Chapter 2 Farewell

Amber's POV Kieran yanked his tie straight with an angry tug, eyes red-rimmed, his chest still heaving from what he'd been caught doing. His fingers rose to the cut on his cheek, and it was already beading a thin line of blood. He studied it on his fingertip for a long moment, then let out a low chuckle and turned back to me. "So now you know." He nodded, almost thoughtful, like I'd merely stumbled onto something he'd been planning to show me all along. "Good. Because all of this is your fault." My whole body shook with the effort of holding still. Behind Kieran, Serena rose off the ground, a small satisfied smile already curling at her mouth, and crossed toward him. She caught his hand, lifted the bloodied finger to her lips, and licked it clean without breaking eye contact with him. She smiled up at him. He smiled back, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her into his side. She tipped her head against his chest, and the two of them turned to me together, both smiling like I was the one who owed an apology. My breath came ragged, too fast to steady. "See?" Kieran tilted his head my way. "Your sister knows how to please a man. Make him feel wanted. You never did." I had insisted to abstain from premarital sex until after our marriage. But Kieran wanted more. Serena rolled her eyes at me, bored, unbothered, like she was watching something beneath her notice. My mother had died the day I was born - a death my father, Sir Walter Holloway, elder-in-council to the pack, had treated ever since as a curse rather than a tragedy. But that wasn't all about that story. This was just what many, almost everyone knew about it. My mother - Marilyn Guthman, was not an ordinary woman. She was the last Keeper of the First Wolf-an ancient supernatural lineage predating the five werewolf packs. The First Wolf wasn't simply an exceptionally powerful wolf. It was the source from which Alpha bloodlines originally received their authority. Years ago, the royal family discovered that the First Wolf had chosen my unborn soul as its next vessel. The royal council panicked. If I ever awakened, the current royal bloodline could lose its claim to the throne. So my mother made a bargain. She used an ancient ritual to seal my wolf before birth. The ritual killed her. And afterward, I was born apparently wolfless. My father was told that his wife died because my birth was cursed. But it was a lie. My mother died protecting me. And someone in the royal family knew the truth. Somehow, Serena managed to access that knowledge. And now trying all she could to use to her advantage just as she'd always did. In the pack, any woman who died during childbirth, the child was seen as a bad omen. They called it 'The Devil's Child.' Every eye that had looked at me twice since then had looked at me the same way: bad luck walking, a child the Moon Goddess had turned her back on. Eighteen came and went with no wolf. Twenty came and went the same way, while every she-wolf my age had shifted years before me. Wolfless. Completely, irreversibly wolfless. Proving to the Pack and those who discarded me, right that I was bad luck. My lips twisted. My eyes flashed red. My fists clenched hard enough to ache. "I, Amber Holloway, reject you, Kieran-" Kieran started laughing, the sound cutting through the garden like a blade before I could finish. "Hilarious," he said, still laughing. "You're wolfless. You can't reject your fated mate." In the Korvathen Pack - a rugged mountain clan whose warriors were feared across the continent - a female wolf without a wolf of her own held no right to reject her own fated mate. Tradition stripped her straight down to Omega rank, blood or council seat be damned. Royal descent meant nothing against a wolfless body. And that was exactly my case. "Cut the bond." My voice cracked. "Cut the bond! Cut it!" I swung my right hand at his face to land him a hot slap. He caught my wrist mid-air, held it there, staring into my eyes for three long seconds. Then, he flung it away hard enough that I lost my footing and hit the ground with a gasp. I looked up at him from the grass, my chest heaving. Kieran and Serena took few steps closer towards me, still smiling, and he crouched down to my level. "Why bother?" His voice had gone almost gentle - mocking in exactly that gentleness. "In an hour, the Alpha Prince's wolf of Drakharis Pack is going to rip you apart. He'll sever the bond for me himself." The Drakharis Pack was known across the entire North America and the continent at large, for its fearless warriors and for producing legendary Alphas who ruled the entire werewolf kingdom generation after generation. Ten years ago, the human race went into war to completely eliminate the werewolves and vampires from the surface of the earth. It was the late Alpha King of the Drakharis Pack, Alpha Darkwood, who mobilized the unbeatable wolf warriors that restored order and peace among the two worlds. Five packs made up its territory, Kieran's own Korvathen among them, bound by blood and oath to the throne at its center. My whole body trembled now, not just my hands. Serena burst out laughing beside him. Kieran only shook his head, straightened, slid his hands into his pockets. "You know," he said, looking down at me like something small and pitiful, "if you weren't such a stuck-up bitch, I might've let your sister stay as tribute. The job was hers to begin with." Serena stepped in close, wound an arm around his waist, rested her head on his chest again. "She-" My voice broke apart before the words even cleared my throat. "She was the original tribute? You've been lying to me this whole time?" The tribute required each family in the Kingdom to produce their first virgin daughters. Serena happened to be the marked tribute, but Kieran used his influence to convince Elder Walter to change the earlier arrangement. With me useless to him, he agreed. What a thing to learn on the night my life was supposed to end. "Farewell, Amber." Kieran gave me a small, mocking wave. Serena spun toward the house. "Guards! The runaway tribute is in here!" Two guards burst into the garden within seconds. "Take her away!" Serena pointed a finger straight at my chest, and the guards seized my arms, hauling me upright and dragging me across the grass. "No-" The word tore out of me as they lifted me off my feet. "She's the chosen one, not me! Let me go!" But the guards kept dragging, deaf to me, until the garden and everyone in it dropped away behind me. **************** The chamber door burst open as a guard's hand shoved me through it, and I hit the floor with a gasp, my breath coming in short, terrified bursts. My white gown streaked with blood along one side. I pushed myself up on shaking legs and turned slowly around the unfamiliar room, until my eyes landed on the man lying still on the bed, a blanket drawn to his chest. Alpha Ronan Darkwood. I stepped closer, careful, one foot at a time, and bent over him. "Okay," I whispered to myself, staring down at his face. "He's gorgeous. That's... something." I leaned in, bringing my mouth closer to his ear, my whole body shaking. "Could your wolf not kill me tonight?" I pleaded. I knew the consequence of my presence if not accepted. I had heard about the first and second set of virgins who were brought in here for same purpose but didn't make it out alive. And now, it was my turn. A single tear slipped from my eye and landed on his cheek. His eyelids twitched, though they didn't open. Something inside the room shifted. Something like a strange vibration that shook the room. I shivered, closing my eyes, scared to my bones that I may had aroused the beast inside him. The moment I noticed his eyes had cracked open, watching me, I gasped and jumped back in fright.