Chapter 2

EMILIA POV

“He wouldn’t kill the adopted daughter of the war general, right?” I muttered to myself as I watched everyone who had volunteered fight and win or lose. Seth and I would be the last ones to go, and I couldn’t get my mind off the threatening words he had said to me earlier.

If he killed me, he would be raising trouble with Carlos.

But, did Carlos care enough to avenge my death?

“Emilia and Beta Seth, please step into the fighting ring.”

My heart hammered in my chest as I stood up and walked towards the ring, where Seth was already in wait for me.

“You only win by submission,” the referee stated. “If your opponent is knocked out mid-fight, you win by default. No foul play.”

I watched the referee walk out of the ring and put his hand up as he blew the whistle between his lips.

“Fight!”

Before I could turn my head from the referee to Seth, I felt a kick in my stomach and was flung to a corner of the ring, where I struggled to breathe and stand up before Seth could get to me again.

It was too late to do anything else as Seth grabbed me by the hand and pulled me up.

“You are the niece of a fucking general!” He yelled at me. “You should be ashamed to be this weak!”

He slapped me across the face and kicked me in the ribs, causing me to fall on my side and groan in pain.

I was pulled by the hair, and I tried hard to pry his hand off my hair, but it only seemed to make him angrier and left with the urge to keep pulling at it.

“You are pathetic,” he spat, punching me in the face and slamming my head against the floor of the ring.

He stood up, kicking me in the gut tirelessly.

“Surrender,” he commanded. “Tap out.”

If there was one thing I had learned from Carlos, it was that the most embarrassing way to lose a fight was through surrender. He made sure to beat me until I passed out, so that I would be used to the pain and refuse to surrender whenever situations like the one I was in came up.

“Surrender!” The louder he got, the harder he kicked. The more he kicked, the more violently I coughed up blood, the warm and coppery taste flooding my mouth.

He really was going to kill me, and everybody was watching. They wouldn’t do anything about it until I either surrendered or passed out.

I could even die.

“That’s enough!” I heard the screams of the referee just as my eyes started to water and my vision got blurry. I could still feel his feet kicking me, but I couldn’t feel the pain it caused anymore. I was growing weaker by the second.

I saw the referee get into the ring and pull Seth away from me with as much force as he could.

My throat was flooded with blood, and my stomach was hot.

My eyes found Seth’s as he struggled against the arms of the referee, who was still holding him back. He looked so full of hatred, just like he did when he had seen me by the corpse of his twin brother, blood smeared all over my body.

I deserved it. I was a murderer, after all. A murderer who had killed his brother without remorse.

My eyes fluttered close as I accepted the fact that death was not very far from me.

I was soon enveloped in darkness.

*

It was dark when I opened my eyes again. My eyes scanned the unfamiliar room I found myself in. In attempts to stand up, I realized just how much pain my abdomen was in.

I looked down at my stomach and pulled up my shirt to reveal purple bruises on it.

I got off the bed and made for the door opposite the bed. Luckily, it led to the exit of the room. I walked out into the hallway until I found the staircase which led to the living room, where Carlos and Alpha James were having a discussion.

“You’re awake,” Carlos noted as soon as he saw me, drawing the Alpha’s attention to me.

“I was just talking to Carlos about letting you back out of the fight. If you’re not feeling up to it, or if you won’t be fully healed by then, you can always wait for the next Blood Moon festival,” Alpha James suggested.

“And I was just telling Alpha James that even if he begged you to back down, you wouldn’t do it,” Carlos countered. “She has a strong sense of patriotism for her pack, Alpha, and she tries so hard to prove herself. Isn’t that right, Emilia?”

Even though I wanted to go on my knees and beg Alpha James to take me off the volunteers’ list, I simply nodded in agreement with Carlos’s words.

“I will do anything for my pack. Please, let me fight during the festival,” I said.

“Very well, then,” Alpha James nodded. “Have it your way.”

In that moment, I knew just one thing – I had officially signed my own death certificate.

*

“You will be fighting tonight, Emilia,” Carlos reminded me. “There’s really no use for these flashy things. I could even say you could die in the fight due to how weak you are.”

It was the night of the Blood Moon festival, and Carlos had now told me to change my third dress for the night, making the same excuse over and over – it was too flashy for a warrior.

I changed into the simplest black dress I could find and walked down the stairs in hopes that he would not turn me away for looking far from flashy.

“This should do,” he approved as he saw me approaching from the stairs. “Now, hurry up. You’ve wasted enough of our time.”

It didn’t take us much time to get to the gathering court, where everyone was preparing to wine, dine, and watch the volunteers of our pack take on other packs’ volunteers.

I looked around nervously as people introduced themselves smoothly, laughing and already having wine and appetizers without a sign of nervousness in any of them.

I hid behind Carlos for most of the night, only shaking the people he shook hands with but almost never meeting their eyes.

The sound of Alpha James clearing his throat into the microphone caught our attention.

“Thank you all for coming. The Blood Moon festival has officially kicked off!” Cheers erupted as we raised our cups of red wine to the moon in its fully red hue.

As Alpha James continued his opening speech, everyone’s heads turned in the direction of the court’s entrance as the gates opened.

The energy in the air took a dramatic shift as we all turned to the gates to see a group of people file into the court. They all split into two groups, creating some sort of human portal for the man who came next.

His intimidating figure sauntered into the room with an air of nonchalance over his lateness to the event or his interruption of Alpha James’s speech.

“Alpha Lucas,” Alpha James called out to him. “I almost thought you wouldn’t come.”

“What fun would it be without the pack of Moonclaw in attendance?” Alpha Lucas responded, walking towards the designated spot for Moonclaw Pack with the soldiers he had brought behind him.

The closer he got, the wider my eyes got, and the more painful and fast my heart beat at the sight of him and the reaction of the one thing I was not expecting from the night.

A mate bond.

Alpha Lucas immediately craned his head in my direction, a cynical smile etched on his face as he realized what was happening.

He was my mate.