Enslaved by my Alpha Mate

BLANCA

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I, Blanca Ceuran, will finally be eighteen. Or, at least, I would be, if I were going to be allowed to live.

However, I am to be executed when the clock strikes twelve. Midnight. For the murder of the Alpha’s firstborn son.

After eight long years locked in the lowest dungeons of the Shadow Wolf Pack Prison, my soul will finally be set free. I will answer for my crime happily, because the thought of one more sleep in this cold, damp cell pushes me toward madness. I long to be with my sister, high above in the heavens somewhere. If that is in fact, where she is. Maybe up there, she and I will have our wolves. Unlike down here, where she and I never did.

You see, about a hundred years ago, a sickness fell upon the land of Shifters. An illness that took many by storm. Killing the beasts inside of them and robbing them of their heritage. When the plague was done defiling the land, most thought the threat to be over, but they were wrong. The next generation of Shifters would experience mutations in their genes. Children born without the ability to shift, cursed with colorless white hair, who would become a family’s shame. Over the years, these children came to be known as the Shiftless. The lowest of the low.

Even Omegas and Rogues had more rights than the Shiftless.

So imagine how my parents felt when they birthed not one, but two, shiftless females. They were shunned by the pack and as a result, cast my sister and me out when she was fourteen and I was five. We were sent to what is called the Rim. The very edge of the packlands where nothing grows and no one cares whether you live or die.

But my sister, Reanna took good care of me. She hunted for what little we ate, and worked her fingers to the bone as a border scout for the Alpha himself. For five years we lived a peaceful existence. Never having much more than each other, but we were grateful for that.

Then one day, the Rim was visited by Alpha Robert’s oldest son, Drake. He arrived with a small group of Gamma wolves on the order of the Alpha to complete the yearly census. All Shiftless were called out of their huts and made to stand at attention. When it was our turn, Drake ordered my sister inside while his Gamma friends remained outdoors, completing the census. I didn't think much of it at first. In fact, I was even kind of impressed that the Alpha's son wanted a private word with my sister.

But, when the walls of the hut began to shake and I heard Reanna screaming, I slipped into our hut. We had one bed that we shared, a straw mattress on the ground, with a single fur for covering. My sister lay there beneath Drake, crying as he forced himself on her, weeping with pain as he groaned with pleasure.

Rage burned inside of me, yet I remained silent as I watched. Then, like a whisper in the wind a voice spoke inside my head.

It said, ”You will be alone now child, your sister will die this day. He has already poisoned her, and she is already close to death, but you must take your vengeance. Steal the dagger from his pants and slit his throat. Then, whne he finally sees you, plunge it into his heart and set your sister free.

I nodded in answer, never a doubt in my mind that it needed to be done.

It was as if I was in a trance as I crept toward him, like some other force had taken control of my body. I spied the dagger attached to the back of his belt and slipped it out easily. Drake was too enraptured to even notice a tiny girl like me. Then I inched up behind him, and slashed at his throat so swiftly and deftly, that it was as if I’d been trained to kill.

The blood began to pour from him, covering his body and my sister’s. He gurgled, then raised up in search of his attacker, and I plunged the dagger into his chest. Drake fell over immediately, his skin smoking and burning as he writhed in pain.

One last look into my sister’s eyes is all I had left with her, because in the very next instant she smiled at me and went still. Falling over the top of her half-naked body, I wept and wept, remaining there until the Gammas came to retrieve the Alpha’s son.

To this day I have no idea what poison killed my sister and when I mentioned it during my interrogation, I was completely ignored.

And that voice... that soft melodic whisper... never spoke to me again.

Later I would learn that it was Drake’s eighteenth birthday and the dagger that I used on him was not only silver, but coated in poison. A gift to him from his father to protect him from Rogues and help guard the defenseless. How ironic, that such a gift ended up guarding the defenseless, from him.

So, I was arrested and locked away without trial. Sentenced to be imprisoned until my eighteenth birthday, upon which I would be publicly executed.

I have lived here in this concrete hell for far too long and my time has finally come.

I can’t wait to be free.

MAX

The time has finally come to enact vengeance for my brother's death and my father isn't even here to see it. What a fucking waste.

My father, the Alpha, was murdered one month ago by a challenging wolf from a rival pack. A Beta who was unsatisfied with his role as second in command and had heard my father lost his heir. He arrived here and challenged my father for control of our pack, killing him within the first five minutes and thinking he had won. I arrived home just in time to see my father's head ripped from his body.

Naturally, I allowed my anger to take control and shifted without a second thought. Apparently this Beta had no idea my father had a younger son and the moment that he realized he would have to fight again, he tried to run. He didn't get very far.

Now, I sit here, the Alpha of the Shadow Wolf Pack. Burdened with executing a girl who was imprisoned at the age of ten.

Ten!

Goddess, what did my brother do to earn her wrath? The wrath of a child?

It is with that thought in mind that I ride to the prison to see this girl for the first time. Not that it will matter in the end. But someone should hear her side of the story before she dies, just so that it's told at least once.

When I pull up to the desolate stone compound I am reminded of how old it is. From the outside it almost looks like an abandoned building in various states of disrepair. The patches of grass that remain around it are sparse and yellow. Wilted by the large dome of evergreens shading the perimeter. The moment I step inside I am led below. To the dungeons of death row where the sun never shines and the walls are frozen blocks of ice in winter.

As my shoes clack slowly across the stone floor, a row of lights is turned on for me, illuminating the four lonely cells on the left.

There she stands, four feet or so behind the thick silver coated steel bars. Drake’s killer. The most famous prisoner in the Shadow Wolf Pack Territory.

A shock of long white hair frames the face of my brother's murderer, falling like a shimmering waterfall to well below her waist. Electric blue eyes - the likes of which I have never seen the equal to - are shaded by long, dark, feathery lashes. They snap in my direction and I am presented with her face.

Suddenly, I regret coming here. I should never have given her a face.

I should have stayed home and left well enough alone.

Because at midnight, when she loses her head, all that glorious hair will be cut off at the neck.

And the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, will be dead.