Almila
Now I sit at the same table as those who glare at me with hatred in their eyes, at the corner of a broken dining table.
The clinking of forks and knives from dozens of pack members fills the entire room.
My mother sits at the farthest end from me, at the head of the table, but she has fallen so helpless that she can no longer feed herself. My aunt and my great-aunt sit beside her, trying to help her eat just as they always do.
At the opposite head of the table, my grandfather laughs along with the betas who are telling him something. He doesn't care in the slightest about the woman sitting across from him, the one trapped in such a pitiful state.
Who would ever want to be led by a former luna who has lost her mate? No one. No one in the pack wanted that. They don't accept my mother as their leader.
The moment our family fell apart and my mother lost her mind, that position was taken from her and handed to my grandfather.
Not that they had ever truly obeyed her in the first place. They only pretended to, so they wouldn't disrespect my father's legacy and bring a curse upon themselves.
And when I refused to take the role of leader, it worked perfectly in his favor. His only desire is to grow stronger, to possess more, and to become the pack's one and only absolute leader.
I could have chosen to become the pack's leader and supported my mother, who had fallen helpless. Maybe that would have suited me better. Maybe it would have kept my father's bones from aching beneath the cold earth.
But I didn't see myself as worthy of that position.
And I didn't see these wolves —who dove into a power struggle the moment my father died— as worthy of me.
I didn't want their obedience, either.
Each day passes the same, and every night when darkness settles in, I stare into the void, unable to sleep. I shut my ears and squeezed my eyes shut against the wolf pup whispering to me from the depths of my soul.
Every bite I swallow at this table, every step I take once I stand, every breath I draw feels like a burden. And yet, I can't give up on this life. The power inside me keeps stopping me, keeps saying it needs me.
I need me. But I can't be enough for myself.
...
The thing that pulled everyone's attention away from the table was a beta who suddenly burst into the hall. He had rushed in so quickly that he staggered on his way over, arriving breathless.
His hair and clothes were a mess, as if he had just finished a long run; sweat clung to his skin, and his muscles looked worn out.
After reaching my grandfather, he bent down and whispered something into his ear.
I watched the expression on my grandfather's face shift dramatically. Before he spoke, our eyes met for a brief moment. Once he processed whatever the beta had said, he rose to his feet. The clatter around the table died instantly.
I felt that oppressive alpha aura rolling off him, like a heavy cigarette smoke thick in the air, but one that had no effect on me.
Yet this time, it felt more unsteady.
As he kept looking at me, that unsteadiness in his eyes grew bigger and bigger. Then he looked away and spoke.
"There's news from the North."
Just that one sentence was enough to make everyone at the table tense. A few people began whispering among themselves.
Even hearing the North mentioned makes a disgusting burn rise from my stomach to my throat. My lips itch, the inside of my mouth stings as if it's full of cuts.
Knowing that many of our sworn enemies, the ones who killed my father, are still alive makes me want to breathe fire. I should've killed them all that night, so there would be no debt left to pay.
But even my father's head wasn't enough for them. So they kept fighting us for a while longer.
Whenever wolves from our pack and wolves from the North crossed paths, there was bloodshed. Realizing it couldn't go on like this, the leaders began sending messages every few months.
One wolf from each pack would fight; the one who survived would survive.
It was, in a way, a show of strength.
It was one of those days again, since news had arrived. By vote, we would choose someone from the pack to send into battle against whoever the North had chosen.
Every time this message came, I volunteered to go.
But my mother, reduced to someone who could only open her mouth to be fed, would start crying whenever I stepped forward.
So I didn't want to see her like that and stopped to volunteer, and began to wait for fate instead. Sooner or later, my turn would come. That much was certain.
The moment the beta handed my grandfather the paper, the same kind of message we always assumed it would be, I knew something was different.
Even before the page unfolded, it was obvious from the beta's expression, from the way his hands trembled as he offered it, that he had brought a very different kind of news.
My grandfather must have sensed it too, because as he took the paper from the beta, he raised one eyebrow and opened it without delay. As he read the note, his expression shifted in a way that was impossible to miss.
By the time his eyes reached the bottom of the page, his brows were tightly drawn together. He looked first at my mother, then at me.
When I met his stare without blinking, perhaps for the first time I saw a flicker of hesitation in his eyes. He wiped that expression away almost instantly and turned back to my mother.
"The northern pack wants to put an end to the hostility between us," he said. "But they have one condition."
When no one spoke for a while, I did. "What condition?"
He frowned, clearly unhappy that the question had come from me. We stared at each other again, neither of us blinking this time.
I wanted to understand what was different, because something was indeed different, and he seemed to realize that whatever came next wasn't going to be as simple as he'd expected.
The tension between us spread across the table like thick smoke. I could feel the others being crushed beneath the weight of our clashing auras, their own presence shrinking beneath it.
He was the first to look away again.
After a small cough, one sharp enough to make several people at the table flinch, he delivered the sentence that made the entire room freeze.
"They want one of ours to be offered as a bride to their future alpha heir."
Everyone had a reaction to my grandfather's words. Some immediately began whispering among themselves, others pushed back their chairs and stood up, muttering under their breath.
The general opinion was that we could never agree to such a thing, but a few voices started saying things that shifted the mood of the room.
"Instead of letting two packs keep killing each other and watching our numbers drop day by day, we could end the conflict this way. I know you won't agree with me, but I think it's a good idea. "
The one who said it was my cousin Hyde.
He was one of the fastest-shifting young alpha males in the pack, though not particularly strong. When we were younger, I'd taken him down with a single move, and he'd run off crying to his mother. He'd held a grudge against me ever since.
And now, when his eyes met mine after he spoke, he furrowed his brows and gave me that familiar hostile look.
After glaring at me for a while, his expression shifted, far too quickly to be genuine. Others had begun speaking, but he cut them off, forcing himself back into the center of attention.
"In fact, I already know the perfect candidate. I think we should send Almila."