Chapter 4 - Murder In The Pack House

🦋ALTHEA

"I didn't mean anything I said at that dinner." He pressed a kiss to my lips. I stifled the damning urge to run.

Running from his affection was disobedience.

I nodded, my lips quivering in a smile I hoped did not look like a grimace.

His eyes narrowed on me, jaw clenching. I held my breath. "You feel unreachable these days, Althy." He cradled my face in his warm palms. It felt like a furnace. "I miss how carefree you used to be with me."

"I am just worried about us, the pack. The Hellhound and Silvermoth keep stirring trouble," I lied. The demons tormenting me were not in our pack borders. They were right in the place that I call home.

His eyes remained assessing, peeling back my words to find what he sought. "So you believe that as Alpha I cannot vanquish the forces against our pack? Because your blood could cure the fever, I can't save us?" His hands around my face began to tighten, pressing and hurting.

I shook my head, bringing my hand up to touch his face, my hand shaking. "The man I love is more than capable." I couldn't even hide the tremor from my words. I smiled, too wide for it to be genuine, but I prayed he lacked enough emotional intelligence to notice.

I let out a breath as his expression lightened. "I am glad you know." He smiled, feathering a lingering kiss on my forehead.

He pulled away, tilting my head back so I had no choice but to look at only him. "I will be gone for a while, but do not mistake my absence as a chance to misbehave."

I was well aware of what he was referring to. His paranoia at the possibility that I would reveal the truth had grown. But he need not worry—because as long as my mother was high gamma, revealing that it was not a bunch of herbs that saved the pack but my blood was the easiest way to a beheading.

But it would still mean he would lose his rank for deception. No one else would be happier than Beta Elias if that happened. As Draven's older brother, he was supposed to be Alpha until I happened.

I nodded.

"But just to make sure you know that you have no choice—" A dark flicker entered his gaze. "I will be taking Wren with me."

My stomach dropped, ice filling my veins.

And all I could do was stare up at him as a smile spread across his face. "Just to be sure you will continue to tow the line without stirring up trouble." He stepped out, giving me time to breathe. 

The door burst open.

"Althy!"

Wren spun into the room, twirled, laughing, a sound so pure it didn't belong in this house.

"Look! Look at my dress!" She beamed, holding the fabric out like wings. "Draven said I get to go on a journey. A real journey! Have you ever been on a journey, Althy?"

My throat closed.

She was twenty years old. But her brown eyes were bright, trusting, innocent, like it belonged to a child of seven.

The accident during the yearly pack hunt had stolen so much from her. Her wolf. Her awareness. Her ability to sense danger. She had no idea what Draven taking her meant.

No idea she was a hostage.

I forced a smile and opened my arms. "Come here, little bird."

She launched herself at me, nearly knocking me over with the force of her embrace. I held her tight, breathing in the scent of lavender soap and sunshine that somehow clung to her despite everything.

"You look beautiful," I whispered, pulling back to smooth her honey-blonde hair. My fingers caught on a tangle and she winced.

"Ow."

"Sorry, sorry." I gentled my touch, working through the knot carefully.

That's when I saw the Scars.

Welts crisscrossing her forearms like a roadmap of pain. Some old, silvered with time. Others newer, still pink and raised.

My stomach turned.

Mother's work.

Every time Wren wandered from her room—every time she laughed too loud or asked the wrong question or simply existed in a way that reminded Mother she'd failed to produce a perfect daughter—she paid for it.

And Wren never understood why.

She'd cry afterward, confused, asking what she'd done wrong.

Then she'd forget.

Again.

I traced one of the scars with my thumb, swallowing the rage that threatened to choke me. "Wren, listen to me."

She tilted her head, eyes wide and attentive.

"You're going on a trip with Draven. You need to behave. Do everything he says. Don't wander off. Don't talk to strangers. And if—" My voice cracked. "If anything feels wrong, you find me. Do you understand?"

She nodded enthusiastically anyway. "I'll be good! I promise, Althy. I'll be so good."

"I know you will." I kissed her forehead, holding her close one more time.

She pulled back, grinning. "Will you be here when I get back?"

The question hit like a blade between my ribs.

"Of course," 

Draven appeared in the doorway, his expression unreadable. "Wren. It's time."

"Okay!" She bounced toward him, then stopped, spinning back to wave at me. "Bye, Althy! I love you!"

"I love you too."

