★Nuel's Pov★
It was deep into the night when a servant came to fetch me from the dank cell where I'd been rotting.
Earlier that morning, they had whipped me until my back felt flayed open, then smeared wolfsbane into the wounds, grinding the poison into my flesh until it burned like acid. My screams had long since gone hoarse. My father had sat there watching, unmoved.
Since the Alpha Council's decision, I was no longer Nuella's shadow. I had been accepted by Noca, the Alpha of the North himself as her replacement. And a few hours from now, I was to be executed in his Alpha ceremony.
The servant carried a plate in her hands as she approached, her steps hesitant. She lowered it onto the floor in front of me and kept her eyes averted, as though afraid to witness me in this state.
"The Luna Regent asked me to bring this. At least so you'd eat something before…" Her voice faltered. "…before the execution."
I stared at the plate. Bread, cream and a thick stew with slabs of meat floating in it. My empty stomach clawed at me, each wave of hunger more desperate than the last. I hadn't eaten since the night before. Still, I couldn't touch it. Not with the fear of poison coiled in my mind.
And not when I still didn't even know who this Luna Regent was supposed to be.
"You honor our guest far too much," a cold voice drawled from the doorway.
My body went rigid. I didn't need to look up to know whose boots and voice those were.
Noca, Alpha of the North.
With a flick of his wrist, the plate was sent clattering across the cell. Stew splattered, bread landed face-down in the dirt.
"There," he sneered. "That looks more fitting for him. Mother grows too soft with our enemies."
My jaw clenched, but I didn't look up. The hunger was tearing me apart, but now that the food was ground into the sand, even if I wanted to eat, I couldn't.
"Why, Nuel?" he asked, his voice curling with scorn as he dragged out each syllable of my name. Nuel—not Nuella anymore. He had stopped playing that game when he realized who I was.
"Does the son of an Alpha find this foreign? Have you never eaten from the floor before?" His teeth ground audibly, a feral snarl punctuating the words.
He leaned closer, his voice a rasp of hatred. "A pity. Soon you'll be boiled in hot oil. I would've promised you the honor of learning how to live the rest of your wretched life eating off the ground. But no, you'll die before you can learn that"
A shudder ran through me. Oil and not water. I had thought the boiling alive punishment was horror enough, but hot oil? That was a cruelty beyond even my nightmares.
"Yes," he murmured darkly. "That fear. I want to see more of it. The same fear that will eat your father alive when he watches his only son and heir burn in front of him."
He laughed, low and cruel. "I must thank you for returning, Nuel. Who could have guessed you'd walk right into my hands, a bigger prize than I imagined?"
Tears stung my eyes, unbidden. I wanted to tell him he was wrong—that my father would feel nothing when I died. Only relief that the burden of me was finally gone. But the words died in my throat. He wouldn't believe me. No one ever did.
The chamber door swung open. "Alpha, the ceremony is beginning. We await your presence," his beta announced, bowing his head.
I hated the presence of the man most of all. He had helped my father weave the lies that painted me as the traitor. I still didn't understand why. A northerner helping my father? It made no sense. Hi testimony had condemned me alongside them.
I shut my eyes, whispering silently to the Moon Goddess. I had never prayed to her this desperately before. She had never once answered me. Not when I failed to find my wolf at sixteen. Not when I failed again at eighteen. But tonight, on my twenty-first birthday—the last chance anyone ever had to awaken their wolf—I begged her for something. For anything.
Was this truly the fate she had chosen for me? To die unloved, unwanted and unshifted?
Noca bent close again, his lips curling into a final insult. But before he could speak, he recoiled, covering his nose.
"Disgusting. What is that stench?" he spat, stepping back as though the air itself had fouled.
Confused, I glanced down at myself. My sister's bloodstained dress still clung to me, ripped and filthy. The only smells I detected were the sharp bite of chemicals and the iron tang of dried blood. Nothing new.
"I don't smell anything, Alpha," his beta said quickly, though even he looked unsettled.
Noca's expression hardened. "Enough. Bring him to the square. Now!" he barked, spinning on his heel as though to shake off his own unease.
The servant behind me shifted nervously before tugging me to my feet.
For the first time, a flicker of doubt shadowed Noca's fury. But whether it was real or imagined, I couldn't tell.
The servant dragged me out of the cell, and the cold night breeze scraped against my skin like knives. My body throbbed from the lashes and the poison still burning in my wounds. I stumbled, and she steadied me for a moment—her eyes softening, pity flickering briefly across her face.
But then it struck her. I was the son of the man who had slaughtered her people years ago. Her sympathy curdled into bitterness and her expression sharpened with malice as though even touching me had soiled her.
We neared the square and I caught sight of Maria. The same noble girl who had sneered at me yesterday. Tonight she stood surrounded by ladies dressed in silks and jewels, their air dripping with privilege. I recognized that their kind would be the royals and high borns. Daughter's of Alphas and possibly Betas as well.
Maria's voice carried above the others. She boasted loudly that Alpha Noca's wolf would choose her the moment he awakened it. The ladies around her forced smiles, cloaking their envy beneath polished masks of false delight. Maria thrived in their shadows, her pride gleaming like a blade.
Then her gaze fell on me. She sneered openly and her lips curled with disdain before turning away. With calculated arrogance, she strode back to the square, taking her place beside Noca himself. Elders anointed his skin with sacred oils, preparing him for what was to come.
"Move!" the servant hissed, shoving me forward. My steps dragged, each one a battle. My body was too battered to walk properly, but they hadn't bound my hands or feet. They didn't need to. I was too broken to escape and they knew it.
I walked with my mind adrift, wandering down impossible paths. What if I had been born into another family? Into another life? Into another body? Would I have been like Maria—boasting to my companions about a man's affection, dreaming of the pull of a mate bond? Would I have known laughter without pain? Would I have been loved by a family?
The thought unraveled, torn away by the deep, bone-rattling howl of a wolf.
I looked up and my breath caught.
Alpha Noca had shifted into a massive wolf.
The crowd erupted in cheers, voices thundering with awe. His Alpha wolf had awakened—massive, commanding, his aura crashing over us like a storm. Power radiated from him in waves, the kind that made lesser wolves bend and tremble. He had become untouchable and unstoppable.
And me? I had nothing. I didn't even want to think about it.
I stood frozen as his massive form leapt from the square. The earth trembled when his paws struck. He was coming straight for me.
The servant at my side shrieked and fled, abandoning me to my fate. My legs were too heavy to run. I raised my hands above my head in surrender, a hollow gesture of desperation.
The cauldron I was meant to be boiled in stood ready at the square's edge, oil already simmering, hissing in the fire. My father was there too, standing at the front of the crowd. Ordered to watch his "heir" be destroyed.
But Noca seemed to have other plans.
"Alpha! I'm here!" Maria's voice pierced the air, shrill with confusion and panic. But he didn't even glance at her. His eyes were locked on me as he lept.
The next instant, his wolf crashed into me. I hit the ground hard, the breath knocked from my chest. I braced myself for the tearing of flesh, the pain of claws ripping me apart, the end I thought he had changed for me.
But instead his teeth sank into my neck.
The crowd gasped and my body stiffened in shock. My mind couldn't grasp what had just happened.
He had marked me.
Alpha Noca, the most feared wolf in the North, had marked me as his fated mate.