Chapter: 2

Elizabeth.

I make my way back home after the rigorous training session with Maeve as the old, rusted bell in the castle tower rings, signaling the time as noon. After the training session, there was nothing more on my agenda, which meant that I was ought to use that time to get ready for the Midnight ceremony.

A Midnight ceremony was an intimate affair, perhaps even more intimate than a mating ceremony. No one was allowed to witness the first transformation. The day a pup turned eighteen, they were to exit the pack boundary and enter the Lunar Woods on their lonesome and spend the night within, meditating and trying to reach within themselves to find their wolf. Half the time, two or three people would turn eighteen years of age on the same day. But our pack was small with only two hundred and seventy people living within, young and old. So today, I was the only wolf turning eighteen.

Which meant that I was to go through my ceremony truly alone.

At the Midnight ceremony, I will also discover another aspect about myself, which is my place in the wolf hierarchy, my tier. There were three tiers in the wolf hierarchy, Alpha, Delta and Omega. Alphas were the rarest of them all, born leaders. Deltas were commoner than Alphas, but unlike being an Alpha, being a Delta was not inherited from the parents. Omegas were the commonest tier, and like Deltas, it was totally random being an Omega.

There were major differences between the three tiers. Alphas had red eyes in their wolf forms, Deltas had orange eyes while Omegas had yellow eyes. Alpha wolves were larger in size, and the strongest, while Delta wolves were smaller, but faster. Omega wolves were the frailest of them all. They often had issues turning to their wolf forms as they got tired often. Alphas also had the ability to talk with everyone via a mind link when in wolf form, but Deltas and Omegas couldn’t. I mean, they could talk with the Alphas, but not with other Deltas or Omegas.

So, today after transforming into my wolf form, I will see which tier I was in. I was fairly certain I was an Alpha, my father was an Alpha, and almost always the firstborn child of the Alpha would turn out to be an Alpha. My mother had been a Delta, as most Lunas were.

There were a lot of hopes riding on my tier. I was meant to be the Alpha of the pack after my father, as most firstborns were. This was a point of contention in my family, because I knew that my stepbrother Easton felt slighted because of this.

My father married my stepmother shortly after my own mother was killed by humans in a battle when they clashed in the Lunar woods. They had gone out to hunting, and as the Luna, my mother had joined because she’d missed most of the hunting while being pregnant with me. They’d come across a group of the human King’s soldiers in their trip, and a fight had broken out. The soldiers were armed with the bizarre human weapons that were capable of killing after a sound of explosion came out, and one soldier had aimed his weapon at my mother and pressed the trigger.

My mother had died on the spot as the bullet had been laced with silver.

The wolves who were with my mother had managed to kill the human soldiers, but by then it was too late. My mother had died, leaving me with my father as my only relative in the world.

I had only been a one-week-old infant, and my father could not care for me on his own. So, he’d remarried. My stepmother had been one of his friends who already had a son of her own, although no one knew who his father was. But such things were natural in wolf communities, and no one cared for it. When my father married her, Easton had only been three years old.

Carol was a fine woman who treated me like I was her own daughter. She never made me feel like a burden, or an unwanted child. She treated me and Easton equally. Because of her warmth, loving nature, I never felt the void left by the loss of my mother, because to me, Carol was my mother. I didn’t even remember Victoria Mannering’s face. And I have to admit, there was a time in my life where I was mad that my biological mother had made the choice to go on hunting when she had a one-week-old infant at home, but that phase had been outgrown pretty quickly.

Today, my father had told me that I was to have lunch with them, so we could spend my last day as a pup like a family would. My father was often busy with pack activities, so taking meals together was a rarity in our household. More often than not I’d get a tray of lunch served at my room by a maid while I worked on schoolwork.

But not today.

I enter the castle through the forest and greet the maids, who are also my friends as I go through. They all tell me Happy birthday, and also show off the cake they’d made in my honor, which is pink in color with white icing spelling “Happy birthday, Eliza!” I thank them graciously for their kind gesture before taking my leave from the kitchens.

I slip into my room via an auxiliary staircase and quickly make my way towards the bathroom, where I’m relieved to find the bath already drawn, thanks to the maids. I scrub off the dirt and grime off my body as fast as possible and clean my teeth. After that, I slip into a cotton dress that feels good on my skin in the summer heat, which also happens to be alight pink. I don’t know why, but I loved the shade so very much, and unless I was practicing or schooling, I constantly found myself wearing it.

I don’t do anything to my hair, instead let it dry while letting it flow down my back. I debate on applying any makeup on my face but decide not to because I loathe to wash it off again.

Satisfied with my appearance, I make my way downstairs to meet my family.