THE ALPHA IS DEAD
My father, the Alpha of the Blackoak Clan, found me when I was just three years old. It was in the middle of a brutal snowstorm, deep in the forest. I was barely clinging to life, my tiny body freezing and fragile, wrapped in nothing but rags. No one knows how I got there or who abandoned me. My earliest memory is of his strong arms lifting me out of the snow and holding me close to his chest.
He took me home and raised me as his daughter. For years, life was good. I had a brother, Kayden, who was a few years older than me. He was loving, protective, and kind, the very definition of what an older sibling should be. We grew up together, side by side, in a warm home filled with love and laughter. But there was always a shadow that followed me—a constant reminder of what I lacked.
I wasn’t human. Far from it. But I didn’t have a wolf either. And in a pack, a werewolf without a wolf is worse than nothing. The other pack members looked down on me. To them, I was an anomaly, a failure of nature, something to be scorned. They whispered when I walked by, their sharp words cutting deeper than any blade. But as long as my father and Kayden were by my side, I could endure it. Their love was my shield.
Then everything changed.
It started with my mother’s death. She wasn’t my birth mother—I didn’t even remember my real parents—but she was still Luna, still the heart of the pack. And when she was gone, everything changed. She passed suddenly, taken by an illness no healer could trace or cure. It felt like the air had been sucked out of our home. My father tried to keep it together, but he wasn’t the same. He started pulling away, little by little, until it felt like I was losing him too.
And then Kayden left. He was sent overseas for his Alpha training, as tradition demanded. I was happy for him, proud even, but his absence left a gaping hole in my life. Without him, I was alone in a house that felt colder and emptier with each passing day.
That was when Lucy came into our lives.
She wasn’t just any woman. Lucy had always been a part of my father’s life, though she was never openly acknowledged in our home while my mother was alive. When she moved into the Black Oak estate after my mother’s death, she brought her son, Kane, with her. Kane was the same age as Kayden, only a few months younger, but the similarities ended there. While Kayden had been my protector, Kane became my tormentor. From the moment he stepped through our doors, he seemed to take pleasure in making my life unbearable.
And Lucy? She was no better. If anything, she encouraged his behavior, turning a blind eye to his cruelty. She didn’t see me as a daughter of the Alpha. To her, I was an unwanted burden, a mistake my father had foolishly taken in. And she made sure I knew it.
Life became unbearable. Every day was a battle, a struggle to survive in a home that no longer felt like mine. The pack members, emboldened by Lucy’s disdain, treated me worse than ever. I was an outcast, a nobody, a wolf-less girl in a world where strength and power were everything.
But no matter how much they tried to break me, I refused to shatter. My father’s love, though quieter now, was still there. And Kayden’s memory was a constant reminder of the warmth I once had. I clung to those fragments of happiness, even as the darkness closed in around me.
I didn’t think it could get any worse.
But then, one day, my stepmother sent me a text that would change everything: “Your father is dead.”
I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. But my heart palpitated inside my chest. I suddenly didn’t remember how to breathe. And liquid ran down my nostrils and poured onto my textbook, damping the white in droplets that soaked the page crimson red.
I excused myself.
And I returned home. Home. Could I even call it that without him? As I pulled into the driveway a little after school that evening, a relentless thudding in my chest reminded me of the growing ache inside. My Isuzu D-Max, an old 1988 model my father had gifted me, rattled to a stop at the front of the house. My trembling fingers gripped the steering wheel as my vision blurred with tears. He had been sick for as long as I could remember, a secret carefully guarded from the pack because he was their Alpha.
It had been me—only me—who stood by his side, trying desperately to nurse him back to health. Lucy, his so-called partner, had barely lifted a finger. She didn’t care. She never did. The weight of responsibility had fallen entirely on my shoulders, and no matter how hard I tried, it was never enough. Now he was gone, home was going to become hell.
I hopped out the warmth of the vehicle, the cold biting into my skin the moment I was out in the open. The front of the house was crowded with pack members and the sight of that did nothing to calm my nerves.
I shook my head. “No. No. Dad, can’t be—” My lower lip trembled. I broke into a run, cold sweat lacing my temple, my voice rose in a strangled scream. “Dad!”
Everyone’s eyes zoned in on me.
