Chapter One

FIONA

The splash of cold water jerked me out of my sleep. I should be used to the inhumane way she woke me up, because she always used a bucket of ice water on me every morning, but I still shivered uncontrollably as I sat up on the bed.

“Get up, you useless girl,” My mother shouted at me, as I tried to blink water from my eyes. “You are already late for work!”

She continued nagging as I tried to put my drowsy self together.

“You always go late to work…”

I stood up from the bed.

“Third count of laziness and I am sure that they will fire you…and you cannot get fired, we need the money…”

I slipped my feet into the bathroom slippers that were by the side of the bed.

“ Your siblings came home from school, earlier this morning, they said that they were not allowed to enter the school grounds because of lack of school fees.”

Hearing those words made me topple over an overflowing bucket of water that caught the water leaking from our rotting ceiling. That was the third strike this week, after our landlord came banging on our door, demanding for our rent that was due three months ago.

Me and my mother locked eyes for some moments as the impact of her words came sinking in.

“What about pa? Is he stronger now? ”

He has to be stronger, dear goddess. How do they expect me to work out my siblings' school fees and house rent altogether from a mere bartending job at a bar that catered to the poorest in the city?

Mom shook her head. “He is flat on his back, can’t walk, and as from yesterday evening last night, can’t talk.”

My mom followed me to my back as I slipped into the shower compartment. “What are the doctors saying?” I asked weakly.

“He needs intensive treatment.” Her voice was harsh. “The medicine they prescribed for him is very expensive. I could not afford it.”

This right here is the reason why I try my best to wake up as early as I can, so I could avoid all this sad news. It seemed like everyday, something bad would happen at our house. And somehow, because I am the eldest daughter, I had to shelter it, work something out, fix it. I was just 23, and I was drowning.

“Mom, what would you have me do?”

“I don’t like that you come back here so early with your miserable peanuts. You should work harder, take the second shift, bring home a tangible amount of money.”

The second shift was the night shift at my bar. Not only was I losing my freedom to freely exist and be happy because of this family, I would lose my night sleep too.

My voice came out pleadingly. “Mom, you know I can’t do that…”

“Shut up!” her fists struck the frosted glass beside me. “If not for your stupid dormant wolf, you would have mated with someone more capable and he would have been sending us money every week. But here I am, housing your miserable ass at 23, and you don’t want to contribute to the house that feeds you. You ungrateful bitch!”

I flinched at her words. My wolf had never emerged, making me an anomaly in my pack and a source of shame for my family and a target for anyone else.

‘It is the other way round!’ my mind screamed. ‘I feed the house, I pay the rent, you are the one that’s ungrateful.’

“I do not want to see you in the house by evening.” She wagged her index finger at me. "In fact, don’t come back unless you have more than at least a hundred dollars. Nonsense.”

Her words reminded me that I was still a failure. Despite having to work tirelessly for the family, the highest I have ever brought back home was 60 dollars.

“I will bring back a better sum of money today.” I sighed, as I slipped into my worn-out work uniform.

I slipped through the backdoor of the bar, hoping that my boss did not see me. The last thing I needed was another verbal abuse this morning.

I slung my bag over my shoulder with speed, and hung it with my coat by the pinned wall. As I turned, I bumped into a body.

“You’re late.” Mr. Gerald, my boss, looked at his watch. “Ten minutes late.”

“I..Sir.” I stuttered.

He stepped around me. “I’m taking it out of your salary.”

I tried to protest. No. The amount he paid me was already too small, I couldn’t afford to get any smaller, not when I had an angry mother to pacify at home. He held up his hand, looking me up and down with the disgust that I found familiar on the other pack member’s faces. “Dormant wolves and their screwed up internal clock. I’m demoting you. You’ve proved unreliable in bartending so you are going to wait tables instead.” He tossed my apron at me as my mouth fell open. “Get to work and try not to screw it up.”

I tied the apron around me, tears forming in my eyes. I’ve worked here wholeheartedly for three years. What I deserved was a promotion and not a demotion. But my wolf that should have come out at sixteen but was dormant till now, was causing these issues for me.

