PORSCHA

***

"Listen to me, and listen closely, for I will only say this once. You will not interrupt me with complaints or questions of my judgement--you will not so much as breathe a word of contradiction. The only thing I want out of your mouth is, 'yes, Alpha', because anything else will be met with the back of my hand.

"Whatever notions you have of a 'love match', a 'true love', or whatever other whimsical bullshit you lot come up with, I command you to forget, because before love comes duty, and your duty to this pack begins today. Our blood feud with the Ironpeak Pack goes back decades and has led to countless losses on both sides. Today, the new Alpha ascends his title, and with him comes the opportunity for a new era--one where our packs live in harmony.

"He is in need of a Luna, a Luna which our pack is capable of providing: you. You are our only Celestine, and although that makes you inherently valuable, your value is only derived from your ability to sire Alpha heirs--and thus far you have not had the opportunity to do that. All your life, you have been treated like the pack's princess--some would say, undeservingly--but now, you will have the opportunity to repay your dues.

"Tomorrow, you will perform the rite and allow Alpha Raiden to claim you as his mate. Tomorrow, you will leave Pinecrest for good to assume your role as the Ironpeak's Luna. This will be a mating of convenience, and it will bring peace between our packs. Is that clear?"

The words reverberate off the office walls with the same ferocity at which they rattle around my skull. I stand there, in the centre of the room, as still as a shell-shocked soldier, gaping--perhaps stupidly--at Alpha Micheal Pinecrest. He sits behind his desk of lacquered cherrywood, fingers steepled and eyes alight with the cunning gleam of strategy as he assesses me.

It's hard to believe that this is the man who raised me from a pup, who once considered me a daughter of his own despite a lack of blood relation. I see none of that fatherly love now in his cold, grey eyes. Now, he sees me as a mere pack commodity, something to be sold, fucked and bred by the enemy for the sake of pack politics. I've been reduced to the cold ink on a peace treaty. It makes me sick to my stomach.

Several seconds of shocked silence tick by, and he narrows his gaze, enunciating every syllable with threatening intensity as he says, "I said, is that clear?"

"Yes, Alpha," I say automatically, even though I don't know exactly what I'm agreeing to. His words haven't fully registered with my brain yet. Instead of providing clarity, it's as though he's taken a whisk to my skull and scrambled everything inside, leaving me with nothing but electrical misfirings and discombobulated thoughts. Nothing makes sense.

"Good." He stands, pushing back his leather-bound office chair. Gold medallions and silver plaques glitter on the wall behind him, displaying his competency as an Alpha. He's a good Alpha, a decisive Alpha, a celebrated Alpha--someone who is notoriously kind and fair to his people. People he loves. 

I had his love, once, and then I lost it. I guess this is the result.

"Your wedding will take place tomorrow morning. Make no mistake--the wedding is merely a formality; the real union will take place in the bedroom. You will only complete your task when there is a matebond in place. Is that clear?"

I nod, still not quite understanding what's happening. All I have is this distinct sensation of the ground roiling beneath me, of my world coming apart. It fragments around me, falling away in shards, while all I can do is stand in the centre of that room, suspended in time and motion. All the while Alpha Micheal--my leader, my protector--continues to move about, shattering my glass world with an invisible hammer. He couldn't give less of a fuck.

"Of course, your duty does not end there. You must provide Ironpeak with an heir. Only then will the peace between our packs be truly secured." At that, he turns to me, eyes pinning me like a butterfly to a board as he says, "Do not fail this mission, Porscha Maye. If you do, you will quickly discover that there are worse wolves than I."

⋆ ☽⋆☾ ⋆

I exit the Alpha's office in a daze. I take the white marble floors of Pinecrest Manor in surprisingly even strides, and even manage to acknowledge the stationed Deltas as I pass them, but the moment I'm alone, I crumple to my knees, body trembling with sobs that I cannot expel.

It's not fair. Being a Celestine was something I used to revel in, but now I couldn't revile it more. Not when it's reduced me to this--a mere womb whose purpose is to propagate the next generation of the Ironpeak's Alpha line. What once made me so rare and precious has been turned against me.

I choke on a bitter sob. I guess, some naive part of me believed that I would be free of my biological obligation. Alpha Michael mated a Celestine from the Shadowridge Pack, and his eldest son, Gamma Lorenzo, is a boy of mere nine--far too young for me. 

I thought I would live my most fertile days in Pinecrest, being treated as pack princess while I searched for a mate who would not be an Alpha, but anyone I happened to fall for. My fertility would fade, my popularity would decrease, but I would still live a happy life. I would still get to choose my mate at the end of it.

I never, ever imagined a time where my body would be commodified and used in a trade. Really, though, I was stupid not to consider it. I was stupid to think that despite Alpha Michael's fostered coldness towards me, he still held some love for me deep in his heart. That, underneath his icy exterior, he still saw that poor orphan girl desperate for a home.

