Prologue

I stared at the place our fingers intertwined; they just looked the same.

Two hands. One big, one small. Looking at them, you would never know that one of them belonged to a wild, hot Pet. 

The other? It belongs to the Alpha I am serving, our Alpha Cain.

They were just hands for all one knew, yes. For a long time we lay beside each other in silence, listening to the rhythm of our hearts. The moans we unleashed earlier kept playing and playing in my ears as if they were a song on the radio being played again and again.

The car’s windows are open, allowing us to exhale from our sexual encounter and inhale our scent.

As we passed roads lined with the houses of our pack members and some stretches of shops, nothing but goods and bags that I once thought that I could never afford, silence only filled the car.

I closed my eyes, too tired to keep them open any longer. Too tired to be contemplating.

Even this early in the morning, the streets were packed in The City Above. Out the window crowds of pack members already moving for the day, huge grins plastered on their lips as today is Family Day in the Blood Dawn Pack. At least this pack is more decent than the one I came from. At least Alpha Cain still reminded his subjects to value the time they have with their family.

And with the thought of wondering about family made me finally crack the silence with my first question since we made love. No, made love is too possessive and romantic. I’m only an Alpha’s Pet, not his Luna. 

What we had is nothing more but the beastly rough sex he constantly gives me—or rather, I constantly provided for him.  

“Did you ever have family aside from your sister and older brother that have been…” I said to the Alpha, which in turn made him slow the car. I couldn’t bring myself to finish the question. His older brother has been murdered by the Alpha of the pack I came from. The Iron Woods Pack. 

Alpha Cain might be hewn of pure hatred and lust, but he never desired the title to become an Alpha. It once belonged to his older brother.

“No. Not someone I can remember.” As we came around the bend, a plume of mist rose into the sky. The Alpha’s private residence, not where his headquarters and office stood, was beside a small waterfall that I wondered was purely a sight to behold that I once thought was wholly magical. “I was only a baby when my brother ascended as an Alpha. Both of our parents were taken by a sickness, relatively exclusive only to werewolves.”

“The Lunar Blight?” I winced, trying to remember as hard as I could.

“Yes. Thankfully as a baby, I wasn’t affected by it.”

He helped me get down the car as soon as he parked it by the driveway. We walked in silence for minutes and were already rounding the corner, passing the alcove where lilacs and roses and orchids hang, greeting me. 

I eyed his private residence. It was nothing more than an alabaster building. Even the tiles outside were made of white marble. But it was more than an expensive ivory building that stood on the corner of our pack’s territory. It was also the place where he was born. Where he learned to talk and crawl. Eat and speak. Where his brother became his primary father figure and mentor, bestfriend and confidante.

Alpha Cain, though he softened towards me earlier, still carried himself with enough lethal grace to send anyone staggering back. Anyone but me.

            And when they beheld me, by the choker of silver crescent moon on my neck, they knew I am his Pet—an actual title in this pack, and the pack to where I came from, that was reserved only to one person.

I am an Alpha’s Pet. Alpha Cain’s very wild Pet. 

I marvelled at the little river that snaked around a bend from the waterfall as it flowed to where the fountain stood, the Moon Goddess’ statue atop it. Its magnificence beautifying the already breathtaking packhouse’s front yard. Coins sank on the bottom of the fountain for some pack members still believe the human’s superstitions that throwing coins in the water’s fountain would definitely grant a wish.

If it did, there should’ve been a fountain at every household filled with brimming silver coins.  

“You were the only pet I brought here,” he said with enough sentiment that made me realize I am somewhat special. To him, of course. “I always let my Pets live in the packhouse and not with me. In my private residence.”

“Because you don’t want them to be close to you because you don’t want to feel that they seemed like family?”

Alpha Cain gave me a lazy smile, and nodded.

The grassy plain beneath my feet, soft and cool and warm, seemed to beckon me to sink my feet deeper, to savor its essence. I lowered myself to the grass, somehow it was not itchy even with my dry skin.

Behind us, the Alpha’s private residence was nothing more but a looming figure, probably fifty feet away from us.

“I didn’t know anything like this even existed in our lands.” I smiled weakly. I wish we could enjoy it more than as an Alpha-and-pet relationship, that is what I wanted to add. But I just curled my lips upward and drank the exquisite view.

He slowly turned towards me, peeling his eyes away from the packhouse beyond his alabaster residence that probably is waiting for him to finish stack of stack of paperworks and Alpha duties; caring for the Betas, his second-in-command and responsible for the internal affairs; his Warriors that are trained to be deadly in a battlefield; and his Deltas, who are more like emissaries and spies and scouts that only answers to him. All of them answer to him, and to him only.

            “You are my Pet—my bed warmer. If I ever find a mate, I am sure she’s not someone like you.” His tone was plain. But I sensed the bitterness in his voice.  I know. I might have expected too much—too much that it hurts to sometimes wish we were more than just who we are now.

I was my former Alpha’s favorite “pet”, too. Not in bed but in the training grounds as his favorite sparring partner, as his favorite punching bag. Omegas never train, we only serve and obey. We never fight.

And so I obey his command to remain stiff as he beats me—beats me for practice.

In times of attack, we are the last ones to hide in the bunker. That's why sometimes enemies get to us first and screaming for help is already too late. That’s what happened to my sister by the way, when Alpha Cain’s Blood Dawn Pack attacked us.

I watched Alpha Cain closely. But even though he’s actually the reason why my sister is no longer with me, I see a man hiding behind a façade of sex-loving and ruthless Alpha who is really just an ordinary werewolf yearning for the presence of his mate like everybody else.

Yearning for the half of their soul, longing for one true love.

“Tell me more about your older brother,” I breathed. My fingers trailing the smoothness of his chest.

“What about him?” he threw me a glance as he eased himself in a sitting position on the grass. I mimicked his movements.

“Did you really not want to lead, to rule, to be an Alpha?”

“He was thirty-three, I was eighteen. Killed by your Alpha in an attempt to a siege. I managed to send him back howling in pain to your lands.”

“So your brother became an Alpha when he was fifteen and you're just…”

“Barely one year old,” he swallowed.

“Why did you kill him just now? Just this year?!”

“Because he tried taking us under his again. And I know he will not stop, so I just reached him first.”

“So you never wanted to rule another pack.” It was more of a statement to myself than a question to him. “So what about the three other packs? Are they the same case with the Iron Woods Pack and Blood Dawn Pack?”

“Yes,” was all his reply. So his takeover to other packs…is more of his ‘prevention method’. He rather killed one first—slay one Alpha—than to face the need to kill many. 

“I did it to save my pack—and yours.” 

Of course. Alpha Cain didn’t march with his Warriors and slay every member of the Blood Dawn Pack. He only slay those who raised claws before him first. He only killed our hideous Alpha Lucius and demanded us to bow before him.

Demanded—since Alphas have traditions to uphold. Besides, if he lets us walk freely, Rogues will still find us. And I doubt it will be a pleasant meeting.

Now that makes sense. The brutality he showed us when he attacked us in the middle of the Snow Moon Festival, the biggest celebration every pack held every winter.

We were just partying when a blood-curdling scream splintered the silence.

But now… “You did what you needed to do.”

I let my hand find its way atop his.

Alpha Cain smiled at me. No—grinned at me. “I never heard a Pet praise me like you before.” 

I lifted a wry smile. “It’s the truth. I might be your prisoner of passion, but at least the one holding my leash is a noble brother even with his bruteness.”

Alpha Cain tipped his head to the sky, to the cloudless sky gleaming down at us, and roared with a laughter that I swore even the trees laughed with him.