004: The Alpha’s World

The Alpha’s World

Talia’s POV

We arrived at the fortress few hours later.

It rose out of the landscape like something that had always been there… stone walls dark with age, iron gates tall enough to swallow the sky, and along the upper edges, shapes I didn’t let myself look at too long. Bones and remnants of old wars pressed into the building like decoration. A reminder, I supposed, of what happened to those who stood against them.

The gates opened as we approached. There was no signal, it just opened.

Inside, it was worse.

The courtyard was wide and crowded, and the moment I passed through those gates, I felt every pair of eyes find me. Werewolves soldiers, servants, nobles in fine cloth and all of them stopped what they were doing and stared. Not with curiosity but with hostility. I was the only human in a sea of predators, walking beside the Alpha, and every single one of them knew it.

I kept my chin high and my eyes straight and told myself not to let them see my hands shaking.

The great hall was worse still.

Valik’s family and inner circle had gathered, and the feeling of walking into that room was like walking into a wall of silent judgment. No one smiled or spoke to me. They looked at me in the way that says I wandered somewhere I don’t belong and I’m about to be devoured.

I stood near the entrance, still in my ruined wedding dress, and tried to make myself invisible.

Before I knew what was happening, the atmosphere in the room shifted. There was a change in how people held themselves, a subtle straightening of spines.

A woman entered.

She moved across the room at a pace that suggested she owned every inch of it, and when she reached Valik, she pulled him into an embrace with a sound that was half sob and half relief.

“My son.” Her voice broke on the word. “We searched everywhere for you… I thought you were gone.”

Valik patted her back once. “I’m fine, mother. Stop being dramatic.”

“Dramatic?” She pulled back and looked at his face like she was memorizing it. “My heart was troubled and I thought something bad has happened to you.”

Her eyes found me over Valik’s shoulder. The warmth she had just shown her son didn’t extend one inch in my direction. She looked at me like I was a piece of furniture someone has dragged in from outside, but not something she’s pleased about.

“Who is this?” She asked Valik while looking at me as if I’m disgusting.

“She is the girl that saved me.” Valik said. “We got married today.”

“What?!” She asked in shock. She turned back to Valik. “Son, what exactly is this nonsense? You bring a human into our pack…” She said the word human like she just stepped on a piece of shit “…and she’s your wife, is that what you are saying?”

A she-wolf nearby, dressed expensively and standing like rejection was something that had never once happened to her, let her eyes travel over me slowly from head to toe.

“She looks so weak,” she said, loudly enough that she wanted me to hear it. “She might die in here anytime soon.”

Behind her, two servants exchanged a glance and murmured something.

“Humans are nothing more than a livestock.”

Cassian walked in and stood at the far end of the hall, caught Valik’s eye, and tilted his head.

Valik’s jaw tightened slightly. He glanced toward the room, a brief, quiet look that didn’t quite look like a warning, because nobody stopped talking, the murmuring got worse and he didn’t say a single word in my defense.

He turned to a servant standing near the wall. “Take her to a room,” he said simply, then he walked away with Cassian without looking back at me.

The servant was a young woman, small and careful-eyed. She dipped her head once and gestured for me to follow without saying anything.

I followed her through corridors and up a narrow staircase, the sounds of the hall fading behind me. The room she led me to was small and stone-walled with a single window and a wash basin in the corner.

“This is where you will be staying, you should thank your stars that you have the Alpha’s backing, if not… I would rather you get locked up in a dungeon, miserable being!” She said through gritted teeth.

“There,” She pointed to a folded cloth on the bed. “Change into that when you are done, so undeserving but what can be done.” She muttered angrily.

Then she left and pulled the door shut behind her, the sound echoed across the room.

I stood in the middle of the room alone for a moment.

Then I found the bathing chamber at the end of the hall and stepped inside. I stood in the basin with water around my ankles and let the silence land on me. I had managed, somehow, to keep myself upright through all of it. The ride, fortress, stares, and mean words that were aimed at me. I had kept my face still and my voice quiet and I had not given any of them the satisfaction of watching me fall apart.

I should have known the silence wouldn’t last.

The door opened without a knock, and they came in like they owned the air inside the room, three she-wolves, moving with the particular confidence of women who had never been told they couldn’t go somewhere. They circled slowly, and the things they said came quickly, overlapping, and practiced.

“Look at this fool, bathing comfortably,” One of them said.

“You trapped our alpha and tricked him into marrying you, such a weak and desperate creature… Do you think that wearing his ring would make you one of us?” Another one said.

One of them reached past me and took the small cloth pouch I had set on the edge of the basin… the only thing I had brought from the village. Inside it was a single dried flower from my wedding bouquet, pressed flat, and a thin piece of ribbon that had been tied around my wrist that morning.

She dropped it on the wet floor and crushed it beneath her heel without looking away from me. She picked the wedding dress and ripped it into pieces.

I said nothing because I had nothing to say to them at that moment.

“Humans who forget their place… disappear without a trace, is that clear?” one of them said softly.

The door opened again.

They moved apart before I even saw why, a reflex, practiced and immediate. They straightened, dropped their eyes, and spoke together in a single voice.

“Good day, Lady Monica.”

She walked in like the room had been waiting for her. Noble bearing, expensive everything, the kind of woman who took up space with intention. She walked on the floor slowly, and I stood in the basin in a small cloth wrap, water dripping from my hair, with nowhere to go and nothing to hold.

Monica stopped in front of me.

She looked at me for a long moment… up and down, slow, and deliberate.

Then she raised her hand and slapped me so hard my head snapped sideways.