Chapter Two: The Trial
1681 Words
Vaelora POV:
A few minutes later, I heard boots striking against the stone pavement outside, the sound was sharp enough to make my body tense.
I tried to catch their scent to figure out who was coming but before I could, my door burst open sharply.
“Vaelora,” my mother said, her voice firm in urgency. “I need you to listen carefully. The Alpha has ordered that you be brought before the pack council. You will be taken there, but you must remain silent throughout the proceedings. Do not say a word. Do you understand?”
I looked into her eyes, my eyes wide and dilated with something close to fear.
“Am I going to die, Mother?” I asked quietly.
She forced a bitter smile. “I need you to stay strong, as you always have, Vae,” she said. “You will live. Trust me.”
I gave a small nod as she grabbed my hand and led me downstairs.
The guards were already waiting. Four hefty stern looking men, here for me, a ten years old child. My heartbeat accelerated.
"Am I that dangerous?" I thought.
My palms became sweaty. I felt intimidated.
Mother handed me over to them, and one of them seized my arm roughly, yanking me violently forward.
In the blink of an eye, my mother had him by the throat.
“I will not have you treat her like a criminal,” she snarled.
Dying gasps echoed through the foyer.
The guard’s boots scraped against the marble floor as she lifted him slightly, her claws pressing just enough into his throat to draw a thin line of blood.
I swallowed hard, as the scent of it hit my nostrils.
“Nyxara!” my father barked. “Stand down!”
The other guards shifted halfway at once, claws extending, fangs glinting under the dim light in defense.
For a moment, just one moment, I thought my mother would kill him. Her eyes flickered to me. Then she released him.
The guard stumbled back, coughing, fury blazing in his gaze, but he did not retaliate. No one dared attack a Gamma without direct Alpha command. Besides, he wouldn’t stand a chance against her. My mother was one of the pack’s strongest warriors.
“Touch her like that again,” she said coldly, “and I will kill you in the most agonizing way possible."
The tension in the air was suffocating, as I watched the adults breathing fury at each other, my little fingers clasped together.
Finally, the guard straightened his uniform, and the rest stand down retracting their claws and elongated fangs. He grabbed my arm again, but this time with restraint as I was dragged away from my home.
The night air felt eeriely cold. Or maybe it was just me. I was taken to the central courtyard, where the entire pack had already gathered.
Torches burned laterally along the stone walls, casting monstrous shadows over the crowd. Everyone had gathered; The warriors, Elders, Omegas and even the Cubs; from the least to the greatest of them all dressed elaborately like tonight was some form of celebration, formed a great circle, watching me.
Some with disgust. Others with fear. And a few… with excitement.
The cold breeze came again, and one of the torch fire flickered in my direction. I swallowed hard, really hard, seeing the crowd.
I suppose everyone was eager to see what would become of me; the abomination no one had seen in nearly a century.
At the far end stood the raised stone platform reserved for council gatherings.
Seated at its center was Alpha Darius.
His mere presence made the air feel heavier.
He sat rigidly in a carved obsidian chair, hands gripping the armrests, dark hair streaked with silver, eyes like molten iron.
Beside him stood the cold Luna. And slightly behind them… a boy.
He couldn’t have been older than fifteen.
He wasn’t dressed elaborately like the others. Instead, he wore simple fitted black training leathers. His posture was straight, controlled. His expression, blank.
His eyes found mine immediately.
They were an impossible shade; pale gold, almost silver under the torchlight.
Those rare shade of Hazel looked so unsettling.
He didn’t look horrified, or intrigued like the others. Instead, he looked… nothing. I could read nothing off him, and somehow, that disturbed me more than anything else.
That was the first time I truly saw him.
Kael.
The heir.
The Alpha’s prodigy.
He stared at me without blinking.
I was forced to tear my gaze away as the guard pushed me to my knees at the base of the platform. Pain shot through me as my knee struck the sharp edged marble-like stone, the skin on my knee bruised so badly, that I could smell my blood. But I knew it would heal quickly, I've always healed too quickly for a wolf, my wounds had always disappeared almost immediately as they occur.
"All except one of course," I thought as I stared at the deep scar at the back of my hand. "Everything healed except you," I muttered as I remembered that night.
