Present day.
Alaska
.
The sound of someone popping their gum filled the small room. "Nope, pass," Eunice, my bossom--but no less aggravating--friend said.
"How about this one?" I stifled a longsuffering sigh, holding up yet another ensemble from my closet.
She casted her gaze heavenwards. "Hilda," she groaned. "You've been displaying just about the same type of clothes for the past ten hours."
She was right, about the clothes. But there was one thing she was wrong about. "It's been just two hours, not ten."
She leaned against the wall defeatedly. "Well it feels like it."
I balled up the green top in my hands and threw it towards her direction. It landed splat on her face. "Stop being a spoilsport and come help me look for what to wear."
"It'll be no use," she grumbled. Just like my entire existence.
Already knowing the answer, I still asked anyway, "How so?"
"Because your closet's filled with just jean shorts and T-shirts. No gowns."
"No occasion's ever come up for me to wear one." I pointed at her. "You know that."
She knew. Having gowns meant you had special occasions to wear them to. Parties. Luncheons. Pack conferences. Dinners.
Luxuries I couldn't afford.While my sisters went to different events after the other, I stayed back in the pack-house, hidden away, until I'd memorised every single corner and chip in the walls. I was, in all essence, father's little, dirty secret.
"What are we gonna do now," she asked
I rose a shoulder in a shrug. "I could borrow one from you."
She gave me a deadpan look.
Eunice didn't own a lot of dresses either; she was an Omega. And I was as good as one, if not worse than one. Omegas were the lowliest of the lowliest, the bottom of the pack hierarchy, the ones who cooked, cleaned-- did everything beneath the notice and capabilities of the higher tiers.
And I was lower than one, because even Omegas could shift into their wolves...
Being Latent was a curse that had followed me through the complicated stages of childhood through adulthood, a scar on my very soul. And I had, inevitably, sustained a few monikers during my formative years. Latent Hilda, Latilda and Hilda de Lat, to name a few.
My gaze slid towards the single window in the room. Lights from the watchtowers lining the rear ramparts flashed around, casting the forest surrounding the pack-house in a dark, gloomy shadow-- although I could still see it as clear as day. Courtesy of my wolf's night vision. I was Latent, but not without the better powers and baser urges of a werewolf.
At that moment a blade of light sliced in through the tiny window, and fell on a spot in the middle of the cramped room. It looked inviting. Tired of ransacking my closet for clothes I won't find, I went over and sat on it.
Eunice stirred from her prone position on the narrow bed, an eyelid flicking open to reveal green eyes. "Why are you sitting?"
"Because I want to?"
"But we've got a party to attend."
"A plan that was entirely your idea."
"Yes." Her eyes suddenly flashed with determination; I grew weary. "It was my plan," she proclaimed, "and I'll see to it that you go out with me to celebrate your nineteenth birthday."
Sigh. Whenever Eunice got it into her head to do something, she went through with it with the determination a teenage boy asking a girl out for prom.
It was my birthday, surprise, surprise. And I planned to do nothing about it, unsurprise, unsurprise. I would treat it as the other pack-members did-- like another normal, bland Wednesday. If not one that was a little more bland than was usual.
As opposed to me, whenever either one of my sisters had their birthdays, dad threw massive parties for them. The only thing dad threw where I was concerned were massive, physically--and emotionally--crippling pain.
Like that time I was thirteen...
My muscles acted on base instinct, seizing in preparation for danger. But there was none, only a vivid remembrance of what it felt like to have lethal wolfsbane pumped into my veins. Agonizing.
Dad had pumped wolfsbane into me, expecting my dormant wolf to shift on instinct and protect its human. But it hadn't. And dad hadn't relented from pumping the burning liquid into my body, either, until I, well, passed out from the pain.
I hadn't known who I hated more then, my dad who continued with the torture for four consecutive years, or my wolf who never shifted to put me out of my misery.
"Hellooooo," someone yelled, and snapped a finger in front of my face. "Earth to Hilda! You're doing that thing where you space out and your face looks like you just drank wolfsbane."
The irony of her sentence wasn't lost to me. The whole pack, including Eunice, didn't know about dad injecting wolfsbane into me, but they did know about his open hostility towards me-- and did well to play it forward so they could get on his good graces.
They had all been harsh, cruel, and the few ones that couldn't bring themselves to prey on innocent me, ignored my whole existence. Fine by me.
For a long while, things remained the same, until one day I'd decided I'd had enough. I'd decided to fight back.
The violent pushing at highschool during lunch break, the humiliating pranks, the overwhelming gossipy laughter and mocking jokes, the hate... All stopped when I finally put in all that pent anger into good use. And fought back.
At first my strength had depended solely on the level of my anger, and I'd fought like a rogue wolf, sloppily, without practice, and was easily beaten much to the amusement of my bullies.
But then, given to the fact I knew the pack-house like the back of my palm, and knew every secret hideout there was-- I'd started spying on the pack warriors during their training....
