Pregnant For My Sister's Alpha

The iron hissed as the hot, steamy white smoke hit me, searing the sensitive skin on my inner wrist. A vivid, angry red mark appeared almost immediately, burning against my skin. But I did not jump back. I didn’t scream. My teeth bit into my mouth so forcefully that the familiar coppery flavor spread through my mouth. Any reaction might cause me problems later. It was essential that I maintain complete silence; any sound would only get me into trouble. “Be careful, Grace! Look where you aim that thing! That silk is worth more than your worthless life,” snarled my stepmother, Elara. Her voice sounded rough, as if it were made of broken glass. Elara never even turned her head in my direction. Instead, her coal-black eyes, encircled by dark lashes, remained glued to the oversized, ornately gilded mirror that was the centerpiece of the room. She was completely enthralled by the image of the true pride of the Silver Lake pack. Rose. My half-sister. The golden child. The soon- to- be Luna. “It’s fine, Mother,” said Rose in a purr that could only be described as liquid gold. Her voice dripped with practiced, deadly sophistication and elegance. She stood on a tiny velvet pedestal, spinning slowly so the white material of her dress clung to her in a manner that caught and reflected the light that came from the glistening chandelier. She ran her perfect nails across her smooth stomach, admiring herself in the glass before her. She reeked of heavy jasmine perfume, an artificial scent meant to conceal the very scent of the beast. “She simply has clumsy hands,” Rose went on, shifting her eyes towards me momentarily in the glass. The expression was pure poison, one that would escape the eye of even her mother’s loving gaze. “She is better suited for the kitchen, or even the stables. Where the dirt belong” I swallowed the blood from my mouth and made sure that my expression remained unfeeling and inscrutable. I tightened my grip on the steamer and focused again on the last stubborn wrinkle in the reserve gown of Rose. There, hidden somewhere within the darkest recesses of my soul, the wolf inside me cried out. It was a weak, broken, pleading sound, a sound that filled me with hot shame deep inside. I pushed her down instantly and made her retreat into the trap that I myself had created. Darkness was her element; she belonged in the darkness. As far as the werewolf society was concerned, bloodlines were everything. I was an eldest child of the Alpha belonging to the Silver Lake pack. By tradition, I should have been at the pinnacle of that plush stage. I should have been adorned in my finest white dress, readying for my greatest day. But in our pack, the presence of blood meant nothing if you were a weakling. And I was not just a weakling, but a near non-existent wolf. Ever since that first night when she finally made her debut, and that was the most miserable night of my life, my wolf had failed to come into her own. While other wolves grew into powerful beasts, I did not; I remained small, fragile, human. I could not link with the others mentally, or cast any sort of aura to show them that I belonged. I had no scent either, and that was something only the most unique wolves in our pack lacked. I was a mutation, an abomination, a mere shadow in the place I belonged to by right of birth. "Keep hold of this, Grace," said Rose. There was no hesitation, nor did she look at me. She just blindly pushed a giant and extremely heavy velvet jewelry box backwards towards me. The force of it knocked the air out of my lungs, but I managed to stop it before it hit the polished wooden floor. My knuckles went white from the weight. The jewelry box itself was made of solid, ancient oak covered in velvet, filled to the brim with generations of pack heirlooms, heavy gold chains, and pure silver cuffs. This thing weighed a ton, and my arms, which had been trembling from holding the steamer for an hour, instantly started burning from the effort. "You don't want to drop it," Elara said with soft menace. "Scratch the finish of this box, and tonight you're sleeping out in the kennels, no blanket." "I have it," I rasped. The sound was harsh, unused. I remained absolutely motionless in the shadows of the huge room, cradling the box to my chest like a human end table. I observed the frenzied activity surrounding Rose, wholly invisible to my supposed family members. There were four different omegas bustling around her like restless and excited birds. One of them was kneeling at her feet, trying to pin down some stubborn fold of fabric near the hem of the dress. Another was applying an alarming dark stain of color to the perfect fullness of Rose's mouth. The two remaining omegas were braiding Rose's spun-gold hair and lifting it up into the intricate style. Words of constant and stifling praise filled the air. “You’re absolutely breathtaking, Rose.” “The Alpha won’t be able to take his eyes off of you.” “Your skin is practically glowing.” Each compliment was a little prick on the