Amidst the crowd, Mrs. Parsley stumbled off the porch and approached me, her arms stretched out. “Your mother doesn’t want anybody in the house.” Her voice was quivering as she spoke. “Please, Please, Feyre, don’t go in now.”
She dared to hold me back.
Dared.
I sidestepped her, holding my index finger out, wagging aggressively. “Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!”
She kept warning, “You know she wouldn’t be in the right state of mind.”
“He’s in there!” I screamed, my voice near breaking. My throat burned with clogged sobs. “She has no right! No right to prevent anyone from seeing him!”
Mrs. Parsley stepped closer. “He’s her husband, Feyre!"
The crowd parted as I shoved past Mrs. Parsley, ignoring the disapproving glares and whispers that followed me. I didn’t care what they thought; I never had. Their judgment was a constant in my life, and I’d learned to live with it.
“He was my father first! The bitch has no right!”
I shoved her out of my way and raced to the front of the house, elbowing everyone who tried to grasp me. I pounded hard against the door, my fist so tightened my knuckles turned white. “Open the door!” I screamed with each pound, my chest heaving. “Open the fucking door!”
No response from the inside. The back door. I instinctively backed away and dropped to the ground, scrambling and ducking through the crowd to escape to run around the house. It was too silent on the inside. Too silent. I take it that my stepmother had told Mrs. Parsley to stop me from coming into the house and the rest of the pack were just playing along with that.
As I raced to the back of the house. With shaking, quivering fingers I scurried to pick up the keys behind the tulips I’d planted in a vase. The cold metal braced against my fingertips and jiggled as I ripped it out of the hiding place.
The door swung open. The warmth of the house reached my face before I even stepped in. The entire house was dark. And I half expected to see my mother in the living room when I stepped in, but she wasn’t there. Instead, my father laid in the living room, cold, gone, a little pale under the light slithering in through the window onto his face. He was just laying there. Laying there. Looking like he was asleep, rather than dead as my stepmother had proclaimed. I had barely had the time to process the image before my eyes when the sound of the door bolting lock behind me grabbed my attention.
I whipped around to see my stepmother standing there. I’ve never seen her more scary, more infuriated, more… her wolf was in charge, I was certain. The way she watched me, in the dark of the house, her eyes glowing red with anger, I knew I was in for a beating of my life.
She stumbled closer, growling, her breathing harsh filling the dark of the house. “You wench!”
I stepped back, and had barely made it two steps back before she closed in on me and grabbed me by my arm. She yanked me forward, her claws sank into my skin, sinking too deep, enough to leave cuts that caused blood to trickle onto her hand.
I screamed. The pain was too much to bear. “I did nothing!”
Her hand struck my face with brutal force, snapping my head sideways, shutting the words out of my mouth. The images distorted from my vision, black and white, and before I knew, I hit the floor, pain rippling through me.
“I told him,” she hissed, towering over me, her eyes blazing, “I told him we should get rid of you, but no! He put his life on the line for you!”
A sob clawed its way up, breaking from my lips. “What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything!”
Her face twisted, fury mixing with something darker, like regret, as she advanced, a growl rumbling from deep within. "He sacrificed himself to keep you safe! All the pack knew it, but you—” She spat the words, her claws flexing. "You're nothing but a burden. A fragile, useless wolf who—”
She didn’t finish. Her next move was a blur—a swift, brutal grip on my arm, her nails piercing my skin, ripping me back up to face her. Another hit came across my face, my scream filled the entire house.
There were bangs against the door.
People were trying to come to my aid.
“I did nothing–”
The first kick came, straight into my gut and rib cage, instantly shutting me up. Then another and another. With each kick laid in were grunts and curses from my inflictor. “You...” growl. “Worthless..” growl. “Piece of crap...” growl. “You deserve nothing! You hear me?! Nothing!”
I wasn’t prepared for such agony. Pain pulsated through my body. There was only pain, all encompassing pain radiating in crashing waves that threatened to drown me with every quivering breath she dragged in. The hits came till I couldn’t scream anymore, but instead I hoped the suffering would stop anytime soon.
When it finally did stop, I was a wheezing mess.
She stood over me while I gasped for breath, feeling the taste of blood at the back of my throat. On my tongue. Dripping down my chin. “Now listen to me,” She told me, a little breathless. “Kayden’s coming back tomorrow. And before he gets here—I want you gone. Forever.”