I'd learned, practiced, honed my skills. Fought. And f*cked shit up like a newly turned rogue.
"Aha!" Eunice exclaimed gleefully, holding up a piece of clothing.
She walked towards me, excitedly waving the dress high up in the air like it was a victory flag. When she stood before me, she allowed the dress slip from her fingers and fall onto my lap.
My hands felt the soft fabric as I examined it. The white slip dress still had its price tag. Distantly I thought aloud, "I can't remember ever buying a dress like this. Someone must have gifted it to me, but then again who wou-- oh!" I exclaimed. "I think I know who it's from."
Shea. She'd given this to me during my eighteenth birthday. Of my two sisters, Shea was the nicest. When her heavily demanding tracking duty would allow her, she'd always check up on me. At highschool, she was the sister that always told the bullies off whenever they grew too harsh, the sister that sometimes got me out of scrapes. And the sister who actually cared for me.
Sadly the same couldn't be said about Anna.
"It was from Shea," I told Eunice. "She'd given it to me for my eighteenth birthday."
A smile formed on her lips. "Shea, ever so nice."
Yeah, Shea was the nice and considerate one. Anna the moody and closed off one. And I, I was the vulnerable and too trusting one who hid everything behind a steely exterior and a vacant stare.
"Come on. Come try it on," Eunice urged, going over to the full-length mirror on the dresser.
I followed, saying, "It was given to me two years ago. I doubt my ass would fit into it."
"You're so thin now, your ass would fit into anything," she replied offhandedly.
"Including Gerad Justin's hands?"
Through the mirror I saw her roll her eyes. "Gerad. Is a jerk."
Yeah, I knew. It hadn't stopped me from crushing on him though. Being the school's football team's captain, the beta's son, a six foot hunk and a certified bad boy, he'd had an embarrassing amount of girls trailing after him at highschool. Including me.
Werewolves began finding their mates at eighteen. At exactly that age I'd looked into Gerad Justin's eyes and was crushed to realize he wasn't my mate. He'd probably looked into mine and thought, 'f*ck. Another one of those weirdos', not aware of the emotional turmoil going on inside me.
But all that was in the past. I'd graduated, gotten over him, and tried to get over the fact that I'd never find my mate. He wasn't in the Stillmoon pack, that I was sure of, and I couldn't travel out to other packs. Dad wouldn't let me.
Although, it wasn't like I was in a rush to find my mate or anything. Thinking about it now, I didn't even want to. No one deserved to be shackled to a Latent.
As I undressed, I listened to Eunice's excited chattering.
"...and next tomorrow's just around the corner, Hil! Alphas are going to be there! Betas an--"
I interjected, "How come you're always excited about the Festival of Lanterns, even knowing you're never going to go to Beastclaw?"
Her eyes dimmed, and for a moment I was overcome with guilt at having ruined her mood.
"For one, it's more like a tradition now, Hil. Celebrating it here would be the same as celebrating it at the Beastclaw pack. Here we'd also have lanterns lighted around until it looked like day at night, there'd be beer and salmon at every dinning table, the trees would bear the fresh imprints of claw marks, and howls would fill the night at twelve." She breathed in, saying on a sad note, "The only difference would be that we wouldn't have alphas and betas from different packs around the world come here."
I paused in taking off my top. "And that is a bad thing?"
She blinked. "Of course."
"Eunice, Betas and Alphas are callous, conceited, and think they own the world." Take it from my father, and every other Alpha and their second that have come to our pack to negotiate deals with him. "It is a blessing we don't have an army of them come here each year."
Countering my earlier statement, Eunice enunciated, "Wrong. The beta of the Beastclaw pack--the largest werewolf pack in existence, mind you--is known to be kind and humble."
I rose a brow. "The beta? What about the Alpha; what about Vaughan Lupus?"
Quiet filled the space between us. Eunice's stance wavered for a bit. Then with a glare directed my way, she turned away from me.
That's what I thought. . .
After I'd finished dressing up, I took stock of myself in the full-length mirror.The virginal white slipdress draped around me lovingly, molding my figure into something prim and elegant. My midnight black hair was let to cascade down my shoulders in dark waves, and my makeup was done flawlessly; my lips were a blood red, and the pearls dangling from my ears shone scarlet.Coupled with my pale skin, I probably looked like some vampire male's daydream. Couldn't be farther from the truth...I wasn't a daydream, a nightmare was more like it-- I lived in one until I couldn't tell myself apart from the demons that haunted me."You look stunning," I told Eunice, coming out of my thoughts.A curt thank you met my statement. I took it to mean she was still mad at me over our earlier disagreement."Come over let me do your hair," I offered.She replied with a short, "I can handle it.""I could do your makeup if you want."
