf from the other pack of the highlands.”

Lukas’ posture changed, protective. “What did he do?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “He saw me.”

He saw everything.

“It’s not safe here anymore,” my grandmother muttered, the fear that I felt earlier can be seen in her eyes right now.

She grasped both of my hands and held it tightly.  “The pack’s mansion… it’s the only place you’ll be safe.”

I nodded even when my heart broke in pieces.

It’s the only place the man from the other territory couldn’t reach once he came looking for me.

“This is bullshit,” Lukas growled.

“It’s my decision,” I said with a conviction I didn’t feel the last time.

The goodbyes were a blur of tears and rushed packing. A single bag with two spare dresses and my herbs.

I glanced at my grandma and handed her granules of some fresh herbs I mixed together days ago. It’s a mix of dried flowers and herbs with a strong smell that could erase traces of a wolf’s scent. I made it myself as part of my hobby, and didn’t expect I’d be making use of it right now.

“This will mask my scent in our house. Grandma, I am so sorry. I will do well at the Alpha’s mansion for us to have this land. And… please, be safe here. I don’t think that stranger will know where I live or if he’d inquire… he is from the other pack, but I… I violated the border treaty, I shouldn’t be dragging our family along with thi—”

“Selene,” my grandma’s voice pull in the present. I paused, my frantic eyes focused on her. “He did not see your face clearly, right?”

I gulped, he did. But I did not say that. 

I wanted to cry as I lied to my grandmother. “Yes, he did. “Yes, he didn’t.”

“That’s good.”

Lukas wouldn’t look at me. He just stood by the door, his arms crossed, a statue of anger.

My grandmother clutched my hands. “Be safe, dear,” she whispered, her tears began flowing.

“I will,” I promised.

The journey was three hours on foot. I had to travel alone, past the forest and streams. Our land is safe. Soldiers from our pack patrol the area consistently. I just have to walk since no vehicle is actively operating at night.

I had turned into my wolf form so I could travel faster, my bag around my mouth. Three hours of pure terror.

Every snapped twig has scared the hell out of me.

Every rustle in the leaves was followed with horrifying thought…

Would he follow me? Did he get my scent?

My mind kept replaying the image from the river.

The man. The stranger.

His massive chest, covered in wounds that would have killed a weaker wolf. The sheer, raw power radiating from him.

He didn’t even flinch.

My body betrayed me with a jolt of something hot and unwanted.

What the hell is wrong with me? I chastised myself. I should be terrified, not… this.

I moved faster, trying to outrun my own thoughts.

The Alpha’s mansion rose from the landscape like a mountain of stone and dark wood. It

was huge. Imposing. It smelled of old money and power.

When I arrived, a stern woman with her hair in a tight bun met me at the service entrance.

“You’re the girl?” she asked, grazing her eyes up and down on me with disapproval. Her name tag read BEATRICE. HEAD OF HOUSE.

“I’m Selene.”

“I know who you are,” Beatrice snipped. “You’re sent by your family as payment for their debt.”

She said the words like they were a disease.

“Here,” she commanded, shoving a grey uniform into my hands. “Rules are on the wall. Break

them, and your family’s debt doubles. Understood?”

I gulped. “Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled.

“Good. You start in the scullery. Now go.”

And with that, I started my work as a maid of the pack house.

The pack house was its own world. A world of whispers and hierarchies. And that includes bullies. They say the first step is always the hardest. I know. But I can’t help but shed tears.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” a girl named Cora sneered on my first day, bumping my shoulder hard. “Another charity case.”

“Leave her alone, Cora,” another girl spoke softly from behind me.

She had kind eyes. “I’m Anya.”

“Selene.”

“Don’t mind her,” Anya said, nodding towards Cora. “She’s just pissed she’s not in the Alpha’s bed anymore.”

The Alpha. Our Alpha. The one I was here to serve.

“Is he… here?” I asked Anya that afternoon as we polished an endless stretch of gold staircase

“Who, Alpha Kirion?” she laughed. “Gods, no.”

“He’s never here?”

“Almost never. Always somewhere else fighting. He takes it more seriously than anyone.”

I nodded, thinking about what that meant. If the Alpha is not always right here then the work that I have to do won’t be as scary. 

“I heard he’s an incredible fighter,” I said, trying to fit in the conversation and also wanting to learn more so that I can get more information and learn how to get by and move around the pack house.

Anya’s eyes went wide. “Incredible doesn’t cover it. He’s a monster in a fight. A god.”

“Wow.”

“And the girls,” she continued, her voice dropping to a gossip-worthy whisper.

“What about them?” I asked.

“They throw themselves at him,” she giggled. “He’s… well, you’ll see. If you ever see him.”

“He has a lot of girlfriends?”

“Girlfriends? No. He never keeps one for long. A night. A week. Then he gets bored.”

A player. Great.

“But that’s not the biggest rumor,” Anya spoke while leaning in closer.

“What is?”

“His condition.”

The word hung in the air between us. “Condition?”

“A rare one,” she said mysteriously. “No one knows exactly what it is.”

“What do they say it is?” I pressed.

“Something about his rage,” she whispered. “That when he shifts, sometimes… he loses control. Completely. That’s why he’s always away. Fighting. To keep it in check.”

An unstable Alpha. That’s just my fucking luck.   

If I mess up… Should I start fearing for my life now?                           

Two weeks passed by quickly.

Two weeks of scrubbing floors, washing dishes, avoiding Cora, and listening to Anya’s stories.

The mansion remained quiet, a lifeless museum. The Alpha felt more like a ghost, a legend.

His presence was nowhere to be found.

In the grand main hall, an old black telephone sat on a mahogany table.

Anya told me it was a very important private line.

In the two weeks I had been there, it hadn’t rung once.

Until today.

I was dusting a suit of armor nearby when the silence was shattered by a piercing ring.