Sold To The Cursed Alpha..

Elvara

“You will smile at your husband-to-be and be thankful someone even wants you!”

“Women don’t lead. A woman stands next to the man who leads and submits! You should be glad I found someone willing to take you, with your wretched curse and everything.” My father’s voice boomed through the pack hall, loud enough to rattle the old shields hanging on the walls and the trophies from wars long before I was born.

I’d never seen my father smile, at least not at me. But now, the scowl I was used to now etched thick lines into his forehead as he glared at me.

“Mother… please, say something.”

I looked at her, hoping for even a flicker of support. For her to help me out just one time. She kept her eyes down, hers fixed on the floor like it held the answers she didn’t want to give me.

“Elvara, the deal is already signed,” she whispered, her voice shaky and careful. “It’s done. Your father knows what’s best for all of us. It’s also for the good of the pack…”

I let out a laugh, but there was no humor in it, only bitterness climbing up my throat. “The deal is signed and nobody thought to tell me first? I trained for years for those trials. I woke up before the sun every single day. I worked myself to the bone for this pack, yet you just handed me over like I was a debt you needed to settle?”

“Watch how you talk to me,” my mother warned, though her hands were shaking at her sides, betraying the calm she was trying to fake.

“Or what?” I stepped closer to her, fucking done with being afraid of either of them.

The many years of swallowing my anger had built up into something big enough to choke me if I tried to push it down. “You already sold me off to a cursed Alpha everyone fears. A man whispered about in every pack from here all the way to the northern border! Nobody will give their daughter to him, and yet my parents, ever so charitably, handed me over to him! What else is left for you to threaten me with?”

A slap cracked across my face, sending my head swinging before I even finished the sentence. The sound of it echoed through the hall, sharper than the sting itself, and it rang in my ears long after her hand had dropped.

I snapped my head back, refusing to flinch as I laughed at her.

“You can hit me all you want, Mother,” I said, wiping the blood from my split lip with the back of my hand, “but it will never change the truth. This marriage was never about protecting the pack. This is about you finally getting rid of the daughter who wouldn’t shut up and behave!”

“You two loathe me. You hate how ambitious you think I have become! You hate me because I dream for far more than you both could ever have dreamed of!”

“That’s enough!” my father snarled, his voice dropping into something colder, quieter, more dangerous than shouting ever was. “You were never going to lead this pack, Elvara. Never. Why should we let you lead when I have a son?! A male! Get that idea out of your head once and for all.”

My heart shattered all over again. I want to be Luna! Who said a female could never be one? Who made that rule?

Inside me, my wolf, Xia, growled restlessly. She was already pacing the edges of my mind like a caged animal.

“Let me handle them. Just once. Just let me,” she fumed inside me.

“Not yet,” I told her, though every part of me wanted to say yes and mean it.

“Then why did you let me train?” My voice finally cracked. The years of exhaustion and the hope I carried finally broke down along with it.

“Why did you let me believe, even for a single day, that I had a real chance at the trials before you drugged my food and locked me in the cellar so my brother could take the title that should have been mine?!”

My mother flinched at that. It was the first honest reaction she’d shown me all night, and somehow that hurt worse than the slap.

I remembered that day clearly, the way sunlight had come through the kitchen window while she cooked my favorite meal for the very first time in my life.

I should have known something was wrong. A mother who never once made an effort suddenly baking my favorite bread, humming while she did it. But I’d been starved for so long for even a scrap of her attention that I ate without asking a single question.

By the time I woke, the trials were over. My brother had already been crowned the pack’s next warrior, the position I had bled and starved and broken myself for.

They took the one thing I had worked hard for. They never gave me a real chance to begin with.

“We did what needed to be done,” my father said, not even bothering to look sorry. “This marriage buys us protection no army in this territory could give us. You should be thanking us for giving you a purpose, instead of standing here throwing a tantrum like a child!”

“A purpose?” I spat the word back at him, disgusted. “Is that what you call being sold off to a stranger?”

“Watch your mouth,” he growled, stepping closer, close enough that I could see the silver rings on his knuckles.

“I can still have you dragged over there in chains like an animal rather than treated as a guest of honor. Don’t test me, Elvara.”

I held his eyes and refused to look away, even as my heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to hurt.

“Go ahead, Father. You can chain me if it makes you feel powerful. It won’t change what you are underneath it all. A father who sold his own daughter to keep his own throne warm!”

His hand shot out and grabbed my jaw before I even saw it coming, his fingers digging into my flesh, hard enough to bruise.

“You ungrateful brat,” he spat, spittle flying with the words. “I gave you a life you didn’t even deserve, and this is how you thank me? With disrespect in my own hall?”

I wrenched myself free from his hold, stumbling but staying upright out of pure stubbornness. There was blood smeared across my mouth, but heaven knows I didn’t care at all.

“I don’t owe you a single thing! If anything, it’s the other way around. You owe me for every year you let me carry the weight in this pack only to discard me when you think you no longer need me!”

“You think I am a threat to my brother!”

My mother had said nothing this whole time. She only watched from her spot near the hearth, her arms crossed tight over her chest as relief flickered behind her eyes.

The door creaked open behind us, and one of the Moonfang Soldiers rushed into the room.

“Alpha Nicholas, her things are packed. The men are ready outside.”

My father gave a short nod, his eyes never once leaving mine, as though he were daring me to say one more word. “Good. Let them come before I strangle her with my bare hands.”

I looked between the two people who were supposed to love me without condition, the two people who had raised me, fed me, and were supposed to protect me from the world, and I saw nothing there but their own greed.

My father and mother didn’t care about me. They only cared about weighing exactly how much I was worth to them.

Then I thought of Martina, my younger sister, who had never once had to fight for anything in her life. Who my mother braided flowers into her hair for, who never went hungry for attention the way I had. I wondered, not for the first time, if things would have gone differently for me if I had simply been born softer, quieter and easier to love like she was.

Outside, I heard the sound of horses approaching the pack house, faint at first but growing louder, their hooves striking hard against the earth.

They were here.

My hands curled into fists at my sides. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I was sure everyone in the room could hear it.

My father snapped his fingers, and at the signal, the soldiers moved forward and seized my arms. I fought hard against their grip, twisting my body around to catch one last look at my mother.

She looked away, refusing to meet my eyes.

“You failed me as a mother,” I spat, my voice low and sharp with disgust and anger. “I never want to see your face again.”