I was wrong. So wrong.

And Ironpeak... Ironpeak of all packs. Their ranks have claimed countless of ours. I have lost good friends to those savages, people who I considered brothers and sisters. Grace, Anna, Tom, Ariel, Jackson... I remember their faces as vividly as their mangled corpses, left on the territory border for our patrols to find. Their sharp, youthful, courageous lives reduced to objects of degradation and amusement.

Ironpeak is not just an enemy. They are a threat to peace. They are evil, and if this new Alpha is anything like the old one, then I know damn well that my womb will not be enough to quench the violence they thirst for. I am in far more danger than Alpha Michael seems to think--Pinecrest is in danger--but maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he just wants a band-aid solution.

Tears burning the backs of my eyelids, I rise to my feet and make a beeline for the armoury. It's true that I have many friends in this pack--women and men who deserve proper goodbyes--but I cannot bear to face them right now. They'll discover my fate soon enough, and I only have so much time to spare as the setting sun threatens to cement my final day as a Pinecrest werewolf, until 'Maye' becomes 'Ironpeak' and my identity is soiled.

No, I need to find Jericho. The man I thought would become my life-long mate. He needs to hear this from my mouth. He deserves a proper goodbye.

It takes me several minutes to navigate the labyrinth that is the manor, but the moment I make it outside, it doesn't take me long to find him. I catch him hauling a rack of swords from the training grounds to the armoury, chest puffing with effort. 

I hate to disturb him while he works--as an Omega, he works hard--but knowing I won't get another chance, I grasp his arm and pull him behind the wall of the blacksmith.

"Porscha?" he stammers, so shocked by my presence that he fumbles his grip on the swords. He blinks at me with wide, green eyes as his blonde hair tosses in the wind. My heart aches at the sight of it.

"Jericho, I--" My voice catches, and I take several moments to compose myself. He stares at me, tense, no doubt equally worried about my state as he is about someone discovering us. As an Omega male, he shouldn't be talking to a Celestine alone, but we've been breaking that rule for years now. Except, being out in the open like this, we have a greater chance of getting caught, and he knows that. "Jericho, something terrible has happened. I...I needed to come to you first."

"What? What is it?" He drops the swords. They clatter to the ground in a heap, announcing our presence to anyone nearby. "Talk to me, Porsh."

So, I tell him everything, from the moment Alpha Michael dragged me into his office to his parting words. I watch Jericho's tanned face grow wanner with every word out my mouth, and by the end of my recount, he's whiter than ivory, looking as though he watched somebody die. 

Several seconds of silence pass by, and unable to keep up my composure, I break, throwing myself into his arms. I bury my head between his neck and shoulder, inhaling the minty scent of him.

"I don't know what to do," I whisper hoarsely. "I don't know what to do, Jericho. I don't want to go to Ironpeak. I don't want to mate him. I...I want to mate you. I want you to be the one."

"But you have no choice, do you?" he says quietly, and something in my chest cracks at the defeat in his voice.

"No. I don't."

Silence. For the first few minutes, defeat hangs heavy in the air around us. Then, Jericho's body tenses, and the atmosphere charges with a renewed vigour. With surprising vitality, he pulls me back and grasps me by the shoulders, forcing me to take in his face. It's etched with determination.

"There is a way out of this, Porsh, one where we can be together."

I blink at him. "How?"

His grasp tightens on my shoulders. "We can run away. We can leave this place for good."

I feel my eyes widen as I understand. "We'll be hunted."

"We'll outsmart them."

"We'll be rogues."

"We'll be free." He grips my hands in earnest, rubbing an urgent thumb over my palm. "For once in our lives, we will be free from our obligations. You won't have to serve as some womb for an Alpha, and I won't have to slave away as an Omega. We can be together without anyone giving us grief, Porsh, and you won't have to live among monsters." His grip tightens as he adds, "This is the way."

I swallow hard. It's tempting. Really tempting, but--

"They will kill us, Jericho," I whisper. "Actually, no. They'll kill you. They'll torture you in unimaginable ways. They'll spare me, but they'll make me watch. After that, my life will be made a hell, even more so than it is now."

He leans down, eyes alight with a wild gleam as he says, "Not if they never find us."

"Jericho?" a voice calls, and I instantly recognize it to be Delta Samuel's, Jericho's boss. My body goes rigid with panic.

"Meet me under the lone elm at midnight, Porsh, and we'll run together," he says. "If you're serious about us, if you truly love me as much as you say, then you will do this. You will meet me there."

With that, he presses his lips to mine so swiftly that it may look like a momentary loss of balance to any onlooker. Then, he departs, and I am left with this lingering ache in my chest, and the tingling warmth on my lips rapidly cools to something hauntingly hollow.