Chapter 2

Less than two hours later, the footage from outside the arena exploded across the pack's communication network.

The trending tags climbed fast.

Wolves from every settlement praised my mother as an "iron-blooded Alpha mother" who had raised a genius warrior. Parents flooded the comment sections begging for her methods.

Back at home, my mother sat in her old, worn beastfur armchair, cradling her communication crystal and laughing until she nearly fell over. In the dim moonlight, that face twisted with excitement looked almost monstrous.

"You see that? The kid your useless father left behind, I turned her into the pack's first-ranked warrior."

"He can regret it all he wants."

"Everyone who looked down on me, I'll put them all under my feet."

And then, mid-sentence, she stopped.

The hand holding the crystal trembled slightly. Her gaze went distant, landing somewhere far away.

She was thinking about that night.

It was not long after I was born, less than three months.

My father had come through the door late that night, carrying a scent that belonged to someone else entirely.

My brother sat on the beastfur rug, studying a combat technique chart. My mother held me, still wrapped in swaddling.

My father tossed his wolf-fang pendant onto the rack without looking at her, glanced over once, and spoke in a tone like he was reporting the day's hunt.

"There's something I need to tell you."

"Serena and I completed the second bonding."

Serena was my mother's closest childhood friend within the pack, the girl who had trained alongside her in the Alpha elite program since they were young, the witness at her coming-of-age ceremony, and the first one who had come running to the pack's birthing den the day I was born.

My mother's arms locked rigid around me.

"What did you just say?"

My father leaned against the doorframe. He didn't even look at her.

"Exactly what it sounds like."

"I marked her last night." He said it with a ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

"I don't know how to put it, but you and her just give me something different."

"With her, I feel like my wolf side is complete."

"Look at yourself. All you do is orbit the kids. How is that any different from some ordinary human who's lost their instincts?"

My mother stared at him, her eyes hollow. She couldn't even tell anymore how much of what he said was meant to cut her.

My father let out a short laugh. "You need your own pursuits, you know? Don't trap yourself."

The den went deathly quiet.

My mother sat there, drowning in vanity on one side and a bowl of stone-cold beast-blood soup on the other. She slammed the bowl down onto the low table.

"Eat. Eat and get to the training grounds. You're this far behind, so how do you expect to live up to having such a powerful mother? Don't you dare embarrass me."

My body sat bolt upright in the chair, eyes blank, not reacting to the soup at all. A corpse can't eat.

But my mother noticed nothing wrong.

When I didn't move, her expression darkened instantly.

"What are you sulking about now?"

"Have I been neglecting you? Food, shelter, who do you think provides all of that?"

"You went on a hunger strike before the Trials, fine. But that's done. You're still going to give me attitude?"

"Who exactly are you trying to show that face to?"

She stood up fast, crossed the room in three strides, and raised her arm.

The crack rang out through the den.

The blow was hard enough to snap my shell's head to the side. There was no red welt rising on that pale cheek. Instead, the struck flesh showed a strange, dark blue indentation where the tissue beneath had stopped behaving like living tissue.

My mother didn't notice any of it.

She grabbed me by the hair and wrenched my head back, forcing that dead face to look up at her. The cruelest, most poisonous things she knew how to say came spilling out of her.

"Don't think I don't know what's going on in that head of yours."

"You're just like your father, weak at your core. A defective bloodline."

"You carry that traitor's genes. You were rotten from the start."

"Showing off a little wolf form to chase after male wolves, are we? Every warrior has to earn their strength the hard way."

"Suppressing your shift urges toward a neutral state, I'm doing that for you... wait until the Trials are over, then everything will be fine."

Her spit hit the frozen face.

This bottomless degradation, this ritual humiliation, she had done it to me countless times since I was small. Every time I glanced too long at a passing male pack member. Every extra five minutes I spent grooming. It always ended here.

I drifted at the top of the den, watching the whole absurd scene with cold eyes.

These words, the ones that used to make me want to tear open my own chest just to prove I had nothing to hide, couldn't touch me now.

All I felt was a deep, hollow grief on behalf of the person I used to be. The grief of watching someone who never deserved any of it.

My mother ran out of venom and let go. My shell slumped back against the chair like a puppet whose strings had gone slack.

"Fine, starve then. Hunger sharpens the wolf instincts anyway. You'll squeeze out more potential during the Trials."

The next morning, early summer moonlight filtered into the den.

I watched my body. A corpse can't hold back the laws of nature forever. The skin had begun to show dark mottling, wide patches of deep blue-grey spreading across the surface, discoloration from blood pooling after circulation stops. Between it all, the faint but unmistakable scent of wolf-rot had begun to leak out.

When my mother came to rouse me for the day's preparations, her brow furrowed hard.

"Why do you look like this? I told you to eat yesterday. Guess I have to fix this myself."

She wanted me functional enough to compete, so she let out a short, disgusted exhale, reached into the inner pocket of her top, and pulled out the black silver-moon jade plate engraved with the Submission Mark.

Without a second's hesitation, she bit down on her tongue tip. A mouthful of essence-blood hit the jade surface.

The Submission Mark was forced to maximum activation.

Under the weight of that dominating will, my shell lurched upright with a sound like grinding gravel, the crack of bones moving against each other without the cushioning of living muscle.