Chapter 1 - Rissa
Perching my chin on my loosely curled fist, I stare at the sun’s warm rays as it illuminates the village of Girdwood, casting a brighter glow than the daytime we’ve been accustomed to for the past couple of months.
The winter that had just passed was rich with not just cold temperatures and long nights, but the bitter tragedies that we’ve faced at the hands of the demonic creatures that haunt our werewolf pack.
The demon dogs from the underworld.
Somehow, the dark, malevolent force of those evil spirits lingers over our village even in daylight, and though we get to experience summer again, there’s not much reason to be cheerful in Girdwood. The threat remains imminent, lurking in the shadows or in the woods, where any lone traveler is bound to lose their life to the demonic being that drains the blood clean off the bones of its werewolf prey. We’ve learned better than to travel through the forest alone, or at night, for that matter. The summer means we have more hours of freedom out in the open before the demon becomes a real threat in the night.
Sighing despondently, I tear my gaze from the sunny expanse of the garden behind the pack clinic, wincing when I notice the mountain of paperwork on my desk. It usually doesn’t take me this long to clear the soldiers for duty after their vitality checks, but I’ve been crawling through stamping their checklists for two whole days.
It’s probably because I’ve been feeling stifled lately, as if Girdwood has become a prison even with the emergence of the new season full of hope; I haven’t been feeling so hopeful, constantly nagged with a persistent, unexplainable inkling thatsomething tragic is going to happen. Even now, as I reach for the first file to stamp one of the Snehvolk soldiers’ clearance certificates, it almost feels pointless.
As if I shouldn’t even be here.
My brows furrow tightly as the thought crosses my mind for the first time since I’ve been having this strange feeling of restlessness. Sure, I’ve been somewhat of an outcast in the Snehvolk Pack, even becoming ostracized from the members of the original Blackmaw Pack—the Alaskan werewolf pack before it became part of the permanent coalition of four packs that make up Snehvolk—but it’s never been enough reason to keep me trapped as an outsider and everything it entails.
That’s what the Snehvolk Pack is—a joint pack consisting of four werewolf packs from the surrounding areas, who came together as one decades before I was born. As a united pack in Girdwood, there isn’t much that keeps us separated, except for the hierarchical system that deems everyone superior to the lowest-ranking omegas.
If there’s any reason for me to feel like I don’t belong, it’s because I’m one of those low-ranking wolves. Even as an original member of the Blackmaw Pack, I was destined for inferiority with my worthless rank and useless bloodline. The only thing that made the pill of my worthlessness tougher to swallow is the alpha, who’s single-handedly responsible for the way I’ve been treated in Snehvolk.
I would have enjoyed a careless existence, always looking at the bright side of things and even working my butt off to find my place in the pack’s clinic, if it were not for him. As an original descendant of the Blackmaw side of Snehvolk, Alpha Brooks is the cold-hearted brute who runs this pack alongside the threeother alphas who actually appear to have hearts that keep them alive.
Alpha Brooks, on the other hand, doesn’t have a single humane bone in his body—not while he’s in wolf form, not even when he’s in human form. He doesn’t have a heart, which is why it was so easy for him to throw me under the bus simply because he could, turning the pack against me, regardless of everything I tried to do to keep my head above the water.
Blowing out an irritated breath that vibrates my lips, I dip the rubber stamp into red ink, about to give clearance to a young werewolf who recently volunteered as a patrol officer, when a knock on the door snaps me out of my robotic daze.
“Rissa…?” The familiar voice on the other side of the door feels like a lifebuoy thrown out to the deep end where I was about to drown.
Relief washes over me as I grab the proverbial tube and come up for air when I stand from my chair.
“Come in, Luna Aurora!”
Before I can finish the sentence, Aurora gently pushes my office door open and stands at the doorway with a bemused frown.
“What’s with the formalities, Rissa?” She raises a playfully skeptical brow, a quizzical smile playing on her lips.
As the Snehvolk Pack’s main luna alongside the head alpha—her mate, Elias—Luna Aurora is far from as serious as she should be considering her rank.
But the once low-ranking omega of Alpha Elias’s quarter of Snehvolk has adopted a new outlook on life, especially after giving birth to their son. Despite the harsh, hostile conditions she’d faced living as the omega with the weakest wolf, she’dsoon discovered that she was a powerful witch with roots in the ancient tribes who wielded magic. Since then, she hasn’t been as morose or dejected about being an outcast or having faced all the bullying she did over the years.
Aurora has truly come into her power, training her magic-wielding abilities to fight against the greatest threat Snehvolk has ever faced—the demon.
But with her sovereign status, Aurora has also become more carefree. It’s probably why she’s my closest friend, and why we gravitated toward each other the moment Alpha Elias put me in charge of keeping an eye on her during her pregnancy.
Now, as we move toward each other, I shrug. “The formalities are only in case anyone is listening. You wouldn’t want them to think you have a favorite,” I giggle.
Aurora chuckles in return, rolling her eyes. “Oh, please! As if I’d care! Besides…” Aurora takes my hand and sighs. “It’s only a matter of time…”
As her voice tapers off and her lips seal into a firm, silent line, I frown.
“It’s only a matter of time…?” I cock my head to the side. “Before what?”
Aurora seems to snap out of her thoughts when she plasters a smile on her face and shakes her head. “It’s only a matter of time before the others are, er—” She pauses to clear her throat. “Are you accepting of the fact that I do things differently. I am a witch, after all.”
My frown deepens as I stare into Aurora’s caramel brown eyes suspiciously. However, she gives nothing away with her warm smile, and I decide that her hesitation must be because she’s going through something.
Witches can be unpredictable; I’ve seen it with both Aurora and Yvonne, Alpha Dawson’s mate. Being so attuned to their emotions seems to heighten them and cause a frenzy, depending on the moon cycle. Werewolves are less complicated in that sense; the moon cycle might determine behavioral patterns and hunger, but it doesn’t command a werewolf’s fleeting emotions.
