Alpha, I was yours before

Seraphina

I turned on instinct, feet digging into the dirt. I sprinted back the way I came, but nothing looked familiar anymore. The paths were wrong the trees had shifted, the streams had all vanished.

Worse still, something was chasing me. I couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see it, but I felt it.

By the time I broke through the edge of the Ember Forest, gasping, barefoot, and bleeding from scrapes I bumped into a large and warm body.

When I looked up, I saw it was the Alpha. The look he had on his face was unkind. I stepped back, trying to catch my breath. That was when I saw the nightshift servants, Aurelie, some elders and some Gamma wolves standing around with worried expressions.

“Why did you go out without a guide?” Caspian’s voice snapped me into reality. I pointed back, panting. “Something chased me.”

“You went too deep into the forests, something lives there that do not like to be disturbed.”

“I'm so sorry…” I stuttered.

He wrapped a coat around me that exuded warmth and smelt faintly of him. “You're cold. Let's go inside.”

He still had his arms wrapped around me. I could see Selene’s eyes light with jealousy.

“I'm so sorry.” I told him. “I couldn't sleep.”

“Don't let it happen again. Aurelie should follow you wherever you go.”

He lifted me up gently and took me to my room, Aurelie trailing us. He gently tucked me into bed.

Aurelie fetched warm water and he patted and cleaned the places where I was scraped and injured.

He watched me sleep while weaving his fingers through my hair.

I didn't know what to make of his sudden kindness. He'd likely disappear in the morning and pretend I didn't exist.

I closed my eyes long enough to convince him that I was asleep. When he left, I flicked my eyes open.

Aurelie stood by the corner silently watching me. The way she looked at me sometimes unnerved me.

I laughed to break the tension. “What was everyone so worried? I didn't spend more than ten minutes in there.”

She walked slowly to my lying form. She looked haunted.“It was two hours you were gone, My lady.”

I sat up, shocked. My back bones groaned.

“I’ll run a hot bath for you.”

“The Alpha said something about a spirit that lives there.” I recalled, sinking into the hot tub. My body finally felt calm and at peace,but inside I could feel Crispy’s agitation.

“What exactly did you see? She asked, standing by the corner looking at me.

“A cabin, in a forest clearing.”

Shock rippled through her face. “The is path to that cabin was magically locked and removed. It means you should never have found it.”

I was silent for some time. Now I even had more questions, why was it locked? How was I able to find it?

“No one has been able to find that cabin not even the mages that set the spell.” She picked up the brush that fell from her hand when she jerked in shock. “The Ember Forest holds things that were buried for a reason. That cabin was sealed off by the Elders before your time. Before even the Alpha’s father ruled.”

There was a mirror opposite the Jacuzzi and I could see the wild look on my eyes. I was still shaking. Something had followed me back. “So what you're saying is that no one before me for the longest time has found the cabin.”

She suddenly looked unsettled. “Seraphina did. She was always there at a point, and she included nobody in her visits.”

Seraphina, that name sounded familiar. Caspian had whispered it to me on the night of the New Moon, when his lush lips touched mine. I remember the vision of a woman bleeding In his arms.

I was so scared, I thought it was going to be me, and that I was now seeing things of the future.

“Seraphina…Alpha's true Luna?” I affirmed.

Aurelie nodded. Now I had an even deeper urge to check out that East Wing. That female ancient voice had said Come Home. I wanted answers to why I could access a path once locked, and only Seraphina could.

“Tell me about this Seraphina.” I urged.

“The alpha will not take it kindly with anyone who talks about her. Do not ask anyone about her either. We don't talk about her here.” her voice was a low growl.

I sank deeper into the tub, trying to calm my racing heart. But it was too late. Something had been awakened, Crispy was still restless and I wasn’t going to sleep again until I understood what Come Home meant.

Later that night, I found myself drawn to the East Wing. I crept out of my room, through the silent hallways, scared of putting on a light in case I was spotted. I traced my hands in the walls to guide me. I've stared too longingly at the East wing, I've literally crammed the path.

This part of the mansion was sealed off tighter than the rest, with thick silence that felt reverent. Or cursed. I expected to find the door leading to it heavily chained, but no. It wasn't even locked. I put my palms on the scarred body of the huge thick oak door. It groaned and slowly opened for me.

My feet walked like it had a mind of its own. Inside here, I lit my torch. It used to be somebody's living quarters. Now it looked like the person left in a hurry and completely abandoned it.

Unfinished stale food still sat on a plate in the dining. The bed was unmade. Dusty Cobwebs swung from the windows. The silence was consuming.

I shivered in dread and still had goosebumps from excitement.

