The dining hall was so cavernous it felt less like a family space and more like a war council chamber where bloody decrees were signed. The custom-carved dining table, made of oak and rosewood and bearing the exhaustion of centuries, must have been worth more than my entire university tuition. The feast presented on red and gold-trimmed porcelain plates felt less like a meal and more like a sacrificial rite.
My gaze drifted to the massive banner hung directly above the Great Stag antlers at the entrance: a black sun rising over the heads of three gray wolves. Bear pelts were laid before the fireplace, looking as majestic as if they were still alive. Around the hearth, ribbons made of wild boar tusks were hung like tree ornaments this savage decor was not a declaration of aesthetics, but of pure destructive power.
The entire pack stood at attention, waiting for Varg's entrance with military discipline. The moment Varg burst in with those unshakable shoulders, Beta Samuel greeted the Alpha with a nod of respect.
"Sir!" Samuel said, not hiding the disappointment in his voice. "We found no trace of the invaders. The scent of humans vanished completely on the other side of the river, as if they never existed."
Varg's jaw tightened, lightning flashing in his eyes.
"Those leeches must have masked their scent with some form of dark magic." he growled. "Go on the hunt after dinner! Send word to the other packs; have their scouts scour every inch of that river."
"My wolf could not pick up the scents," Samuel said, narrowing his ice-blue eyes. "The smell of silver and magic scorched my lungs. I will try again with an antidote."
Varg raised his hand like a sovereign. "Begin the meal!"
In my own pack, the Stonehearts, things were... more human. Alphas and Betas sat on the same level, but in this pack, hierarchy was a religion. Because of our proximity to human borders, the Unmarked Omegas in our pack could buy frozen chicken from a market and put it in their fridge. But here, in the heart of the wild, "hunting parties" were a saga of success.
I remembered how the men in my old pack used to belittle me.
"Vespera, you should eat the pig's hooves. You don't deserve the meat."
"Luna..." a young Omega girl said, offering a massive tray before me. "Pork, fish, venison, and mighty stag meat... Which would you honor?"
Everything piled on the table was raw. Pieces of pork lay in a pool of their own blood. The vital warmth in the animals' bodies hadn't left yet; they looked as if they were sleeping, but remained poised to wake and scatter our table at any moment. My stomach staged a rebellion against this scent of raw death.
I wanted to sob when Varg ripped the heart out of a stag with his bare hands as if he were tearing off a piece of bread.
In my mind, there was only Bambi.
That lonely little fawn lost in the winter forest after losing his mother... I remembered those cold mornings in the orphanage. Leaning my back against the other children, biting into buttered bread sprinkled with sugar while watching Bambi...
As the taste of sugary bread came alive on my tongue, I watched Varg chew that stag heart with the pressure of a single human jaw. Fresh blood stained his beard as he smiled at one of the Alphas next to him.
"Here, my boy Tj, eat the liver! The power in a young Alpha's veins comes from here."
"Vegetables are actually more beneficial." I said in a whisper-thin voice, breaking through the sound of raw meat crunching at the table. "They provide fiber for your intestines... They make digestion easier."
A deathly silence fell over the table. An old wolf broke the silence with a laugh.
"Luna... You are truly a funny Omega. My nephew will get a good laugh out of your jokes. The prey's food is our prey. But stags only eat grass; we eat stags."
"My Luna must be strong." Varg said without lifting his head from his plate, looking at me from under his brows. His voice spread through the room like a command. "You will carry the heirs of an invincible Alpha. The body that will give birth to the Black Sun needs raw blood and meat, not grass."
I turned to the Omega girl next to me, my voice trembling. "Can you cook this? I... I can't eat raw meat."
The table froze. The girl, crushing the skin of a raw chicken between her teeth, blinked as if I had cursed at her. While a middle-aged Beta looked at me in shock, a little Alpha girl with violet eyes stepped forward. She was twelve at most.
"Luna... We know you are not a wolf." the little girl said curiously. "But you are not a vampire either. Does your soul never crave hot blood? Does that wild instinct never wake up inside you?"
