1

KHLOE

 

A banquet was what it was. There was no other way to describe it.

 

It was a splendid one, too, as expected. There were rosettes standing lonely and beautiful in glass vases. The hall had a highceiling, white, such that if you looked above you would experience afeeling similar to that of staring at the heavens on a cloudy day.Below, rugs of fine fur adorned the black marble floor. Candles filled every inch of the halls, glowing a kindly, warm yellow, each one standing on solid metal ornate candle holders. The light from the candle fire reflected onto the glossy floor, and when one looked at it, the black marbles resembled a river of oil afire.

 

It was beautiful. Fire was such a beautiful thing that if you did not know what it was, what it could do, you let it draw you to it. Khloe had once seen a moth drawn to a flame. It burned in seconds, leaving behind the smell of singed ants.

 

That was what I felt about Caleb. He was like fire, burning everything thing he touched. Every girl in the town wanted him in that same way every child wanted . With a feverish hunger thatcould not easily be tamed. He was the Alpha's son after all. That made him the next best thing. When his father died, he would be the alpha, taking over his father's seat as the new ruler of the Blood moon pack by right of succession. Even though Tybald, his father and Alpha of the Blood moon pack was still strong and formidable, the prospect of being the next alpha mate was still a mouth watering thought for some.

 

I was not among their numbers.

 

I had not wanted to attend the birthday feast that eventually became tha banquet, but the sage had made me. It would be unacceptable, the sage had said, eyes crinkled and angry, for me to be absent at such an event. All of the blood moon pack would be there in the flesh to see Caleb choose his mate. It would be completely unacceptable, he said.

 

The prospect of being present at Caleb's appointment festival, the prospect of being among those who he would choose would have made some other girl's heart beat faster, but it did not excite me. It only made me more angry than I already was. And I was already very angry. Enraged. I had been ever since Adolph died. He was the old sage, the one who picked me up from the streets and feed me, a hungry, overlooked orphan. Ever since he passed on and a new sage was appointed, my life had gotten from hard to impossible. Now, the sage was trying to make me go to inconsequential festival.

 

Adolph would never have let that happen.

 

'Why?' I had snapped at the sage. 'Why should I go to a place where I am not wanted. Or am I now obligated to choose Caleb's mate for him as well as protect the pack?'

 

'You will appear because I say so, and that is the end of it.' The man growled.  

 

'What more do you want from me?' I said sarcastically.

 

'Everything.' The man ground out, his teeth clenched. 'Everything there is.'

 

It was the sage's usual mood when speaking to me; teeth pressed together in a snarl, his expression pinched, angry. He hated me, I knew. He hated me like the rest of the Blood moon pack. Only Adolph had thought differently of me, only he had treated me like a person. But he would also have wanted me to obey the new sage as much as she disliked the man.

 

So I went.

 

The sun was slowly beginning to sink below the horizon, painting the world red, amber and pink as it descended. The halls of the Tybald's house were larger than life. Larger than anything that Khloe had ever seen. I could bet that it was possible to get one's self lost in the labyrinth of a house.

 

I had seen Tybald's house plenty of times, its sprawling courtyard, the sycamore trees and weeping willows that formed rows lining both sides of the flagstone road leading into the building. I had seen it plenty of times from the outside, but I had never been inside the manor. In truth, in all the twenty years of my life, I had never been into the houses of many. It was commonplace for people tpo turn you away when you were an outcast. A cursed wolf, like they had called her once, a long time ago. Long before she saved them.

 

But as I walked towards the hall, the guards posted at the door, tall bronze coloured men wearing breastplates and swords they did not really need at their hips, did not bar

me away. They stayed still as statues and let me pass. A small crowd of people had been walking on the path as I approached the steps. They parted to me her pass,like a field of wheat parts before a farmhand. The chattering andwhispering that followed was scant, small, like the buzzing of bees, low enough that it could be ignored. And I had had years to practice how to tune out gossip, how to pretend mt ears did not hear what people said about her.

 

'Cursed wolf.'

 

'Dog.'

 

'Wolf's bane.'

 

'Did you hear she killed her mother coming out?'

 

'Her father starved to death while she watched.'

 

'I would never wish such a cursed child on my enemy.'

 

I smiled at them.

 

Inside the hall, as I stepped in and glimpsed the single roses and the candle sticks standing lofty and bright, the hall went quietfor a moment.

 

Then the moment passed, and the chattering began again. The festival had officially began.

 

The first time I saw a man die, it had been my father. And it had been my fault.

 

That was what the Blood Moon pack believed, too, until Adolphconvinced them otherwise. But it was true, it was my fault that he was gone. Him and my mother. Though it was not my fault in the way they had believed it was.

