#Chapter 2: Dream Chasing

I tore awake, clawing at my bedsheets as if I could rip that nightmare from memory, but all I could see was the red. Papa and Mama, my brothers, my Pack. I could feel it all over me, sticky and slick and metallic.

It’s all over me, the dark of it, the lukewarm wet, the stench. I can’t get away. I can’t– can’t–

…a soft growl rose in my mind. A low hum, more like. My wolf Seren cloaked my conscious, grounding me, assessing my immediate surroundings. But without proper training, I couldn't maintain the connection with my wolf for long. It wasn't uncommon for days to pass without feeling Seren's presence.

As always, Seren slowly faded from my awareness, and my usual calm settled over me once more.

There was no red. No suffocating scent. What had felt like blood caked on my body was just my blanket clinging to cold sweat.

Almost nine years later, I still suffered the same nightmares of my Pack being slaughtered every night, and the Tyrant King looming over me. Some things could never be washed away, no matter the time passed. But today, I had many other things to clean.

I dressed for the day, suppressing the lingering tremble in my hands. These days, I was doing better. When I had first been brought to the Lycan court, the tremors were endless.

“Mate,” Zavan had said that day. And after murdering my family, he stole me away from my Pack’s land.

What could the Tyrant have wanted with a small pup? I remembered the looks of disdain, the whispered laughs and ugly jeering. Only when I grew older did it also dawn on me what further purposes the other Lycans had expected me to serve as the King’s mate, even as a child.

It puzzled me, and others, to this day that he wanted nothing of the like. He just assigned me the status of omega, and left me here while he ravaged the remaining werewolf packs with war.

What was I to him, but a sole gained trophy from his conquest of meting out justice over the werewolf packs. If it wasn’t my duty to dust off forgotten palace antiques, I might have been wearing my own coat of lint by now.

I should’ve felt grateful for being spared maybe. Lucky. Blessed– my Pack had once called my family this, after I was born.

None of these resonated with me as I knelt on cobbled stone ground and dragged a wet rag across the dull surface. As an omega, I was given menial labor to occupy my time. With the master absent, his dogs had no qualms against tasking me with the more miserable work that needed doing.

If they got bored enough, they would even lash out at omega werewolves like me physically. But nothing to disfigure me permanently, to mar the King’s ‘prized pet’, that couldn’t be gone should the master return on short notice.

Honestly, I preferred the wet rags and dirty floors to their lot.

The sound of approaching footsteps, carried down the empty hall. I tensed instinctively and scrubbed harder as a shadow fell over me.

“You’re not looking wretched enough today,” a smooth voice chuckled. “Swiftly now– frown deeper.”

I let out a breath, grin breaking through before I was finished looking up. “Cursed wolf.”

Lycan Gamma Derek to the Tyrant King now, was different from any other Lycan I’d encountered so far.

By appearance alone, he was easy to pick out. Compared to werewolf standards, Derek was still quite large– his height had him towering over many other Lycans– but his longer, leaner physique set him apart from the bulkier rest.

“The death-on-your-feet aesthetic becomes you,” Derek said, tipping my chin up with a featherlight touch. “Your eyebags in particular are coming along.”

I turned away to hide the flush of heat rushing to my face. “If you have this much free time, can’t you spend it on a hobby and not picking on me?”

“Picking on you is my hobby,” Derek retorted. Flatly he said, “More nightmares then.”

“It’s nearing that time of year again,” I admitted. The date was seared into my memory forever: my birthday, and their death day.

“Do you still have any of the last batch of tonic remaining?”

“A bit.”

Years earlier when I was first brought to the palace, I spotted him as one of the Lycan youths close to my age. Just the same, he had noticed me.

Over the years, he kept noticing. And every now and then, when he wasn’t at risk, he would even help me– as he gained rank, he used his sway to keep my chore load manageable and assigned me to less populated areas of the palace where other Lycans wouldn’t be as likely to harass me.

Supplying me sleep tonic was one among the many ways he had made my life here tolerable. While the sleeping tonic never stopped the nightmares, it at least gave me enough rest to get through the next day’s labor as an omega.

“You know to come to me before you run dry,” Derek said. “I’ve updated the formula recently.”

That was another way Derek stood out. While many Lycans of the high ranks were aggressive and physically menacing, Derek was cunning. He distinguished himself by serving as the palace apothecary.

It was why Derek was stigmatized by the other Lycans. His knowledge of poisons and potions were overlooked in this society of warmongering expectations. I didn’t want to add to his hardship– whenever other Lycans were around, we pretended not to know one another, and I acted as though he was just another monster to me.

But he wasn’t. And that was why I decided to tell Derek everything.

“I won’t need more tonic,” I confessed. “I’m leaving this place.

Derek’s eyebrows raised. He said nothing, at first. Always calculating. I half-expected him to try to talk me out of it. But then he asked, “How exactly do you plan to manage that?”

“My birthday,” I told him, resolute. “I’ve been working in secret. My control over my wolf is getting stronger by the day, I can almost fully shift.”

It had baffled Derek when I first told him that my parents had never trained me. The likelihood of my wolf taking over and me retaining my mind during my first full transformation was a reach, and I knew I sounded crazy. But I refused to spend anymore of my life rotting here.

“At eighteen, I'd be an adult. The moon would grant me its strength that night. I couldn't miss this chance, Derek.”

Derek’s lips were pressed into a thin line, as if he was deliberating what to do with this information.

I wondered if I made a mistake telling him after all. The way Derek complained about this place, about how the King squandered his talents by leaving him here and excluding him entirely from the war effort, I had thought Derek hated the palace nearly as much as I did.

“I received word of the latest developments from the warfront this morning,” Derek said then, careful as he watched for my reaction to what he said next. “The last of the expanded borders have been declared secure. The King is returning from his campaign.”

Cold dread sank into me first. A wolf towering over a red lake, its darkness growing toward me– the Tyrant who slayed my family and left me with nightmares.

But the pain rapidly twisted into fury. That bastard, that murderer, that–

“Mate….”

I shuddered. If the King was returning to the palace, then this could be my last chance of escape. Turning eighteen also meant our mate bond would snap into full force.

But– it could just as well improve my odds.

“Is there a banquet planned?” I asked.

“For the King’s victorious return?” Derek met my eyes, knowingly. “The palace is about to be thrown into chaos. And I’m sure alcohol will be provided in excess.”

“Increased security–”

“Only in proximity to the King. Not the exits.”

“When?” I breathed, voice hushed as I dared to hope.

“Coincidentally,” Derek said, “on the eve of your birthday.”

This would be it.

My last chance, my best chance, and truthfully my only chance if I didn’t want to be trapped with the Tyrant who slaughtered my pack for the rest of my days.

I would run.