"I..." I said, feeling every eye on me. "I have never shifted. And no, I would rather vomit than drink blood."
"What do you even eat then?" Samuel said, rubbing his massive belly. "How do you stay on your feet?"
"McDonald's?" I said, blinking.
Faced with the blank stares of those at the table, I continued...
"French fries, Ranch sauce, the apple slices are my favorite. Apple pie for dessert... And I like my burger with flame-grilled barbecue sauce. With plenty of cheddar cheese."
Right now, I felt like an alien. Everyone was watching me as if I were a rare monkey in a zoo.
I looked at the boiled chicken leg placed before me—at least it had seen hot water. They looked at me as if I were eating trash.
Varg leaned toward my ear. His hot, meat-scented breath made my skin crawl.
"If you eat chicken, you engrave the cowardice of the chicken onto your soul, Luna."
"Does eating a stag's heart not make you prey then?" I said in the same whisper, not looking away from him.
Varg's lips curled into a dangerous smile. "Would you like to be hunted,babe?"
Actually, his pack was more balanced than Varg. Even the lowest-ranking wolves were well-trained and equipped. Varg had sworn not to feed a single weak soul here. Omegas were not just "breeders" as in other packs; they were healers, storytellers, sages who raised the children.
I even noticed my fever had dropped thanks to that perfume-scented liquid they rubbed on my skin. Varg was a terrible candidate for a husband, a vandal of a man, but I had to admit he was a great pack leader.
His eyes roamed over everyone, from the baby in the cradle to the oldest member, not with a father's affection, but with a general's discipline.
"Luna." one of the elderly Omegas said gently. "If your wolf never woke, have you never even had wolf dreams? Those dreams where you run in the forest, where you taste the blood..."
"I've never seen them." I said, forcing myself to swallow my bite. "There is no trace of my past lives either. I am not a pureblood. I am just the result of an unfortunate seed. This is my first life, I think. I have never howled before."
Samuel dropped a fish onto the plate of the woman next to him with a loud thud.
"I found my soulmate through that dream where I saw myself by a waterfall with a fish in my mouth! I gave the fish to her, and she marked immediately."
"In my world." I said with a bitter smile. "Men buy diamond rings. They kneel during a nice dinner accompanied by a beautiful violin. Bloody fish don't bring a mark; they only bring nausea."
An old Alpha laughed. "Human nonsense! I told you that the D-ckHeart pack's closeness with humans would weaken them. Bonding with humans is a poison. Hah! "
"True..." whispered the others. The voices grew like an avalanche. "They haven't tried anything to wake the dead wolf."
"My wolf..." I said through my teeth, at the limit of my patience. "Was never born. It never howled. So stop digging graves."
"I knew a brave warrior once!" the old man began, as if telling a horror story. "He took a silver stake to the heart. His body was intact, but his bond with his wolf was severed. When we dipped him to the bottom of the River of the Dead and pulled him out..."
"Luna will not be dipped into water full of skulls!" Varg roared. His growl rattled the glasses on the table.
Wait,what ! ?
While everyone bowed their necks submissively, I quietly kicked Varg's foot under the table. When Varg fixed his eyes, red with rage, on me, I didn't back down.
"If bringing her to the brink of death would wake her wolf, Kael and his sneaky kin would have tried it a thousand times." Varg said. "We are wolves, not goddamn zombies!"
Vesperenstein!
I thought to myself. I'd probably be a freak there too—a zombie with a beating heart. Or they'd have fitted me with a box of jellybeans instead of a heart. Something would definitely go wrong. This time, a living man would want my living-dead womb just to become immortal.
The bites were stuck in my throat. The chicken turned to stone in my mouth as a soldier burst inside.
"Sire!" he said, breathless. "We found the torn scarf of one of the humans. It has fresh blood and... pieces of flesh on it. We suspect they have been turned."
My heart is hurting. My soul was burning.
I recognize the scent of this perfume. It was like powder and peach. Although it had the smell of blood, there was also musk.
It belonged to someone who was mine.