 

 

'You are wonder, lily,' he used to say to me, because she was to him. But also, because I was pale. White as melting slabs of iceover a river in spring. Where other members of the Blood Moon pack had skin the yellow of melted butter, my skin was like ice, my hair pale, too, like a curtain of white silk cascading down my scalp onto my shoulders and further below, to the indent of my waist.

 

I was a wonder when her father was alive, because he was my world. But when he did and I was left to herself, I realized that the Blood Moon pack had a very different name for what I  was, what I represented with her pale skin and bleached hair. Monster. Freak. Mutant. I was the very picture of monstrosity to them. The many misfortunes I had suffered did not help matters much either. They marked me out as cursed. Being born the same year a five year famine began ripping its way across the land did not add more love to me.

 

They hated me by the time my father died.

 

 

 

'Khloe,' Cassie said, sauntering over to me and sidling next to her. 'It has been too long.'

 

She wore a red dress, velveteen, trimmed to hug her body closely, accentuating every curve there was to accentuate, emphasizing her hips and breasts. In that well lit hall, and against the backdrop of her sun brown skin, the dress sparkled like a handful of red rubiesfloating down a black stream.

 

'Cassie,' I said curtly, dismissively, hoping the woman would take the hint and leave. But Cassie was Cassie and she was not having any of it.

 

'Who do you think Caleb would choose as his mate?' Cassie asked leaning towards me and whispering conspiratorially as if she was best friends with me, and we were having a good chat. But with Cassie, it was never as simple as that. She always had something up her sleeve, there was always an ulterior, self serving motive to everything she did, and everything she said. I wondered what her game was this time around.

 

I just shrugged. 'Caleb does what he wants, he will choose who he wants at the end of the day.' She eyed the other woman. 'You have plans to be that person, don't you, Cassie?'

 

Cassie just smiled a sly smile, flipped her hair—a wreath of curls that were far darker that the colour black itself—behind her, andasked, 'Don't you?'

 

'No. I don't, Cassie.' I  said firmly.

 

I was leaning against a heavily decorated pillar, holding a glassof the reddest wine in her hand. Most guests were seated, all wearing different shades of red just like Cassie was. Caleb, the celebrant, had not yet been presented as so the crowd busied themselves with mild wine and small talk, the sort of wine that did not induce drunkenness regardless of how many glasses or flagons of it one drank. The small talk was better than the wine, far more intoxicating, for those who were enjoying theirs at least. Bouts oflaughter could be heard over the soft music of the lyre and flute.

 

Cassie's eyes watched me like a hawk's now. I remained watching the crowd, pretending not to feel the other woman's gaze burning into the side of my face, but she felt it all right. Years of being watched had also taught me how to be aware, it had given me a sixth sense of a sort. I did not need her wolf blood to smell trouble, to feel the hairs at her nape rise, bristling.

 

'If you are not here for the ceremony, if you really don't care, Khloe, then why are you here?' Cassie asked. There was a new malignance in her tone. None of the former friendliness she had approached Khloe with remained.

 

So this was her game, I thought.

 

'You want Caleb for yourself, Cassie, I know that. We all know that. We have known it for a long, long time.'

 

'So why? Why are you here?' Cassie snarled. She had hard green eyes that reminded me of a snake she saw once while playing behind Adolph's cottage, between rows of golden corn. Adolph pinned the creature to the ground with his staff when it reared itshead to snap at Khloe.

 

Even though Cassie was Caleb's beta and had been so since they both could turn into werewolves, she was paranoid when it came to him. She was fiercely protectively, too, but that at least wasexpected.

It was not news that she wanted to be the one that he chose and bonded with. It was also not news that it was she who Caleb would most likely choose of all the eligible women in the West. I was the least eligible if anyone was being truthful. Caleb choosing me would be scandalous. Even if a madness came on him and he did so, his father would not allow it. I would not allow it of she had a choice. But there was no reason to say all of that to Cassie. It did not matter.

 

Instead, I smiled at the snarling woman and went back togawking, sipping her wine.

 

'You may be think we love you now because you turned pretty, Khloe, because you 'saved' us but we don't. You are still the cursed wolf you were all those years ago.'

 

She was beginning to say more, but a new silence in the hall stopped her. Tybald had emerged with Caleb, and they stood on the dais, tall and sun-brown, their clothes red as the wine, red as blood.

 

Tybald raised a glass half full of wine above his head, and the entire hall followed suit.

 

'To my son, Caleb.'

 

'To Caleb!' The crowd replied.