Chapter One

Sophia’s POV

Today is just another miserable day in my life as an orphan omega, overlooked and forgotten by almost everyone in the pack. Today should have been so different, it should have been a celebration with my family, but I am alone in the world. There will be no party, no congratulations and perhaps most sadly of all, no first run with the pack. To them I am a burden, my life is not something to be celebrated, my presence is merely endured.

Today marks my eighteenth birthday, a sacred day in the life of every young werewolf. In the early hours of this morning, whilst the full, blue moon was still hanging in the sky above the forest, I shifted into my wolf form for the first time and the true nature of my being was finally set free.

It wasn’t the joyous occasion it would have been if my parents were still here. In fact, nobody even gave me a second look as I trudged out into the forest on my own. The other omegas all remained in their beds, knowing that if they were caught out of them, they would be visited by the business end of a whip. I had nothing but the tattered, greying sheet from my bed and thoughts of what my wolf would be like. I silently contemplated what my life could have been if the rogues hadn’t killed my parents and destroyed my future in one swift and bloody act.

The metallic din of clattering of pots and pans echoes through the kitchen and I scrub furiously at a stubborn stain on a plate. It’s almost as if they deliberately wait for the food to dry to the plates before returning them to the kitchen to be cleaned. As I work, an unfamiliar restlessness stirs within me, as if an invisible force urges me to look up from the sink full of dirty dishes and floating scraps of food that make my skin crawl every time they float past my submerged hands and touch my wrinkled skin.

My heart falls through my body and hits the floor with a metaphorical splat as I catch sight of him—Zaine, the alpha of our pack. Scarlet Moon Pack, my pack, is the second biggest, second strongest pack in the Northern territories.

Tall, brooding, and powerful, he commands respect and instils fear in almost equal measure. Every female in the pack dreams of being fated to him, even I did as a child, before my world turned upside down. I have grown up since then and my dreams have dulled to something far less fanciful. The only thing he makes me feel now is absolute disgust, until this morning anyway. When I got my wolf, everything changed. My shitty life just got worse, if you can believe that.

I thought, that after my first shift, I would be able to sneak back to my shared room by entering the pack house through the garden door and tiptoeing down the corridor to the omega’s quarters. It was still early, everyone would be sleeping, and I could remain invisible, but that route led me right past the library where he was, slumped over a pile of crinkled old maps and open books.

When my wolf emerged, her instincts blended with my own, and as I crept past the door like a frightened little mouse, she recognized him as our mate and began pawing at my insides trying to get out. Trying to get to him, of all people.

It was a cruel twist of fate when she started howling in my head. All she was saying was ‘Mate, mine, mate.’ Over and over in a desperate tone that shattered my heart as I ran down the corridor as fast as my feet would go, the slapping of bare flesh on the tiled floor echoed all around me. I barely made it back to my room before heaving last night’s meagre dinner into the pristine toilet bowl I had scrubbed clean that very morning.

All I could think was, how could this be happening? Have I not suffered enough?  Zaine despises the omegas: he considers us nothing more than burdens to the pack. What will he do when he discovers he is mated to the lowest of the low? Exile me? Reject me? Kill me? Any of the above are just as likely as the rising of the sun each morning. My fate will most likely be decided by which side of the bed he wakes up on. Alpha Zaine is not known for his patience or level temper.

Killing me would almost be merciful. Being exiled and becoming rogue, living a packless life, is a fate worse than death. Being rejected would kill my wolf then after feeling the agony of her demise I would die soon after, hollow and hopeless.

Yes. A swift, clean death would be the best outcome I could hope for, but I am not ready to die. I told myself there has to be another way, and I will just buy myself time until I find it. Maybe another pack will take me in, or I could flee before he has the chance to exile me and find somewhere safe to hide until he chooses a more suitable mate. Perhaps then I could return and continue my life here with my friends, return to being one of the nameless faces who serve those above me.

I told my wolf exactly who and what our mate is, and she listened intently as I described the many injustices he has turned a blind eye to or actively participated in. To him, we are worthless, omegas and nothing more. I felt her heart continue to break as she realised, she had waited eighteen years to find the other half of herself, only to discover he is a monster and a vicious brute. Something else stirred in her when I explained the pack structure, like she couldn’t accept our position in the pack, but she remained silent, seething, and restless inside me.