Flashback:
I stayed back at the pen after my parents had gone to bed. Then a woman in black cloak slipped in, white hair sticking out of her cloak as she approached me stealthily.
"Mum?" I called.
She didn't respond. Instead she pulled out a sliver dagger. "She's not human. She doesn't deserve to live," she'd kept muttered beneath her breathe.
I was scared. "Mother?," I cried. "I want to go back to mother...."
***** **** ****
“Vaelora Matt,” Alpha Darius’ voice boomed across the courtyard, snapped me back to reality. “Daughter of Beta Matt and Gamma Nyxara.”
The cold formal tone sent a chill down my spine.
"I shall read you your crimes," he began.
"Crimes?" I muttered to myself, confused.
“You shifted ahead of nature and tradition,” he continued. “Before your time.”
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
“You shifted under the age of eighteen. Without ritual. And into an accursed form not seen within this pack for over a century.”
Silence followed.
“You are a white wolf!.”
Whispers erupted.
“A white wolf?”
“That’s a bad omen…”
“She’s cursed…”
"She's a demon..."
"I knew arrogant prick was no good..."
I heard every word, from every lips. I felt light headed, was vision was blurring out from the force of it all. A shrill sound kept ringing in my head..."Kill them all, Vae. These unworthy lot. Let me take over, and we could kill them, together..."
I shook my head violently, trying desperately to remain in consciousness.
“According to pack law,” Alpha Darius continued, “a premature shift is punishable by confinement and ritual suppression.”
My mother inhaled sharply behind me.
“But,” he said slowly, “a white wolf is not merely premature.”
His gaze hardened.
“It is a curse upon the Alpha bloodline—and upon the wolf race itself.”
“Kill her—”
“She’ll bring ruin—”
“It’s happening again—”
Voices overlapped, rising into chaos.
My ears rang.
I kept my head down still, just as my mother instructed, in silence.
Alpha Darius raised a hand, and the courtyard fell quiet instantly.
“A white wolf is an abomination,” he declared. “And it should not be allowed to live.”
My heart pounded so loudly I was certain everyone could hear it.
So this is it…?
“For the safety of this pack,” he continued, “Vaelora will be executed.”
The air went still.
A low growl rumbled from my mother, and every warrior in the courtyard stiffened. Several shifted halfway again, claws scraping against stone.
My father grabbed her arm. “Nyxara. Don’t.”
Her breathing was ragged behind me. I could feel her rage like heat against my back.
Alpha Darius’ eyes narrowed.
“Control your Gamma,” he ordered.
My father forced her back a step, but she refused to yield.
“If you execute her,” she said, her voice trembling with fury, “then you execute a child of this pack. A child who has committed no crime.”
Alpha Darius was quiet for few seconds.
“She committed the crime of existing,” the Luna's cold voice cut through the night.
The words struck harder than any blow, and the crowd murmured of approval had followed.
One thing was clear now. They all want me to die.
I just knelt still. I didn’t cry. I didn’t know why.
Maybe I was numb. Maybe everything had happened too fast. Or maybe… some part of me was just tired... or had already grown used to being hated.
Alpha Darius rose to his feet.
The movement alone sent a ripple of submission through the courtyard.
“The Luna is right," he said. "The last white wolf brought betrayal. Blood soaked these grounds for decades, the pack fell apart. Lives were lost. I'm sorry but I cannot and will not allow history to repeat itself.”
History..?
So that was it?
I was being punished and hated for something someone else did?
“For the preservation of this pack,” he declared, “Vaelora Matt will be executed at dawn.”
“No!"
The word cut through the courtyard.Young, calm, full of defiance.
Every head turned.
Kael stepped forward from behind his father. His expression hadn’t changed, but his eyes had.
They were no longer empty. They were sharp, and now focused on me, and somewhere in them I saw pity and I hated it. Hated how it made me feel.
Alpha Darius’ jaw tightened. “This is not your concern, Kael.”
“It is,” Kael replied evenly, breaking his gaze away from me to his father.
“If she is a threat to the Alpha bloodline, then as its future, she concerns me more than anyone… Father.”
- Writer
