Chapter 1:
Ana
The chain on my ankle clanked. It was the same rusty, dragging song that had played at every dawn for as long as I could remember.
The sound was now a core part of my mornings, a constant, physical reminder that freedom was a dream I was never meant to grasp.
I opened my eyes slowly, the chilling bite of iron heavy on my tongue before I even shifted my weight.
Mom, Dad, and Lia stood three feet away from me. They watched me with an intense, surgical scrutiny, as if I were a piece of dirt they were planning to scrape off the floor. Their faces were rigid, carved from cold hatred, and their eyes were sharp and sterile as polished blades.
Dad's hand moved faster than I could track. The slap came quick and brutal, cracking across my cheek like a gunshot. A blinding, fiery burst of pain instantly flooded my senses.
"You ungrateful beast!" he bellowed. His voice was raw with fury and filled the small, tight space, booming off the stone walls.
My head snapped violently sideways. The metallic taste of my own blood spread thick and warm across my tongue.
I swallowed it slowly, forcing my expression into a mask of stone, determined not to flinch and not to give him the smallest fraction of satisfaction.
My vision swam and blurred, but I fought back the instinctive tears. Crying never helped; it only proved I was weak and made their hatred intensify.
Lia stood just behind my parents, her lips curled into a perfectly formed, triumphant smirk. She had perfect teeth, flawlessly styled hair, and a perfect lie of a sisterly concern.
She always looked as though she belonged in a bright, different world—one where she received boundless love, while I was simply the family's greatest source of shame.
Mom's voice cut through the heavy silence, a thin, sharp blade of sound laced with venom. "Still alive," she observed coldly, her tone a statement of fact, not surprise. "Still breathing our air."
Her words stung me far worse than the force of Dad's slap. I forced my trembling hands to remain still and slowly lifted my eyes to meet theirs. "Why?" I managed to whisper, the sound rough and broken. "Why not just kill me? You look at me as if I'm pure poison. Just end it now."
Dad's face twisted further into a mask of pure, uncontrolled rage. His hand struck me again, this time harder and with more malice. The sound echoed one last time, loud and painfully final. My jaw instantly ached, and my vision temporarily dimmed, but I remained upright on my knees, refusing to fall.
"How could I have raised a monster for eighteen long years?" he shouted, his voice vibrating with a deep, furious tremor. "We should've left you in the mud the very night you tore yourself out of her!"
Tore out of her. He meant my mother, the woman who could barely bring herself to look at me without an overwhelming wave of disgust washing over her face.
Mom took a slow, deliberate step closer. Her eyes were dull and frighteningly cold, like the light reflected from a dead moon. "You screamed until the windows in the house cracked," she hissed, reliving the memory. "We knew the very second you opened your eyes exactly what you were."
Her words cut deeper than the iron chains around my legs. A desperate, hopeless urge rose in me to ask what unforgivable wrong I had committed.
I wanted to beg her to stop, to look at me just once as a daughter, and not as a curse upon their bloodline. But I knew it was utterly useless. I had ceased being their child a very, very long time ago.
Lia moved forward, resting a hand lightly on Dad's forearm before he could unleash another torrent of blows. Her voice was designed to sound gentle, but her eyes positively danced with a cruel, well-practiced pity. "Daddy, please stop. She is still a member of the Ironfang clans. That moon chain collar is working; it keeps the wolf perfectly caged. She can't possibly hurt us."
Her tone carried more undisguised pleasure than genuine concern. She wanted me alive, not because she cared for my survival, but because she enjoyed the spectacle of watching me crawl and suffer.
A dry, broken, and agonizing laugh tore its way from my throat. "Keep telling yourselves that lie," I managed to say, the words rough, hollow, and utterly void of hope.
Dad's eyes flared with renewed anger. He lunged forward, grabbed a handful of my hair, and ruthlessly yanked my head back until I was forced to stare directly up at him. His breath, close to my face, smelled thick and sour from wine and pure rage.
"Look at me, beast," he spat out through clenched teeth. "You are going to listen to every word this time."
Burning pain shot down my neck, but I held his gaze. I didn't know why I still fought to hold that connection. Perhaps I still wanted to prove that a part of me wasn't weak. Perhaps I wanted him to see the small, defiant flicker inside that simply refused to break.
"I have decided," he announced finally, his voice lowering to a menacing whisper. "You will marry the Shadow Alpha."
The words struck me with a force that far surpassed any physical blow.
For one suspended moment, I was completely paralyzed. I couldn't move. I couldn't form a thought. I couldn't even take a breath. The chain on my ankle fell utterly silent and still. My chest felt instantly frozen, as if my heart had simply stopped beating altogether.
The Shadow Alpha. Everyone in the neighboring kingdoms whispered his name like a mortal sin or a chilling curse. He was known as a ruthless, terrifying man whose brides had a chilling track record: none of them ever survived beyond a few short weeks. Some claimed they ended their own lives out of terror. Others maintained that he had murdered them all. No one truly knew the full story.
And now, they intended to send me to him.
My voice broke free before my rational mind could stop it. "What?"
The single word ripped through my throat, raw, high-pitched, and completely strangled.