Avoiding Zaine has been my sole focus all day, in the hope he would not notice me or choose a mate before realizing the moon goddess had bound us together in a cruel joke at my expense. Staying out of his way for a little while should have been simple enough, I can’t recall clapping eyes on him more than twice in the last month. The pressure to provide the pack with an heir has been slowly mounting, and whispers have been circulating that he might take fate into his own hands and choose a mate for himself. He only recently returned from one of the neighbouring packs, Waning Moon, and rumour would have it he was there in the hopes of finding his goddess fated mate. 

He isn’t getting any younger, but he isn’t old either. It is true that at his age, most of us would be paired off and have a couple of pups running around, tearing up the place. For him, an Alpha, being thirty-one and unmated is cause for concern about the pack’s future security. His Betas, Luca and George, have been throwing women in front of him at every opportunity. Sometimes the other kitchen girls and I brave a peek behind the dining hall curtain to watch the parade of prize turkeys as they are marched up to him, one by one, and rejected with a brief wave of his fork.

As you might expect, my hastily constructed plan began to crumble no less than twelve hours after this life changing revelation. Why would it go any differently? My whole life has been nothing more than misfortune and the world laughing at my expense.

Zaine bursts into the kitchen, his presence filling the room with his intimidating aura, it seems to suck almost all of the air right out of the room and my chest tightens in an instant. What little air is left crackles with tension, and I know he has probably already caught my scent, that is more than likely what brought him in here in the first place.

That’s another thing about Alphas, their senses are heightened beyond normal, they are stronger than two or three average wolves and they have the ability to command anyone in their pack to obey their orders and there is fuck all we can do about it. The moon goddess really stacked everything in their favour when she created the mate bond.

Mrs Crook is the closest thing I have to a mother, or family of any kind in this place, and she is as sharp as a tack and quick as a whippet when she senses the panic rising inside me. She discreetly shuffles her ample frame around the countertop, deftly ducking to dodge flying silverware, and puts herself in between me and the beast I was apparently created for.

“Leave, now. Take the back door. I’ll come by our room and check on you as soon as the coast is clear.” She whispers over her shoulder. I can see the pity in her eyes and my heart gallops behind my ribs, banging on the bones, trying to break free. Ever since my parent’s deaths, she has lifted my spirits with stories of how she met her mate. He rescued her from a life of servitude, and they lived happily in the Delta wing, her mate serving in the Alpha’s guard. Her stories gave me hope that my mate would take me away from all of this. That hope was my light at the end of a long dark tunnel, and my wolf snuffed it out with her calls for her mate.

When Mrs Crook’s mate, Jonathan, was killed in a rogue attack, she found herself right back where she started, only now Zaine was Alpha, not his kind and benevolent father. Most wolves go mad with grief when they lose their mate, but not her, she is stronger than anyone I have ever known and she held herself together for the sake of us, the omegas. Without her, life would be far worse than it is, she is our spokesperson, our leader, our mother.

I can’t help my body’s reaction to his presence, and my damned feet won’t move from this spot. I don’t know if it’s fear or my wolf that keeps me rooted in place. A tight knot forms in my stomach and tingles erupt all over my skin. Pure, undiluted panic surges through me, and I shake my head, silently telling her I cannot move. My eyes widen and the realisation that I most likely won’t make it back to my bed tonight causes bile to rise in my throat. Fat tears gather on my lashes and threaten to spill as the kitchen erupts with chaos.

A sudden dampness spreads between my legs and I inwardly curse nature for making me so weak. My body is literally calling out to him, every instinct, every cell craves him, and I am powerless to do anything about it. For anyone else, finding out they were fated to the alpha would be a dream come true, but for me, it is nothing less than a nightmare.

Plates shatter on the terracotta tiled floor, cabinets fly open and are left barely hanging by their hinges, and ingredients spill across the floor as Zaine tears the kitchen apart in a temper, desperate to uncover the source of the aroma emanating from none other than me. I press my back against the wall and squeeze my eyes tightly closed, hoping beyond hope to somehow sink into the cold plaster and disappear. My heart pounds in my chest drowning out the ruckus. I can hear his laboured breaths as he closes in on his target, me. I open one eye out of morbid curiosity, only to see his eyes staring right at me, burning with his basal desire to take his mate. I have nowhere to run.

“You.” He stares right at me and licks his lips as if he can taste my scent. “Out of my way, woman.” He gives Mrs Crook his signature ‘Don’t fuck with me’ look. She stands her ground and I can see her hands trembling as she holds them out in front of her.