She skipped out of the room, Draven's hand settling possessively on her shoulder as he steered her into the hall.

He looked back at me and smiled.

Then they were gone. I stood there long after their footsteps faded.

As the sun dipped below the horizon and the house settled into silence.

I pressed a hand to my stomach and to the life growing inside me that would be born into this nightmare and felt the tears finally come.

A drop into the ocean of tears was still yet to shed.

---

Nighttime.

I sat by the window, staring up at the moon.

Full and bright, it cast silver light across the grounds, turning shadows into something alive. Beautiful and cold and indifferent.

The Goddess's eye.

Watching but never intervening.

The pack house had gone silent an hour ago. Every light was extinguished. Every breath had gone slow and steady with sleep.

It was time.

I rose, pulling my cloak from the back of the chair and fastening it around my shoulders. The fabric was dark, black as the space between stars and would hide me in the shadows.

I moved to the door, listening.

Nothing.

I slipped into the hallway, barefoot, silent as a ghost.

The floorboards didn't creak. I'd memorized which ones would yield three years ago. 

Down the stairs. Past the sitting room. Through the kitchen and then reached for the back door—

I could see movement outside.

A figure emerging from the tree line, her markings gleaming.

Yana.

My heart lurched. What was she doing out there?

She glanced around quickly then slipped through the back door and into the house.

I ducked behind the pantry door, holding my breath as she passed..

She didn't see me.

She disappeared down the hall toward the servants' quarters, her steps hurried but soft. 

I halted in my hiding place.

I waited, counting breaths. One. Two. Three. Through the window, birds circled against the moon—the signal. The coast was clear.

I made my move and let the woods swallow me whole. 

—

By the time I snuck back in, my muscles ached. I felt weighed down as I slammed myself back onto my bed. The position of the moon had told me I had been out for just two hours. That was a record. I allowed myself half a smile as I drifted to sleep. 

I didn't take off my cloak nor did I clean it as darkness took me. 

A crash startled me back to alertness, I jolted off the bed as my door was slammed open by uniformed gammas. 

I blinked away my exhaustion, shrugging off the heaviness from my bones. "What is going on?" I asked, my heart in my throat as I took in their cold expression. 

Their jaws tightened, hands clenched to fists as if they were just a breath away from shifting and ripping me apart. None of them ever particularly liked me but this was different. This was neither disgust nor dismissal. This was loathing. 

I took one step back as they all shifted to make way for another. 

My breath caught, my pulse pounding in my ears as my mother stepped in front of them. 

The perpetual noose around my neck tightened as the smell of fresh blood permeated the air, choking me. 

My mothers arms were not just stained in blood, they were completely covered with enough that it was dripping. Her clothes were the same, red blotching her mid section. 

I held on to something to steady me. My heart stuttered, my body giving away to shudders as I took in her face. Pale and streaked with tears. Her eyes were red rimmed. 

Never in my entire existence, had I seen my mother shed a tear much less cry. 

Her eyes bore to me and with every stride she took towards me.

"What happened?" I echoed my earlier question again.

The question turned into my damnation as he hand shifted into her wolf's paw with its claws out. 

Instead, she spoke.

"I have always known," she began, her voice low and venomous, "that you would be my undoing."

I opened my mouth, but no words came.

"A disgrace," she continued, stepping closer. "My biggest mistake. The moment I held you in my arms, I knew."

Her lip curled.

"I prayed to the Goddess that she would take you back. That you would simply... disappear. But you clung to life like a parasite."

Each word was a knife.

"I watched you stumble through your childhood, pathetic and useless, and I told myself—at least she is harmless. At least she cannot do any real damage."

She laughed, bitter and broken.

"But I was wrong."

Her eyes blazed with something beyond rage. Beyond grief.

"You couldn't stand it, could you?" Her voice rose. "That Circe had everything you wanted. The Alpha. The title. The respect. Love."

"Mother, I didn't—"

"DO NOT SPEAK!" she roared, and I flinched.

The gammas behind her shifted, growls rumbling in their chests.

She took another step forward, close enough now that I could see the tears streaking through the blood on her face.

"You were always jealous of her. Always bitter. Always watching from the shadows with that pitiful, hungry look in your eyes."

"That's not true—"

"She was carrying the HEIR!" The words ripped out of her like a scream. "The future of this pack. Draven's firstborn. And you—"

Her voice broke.

"You killed that child."