Chapter 1: The Unknown Enemy

Lyria’s POV

My breaths came in ragged gasps as I tried to keep my head above the surface of the deep, cold, and relentless river.

I forgot how to catch my own breath the moment I watched my mum’s body gradually sink deeper.

Desperation coursed through my entire existence as I struggled against the current.

“Hold on, Mom, please!” I cried, reaching for her.

After what felt like a lifetime, I was happy that I had almost gotten to her. Albeit unsettling that her head was now dangerously below the water and she wouldn't last long there, her struggling hands above it still offered me a glimmer of hope.

In no time, I covered the little gap left between us, only for me to try and connect my hand with hers, and then—my fingers brushed nothing but air.

To my utter bewilderment, she didn’t even drown. She just vanished.

My loud scream was met with derisive laughter as I jerked back to life. To reality.

I wasn’t dreaming anymore, yet water dripped down my face in a slow, steady trickle. My mat was soaked, and my saturated clothes clung to my skin.

Then I looked up to see three women—three elders’ wives hovering above me. And I realized that I had just awoken from one nightmare, only for another to affront me.

In a pack where I was generally treated like shit, these women were a pain in my delicate ass.

It was still very early in the morning, but they seemed to be catching the fun of their lives, all laughing like the jobless women they were as one of them carried a bucket of water in her hand and another held a cup.

“Finally awake, are we?” the chief elder's wife who is their leader sneered, tilting the tin cup for another pour.

The second woman holding the cup scoffed. “Sleeping like a spoiled pup while work awaits. I can't even believe she's having another nightmare again.”

“Of course, she would keep having nightmares,” the third woman added, crossing her arms around her bosom, grimacing. “A useless Omega like her wouldn’t be able to afford the luxury of a good sleep.”

I swallowed hard, gripping the damp fabric of my dress as the third woman's mockery elicited another round of laughter from the three of them. I just stared at them in silence as their laughter danced across the storeroom, hitting the wall and bouncing back to affront me.

In a bid to suppress my anger, I closed my eyes and tried to take a deep breath. Not that my anger would have any impact on them. It would only incur more punishment on me.

Over the years, I had endured and gotten used to different levels of punishment.

My wolf was so weak and quiescent. I had always been the one defending us, retaliating, and bearing the brunt.

But I was starting to get worn out from the routine, and I was trying to avoid drama. That was the only reason why I wasn’t shouting back at them for this current maltreatment.

For a moment, I thought my inhalation technique was working, and I was doing better at suppressing my anger before them—until the second woman’s bitter voice hit my ears again. “Close your eyes from now till eternity. It won’t change the fact that you’re just a weak omega.”

I bit my lower lip to see if that would help me suppress my anger since the inhalation method had failed me, and then the third woman added, “A traitor's child at that.”

Those words had my eyes snapping open instantly as I stared at the three of them one after the other, fuming, before I fixed my gaze back on the woman who had just spoken. “Don’t!” I only said, trying so much not to explode.

For a moment, I thought that warning would be enough. But obviously, the woman knew no threshold. Her overfamiliarity with my weakness had eaten too deep into her for her to stop.

“Don’t what?” she demanded with a smirk. “Your parents were nothing but traitors.”

And that did it. That was the last straw that set me off. I didn’t register when I rose from the drenched mat. The next thing I knew, my hands were wrapped around her head in a chokehold. “I would take anything, but don’t you ever speak I'll of my parents.”

As if in a daze, her two other companions didn’t say a word after chorusing a gasp. They were stunned into silence. At their friend’s throaty cry for help, they finally snapped out of their daze. It was then that I was pushed away from her and subdued.

Before they could retaliate, the Chief Elder’s voice boomed—the husband of the one I had just attacked. “What’s going on here?”

The elder's eyes narrowed at first when his wife, the affronted woman, started narrating what had happened to him. But those narrowed eyes started growing bigger and bigger with every lie and exaggeration she put in her words.

The moment she lied that I slapped her and also attempted to pour water on her face, I thought his eyes would pop out of their sockets with how dilated they seemed. I didn’t even bother defending myself because he would never support me over anything or anyone, let alone over his wife.

The moment he seized me and tried to drag me away for punishment, I made sure not to allow her lies to go to total waste.

I wriggled out of his hold, and in one swift movement that they would have never seen coming even in a thousand years, I grabbed the bucket and emptied the remaining water onto their faces before my wrist was shackled again by the enormous hand of the elder.

As I was dragged away for punishment, I couldn't help but smirk when I shoulder-checked them to see them drenched. Their look of discomfiture enraptured me, and their profanities were like music to my ears.

As my penance, I spent the next hours doing more strenuous work than usual around the large compound designated for all the elders of the pack.

The scent of wet earth and pine clung to the morning air as I scrubbed the wooden floor of the pack’s main hall, my knuckles raw from hours of work. The icy water in the bucket stung my fingers, but I couldn’t dare pause when the elders around were watching.

They conferred about the Blood Moon Festival happening on the morrow and how they would compose themselves before the Alpha King, who would be attending for the first time in several years.

Everyone spoke so high and mighty of this Alpha King, but that's none of my business, so I paid the elders no attention—until one of them suddenly paused and shouted at me.

“Faster! More work awaits, you lazy thing.”

Lazy. That was their favorite word for me. It didn’t matter that I worked from dawn till midnight, fetching, cleaning, cooking—whatever task they deemed beneath them. To them, I would always be nothing more than the orphaned slave girl they bought at a bargain.

I stubbornly maintained my pace while I continued scrubbing the floor, a silent dare for him to do his worst, but he just ignored me and continued his discussion.

I swallowed hard and forced myself upright when I was done scrubbing, my limbs aching from exhaustion.

Twelve years had passed since I was dragged to the Ironclaw Pack, shackled and starving. Twelve years of servitude, of swallowing every insult, of knowing that no matter how hard I worked, to them, I would never be more than the omega whose parents were traitors.

I should be numb by now. But the nightmares didn’t let me forget.

They came occasionally, sometimes taking different forms, just like how it took the form of my mum drowning today. But all my nightmares often repeated the same themes: My mother’s voice, whispering my name. The metallic scent of blood. My father’s roar of agony before silence swallowed him whole.

I hated Alphas with passion, to say nothing of the Alpha King, who was the Alpha of this pack and also the King of all werewolves. He was an unknown enemy. And I liked that, all these years, I’d never had a reason to cross paths with him. I wanted nothing more than for it to continue that way.

“Hey!” I suddenly heard a voice boom from one of the elders behind me as I carried on with my task nonchalantly. But I focused on what I was doing even more, refusing to spare them a glance—until the elder unknowingly corrected himself.

“Lyria, I'm talking to you. Are you deaf?” he thundered. Only then did I twirl slightly toward his direction, making an effort to hide the smirk playing at the corner of my lips. But it turned out my smirk was a snitch.

“What is so amusing?” he asked. “Anyways, listen, and listen well. You’re cleaning the feet of the Alpha King tomorrow to welcome him to his seat.”

My smirk vanished immediately. And his came alive.