"A woman cannot become an Alpha!"
The lash cracked across her back for the fifth time.
Danika clenched her jaw and swallowed the scream clawing its way up her throat. Her knees buckled, but she refused to fall, not in front of them. And especially not like this.
"It is tradition! Only men can lead. Women are to obey! To submit and to follow them! This rule has been for generations! It can't be changed because you are my daughter! So you must go through this ritual and find a mate to claim you!"
The words echoed in her skull, heavy as iron.
She had tried to run the night before—to flee the ritual that would strip her of her last shred of dignity. But she had been caught at the borders and dragged back by her father's soldiers.
Crack!
Another lash bit into her skin, reopening the fresh wounds already weeping beneath her torn shift. The pain was a flame down her spine, but still, she said nothing.
The whipmaster hesitated.
"More," her father growled. "She dared to run from her destiny."
Danika's head lifted slowly, strands of blood-matted hair sticking to her cheeks. "Better I run," she rasped, "than be dragged into a circus where I'm paraded like a broodmare."
Gasps filled the gathering as she dared talk back at the Alpha.
Her father's eyes darkened with fury. "Lock her up. Let her rot until morning. But she will go through the ritual. Even if she must crawl to it in chains."
***
His punishment had been swift. Public and brutal. He had ordered ten lashes in front of the council and locked her in the pack's dungeon overnight.
By morning, she had barely slept. Her body ached from her raw, bloodied back, and her wrists were sore from the shackles. Yet she was dragged out again and forced to endure the scenting ritual.
No time to heal. No rest or mercy.
Her wounds still throbbed as she was steeped in scalding hot water infused with moon-herbs and bitter extracts—remedies meant to awaken dormant pheromones. But for her, they only burned.
She gritted her teeth and bore it, her back stinging, her bones weary.
This was her father's final attempt to salvage the family's pride.
Now as night reached, Danika stood before four Alpha heirs, their gazes circling her like vultures over a dying thing.
She lowered hers, letting her wild curls curtain her face. Anything to mask the humiliation burning in her eyes.
At twenty-one, she was still latent. Unable to shift or commune with her wolf.
In Crimson Veil Pack where her father reigned as Alpha, girls were expected to summon their wolves by sixteen. Anything less was a disgrace.
And she had become the living embodiment of it. Was? No. She'd already been one even before finding out she was latent. The label had clung to her since birth because of the circumstances surrounding it.
Every Alpha her father begged had rejected her — not because she was not beautiful. Her father had in fact thought of this ceremony as his last option. Because he believed that if none wanted her because of her status as his daughter, at least one would be willing to take her in as a mate because of her physical attributes.
Her father had paraded her before countless Alphas in the past, begging for an alliance through mating. But none had accepted. Even though her father was the most powerful in the East, she was considered empty inside. No wolf meant no power, and in her part of world, it meant that she had no worth as well.
But now that she would be turning twenty-one in a few months, the Lycanshade Council's pressure had grown unbearable. So her father made this final gamble.
The first Alpha had stepped forward.
He was young and cruel-looking and his eyes gleamed with contempt. He appeared arrogant and someone she would not relate with, but she had no choice.
He leaned in, sniffed the air and then recoiled sharply.
"She's lowly," he sneered, loud enough for the crowd to hear. "The omega stench coming off her makes me want to puke."
Snickers rippled among the onlookers.
Danika flinched inwardly but held her spine straight. She dared not do so outwardly, lest she would incur her father's wrath. She had trained herself to never cry in public. But inside, she cracked.
What was wrong with her being an omega? She still couldn't grasp the concept of packs having hierarchies and considering the omegas as the least and ones to mistreat.
She made sure to take in his face properly despite the hair curtaining hers.
It was Rowan, the Alpha heir of the Hollow Fang Pack.
She watched as he closed his fist tight, rejecting the fragile wave of pheromones she had struggled to release into the air.
Kaelan of Grave Moon Pack did not even bother to step forward from where he stood. She had heard stories of how arrogant and immature he was but she never thought it would be to the point where he did not honour traditions or was pompous enough not to keep them, at twenty-seven years of age.
"I heard she's a hybrid and my pack does not need a future Luna who is half human," he said as if he had rehearsed the words previously.
Danika noticed her father's gaze burning on Kaelan's father's who stood among the crowd. As if knowing he had put the words in his son's lips.
She couldn't bear that she was still standing here and listening to all these being said to her face. But what could she do? She was hopeless herself and needed someone to claim her.
And this desperation wasn't just about fear of ridicule or the endless whispers behind her back labeling her as the Crimson Veil Pack's burden.
No.
It was her body that had begun to betray her, and suddenly, it began to tremble again. Her uncontrollable pheromones.
The air shifted and thickened. The scent of her heat bled into it, laced with need and desperation she couldn't mask.
Her thighs clenched involuntarily. Her breath grew shallow. She could feel the hunger building inside her—raw and primal.
The Alpha heirs stiffened. Rowan's jaw ticked. Thorne's eyes flickered gold.
It was dangerous now.
Being in heat around dominant males… it was like bleeding into an ocean of predators.
Her skin burned. The ache grew unbearable. Her body screamed to be touched, claimed—anything to relieve the fire tearing through her.
But no one stepped forward.
No one saved her.
She sank to her knees, the world spinning.
And just when she thought it would consume her, It stopped.
The fire. The ache. All of it.
Gone, like a smothered flame.
Her breathing slowed as the tremors eased. Confusion gripped her chest.
She blinked once and twice again, scanning the men who circled her but none of them seemed to have claimed her like she thought.
Then, clear as daylight, a voice echoed in her mind.
"You are mine."