★Nuel's POV★
Two guards stepped into the room with the beta looming behind them. Without a word, they seized me, dragging me out as if I were a criminal caught selling secrets to rogue wolves. Their hands were rough and their grip merciless—like I was filth they could not wait to be rid of.
Neither my father nor my mother lifted a voice to stop them.
Only my mother spoke, her tone laced with venom. "Hurry. Have the servants ready him quickly. The emissaries from the Northern Pack will soon be here. We don't want to keep them waiting."
I wanted to cry then. To ask her why she hated me so much. Why she loathed the son she birthed. But I didn't.
To her, this was the better choice—better than giving up her precious daughter. To her, this was also convenient. A chance to rid herself of me, the stain she carried in the pack.
She had needed a son to strengthen her claim as Luna, to secure her power beside my father. But me—born weak and wrong must have shattered that hope. Perhaps she had thought my father would bring another woman to give him strong heirs. And indeed, he had tried. He brought two women into this house. But both had died mysteriously. Even as a child, I had suspected my mother's hand in it.
Still, an elder had counseled my father to wait. To wait until I turned sixteen. Perhaps, the elder had said, I was a reincarnation of a powerful wolf disguised as an omega. Perhaps when my wolf awakened, everything would change.
But nothing changed. I never wolfed out. Nuella did. And with her Alpha wolf, she saved my mother from her shame. The first female Alpha heir—celebrated, admired and cherished. While I became the first of another kind. The Alpha's son who was born an omega. An omen. A curse.
We passed through the hallway toward the West Wing, and as we crossed the Pack's square, my eyes froze.
Three heads hung on wooden poles, mounted in the center of the square.
I gasped. My heart dropped as recognition hit me. They were the same servants who had come to get me ready earlier. In the fading light of early evening, their faces were still clear enough for me to see.
I turned, my eyes wide, to the beta striding behind us. My lips parted, desperate to ask why. Why had they been killed for obeying me? For opening a single door?
But I knew better. Even the beta outranked me. Even these gamma guards dragging me were higher than me.
The Alpha ruled first, then the Beta, then the Gammas. And at the very bottom, always the omegas. Slaves in every pack. Worthless and disposable. That was my place.
The tears came before I could stop them, blurring my vision as we walked on. But what use were tears now? I had cried for years and nothing had ever changed.
An Alpha's son was not supposed to cry. Even in weakness, even in disgrace, I was expected to carry myself with dignity. Another thing I had failed at. Another rule my sister kept perfectly, even though she was female.
So I lifted my head high as they dragged me along. The tears streamed silently, but I refused to let them break me. My ordeal had not even begun yet. To waste my tears now would be useless.
*****
It was already late in the evening when the new servants the beta had summoned finally stepped back, their hands trembling with nervous satisfaction as they finished preparing me in the West Wing chambers.
They giggled softly amongst themselves, exchanging anxious glances as they handed me the mirror. I caught their reflections before I caught my own—wide-eyed, pale-lipped, whispering in fear behind forced smiles. I knew then, as surely as I knew my own heartbeat, that their fates were not secure. Servants who bore secrets rarely lived long.
The girl staring back at me in the mirror was not me. She was Nuella. My sister. The cherished daughter, the perfect bride-to-be, the one promised to the Alpha of the North. The red silk dress clung to me like betrayal, its shimmer almost mocking. My lips, painted to perfection, curved in a smile that wasn't mine. A golden wig flowed down my shoulders, masking my darker cropped hair and with the high heels they strapped onto me, my height nearly matched hers.
We were twins, born of the same womb and to the untrained eye we were indistinguishable, except for our genitalia. But I knew. I knew I was the shadow, the lesser one, the twin born wrong. She was the one chosen, and I—well, I was the one being forced to take her place tonight.
Because years ago, my father had slaughtered the family of the Northern heir. He thought he had ended them all, wiping away his enemies like blood from a blade. But the boy had survived. He had grown into a man and an Alpha with strength, vengeance and power that dwarfed ours. My father, desperate to avoid war we couldn't win, had run to the Alpha Council, begging for their mediation.
The council had judged, as they always did. They decreed that my father's crime could only be appeased with sacrifice—by offering his daughter as a bride to the very man whose parents he had murdered. It was to be both penance and treaty, a binding of lives in exchange for peace.
It should have been Nuella. The golden one, but now it was me.
I sat there wrapped in her robes, walking in her shoes, breathing under the weight of her destiny. The servants had drilled me for hours, forcing my steps into Nuella's poised stride, teaching me how not to stumble, how not to betray the truth. Every falter or hesitation could cost us all.
The heels pinched my toes but I didn't complain.
And though I played the part, I couldn't silence the knowledge that I was walking willingly into a cage.
A cage built of silk and lies.
A cage of blood-debt.
And tonight, I was the tribute.
I was expendable in my parents' eyes. The thought crept through my mind like a slow poison, but I forced myself to swallow it down, convincing myself this sacrifice was for my sister, Nuella.
She had been bedridden for months, wasting away behind closed doors, her body too fragile to move on its own. To add the burden of this barbaric ritual to her shoulders would break her completely. I couldn't allow it. The inhumane cruelties they inflicted on tribute offerings—no, she would never survive them.
And besides, my father had promised me a way out. He swore he would send rogue wolves to intercept and free me before I was discovered. He had even handed one of them a stash of money to place in my hands once they pulled me away from the Northern pack. With that, I could vanish into another country, carve out a life where no one would ever trace me back here.
It was a cruel bargain, but in his twisted way, my father had framed it as strategy. By putting myself in Nuella's place, I would not only spare her suffering, I would also help him flip the narrative—make the Northerners appear guilty, indebted to him and accused of mishandling his daughter.
The hollow plan rang in my head until I snapped out of it at the sound of footsteps. The same guards who had dragged me back into the West Wing now moved toward the two servants who had prepared me.
My chest tightened. I shook my head, my gaze faltering knowing exactly what fate awaited them.
Their heads would soon decorate the poles in the pack square. My father always tied loose ends with blood. To him, secrecy was worth more than lives. And with their deaths, no whispers would survive the night—no rumors or risks.
And no one left alive to sell out the secrets of this arrangement.