Chapter 1: New Pack, New Home

Anastasia’s POV

The chain around my wrist tightened as the Beta holding the leash pulled us closer and closer to their pack’s grand gate.

            Our new pack. Our new home of torture.

            Only the lives of the living high-ranking wolves will change. The Omegas like me? We remain the same. We’re prisoners, at the same time a new addition to the new Alpha’s collection. A pack’s material possession. Nothing more.

            The sky is not bright either,as if it mirrored our own emotions. Gray clouds hovered above us, looming. It seems to be just waiting for us to enter the Blood Dawn Pack—and then rain over us like some poor ducks drenched in watery mud.

            We’ve been chained using a single chain that connected us to one another. The Omegas have marched as one line held by a single thick chain pulled by one Beta on the front while our backs, feet, and sometimes the exposed skin between our hand and arms were whipped by some Betas as well. Blood coated the many silver-tipped ends of the whip, glinting like rubies atop silver under the cold ray of the afternoon sun.

            I saw a man ahead, smirking at me—or at us, I don’t know. He has powerfully built muscles that can send several enemies flying even in his human form, his sun-kissed skin that probably has been trailed by as many lips of women as much as their hands, and—miraculous for a man—his shiny pinkish lips that made my eyes squint.

            Too beautiful for an Alpha. Too fucking handsome.

            I gave him a wide grin. The gesture remains a mystery to me as well as why the hell did I do that. He saw me and stalked away almost immediately, as if my grin sent him back to wherever paradise he came from. Or hell, I don’t know.

“Hey, you!” A Beta holding two whips, one on each hand pointed at me, the silver tips clanking at each other. “What are you smirking at?” Then his nails lashed at me, leaving my face bloody and more corpse-looking. No blood trickled from my face, perhaps it was because I’ve lost so much blood that I no longer have more to display with.

            “You don’t get to smirk or stare or look at the Alpha like that.” And a whip cracked in the air. One strike and my body was already on the filthy ground even before I could scowl.

            A Beta was already on my side before I could draw my next breath, grabbed me with his icy grip on my upper arm as it unlocked the chain on my wrist and half-dragged me to the front.

“Look at me, Omega.” I didn’t bother looking at him even when he commanded so fiercely. I am the most stubborn Omega in the Iron Woods Pack so why shouldn’t I be stubborn here too? “Did you just hear what I said?”

“Oh pretty much every bird heard you, sweet Beta.”

A slap so hard thundered on my ears. I fall dramatically to the ground but immediately gain my footing. My palm was already on my cheeks, clutching my face.

But my smirk remained.

“That’s enough, Beta Jansen.”

I didn’t notice I was the one who held the line of blight-stricken Omegas if it wasn’t for the Alpha now in front us.

‘I thought he walked away?!’

Alpha Cain. Vicious. Cunning. Cruel.

Yes I remembered his name pretty much even before he attacked us during the Alpha’s daughter’s birthday. The Alpha’s body obviously has been left as a feast for the crows while his head is now on one of the iron spikes of the Blood Dawn Pack’s gate. Perched atop the grand entrance as if it was a mere welcoming gesture to us.

Even the two huge black wolves statues, wolves howling as they tipped their head to the sky, their eyes made of pure ruby, seem to shudder at the head now between them.

Alpha Cain gave me a small, horrible smile. The smile of many monsters. Magic sizzled in the air between us as he snapped his fingers and the chain was once again on my wrist.

I heard how magic works especially when conquering another pack: when an Alpha kills another Alpha and takes his lands and subjects for himself, the power of the dead Alpha will immediately transfer to him. Not on the dead Alpha’s son or daughter, but to the conqueror.

That’s how werewolves, especially Alphas, value strength to the point that killing one another is merely a sport to indulge into. A hobby, if one may put it.

I’m now on the front. Walking first, chin high, into our impending doom. No doubt the whip will greet me more times than I’ve been in the middle of the line.

“Put them in The City Under. I’ll be in my private residence.” Then the Alpha vanished, probably nestling back in his throne now that he has conquered another pack again.

Alpha Cain gave me one last wary glance. “Give her a greeting worthy of my name.”