The Caged Wolf

Amara's POV

I'd never looked up at the sky.

Not like other folks had; stretching out wide and boundless and full of potential. My world was always broken into fragments, viewed through contradicting bars across my window or the splits in frigid stone walls that held me captive. Outside existed only in fantasy, something I'd dreamed, something I was never supposed to reach.

For eighteen years, I had never been anything other than a secret. A pilfered breath in shadowed hallways. A ghost behind closed doors. A Winters by birth, but not by name. No one beyond these doors was aware of my presence.

Because I was never supposed to be.

I felt all that would change this night. 

My heart beat rose, as I thought of the possibility and the door opened. 

Heeling clicks, slow, stiffly, rang through the stillness. And then the voice, honey-sweet and lethal.

"You're actually doing this?" I heard her say. I turned to see Kamla. 

She stood in the doorway, with her arms folded, her smile like a knife. “Allowing them to parade you around like some lost relic?”

Her words were meant to cut. To remind me of my place.

I stood there and gazed back at her, steadfast, unblinking. Kamla Winters was the daughter our father wanted. The golden one. The one who was given everything and I was left in the shadows. She had love, status, freedom.

I had nothing.

“I have no choice,” I exclaimed, smoothing the dress fabric, even though my hands trembled.

Kamla cocked her head to the side, a smile growing larger. “Of course you don't.” She let out a possessive sigh. “Father's little prophecy child, free at last from her cage.”

She looked at me for a moment, laughter glinting in her eyes. “I wonder,” she said mockingly. “Will you be able to live with him?”

I hunched back to my full height, steel flowing into my backbone. “I always survive.”

She held my hand tightly and dug my claws into my flesh. I winced in pain and tried to free my hand, but failed. She smiled wickedly and pinched harder. 

But before she could dig her claws in deeper, a voice sliced the air.

“Amara!” 

It was a cold deep voice and we instinctively turned.

My father was standing in the doorway, the Blood Moon Pack's Alpha. He did not look at me with warmth or pride. Only expectation. And to his side, Beta Luther Cain looked at me with the same uninterested look he always used to; save this time, his eyes lingered a little longer than normal. 

“It's time,” Dad said and Kamala freed me. 

A crawling chill crept down my spine.

I should have been freed. This was my first opportunity to escape these walls, to see my pack, to be more than a ghost in a cell. But instead, something within me howled that this was not freedom.

This was something else altogether.

Kamla lingered about me, her perfume overwhelmingly cloying. "Good luck, sister," she whispered, her voice as smooth as a blade. "Don't make us look bad."

And she was gone.

And I stood alone between the world I had known and the world beyond the door.

With one last deep breath, I leapt into the unknown.

*********

The ballroom was a whirl of movement and sound. Laughter. Rattling glasses. Chandeliers trembling light on a sea of faces.

Red and gold streamers cascading down from the ceiling, a bitter reminder of where I was actually supposed to be.

I pushed through the crowd, gasping air caught in my throat. Their eyes followed me. Some were curious, some suspicious.

They did not know me.

Kamla in the midst of it all, wrapped in red, and bathed in the golden light. She was home. She had always been home.

She looked at me and smiled.

And then…

I started to feel it.

A pull so deep, so primal, it anchored me to the spot.

My wolf stirred to life.

“Mate,” my wolf spoke loudly in my mind. 

The smell hit me first. A smoky cedarwood, dark and heavy. My body reacted before my head even had a chance to process what was going on, and then I saw him.

Alpha Elias Beaumont. He was tall, and handsome. His full dark hair made me feel bald and emerald eyes were sharper than the edge of a knife. 

He stole the moment. The rest of the world went into oblivion.

He was mine.

I took one step closer and he retreated.

The earth beneath my feet could have turned to liquid, it was that soft.

Elias's face impossible to decipher, his jaw shut tight, his eyes burning with some feeling I had no notion how to classify.

My wolf yelped in agony, but I held strong, muzzling my own breath into a level plane, waiting…waiting for him to speak.

He felt it just like I did. I moved towards him, but he stopped me with his hand. “Don't,” he warned. 

And then, his words, individually like a blade, cutting through me.

"I, Alpha Elias Beaumont of the Artemis Pack, deny you, Amara Kings, as my mate."

The air was sucked from the room.

A collective gasp tore through the crowd. My knees nearly buckled.

No. No, it wasn't happening.

Searing pain exploded in my chest, burning me like silver bullets. The mate bond broke, unraveling like a shredded string. I clenched my fists hard, nails deep in palms, hanging by a thread.

And Kamla stepped forward. Her voice gave a sickening purr. “Elias,” she breathed, her small hand on his breast. “Don't be cruel.”

Elias drew a harsh breath. His shoulders were braced.

That wasn't the worst, until he spoke again. “She's my mate. Kamla is mine!”

What? Kamla? Not me?

My world shattered at my feet.

The crowd cheered, accepting Kamala and then laughter flowed as they looked at me. Their whispers continued and grew higher. 

I couldn't breathe.

Kamla flung her chin back, the victory etched on her face. “Welcome to the real world, sister.”

Something within me shattered. I turned and walked away ignoring their mockery. This was the las

t straw. I would not be disgraced anymore. 

Elias had rejected me.

Kamla had stolen my fate.

And I would make them regret it.