“Please Alpha Zaine, she only turned this morning, give her some time to digest this. She can’t even access the mind link yet. Can’t you see, she is terrified” Mrs Crook pleads my case, but I don’t need time, I need to escape. I should have run this morning when I had the chance. It would be better to be out there amongst the rogues than to be bound to him for the rest of my life, however short it may be.

“Step aside. I will not repeat myself again, do you understand?” Zaine leans in to Mrs Crook’s ear and delivers a warning dripping with the threat of bloodshed. All I can do is watch as she steps aside. I don’t blame her, he wouldn’t think twice about following his threat through to its bloody end, not after all of his fruitless searching. He has finally found his prey and only a fool would stand between him and his prize.

Cornered and defenceless, I brace myself for the worst. Zaine is known for his dominating nature, and I am certain that if he doesn’t want to kill me, he will want to stake his claim, regardless of my feelings, that is the way it goes. The goddess fates you to one mate only and the rest is history as they say.

To my surprise, when his piercing blue eyes lock with my plain, dull brown ones, a flicker of lusty possessiveness crosses his face. I curse the moon goddess as my legs threaten to buckle beneath me, why did she have to make us so subservient to our mates?  

Before I can react, his strong arms cage me against the wall, the muscles either side of my face flex ripple, his voice, laced with authority, rumbles through me. “You are mine, Little Omega. The moon goddess has spoken.” I’m not shocked that he doesn’t know my name, but the fact that he would announce his intentions in front of the entire kitchen staff and his Beta, Luca, who had followed him in here in a vain attempt to calm the beast, rocks me to my core. I had been holding onto the hope he would find out what I am and end my suffering.

My anger surges, overriding my fear and any sense of self preservation. I glare up at him, my body propped against the wall with only my shaking legs holding me up and shame burning in my cheeks, knowing he, and every other male in the kitchen can smell my body’s betrayal. What my body craves because of this stupid mate bond, and what I want, are two very different things.

How dare he come crashing in here and declare that I am his? Only yesterday he would have killed me without a second thought. After everything I have suffered, everything he has knowingly put me and my friends through, he thinks I am so weak that I would be a slave to my primal urges, and by extension to him. I don’t think so. The mate bond can kiss my day old, furry arse. 

“I could never accept a man who treats his pack, especially the omegas, with such cruelty and indifference, I reject you, Alpha Zaine.” I practically spit the words in his face which is only inches away from my own. It’s not the smartest thing I have ever done, but the look on his face was worth whatever comes next. Pure shock. He stiffens for a second and blinks rapidly as he digests what has just happened. Nobody has ever spoken out against him and I have I feeling I will be the only fool in history to do so.

Fury twists his features, darkening his expression. There he is, Alpha Zaine, in all of his glory. In an instant his hands move to grip my arms, his long fingers dig into my flesh so deeply I know it will bruise. Without warning or another word, he drags me out of the kitchen, and my screams of protest fall on deaf ears. Nobody would dare stand in his way, not even Luca.

My wolf would not allow me to say the words of a formal rejection, and I am not strong enough to fight her on that, but I will fight him until he either kills me or rejects me himself.

Locked in the room next to his, rage burns under my skin. His parting words as he shoved me inside, that ‘I should be thankful he has not cast me out of the pack’, only add fuel to the fire that burns inside me. How dare he think he can lock me away like some kind of prisoner? Although I suppose I have been his prisoner in one way or another for the better part of the last eight years. I pace back and forth, my feet sinking into the plush cream carpet, my wolf paces along inside me, her growls of discontent mirroring my own frustration.

After a few minutes my boiling anger calms to a simmer and curiosity takes its place. Why does Zaine want me? After the way I acted, I should be dead. If he despises omegas so intensely, why would he even consider mating with one, whether the moon goddess has fated us to be together or not?

The questions gnaw at my mind, but I already know the answer. He needs an heir, and a pup from a fated mate, even one as low on the totem pole as I, would be better accepted than one from a chosen mate. That must be his intention, to hold me captive, breed me for a couple of Alpha pups, then discard me when I am no longer of use to him. That sounds about right, Sophia, the disposable mate.

I will never give him a pup. I refuse to secure the future of a pack that has forsaken its most vulnerable members. Locked away or not, I will find a way to free myself and after that I will leave this place, along with anyone who wishes to join me. I am grown now, I have my wolf, and I finally have the ability to make choices about my own future.