needles beneath my fingernails. It was a pain I knew all too well, a constant dull ache in my chest that followed me into bed at night and out of it every morning. I was used to the sting of rejection that came from being the unwanted and unseen sister. I had learned to build walls inside myself to cope. Tonight, though, the walls were crumbling. Tonight, the pain was far more intense. Tonight was the Mating Ball. Tension had been running rampant within the pack house for three straight days. It was not hard to see why. The Silver Lake pack was being overrun by their neighbors; they lost territory every day and the Alpha’s warriors became weaker and more easily killed every time rogue wolves attacked. Desperate, my father arranged a marriage alliance. He gave Rose to the most powerful, merciless Alpha in the whole region. Alpha Kael from the Blood Moon pack. The very mention of his name alone would make every wolf in the territory involuntarily shudder. Not only was he an alpha, but also a warlord. All the horror stories the omegas spread about him made him seem like a demon incarnate. It seemed that his wolf was the size of a bear. His eyes supposedly reflected silver liquid until the moment he killed his enemy, when it became completely black. They also told me that he had strangled his rivals with his own hands to be the alpha. Tonight, that very demon was about to come through our doors to become the mate of my sweet yet deadly sister. "Do you think I should wear emeralds or rubies?" asked Rose, tilting her head back arrogantly. "I think the rubies make my eyes pop.” "The rubies, definitely," Elara agreed, clapping her hands in glee. "Get the box up here, Grace. Move fast. No dillydallying." I emerged from the shadowed area behind the door, my body protesting with agony as I dragged myself across the room carrying the heavy wooden box. I held my head down low, allowing the messy, unwashed strands of brown hair hanging down over my forehead to conceal my face from the people around me. There was no way I wanted to make eye contact with anyone. Eye contact was a challenge, but I was too tired for that. I stopped beside the pedestal and opened the brass catch on the box. Rose's nails scraped viciously across my scalded wrist as she dug through the box for her jewelry. She didn't care that she had hurt me. She wasn't paying any attention to anything but the necklace with its sinister red stones. "Put it on," she instructed Elara, not bothering with me at all. There I stood, hands still holding the lidless box, inches away from being enveloped by her warm aura, inhaling the jasmine scent that would choke me if I got any closer. I looked at the planks of wood under my feet and counted how many grains were there. One. Two. Three. Four. "Just endure it," I thought desperately. Just survive tonight. Crawl into the kitchens. Scour the plates. Remain hidden. The wolf clawed at the prison bars I had set up around her in my head. It was not fear, but something else that she could not explain herself. It was as if she knew something was about to happen; something big and terrible enough to shake the whole earth. I slammed her back down hard, terrified of losing control of my own body and mind. The double doors of the master bedroom suddenly opened wide. The whispered conversations of the omegas ceased immediately. Even Rose ceased her spinning. I took a glance from behind my curtain of hair. It was Elder Mathis standing there. The elder was an old, hard-nosed man whose proposal was that I be sent to live in the wild rogue lands after my sixteenth birthday due to not showing my wolf form. The elder moved further inside the room, leaning heavily on his cane. Sharp and piercing eyes that seemed to calculate the very moment he looked at you, fixated themselves on Rose. He did not even spare me a glance despite standing beside her, carrying that hefty box of furniture. The elder exhaled sharply, and a look of pure reverence appeared on his weathered face. "The perimeter is secure," Elder Mathis declared, his voice choked with emotion as he stared at my sister. "The Blood Moon convoy will arrive within twenty minutes of crossing the southern border." Excitement filled the air amongst the omegas. Elara clasped her hands to her chest, her eyes shining with happy tears. "Are you ready?" Elara whispered, her voice shaking with the significance of the moment. Elder Mathis moved slowly towards the edge of the velvet platform, studying Rose from head to toe, from the flowing white silk of her dress, to the blood-red rubies in her ears, to her perfectly coiffed hair, to her proud and conquering smile. He nodded slowly in respect, bowing his head in deference to the future Luna of the most dominant pack in the country. "She is absolutely beautiful," Mathis said softly, and his voice reverberated through the thickening silence of the room. He turned to face the omegas, his gaze scanning over Elara, ignoring me as if I didn’t exist in the dark corner. "A Luna must be perfect… just like Rose.”