When Varg had left me in the middle of that vast, infinite whiteness, my frail human side had already written its farewell letter. As a freak sealed with vampire venom and unable to shift, I was nothing but prey in this cold. I was at the top of the food chain in name only; in reality, I was a snack for every predator out there.
All I had to defend myself was this: "Don't eat me, I taste like vinegar!"
I pulled my knees to my chest, huddling in the narrow corner. My mind still held onto Kael's mint-scented, porcelain safety. I hoped he would find me. Even if I didn't truly belong, I yearned to sit at that table again.
"Wild boar isn't for Vespera; let her pick at the chicken bones," they used to say.
"A rabbit's leg is enough.
She doesn't even need meat; she doesn't hunt. If we hunt, she can have the hide and the broth. But not the whole thing."
As my teeth chattered, I could feel the dead venom in my veins turning to ice. My stomach ached for the taste of foods I had long forgotten. I was frozen to the core and I had no wolf to warm me. Abandoned by Varg in a desolate forest, waiting for the white crystals to claim me—they didn't feel like snow. They felt like poisoned arrows raining down on my skin.
Then, the door was kicked open. It wasn't the storm that entered, but a man more predatory than the storm itself.
Varg stepped inside, holding a rabbit whose throat had been ripped out, still dripping warm blood onto the snow. He was in human form, wearing only leather trousers. Despite the sub-zero temperatures, steam rose from his bare chest. He was burning like a coal.
He looked at me, huddled in the corner, with the same disgust one would reserve for a parasite. He tossed the rabbit onto the dusty floor in front of me.
"Still not dead. " he murmured, his voice as abrasive and mocking as a blade against a whetstone. "Did you think I abandoned you and decide to stage one of your little human dramas?"
I couldn't answer. The cold had sealed my vocal cords. Varg took a step toward me, his dominant scent instantly dispersing the dead air in the room. When he knelt before me, the massive physical disparity between us hit me once again.
He was a High Alpha—a monster who gathered all the might of nature into a single fist. And I... I was just a flawed draft.
I couldn't kill him, but nothing stopped me from glaring at him with eyes full of spite.
Thank God for free features!
"Eat this," he said, gesturing to the rabbit. "Let those veins of yours, soaked in dead venom, warm up. I don't have time to carry a corpse across the forest."
He gripped my chin, forcing my face toward his. The heat of his fingers burned my skin. There was no pity in his eyes, no love. Only the dark possessiveness brought by a thousand-year-old prophecy.
"I am waiting for you to kneel, Vespera," he whispered, his breath ghosting over my lips. "But not from the cold. You will kneel before me."
The metallic scent of the raw rabbit mingled with the damp air of the shack. My stomach churned but the parasite venom in my veins was desperate for anything Varg threw my way. I looked at him as if waiting for a mountain to collapse upon me.
"Why?" I whispered, my voice cracking from the frost, yet the stubborn human side of me remained upright. "Why me, Varg? Why did you burn everything down to take me from my glass vase, only to insist on forcing me onto your dark throne?"
Varg paused as he slid his knife into its leather sheath. He didn't roll his eyes this time; instead, he narrowed them and leaned over me like a predator. Shadows danced across his sharp features.
"Marriage?" he said, his voice a low growl vibrating in his chest. "Do you think this is a fairy tale? Don't bring the fantasies you built with your little porcelain prince into my world."
I pulled myself up, ignoring the burning distance between us and took a step toward him. "Then why this tyranny? Why this rush to seal the bond?"
Varg closed the gap in a single move. His hand wrapped around my throat with an authority that was firm but didn't crush. His thumb felt the coldness of the vampire venom at my pulse point.
"It's not about you," he whispered into my ear, his breath hot enough to melt Alberta's winter. "It's not about your freakish body, your blonde hair, or those silver, childish looks you give me. It's about... the prophecy. That fucking prophecy is more valuable than your very breath."
He shook me, pinning my back against the cold, splintered wall. His chest pressed against mine, his heartbeat forcing my own into that same savage rhythm.
"You are the only key to the gates of my hell." he said, his eyes turning entirely black. "I will marry you because your ancient blood is the only thing that can fuel my dying power. You are here not because I love you, but because I have to condemn you to the darkest corner of this universe."
He leaned in so close that the scent of gunpowder and leather invaded my lungs. "This isn't a marriage, Vespera; it's the collision of two catastrophes. And you are the most beautiful sacrifice of this disaster."
His hand on my neck slowly loosened but his fingertips lingered there for a moment longer, as if wanting to sear my skin. I couldn't tell if he looked at me with desire or profound hatred. Perhaps they were the same thing.
"Now eat the rabbit," he said, his voice returning to its icy authority. "I need you alive for my prophecy. Not for your love."
"Can we not cook this? I've never eaten raw meat. I always cook." I said, a shaky breath escaping me. "I like it medium-rare, but raw meat smells horrific."
"You are no wolf!" Varg said, fixing me with a belittling stare.
I straightened against the cold wall as if sitting on a throne. The mocking glint in my eyes was sharper, more piercing than the ice of Alberta. With a poisonous smile, I shattered Varg's fierce silence like glass. I slowly turned the rabbit toward the small fire. I whispered.
"I might not be able to give you a child, Varg. Go back to inhaling the scents of those breeding Omegas with their hyacinth-scented necks. Go drink from the lips of those submissive females that taste like strawberry wine. Because this freakish body... will never carry your grand wolf cubs. My womb is likely as convoluted as I am. I'm sterile."
Varg's jaw tightened, the veins in his neck bulging like ropes. But I didn't stop. I delivered the final blow—the one that would truly madden him, the one that would lay waste to his High Alpha pride by seeking refuge in the mundane.
"I'm going to be a human's wife, Varg. I'll wake up to the sound of an alarm and go to work together just to make the boss happy. I won't spill blood in the forests like you to survive; I'll hunt for grocery receipts and bills that need to be paid. Do you understand?"
As Varg's eyes darkened with fury, I erased the scorching distance between us with a whisper.
"If I ever decided to be the Luna of a wolf, Varg, that person would have been Kael. That porcelain prince, at least, didn't look at me like an object. But you..." I looked him up and down. "You're just a foreign usurper, Varg. In my story, you're not an Alpha; you're just a thief."
Varg's roar shook the rotted ceiling of the shack. In one move, he grabbed my shoulders and slammed me against the wall so hard the timber groaned over the sound of the storm. His face was inches from mine, the scent of sandalwood now thick enough to burn my throat.
"Grocery receipts?" Varg hissed, his voice coming from the lowest floor of hell. "Bills and the bed of a common man? Do you think you can breathe for even a single day among those pathetic humans while you are sealed with my blood?"
Varg pressed his hand over my heart, over the very center of that rapid beat.
"I am your hell, Vespera. And believe me, grocery receipts don't pass in hell. There is only blood and absolute obedience. If you mention that porcelain prince of yours ever again, I will personally tear out his mint-scented throat right in front of you."