Everything was covered in decades layer of dust.

The perfumes on her dressing table were still full and smelt of moonflowers. I purloined some. The clothes hanging on her rack was beautiful, would have fit me easily and I was tempted to take some. She died decades ago. There was no way the Alpha would recognize this dresses and I don't even see him every day.

I searched the room but there was nothing I could see, that could help me with my answers. It was only a room rich with memories, giving the aesthetic of a fragile, beautiful woman that was deeply loved and from her massive stone collections; probably a stone witch.

That was until I saw it.

At the far end of the corridor hung a massive painting. My breath caught. Framed in silver and cloaked in years of dust, was a portrait…of me. Or someone who could’ve been my twin. I scrambled towards it.

By the side of the frame, in a gorgeous cursive handwriting was the name “Seraphina.”

The Alpha’s first Luna.

She was beautiful, poised and hauntingly sad.

The resemblance was uncanny. From our noses, to our lips, to our height. It explained the hauntingly deep looks Aurelie gave me sometimes. I was a spitting walking image of the true Luna.

What could this even mean?

My fingers twitched to reach out and touch it. Crispy stirred. “Don’t,” she whispered.

I fumed. “I preferred when you were silent than now that you're a non-adventurous wet blanket.

I reached out and touched the frame… then the edge of the canvas… then her face.

The moment my skin brushed against the painting, the air split with a crackle of static. My breath caught. My vision dimmed.

Suddenly there was pain. White-hot pain.

My head forcefully jerked back. My eyes rolled. My mouth opened to scream, but no sound came out.

The mansion disappeared.

Suddenly, I was back in the forest. The clearing with the same trees, the same foreboding air, the same rustic cabin.

But this time, someone was standing in front of it.

It was Seraphina. She was dressed in silver and emerald robes. Her hair was long, moonlight white unlike my golden hair, and her eyes glowed like dying stars.

She looked directly at me, then through me. And started running forcefully to my direction like she was heavily chased. I tried to move because I was directly in her path but something had me stuck. She bumped into me, or didn't, but somehow our two bodies became one.

I became Seraphina. I was running and bleeding. My feet were caked with mud, deep slashes of blood that wasn't there before on my right thigh.

The forest blurred around me as I ran. I could hear distant shouting and slashing noises that came closer and closer.

Then suddenly I was in a battlefield. The exact same one in the vision I had on the night of the new moon.

Chaos. Bodies falling like flies. Light riveting off blades stained with red. The forest floor soaked with blood.

I slammed into a hard body that steadied me. I could feel my mouth curling up. Seraphina knew this person so much she was smiling at him in the middle of this chaos. He was wearing a cloak similar to the ones the Gamma wolves wore. I couldn't see his face clearly.

Then soon after, there was a sickening smack, and he violently hugged me. A jarring burn came five seconds later and that's when I realized that he stabbed a sword through me.

“Why?” my voice—Seraphina’s voice—choked out. “Why would you…”

“We warned you not to bear his child.” He whispered in my ears. “You wanted to overplay your role.”

I coughed up blood, whispering, “He’ll know—he’ll sense this—”

“He’ll think it was the rogues. We’ll leave claw marks. Bite you hard enough. Maybe rip out your heart just right.”

Then the knife squelched out.

A silver blade, carved with ancient runes, typical of a Gamma’s sword.

I gurgled up blood, my knees buckled. He stepped around me. And I was tossed into the Alpha's arms.

The last thing I could feel was the wetness of his tears on my face as he held me tightly, begging me to stay with him. Then everything went black.

I jolted up off the floor of the dusty room, gasping, crawling backwards until my back hit the wall.

Her heart pounded as I realized what that vision meant. Seraphina wasn't killed by those rogue wolves but by someone in the mansion, one of the Alpha's men. Someone who didn't want the Alpha to breed so that his bloodline would be weak. Someone who killed the only person who was able to birth for him, in a “battle” that could have been set up.

Someone who probably lived in this mansion and watches me day by day as I innocently went around looking like the True Luna. Little wonder some stared more than they should have.

Someone wanted her dead, and might want me dead too. On the simple basis that I looked like her and might be her.

Morning light started to filter through the stained windows making me surprised. That vision took five minutes but it could as well as be five hours in the real world.

I could feel a scratchy burn on my left wrist. When I flipped my hands over, I recognized it. It was the same symbol I saw marked on the door of the cabin in the forests. Now it was on my wrist, burning red.

I stroked my fingers across it, trying to soothe the prickling pain.

My knees buckled, it felt like I was punched. My knees collapsed to the ground and my head whipped back.

Another vision.