My mind instantly got thrown into a mindless turmoil, and my senses clogged with scents, sounds and sights of things that weren't there.The putrid smell of urine and aconite. The sweat trickling down my clammy skin. The feel of my bones melting. . . The sound of slow, approaching footsteps.A whimper filled my ears and I realized I was now sat rocking on the floor, back in Eunice's car. I tried to hang onto the present, but the memories were relentless.Like a large sea monster, it threw me back into the ocean of my spiraling thoughts, holding me down until I couldn't breathe, until I was drowning, drowning in my sea of memories. My chest constricted and a wet substance slid down my cheeks. I realized I was crying, inside the ocean?The pungent smell of urine filled my nose, and when I opened my eyes, it was to see father advancing towards me with a large syringe. The point of the needl
I knew my fate as well as I knew I was a freak. Dad was going to fry my ass.Over the years, he'd reduced the amount of time he tortured me with wolfsbane. Only injecting me with it occasionally, and as a form of punishment.Which he would give to me if Lizzy told on me. And I was sure she would. So it was only a matter of time before he sent me down to that dank cell."Hey," Eunice called softly, speeding down the road, not minding the snow. "Are you okay?"Using my middle finger, I tucked my hair behind my ear. "Yeah, sure, why not."She pursed her lips but remained silent.I turned my face to the window, defeatedly resting my forehead on it. I stared at my reflection, my eyes were a burning teal. Yet another abnormality.Sometimes werewolves e
It felt like it'd been mere seconds ago when we'd walked in through the airport's glass doors and into the wide, tiled halls bustling with humans, seconds ago when my bewildered eyes had soaked in every single detail like a sponge. Now we sat on the leather seats of the plane, boarding a first class flight. Behind me, father sat typing on his laptop. Beside him sat three pack warriors-- their size had initially given the flight attendants a scare. Now they quietly sat on the chairs, looking bored out of their minds. After a while I looked out the windows. My heart jumped into my mouth. The view was as exciting as it was frightening; at this moment I thought the two words could mean one and the same thing. To be this high up....Frightening!Exciting. Tufts and strips of clouds obscured the view below once in a while, but I didn't mind as the clouds themselves were rightfully asto
The discomfiting feeling instantly dissipated once we got into the house. Awe suffused me. The ornate chandeliers hanging several feet above shone down the enormous, white-painted hall.Around, collections of quaint furnitures and elegant sculptures were classically arranged in varying shades of white. Behind a tall flower vase in the middle of the tiled hall, a wide staircase rose up in all its magnificence to split into opposite directions.Greta climbed up the stairs and turned right.Walking along the silver balustrades, we followed as she led into a cavernous hallway. A single chandelier hung down, displaying a riot of exotic oil paintings on the walls. My feet strode on plush red rugs, my eyes soaking up every luxurious detail.Several twisting hallways and flights of stairs, which I all memorized, led into a narrow hall. The left side of it was lined with tall, elegant vases containing incredibly beautiful flowers, and its walls were co
Something was stirring within me, struggling to get free; or at least trying to get something across. But the niggling feeling, that wasn't entirely bad, was overridden by my fear. I stopped and waved the lantern in front of me wildly, saying, "Whoever the creep you are, show yourself!" I thought about my phone that was back in my large room, charging, and thought myself more the fool for leaving the pack-house without it. I felt a presence approaching me. Dark. A presence so dark I felt my wolven instincts flare alive for the first time. /Mate/ my wolf said for the... First time. Amidst my fear for whoever or whatever was approaching, I felt a joy so profound fill me that I started to cry. When I heard a twig snap, I became alert, putting my emotions in check. Whipping my head around, I saw nothing but the tall sh
After I'd finished showering, I emerged from the bathroom, a load of hot steam escaping into the room.I went in search of what to wear for breakfast, the young omega steadfastly at my heels. She began pelting me with rapid questions."How did you do that? I had no idea some werewolves had telekinetic abilities. Why had the Alpha been chasing after you? Are you a hybrid? Half fey? You know, I think you might be because you're really pretty. Do you kn..."My patience, all the while, had been stretching quite admirably to contain my annoyance. I tuned out her voice as I selected a pair of jeans and a beige blouse.When I proceeded to wear them, she suddenly fell silent. "You can't wear that, Miss.""Why?""For one, Greta would have my head. And two, everyone would be dressed to the nines. It's the Carnival of Lanterns!"My pati
Late evening soon rolled in and Nayla led me to the venue of the Lighting.I didn't know how to feel about seeing Vaughan again.Oh, I did. And not wanting to see him anymore than I did a syringe of wolfsbane translated to it.Colourful birds chirped above me, and the heady scent of flowers in the east gardens seeped into my nose.I noticed a portion of the garden were missing most of their flowers. Frowning, I asked, "Why are their flowers missing?"Nayla looked at the direction I was staring at. "Oh. That's because the Alpha always has flowers sent to newly weds, and their newborn pups."I digested that. My fingers trailing over a bed of white roses, I asked a question that'd been unknowingly festering in my subconscious. In spite of myself, soon after I asked it, I instantly became consumed by it, wanting to know..."Nayla, what is Vaughan like?"Under her breath she murmured, "I see you both are on first name basis, somethi