CHAPTER 1: BLESSINGS AND CURSES

Chapter 1: Blessings and curses

Selena's pov

"Selena! Come downstairs, honey!" I heard my mother calling me from downstairs and I rolled my eyes and left Laticia, my pet cat, to go answer my mother.

My eighteenth birthday was yesterday and suitors have been trouping in from all around our pack to see the rumoured prettiest girl the white moon pack had to offer.

Sadly, that's me; Selena Castellan and unfortunately, my beauty is more of a curse than a blessing.

My mother is Elena Castellan, revered matriarch of the White moon pack, a peaceful and majestic race of werewolves descended directly from the moon goddess and blessed with her life force.

Our glowing fair skin, extraordinary beauty and healing abilities have made us popular over the decades and while we were blessed to have the goddess's blood flowing in our veins, we had one fatal flaw... We couldn't shift into wolf form. A small price to pay for our beauty and insane healing powers.

Because of this weakness, we have been plundered for ages and taken as slaves or worse. To stop this, we entered into a pact with the most powerful pack in existence; the Poison Fang pack whose bite is said to be more lethal than a viper's. Poison Fang protects us while we give back to them with our healing powers and nature magic.

However, we are to remain untouched and must be mated only amongst each other. It was one of the agreements on the binding contract.

Sadly, Tristan Morgenstein, the spoiled alpha prince of Poison Fang didn't get the memo.

His men gathered in my living room, armed to the teeth.

They have come for me.

My mother's face was filled with dread as she turned to me.

This could very well be a good reason to mourn. Alpha Tristan's name precedes him. Spoiled, selfish and wicked were words used to describe him on a daily basis. However, they would have remained just rumours if I had never met him with my own eyes.

It had happened when I was only fourteen, four years ago. My mother had sent me to pick medicinal herbs close to the borders of our pack. I had heard cries and screams and gone to investigate.

I wish I didn't. The memory came back to me in waves.

"Please, Alpha, I beg you. I am still a virgi–"

"Shut up, you stupid wench and spread those legs wider for me!" The alpha had ordered, ruthless driving his hips between the girl's legs. He had hit her, mocked her and savagely raped her in those woods and only the goddess knows how many other girls have fallen victim to the spoiled brat.

The shewolf had shed quiet tears as he ruthlessly took her virginity and I had watched with tears and rage in my eyes. When he was done, he had casted her away like she was nothing and then his eyes fell on me.

Even at that time, I knew greed when I saw it and what was reflected in his eyes was the burning, greedy desire to take me too.

But that wasn't all it was. Weak as she was, my wolf, Tahila, had howled in relief, her joy at finally having found her mate was infectious but I slammed her down with a two hundred pound sledgehammer and tried to think with my head for the both of us.

It was a very rare occurrence for werewolves to find their mate that early and shewolves from my pack were usually mated to the males in my pack.

But here I was at fourteen, my wolf yearning for Tristan. I have always been a special child but that day, I wished I was anything but special. I didn't want to be mated to a tyrant like him.

Tristan had asked for my age and obviously seeing that I was too young, he had let me go...

Or so I thought.

Since that day, every year on my birthday, he would buy me things; makeup, expensive jewelry, lingerie, skimpy dresses... Things I didn't and would never need, especially from him, with a personalized birthday card in his own handwriting, telling me that he can't wait for the day to claim me as his own. Telling me all the dirty, wicked things he plans to do to me when I become his.

Over time, his father, Alpha Ezra, fell immensely sick that even our best healers couldn't heal him. And because his older twin brother was away in exile, he stepped up to rule the pack as Alpha for the time being. I thought that he would have more responsibilities on his hands now that he was alpha, but I thought wrong because the gifts and letters kept coming.

I would shiver and chuck them in the fire, praying to the goddess he would one day forget about me or miraculously find a new mate and realize that I was not the one for him.

Perhaps that had been too big of a miracle, even for the goddess because here were his men, without the gifts this time, obviously prepared to take me, even if it was by force.

Still, I goaded. "No gifts today?"

"The Alpha gave us orders to bring you to him," the leader of the men said to me. "Pack your things, Selena. You're coming with us."

I looked to my mother for help but even she had a distraught look on her face. There was nothing she could do. The Alpha's words were as good as law, the matriarch of a small, defenceless psuedo-pack couldn't possibly defy him.

"Do not refuse us, Selena," the man warned sternly, probably seeing the conviction in my eyes.

"I won't refuse you," I said at last. Not you at least. I needed to see the alpha and tell him myself that I want nothing to do with him. "Let me pack my things." I said, to act the part of a docile, willing and submissive little princess.

They allowed me that small mercy of packing my little personal belongings, not much, because I would be coming back by all means. I said goodbye to my cat and told her to wait for me because I had every intention of coming back.

My mother was all tears and empty promises as I stepped out the door with the alpha's men.

"I'll work something up with Ezra when he is healed of his illness. I prom–"

"Selena! SELENA!" Somebody suddenly screamed, rushing downstairs. My younger sister Diane, crashed into me and pulled me into a bone crushing hug. "Please, don't go, Selena, mother, you can't let her leave us!"

My heart constricted in my chest and I patted her hair. "I'll be back, Diane, don't worry. I promise."

With great difficulty, my mother pulled Diane away from me and she watched with a grief stricken face and tears rolling down her cheeks as I stepped into the Alpha's car.

If I had known that was the last time I will ever see them, perhaps I would have made my goodbyes longer and not wasted my breath on empty promises.