CHAPTER ONE: THE FALL OF LUNA.

The steam scalded my skin, a burning reminder of the scalding humiliation that surrounded me. I shook my hand, gathering up shards of broken china, shards of my life in it. I was Luna a moment ago. I was something less than dirt on their feet now. Omega. The lowest of the low. All for spilling a cup of tea.

It was not my fault. Elara, Damien's mistress, had bumped my elbow, delicate china precariously perched on my forearm until it hit the floor. The scalded liquid sprayed, spattering a little on her, most of it scalding my hand. But Elara, a pro at melodramatics, had screamed, her arm hugged to her side as though it was in pieces. Damien, my husband, my Alpha, hadn't even looked my way. His eyes, always cold and distant, burned with a possessive fury that was all for me.

“How dare you,” he'd boomed, his deep voice rumbling in the pack house. The air shook with his Alpha power, heavy over me, suffocating me. “You did it on purpose!”

“I didn't,” I breathed, my words swallowed in the face of his rage. “Elara—"

“Don’t you even think of laying it on her,” he'd snarled, his hand flashing out to strike me. The force of it sent me reeling. The taste of blood was in my mouth, my cheek on fire. The room spun, pack members’ faces a haze of condemnation. None of them dared to intervene. None of them ever did.

“You’re a disgrace,” sneered Damien, his face twisted in disgust. “You’re not worthy to be called Luna. Guards! Remove her title. She will be marked Omega.”

The sentence was a death knell. Luna. A title I wore begrudgingly, not gladly, in tired acquiescence. It was nothing in this pack, nothing when Damien’s heart was already taken. But Omega… that was a death sentence. An existence of slavery, of humiliation, of being something less than human.

Two massive guards, their faces blank, their hold painful, took my arms in their grip. I didn’t struggle. There was no point. Struggling would be more painful. They dragged me to the marking chamber, the pack’s whispers in my ears, biting as pieces of jagged glass.

The marking iron was scaldingly hot, the smell of burned flesh in my face. I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the torture. The brand, a crude symbol of the Omega, was burned into my skin, a permanent mark of my humiliation, my worthlessness. It was a mark not just on my body, but on my soul.

They shoved me into the Omega quarters, a small, dimly lit room in the back of the pack house. It was a world away from the decadent suite I'd shared with Damien, a place in which even the sun struggled to filter in and in which the air was thick with desperation. The other Omegas, their hearts broken, their eyes empty, didn't even raise their heads to mark my presence. They knew better than to give comfort, to show any semblance of pity. Pity was a weakness here, a weakness to be exploited.

I sat down on the thin, straw-filled cot, the hurt in my cheek and my branded shoulder throbbing in sync to the hurt in my heart. Tears leapt up, hot and acidic, but I swiftly blinked them away. Tears would be interpreted as weakness, an open invitation to more brutality.

I was a lone wolf, even when I was mated to Damien. I was always different, quieter, more reserved than all of the rest of the pack. My wolf, Luna, was a reflection of my own soul -independent, strong, and fiercely protective. But Luna was dormant now, smothered in the weight of Damien's rejection and the pack's revulsion.

I thought of my parents, of my small, independent pack that I was born of. They'd been overjoyed when I'd been selected to be Damien's mate. They'd considered it a great honor, a way of ensuring a better life for me. They hadn't been informed otherwise. They hadn't been informed that Damien's heart was as empty and cold as the wide, sweeping landscape of the northern tundra that he guarded so often.

I was a marriage of convenience from day one. Damien never loved me. He took me for political reasons, to secure a union between our packs. Elara, his childhood sweetheart, his true love, was always his number one concern. I was a substitute, a Luna in name. I tried, desperately, to capture his heart. I was a compliant wife, pleasing to his whims, managing pack business, always keeping his pleasure more to my desires. But it was never sufficient. There was always a distant, cold detachment in his eyes, his touch, when he deigned to touch me at all, was perfunctory, without heat. Elara, on the other hand, was everything that I was not. She was flamboyant, flirtatious, manipulative. She knew just how to treat Damien, just how to massage his ego, just how to get him to believe that he was the most dominant Alpha in existence. And he lapped it up, every kiss, every touch, every manufactured tear.

Now, I was nothing. An Omega. Less than nothing. I would be at their every behest, performing their most menial duties, suffering their abuse, their ridicule. My existence, already a bleak one, was a living hell.

And yet, even in my darkest hours, a small fire of resistance smouldered in my heart. They could destroy my body, mark it, strip me of my title, but destroy my spirit, never. I was a lone wolf. I had lived through worse. And somehow, someway, I would live through this too. I would rebuild my strength, I would take back my wolf, and I would find a means to escape this hellhole. They took everything else, I accepted, but my will to live was something that would never be taken.

I closed my eyes, my vision of my parents’ faces, their encouraging smiles, flashing in my vision. For them, for myself, for the lone wolf that lived in my heart, I would survive. I would live. And one day, I would be free.