Danika is stirred awake by the soft jolt of wooden wheels against a rugged path. Her head throbbed and her vision blurred as she slowly opened her eyes. The scent of something unfamiliar filled her nostrils.
She was lying on a rough blanket in the back of a moving carriage, with its interior dim, lit only by the cracks of the moon's beam slipping through the seams. Panic rose in her chest as the realization settled in: she was no longer anywhere near the Crimson Veil pack.
She began thinking of a way out. Groggily holding on to her head as she recalled how she had been abducted.
Suddenly the carriage came to a screeching halt. She wondered what had happened. Had the enemies direwolves grown tired out for their carriage to stop?
That was what often did theirs. Not as if she had ridden in one before. But watching her step sister Lyra and her mother do, she could tell from standing outside with the servants what caused the direwolves to stop.
The perfect chance to escape. She thought to herself. It had just presented itself.
But the carriage seemed rather too strong or perhaps it had been locked from the outside because it couldn't open, regardless of how much she tried to secretly do so. And she couldn't struggle openly with it lest she would get caught by her abductors.
She was still struggling with the door when she heard a voice that made her to pause.
"She's in the carriage" it said, and Danika could hear footsteps approaching.
It wasn't just any voice because she was used to it.
"A mate. An addition to your pack. Or a kitchen worker. Please make of her anything as long as she gets to stay under your roof. I can no longer assure myself of her safety if she were to remain under my stead"
She paused again. She wasn't mistaken and the voice was one she was quite familiar with.
Not bothered about trying to escape secretly anymore, she hit the door with her body and this sent the plank of wood falling off.
Some men dressed in uniforms she could easily identify tried to stop her but Alpha Benard, her father raised his hand and stopped them.
"I told you Damien" he muttered to the young man standing beside him.
"She's quite defiant"
Damien smiled as he watched her approaching, concerned not about what her father had just told him about her.
"How could you do this to me, father?" Danika demanded, hurling the words out of her mouth as she stared at her father squarely in the eye with contempt.
How could he betray her this way? She thought as the words she had overheard began replaying in her head.
To make of her anything as long as she remained under his roof? Why? Was she that much a piece of burden that he was desperate to get rid of?
"How could you do this to me?" She shouted the second time as she received no response to her first question.
She didn't mind that she was treated like an outcast in the same pack her father was the alpha of. Didn't mind the mistreatments she received at her step mother and sister's hands. Nor how she was dreaded by other pack members.
Now her father was showing to the world that he wasn't any different from all these people she had endured for all these years?
Her eyes stung and a tear fell from her left eye, betraying the promise she had made to herself not to cry, regardless of what happens.
But how could she keep up with this promise when whom she made it for was the cause of her sadness.
"I'll leave her with you, Damien. Do see that she's under your roof and doesn't get to come out" Alpha Benard said coldly as he turned to mount his direwolf.
" Why are you ignoring me father? Why are you leaving me here with these strangers?" Danika cried as she watched him leaving.
A guard brought her ratchet bag and handed to a guard of Damien's. She hadn't even carried half of the second hand clothes she owned and now her father gave her out? Just like that? Just like that. And it was the most painful thing for her to say.
Alpha Benard mounted his direwolf in silence, his eyes fixed ahead as Danika's voice continued to crack through the night.
"Father! Please don't leave me here!" she began to cry this time around, no longer questioning him as she saw that he was serious about leaving her behind.
Her voice was hoarse and he could feel the disbelief etched in it.
But he didn't turn. He couldn't. Regret gnawed at his heart, but the shame he felt held his shoulders stiff. He had failed her as a father.
And now, keeping her in his pack had become a threat to everything he stood for, to everything he was, including the throne he had bled to protect. And yet, giving her away felt no less cruel.
Danika's tear-filled eyes stayed locked on his back until he mounted his direwolf and rode away into the dark woods without so much as a final glance.
Silence fell. She still couldn't believe it. How. Why. What had she done to deserve such a cruel fate.
Damien remained where he stood, watching her quietly. He didn't rush to comfort her, and neither did he offer any false kindness. He waited for her to be done, calm and unmoved, as she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Her chest still rising and falling from sobs she refused to release.
When the last echo of her father's departure faded, Damien stepped closer.
"Enough," he said. "He's gone and it's time for you to face reality. There's no place for weakness in my pack."
His tone was steady not harsh but there was no softness in it either. He reached into his cloak and pulled out a piece of dried meat, holding it out to her.
"Eat. You'll need your strength."
Danika stared at the meat and then at him. How could he have known that she was hungry? It was late already and she hadn't had anything to eat since the morning. From bathing in herbs to starving herself all so she could be able to release pheromones to seduce one of the alpha heirs.
Her eyes stung again.
"You may have lost your place in your father's pack," Damien continued, "but you're in mine now. I'll give you shelter but you'll give back. Everyone in my pack earns their place."
He turned and began walking toward the camp, not checking if she followed.
Danika stood still, trembling with the chunk of dried meat he had placed in her hand before leaving. Her world had just shattered. But this was looking like the beginning of another miserable one.
Except that it was going to be with one who owed her father.
As Danien was indebted to him.
Once he had gone to war with an enemy pack and his forces were about being annihilated, her father had come with his reinforcements even though he wasn't aware of he war and he had saved Damien and his throne. Perhaps this was the way her father wanted him to repay his through.
Just then it dawned on her. How silly she was to know everything about her father. Every business of his and every debt owed him. Every ally and enemies of his.
She knew them all but the only thing he knew about her, his own daughter was that she was a twenty-one-year old unmated and wolfless omega.