By afternoon I counted the money that was in my pockets, a meagre 47 dollars in tips. Not enough for my father’s medicine, nor slightly close to what was needed for my sibling’s school fees.

I heaved a sigh of defeat. I was finished. What do I do?

SERGIUS

I stared at the golden city beneath me that stretched out to the horizons; everything belonged to me. Behind me the servants quietly chattered as they cleaned up my penthouse suite, arranged my bath water, the clothes I would wear, my schedule.

“Alpha,” My Beta bowed, and I responded without taking my eyes off the beautiful scenery. “You have an emergency meeting with the council by eight.”

“My schedule does not start by nine and they know that.” I sounded annoyed.

“Yes, they do. But they said that it is bad news and it needs your attention immediately.”

I snapped my gaze to him. The council rarely brought bad news, and if it was that bad, they always kept to my schedule. But this…

“Keep the bath water warm.” I shouted over to the servant that was preparing my bath. “Let’s go.” I nodded to my Beta.

We took the elevator down to the throne room, and when we entered the throne room, my blood immediately chilled. 50 pairs of unsmiling eyes bored at me, their faces grim and solemn. Whatever it was, it was bad. And I hated that they allowed it to escalate to this level without bringing it to my attention.

“What is it?” I barked in fury, when I sat down and they were still regarding me with that morose expression.  Elder Morteus, the eldest among them, stepped forward with a leather-bound tome in his hands.

“Your Majesty,” he said, his voice coming out like a squeak. I gulped, dread rising in my throat. Morteus was the only person in all of the North who was not scared of me, if he was scared, then this was as bad as it could get.

“…we have completed our research into your condition.”

My jaw clenched. For the past month,  I have been experiencing strange episodes; blackouts where I could not remember my actions, violent rages that came from nowhere, twice I had to be contained. The pack healers were baffled. I made sure word of it never crossed my gates.

“And?” I demanded, sitting up straighter in my chair. Morteus opened the ancient tome. “It’s the curse of the Blood moon Alpha. On the seventh blood moon, you are expected to shift into a lycan and inevitably run mad from the experience. Your lycan state will run berserk for two months and then begin to atrophy until you shrivel to death.”

My world tilted, my heart roared in my ears, my sight doubled in shock but my voice was strong as I said, “continue.”

“There is no cure. Magical stones will bind you when you shift because in that madness you’re likened to a murderer, crushing whatever is on sight. You will be contained underground until your imminent death.” Silence.

They were waiting for my reaction. I hid my trembling hands under the table. It didn’t feel real. Nothing felt real. “You have more to say.” I nodded to Morteus.

He stepped closer to me. “We noticed a pattern, Alpha. Every Alpha-king in your lineage has faced it upon reaching their twenty-eighth year.”

His voice was muffled, as if I was underwater. “My father---”

“Died from it, yes. As did his father before him, as did his father before that.” Morteus' weathered hands shook lightly. “During the seventh blood moon the curse reaches its peak. The Alpha king loses his mind completely and..”

“Dies,” I finished, my voice dull and empty.

“Yes, your Majesty. You just have a year of sanity left.”

I closed my eyes in pain as his words stabbed me. Just this morning, I was counting myself lucky to rule all of North Europe. That it all belonged to me. Now everything I had worked for, everything that I had built, was just going to disappear into the wind like that, gone to the next person in a different lineage who did not work as hard as I did, who would eat everything I had sown.

The more I thought about it, the more I trembled. But it was not from anger, it was from a blood-curdling rage that seemed to seep from the tip of my toes.

Good. Another freaking episode at the bloody wrong time. I watched as I took the nearest glass cup and aimed it at Morteus' head. He missed by the slightest and the cup shattered on the wall beside him, tinkling with a high-pitched ringing, the glass fragments scattering in every direction. “Get out!” I screeched, throwing more glass cups and upturning the central table.

The throne room rang with frightened shouts and the sounds of wood breaking as I beat the central table to dust.

I couldn’t stop myself, I couldn’t help it as the rage flooded through my veins and blood started to flow from my knuckles.

But I knew that when it stopped, when I snapped out of it, I wouldn’t even remember.