Chapter 1: The scattered Feast

VERA

I didn’t drug the Alphas, but try explaining that when the most powerful men in the Pack are dry-humping the wall.

The platter slipped from my hands.

“My…oh no!” I gasped, stepping back as ceramic shards scattered across the stone floor.

My throat closed. The sound of the broken plates was swallowed by the low, primal growls echoing around the Pack Hall.

“Witch, did you fuck with this stew?” one Alpha growled, his voice cutting through the guttural, erotic moans from a pack of ruthless, dominant and powerful Alphas losing control of themselves.

Someone had tampered with the meal I prepared and laced it with an aphrodisiac.

And not just any meal: the feast for the Alpha summit.

Hot tears streamed down my face. “Please…who did this?”

I had spent all morning preparing my sister’s signature dish: smoked moonleaf pheasant. And now the Alphas were rutting like animals.

I knew my life was hell but not even hell could have prepared me for today.

It had been five years since my sister choked out her last breath in my arms, leaving me to care for her son, Noah. When she left, she took my happiness with her and Luna Marie carved my life into a contract.

I never planned to replace my twin sister, but life and Luna Marie, my so called mother-in-law clearly doesn’t care about intentions.

Somehow, she manipulated me into marrying Jade, Anna’s mate through a five-year contract signed before the Alpha Council.

She turned me into the stepmother of the boy who once called me Aunt.

I tried to love Jade and his son, but that love was measured by how well I served them…like a slave.

My fingers shook as I arranged the rosemary sprigs on the tray, just like she used to, remembering how Jade always bragged that no one cooked it like Anna.

One mistake, and I’d face the fury he reserves only for me. I couldn’t afford that.

So I poured every bit of focus into this meal, sacrificing eight hours of sleep just to get it right.

And now, someone has ruined it by adding baneberry into the food, a notorious aphrodisiac.

I was doomed.

“She is just a whore!” Beta Jarek roared from behind me shielding the bulge between his legs with his right hand.

“She wants a taste of every Alpha here!” someone else sneered.

“Maybe Alpha Jade isn’t satisfying her,” a short, stubbly Alpha chuckled darkly.

“How dare you, Vera!”

“How dare you humiliate the Alphas?”

Alpha Jade’s bitter, all-too-familiar voice sliced through the chaos, colliding with Noah’s sharp, cruel laughter that rang in my ears like a curse.

At just ten, Noah should’ve been giggling over harmless jokes, not wearing malice carved into such a young face.

This was the child I had raised with every drop of love left in me after losing my twin sister.

Yet, somehow, this boy had become my greatest nightmare.

Before I could fully process the madness unfolding around me, Noah grabbed an untouched platter meant for an Alpha who had narrowly avoided the poisoned feast.

My body froze as he dumped the entire contents over me.

Dark sauce flooded my vision for a moment. The rest splashed onto my white royal robe, soaking into the fluffy lace on my shoulder like blood staining a wedding dress.

A cold piece of meat slid down my neck, leaving a sticky shameful trail.

“You’ll never cook like her,” he spat, “So stop trying!”

Laughter erupted through the pack hall—guards who respected me all their life smirked at me in jest, and the cooks stared at me like I was a paid actor in a humiliating drama.

The room began to spin.

“You had better pray for the floor to crack open and swallow you before I reach you”.

Jade’s boots shook the ground as he walked up to me.

He plucked the pheasant from my hair, slammed it at my face and struck two hot slaps on my cheek that whipped my head sideways.

“What nonsense have you done?” he barked.

My skin burned and for a moment everything went still…so silent that I could hear the click in my skull.

“Explain this rubbish, Vera!”

“I didn’t—” I tried to explain to him. But what could I say? I, who had never been claimed, didn't even know the taste of mating wine, let alone where it was kept.

“You have to fix this mess you’ve started. Now!” He barked again.

Tears blurred my vision as I fled from the pack hall to our chambers, brushing off vegetables stuck to my dress.

Despite everything, Alpha Jade’s cruelty, his temper, and his utter disregard for my dignity, my body still betrayed me whenever he was near.

The scent of pine and cloves that clung to his robes, the quiet command in his voice, the way the air thickened whenever he was close, it all pulled at something deep in me I didn't want to admit still existed.

I hated him, but some part of me hadn’t learned how to stop wanting him.

And maybe that was the cruellest part of it all.

“Gods, what is wrong with me?” I hissed slamming the door behind me.

“I am done!”

With Alpha Jade, his son, his mother, and the entire pack.

I yanked the dresser open, sobbing bitterly as I stuffed in whatever clothes I could grab.

“Fuck this!” I whimpered, flinging the lingerie he once gifted me against the wall.

“Fuck his temper!”

“Fuck his son’s tantrums!”

“Fuck his manipulative mother!”

“And fuck me for still craving his hands on me!"

Even the silent walls around me knew I didn’t mean it.

The door creaked open.

Luna Marie leaned against the frame, with a look I couldn’t quite place.

“And where do you think you’re going?”

“Running away? Just like a gutter rat, are you?”

“I fulfilled your contract, Luna!” I sobbed.

“Noah is ten now, he doesn’t need me anymore!”

She traced a finger along my collarbone.

“Well, sweet girl, contracts don’t erase debts. Especially not the kind you owe me.”

A stranger listening to her talk might have imagined some damsel in a cliche mafia romance novel involved with a loan shark and a billionaire riding in to play hero.

Well, I’d have traded my soul for something that simple.

She stepped forward with a wicked grin and pulled out her phone.

“Let’s replay your masterpiece.”

Then came her favourite heart-wrenching video.

“Or is that not you again, Vera the Saint?”

My lungs locked. I didn't need to look at the screen to know what was playing and deep down I prayed no one would walk in at that moment.

I had memorised every frame: the way my hands shook, the way Max’s eyes bulged. The way the knife slid in.

Yes, I stabbed Max, the palace caretaker. And now Luna Marie plays that video whenever she wants to remind me of who the boss is.

“You bloody murderer!”, she taunted.

“You owe me,” she winked. “Unless you’d prefer Jade and the whole pack see your finest performance.”

The word punched through me sharply as the knife I’d driven into Max’s chest ever had.

Yes, I stabbed Max!

I killed him!

But does that make me a monster or just a woman who ran out of choices?