Chapter 1: Little Bird

Aviana’s POV 

Endure it, Aviana. You are not a murderer.

The lash came down on my back, splitting the skin open. I squeezed my eyes shut. Clutching my fingers so tight it broke the skin in my palm. 

You are not a murderer.

Another one landed before I could breathe through the first causing more blood to spill down my damages back.

I am not a murderer. I screamed it inside my head trying to hold myself together and silence all their voices. I could hear it, I could feel their emotions and it was driving me crazy.

Don’t you dare cry. I told myself that too. Don’t you dare give them that.

My knees buckled against the rough stone floor of the punishment hall, the crowd made a sound of amusement at my pain. I could see their emotions as clear as daylight. They all wanted one thing and that was to see me dead and rotting. 

The hall sat at the lowest level of the palace, carved directly into the bedrock beneath the east wing, far enough underground that no sound ever reached the floors above. The walls were made with stone. 

Iron rings had been driven into them at different heights for different purposes and I had learned what each one was for. 

The floor sloped slightly toward a drain at the center. I had learned what that was for too. The only light came from four wall torches that casted more shadows than light. The whole place smelled like blood and iron.

It was not a dungeon. This place was only designed to break you down. And to punish you into submission.

I had spent more time here than anywhere else in the palace since I was ten years old.

It was as though I was dying, one lash at a time, but the worst part was that I knew it would never fully end. They had tried to kill me before. The wolfsbane hadn’t worked. 

Nothing worked. So instead they did this.

They gave me a life that felt like death instead.

Stop, I begged inside my head. Please. No more. I can’t take one more.

But that was a lie and I knew it. I would take one more. I always took one more. Because since I was ten years old and found my father bleeding and got the blame for it I had known one thing with absolute certainty …

My life was going to be filled with pain.

And since they couldn’t kill me, I would know death every single day of my life.

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My name is Aviana, daughter of Alpha Caden Jessa.

I was once the most loved princess of the Eastern Park … the Blood Claw Pack, as the other territories called us, for the crimson war paint our warriors wore into battle and the fierceness they carried that had never once been broken.

My father was Alpha Caden of the Blood Claw. He was not just loved within our own borders. He was respected across the entire realm. 

It was he, who stood beside the Alpha King when the long war finally ended … the brutal decades-long conflict between the four great packs that had torn the werewolf realm nearly in half. 

Before he became Alpha our pack had been struggling. The resources were thin, our borders were constantly threatened, our people were at their breaking point due to all the hunger and war. 

After ending the war the Blood Claw of the west became the realm’s armory. Our lands produced the finest weapons, the strongest metals, the best-trained blacksmiths and battle engineers in any territory. 

If you wanted to equip an army properly you came to us. That was my father’s doing. His vision and his stubbornness and his refusal to believe we couldn’t be more than we were. He single-handedly turned our park into the pride of the nation.

The other packs each had their own greatness.

The Iron Ridge Pack of the North controlled the mountain passes and the coldest trade routes, the wolves were built like their landscape … immovable and enduring. They supplied stone, timber, and strong soldiers that didn’t break even in harsh conditions. The wolves from that park looked almost like giants.

The Gold Plains Pack of the South held the farmland that fed everyone. They had very rich soil, the best healers in the realm. You did not want the South as your enemy at harvest time.

The Silver River Pack of the East was the heart of it all … they had all the major roads, and the connections between every territory. They might look like the weakest, but the other parks could not function without them.

And above all of them, the Lycan King. The supreme authority that every pack answered to. The one who kept the balance when the balance threatened to tip.

As long as everyone played their role, the realm held together.

My father understood that better than anyone.

And I … his eldest daughter, his little bird, as he always called me … understood almost none of it at the time.

I was spoiled. I’ll say it plainly because it’s true. Being the beloved princess of a beloved Alpha in a prosperous pack meant that very little was ever denied to me. 

My elder brother Aldric trained from dawn every morning, studied pack law in the evenings, and carried the weight of the future Alpha on his shoulders with a seriousness I used to tease him about.

I skipped training regularly.

I had no interest in studying battle strategy or territorial law or the careful diplomacy that kept our borders peaceful. 

My father would protect me. My brother would lead after him. I was going to be loved and kept safe and that was simply how things were. 

I just wanted to keep playing with dolls with my junior sister Patricia. A little angel with blond hair and blue eyes. And my best friend Phillip, who I have always had a massive crush on.

Father will always be here to protect all of us. 

Oh how wrong I was.

Because soon came the night that ended everything.

I woke up frightened, heart pounding, the storm outside was so loud it felt like the sky was falling apart. 

I went to look for my mother but her door was locked. She had been unwell and slept early and deep on the medicine the healers gave her.

So I went to my father.

I padded down the corridor in my bare feet the way I had done a hundred times before. His door was slightly open which was unusual.

I pushed the door open.

What I saw made me stop moving immediately. A masked man was standing close to my father. He dug a silver blade deep into my fathers chest, causing him to stagger back. 

“Ohh” I gasped, causing those black eyes to find me across the room … that is the colour of eyes only the east pack wolves have, with darkness all the way through, no light in them at all.

I thought he was going to kill me too but he left through the window as silent as smoke.

I ran to the bed as tears slipped down my eyes. 

The knife was still in his chest and I grabbed it with both hands and pulled with everything I had ignoring the pain in my heart but it wouldn’t come out no matter how hard I pulled.

And the blood … I still dream about the blood, the way it poured and kept pouring, soaking my hands up to my sleeves and spreading across the white bed sheets until there was more red than white and I was screaming his name and he wasn’t answering and I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t answering…

“Father, please get up. Father please.”

I couldn’t feel him anymore. My gift … the one I had always loved, the ability to feel what others felt … reached for him and found nothing. He was empty.

The door opened and Aldric stood there.

As I looked up at my brother with my father’s blood on my hands and my face, I said …

“Brother please. Someone has to help him.”

“Murderer.” He screamed and I knew my fairytale had come to an end.