"Family is supposed to be the one place you’re safe. Mine was the first place I learned to run."
_Seyra
003.
Seyra looked around, trying to find the possible best escape route, but anywhere she turned, there was someone. Cassiel stood at the side entrance that led outside the foyer, Astrid was blocking the path leading to the stairs, and her parents, they stood at another side with the Beta beside them.
She was flanked by those two guards she still held a grudge against. There was nowhere to run to. She was trapped.
This couldn’t be happening.
"Seyra," Bruce, her father, called, smiling like he was about to do her a favour. "The debt we owe the Alpha is due. We need to repay it."
Seyra let out a breath. "I don’t see how that is my business," she answered, giving them a nonchalant expression.
A muscle in Bruce’s jaw ticked, but he maintained his cool. "It is your business, Seyra," he took a step forward. "You’re the first daughter of this family, so it’s only normal you step up to your responsibilities."
Seyra almost laughed. "And by responsibilities, you mean agreeing to get sold to Alpha Orin?" she asked, and they said nothing. "Are you hearing yourself? What’s my business with a debt you owe the Alpha? You never used the money on me. You spent it all on Astrid’s education. Astrid should get sold because she’s the one who benefited. I won’t do it."
Bruce turned to face Astrid. Astrid let out a long sigh and burst into tears. "Can you believe what she is saying, Father?" she walked to where her father stood and linked her arms with him. "I already have a mate, and Seyra wants me to become a maid."
"That is not happening!" Salome snapped. "Seyra, you have no choice but to go serve the Alpha."
"I have no choice?" Seyra laughed. "I am sick and tired of not having choices. I am sick and tired of having you dictate my life and making me feel like a nobody. I won’t go. I’d rather die than do you any favour!"
"You good-for-nothing whore!" Salome slapped her hard on the cheek. "We are the ones doing you a favour!"
"I don’t want your favour!" Seyra snapped back. "I don’t want it, okay? Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? What all of you have done to me?" She pointed her finger at all of them, ignoring the sting on her cheek. "Astrid and Cassiel tricked me for eight months, made me believe I was loved and then shattered my heart in the worst way possible."
She pointed at her parents. "You two never treated me like a human being because I wasn’t beautiful. Because I had silver hair and a small wolf. You beat me up, insult me and make me take the blames for your ’perfect’ daughter."
She turned to the Beta. "And you! You just sat there and watched your son disgrace me. Have you no heart?!" she snapped, and everyone gasped.
No one has ever raised their voice at the Beta before.
Beta Magnus might be the Alpha’s right-hand man, but he basically had lots of power and autonomy over the pack. Since the Alpha barely showed his face, Magnus was the one who gave orders in his stead and sent his decrees to the pack.
He was powerful. No doubt about that.
Beta Magnus watched Seyra with an indifferent expression.
Bruce quickly ran forward and bowed his head. "I’m sorry for my daughter’s outbursts. She is just too emotional—"
"I don’t care how emotional your daughter is, Bruce," Magnus said, his voice sending shivers down their spines. "Next time she talks to me in that manner, I’ll give her head to you as a souvenir."
Bruce bowed.
Magnus signaled for Cassiel to come stand by his side. "The guards will be here to pick one of your daughters up in two hours. Make your choice before then. Do not waste my time."
They bowed, and he walked past Seyra with a frown. Cassiel hugged Astrid and kissed her in front of Seyra.
Seyra clenched her fists, her heart hurting all over again. She didn’t even know what to say to him anymore. Whenever she opened her mouth, no words came out, just tears.
"Don’t worry, you will not be a maid. You were made to be my Lady Royal. And once Father talks to the Alpha and he makes me one of his special soldiers, my status in this pack will be elevated and I will give you everything you want," Cassiel said.
Astrid smiled and nodded.
Cassiel ignored Seyra and walked out. He signaled the guards not to let her go, to stop her from escaping before leaving.
"Now that they are gone," Bruce’s tone dropped to a deadly calm.
Seyra stared at him, her heart beating fast.
"You will accept this whether you like it or not," he walked to a stand and picked up a whip.
Seyra’s eyes widened. Was he crazy?
"You are already useless. You should try and be useful for once," he stopped in front of her. "You don’t meet the pack’s beauty standards, your wolf is ugly and weak, you don’t have a mate and I am not going to let you sit and feed off me when you have nothing to offer!"
"Then I’ll leave," Seyra whispered, meeting his glare head-on. "I will leave your house, I will leave this pack, you won’t see me again. You won’t have to worry about spending your money on me or me leeching off you."
Astrid panicked. If their father allows Seyra to leave, she would be the one to be given to the Alpha. She wasn’t going to stand here and let that happen.
If she became a maid, the she-wolves jealous of her would laugh at her. She was too beautiful for that.
"Father," she rushed to where he stood with tears in her eyes. "Don’t force her anymore. I will go."
Bruce’s eyes widened. "What!"
Seyra rolled her eyes. She knew Astrid too well.
"Of course I know going to the Alpha’s pack house will have a terrible effect on me. I might lose my beauty and status in this pack. I will be miserable and—"
"No, Astrid, that is not going to happen!"
"But Father—"
"Enough!" Bruce snapped. "Seyra, you will go to the Alpha’s palace."
Astrid looked at Seyra and gave her a sardonic smile.
"And that thing you said about leaving the pack," Salome began with a smirk. "That’s not possible. It seems you do not know the laws of Harlow Hades. A she-wolf without a mate has no choice. She would either choose to be killed or work at the pack motel as a stripper."
Seyra gasped. "That’s not true!" she snapped.
She’d thought the motel stuff was a myth, an excuse used by mothers to get their daughters to go find mates.
"Oh, but it is," Salome chuckled. "You were quite popular today and the motel has taken an interest in the silver-haired girl with no mate. I could send you there to become the slut you so desperately want to be, but we’re offering you another alternative."
Seyra took a step back. The guards were still flanking her. Her shoulders dropped and a tear dropped from her eye.
Bruce dropped his whip, seeing that Seyra had lost the fight in her. "You have two choices. Go work at the motel or the Alpha."
Seyra’s stomach turned.
A stripper. At the motel. Used by anyone with enough coin, night after night, until there was nothing left of her that belonged to herself.
She had heard the whispers about that place. The girls who went in never really came back the same.
She looked at her mother, then at her father, searching for even a flicker of hesitation. There was none. They had already decided. They were only waiting for her to catch up.
And there was her second option.
Alpha Orin.
The masked monster. The man no one in Harlow Hades had ever dared look at, because the ones who tried never spoke of what they’d seen.
If she went to him, she might not survive the week. He could kill her for looking at him wrong, for breathing too loud, or for existing in a space he didn’t want her in. That was the Orin everyone knew.
Parents even whispered about him in half-finished sentences to frighten disobedient pups into behaving.
But he wasn’t asking her to give her body to strangers for coin.
He was asking her to serve. To clean. To disappear into the background of his palace the way she’d already learned to disappear into the background of her own life.
If she kept her head down, kept her hands busy, kept herself small and unnoticed the way she’d been trained to be since she was old enough to understand she’d never be Astrid, she might survive.
And if she survived, she might find a crack in the walls of that palace. A moment when no one was watching and find a chance to run.
She could vanish from the pack.
And when she was far enough away, far enough that none of them could reach her, she was going to become someone none of them recognized. Someone strong enough that the next time she stood in this house, it wouldn’t be her family deciding her fate.
It would be her deciding theirs.
Seyra straightened her spine. She looked at her mother, her father, at Astrid standing behind them with that same hungry, satisfied look on her face, like she’d already won something.
Then she made her choice.
"I choose the Alpha."