To Wed A Monster

CELESTE D’ARDEN POV My name is Celeste D'Arden, born and bred to be the first female Alpha of the Crescent Pack. I had lived my whole life locked up in a coal cellar, visited almost everyday by Betas who don't come to check up on me or ask if I was running insane all by myself. No, their only purpose of visiting was to train me in ways that a normal wolf would describe as torture. To father, that was the only way I'd be safe and strong enough to be able to rule a great pack like Crescent. To the pack, I was a beacon of hope, the chosen one who they believed would bring peace to the realm. As for me, I hated my life. "Knock Knock." My eyes flickered open, knocking me out of my meditative state. Today is Sunday, the only day in the week I was free from training, so I wasn't expecting any visitors either. "Who is there?" I asked, rising from the mat and rushing quietly to my desk where I had hidden a small dagger. Tucking it behind me, I meandered to the door and quietly opened it. A young maiden stood there with ashen face. "Your father wants you in the palace immediately." I blinked, my heart leaping with excitement at the thought of seeing daylight after months of darkness and lamps. Clearing my throat, i shook my head. "No, I can't. Father knows it's risky for me to leave the cellar." "Alpha Jordan made the decision himself. He wants you in the palace immediately." A tear dropped from her eyes as she lowered her head. "Our lives depend on it." ########## I squeezed the letter and tossed it aside. "Never, Father! I'd rather die than be sold off." "Celeste, you have to calm down." My father said, holding my shoulder. "You know I will never sell you off. You're my gemstone, my everything." I shrugged his hands off my shoulder. "Then what is that?" I pointed to the squeezed letter. His silence only made my heart crumble more. "No, Papa." I sobbed, falling to my knees. "I beg you, don't strip me off my birthright. I've trained all my life to be Alpha. I have sacrificed too much to be married off to a stranger." Queen Wicily, my stepmother walzed into the room. Her presence, as usual, turned all heads. Dressed in a black gown with diamonds around her neck and wrists, she was an ethereal beauty with ebony eyes that screamed evil. One smirk from Queen Wicily and I knew the case was over. My father loved me dearly but whenever it was me versus his new wife, she always won. “Celeste, you don’t understand the magnitude of our situation.” Father tried to explain, his eyes unusually sober. “You are so young and—” “Let me talk to her.” Stepmom cut in persuasively. “We are both women and I’m sure she will listen to me.” Looking at me with those soft eyes, father pulled me close and kissed my forehead. “I love you, Celeste and no matter what happens, I want you to know that your stepmom and I wish the best for you.” He couldn’t possibly mean that? Queen Wicily had never meant well for me. She hated me and she didn’t even try to hide it. “Celeste knows we love her.” Queen Wicily added with a sneer on her face. “Don’t be too hard on her.” My father whispered to her before leaving the room with his Betas. As soon as the door was shut, the Queen grabbed my ears and pulled me towards the stained windows that oversaw the castle’s fields. “Let go of me.” I struggled as her long fingernails dug into my earlobes. Anexia—my wolf—growled within me by the disrespectful approach of the Queen. If not for the respect we both had for father, Queen Wicily would have faced our wrath a long time ago. Cackling loudly in my ears, she pushed open the large windows, allowing the cold morning wind and snowflakes into the room. Dark clouds hovered in the sky, promising a storm ahead but it wasn’t the frightening weather that made my skin ashen. No, it was what I was seeing in the fields below. Troops of soldiers mounted our fields; huge, gigantic and muscular men bearing a strange flag in their hands. I couldn’t count them all but I was sure they would be up to a thousand or more of them. Wearing black robes with head armor made of skull, the men below were too popular to be mistaken for my father’s soldiers. My blood ran cold as I watched the quiet troops stand still with their spears, axes and boomerangs clutched to their arms. “Do you recognize them, Celeste?” She asked, her voice laced with excitement. Battling the paralysing fear that ran down my spine, I nodded my head. “Yes… They’re Lycans.” The word alone made my mouth tremble. It was known here in the Crescent pack that the mere mention of the Lycans was a bad omen, and as kids, they usually scared us with stories of creatures from the North who had feral instincts and craved for bloodshed more than anything else. “Smart girl.” She clapped her hands, freeing my ears which were sore and bruised. “Do you know why they’re here?” "No." She chuckled. "Many years ago, your father made a bad deal with the Lycan King. In exchange for a miracle potion to help your mother bear a child, he promised the King seven chests of diamonds every year." “I was born from a potion?" I flickered my eyes as her words refused to sink in. "No, that can't be true." She giggled. "You wish, Celeste but the truth will always be the truth. Your father kept to the end of the deal, giving out seven chests of diamonds to the Lycan Kingdom every year." My mind began to race with countless thoughts and I finally began to understand why our pack was always bankrupt. Despite our natural resources, Crescent pack was always poor and as the years went by, the poverty ratio increased geometrically. It was all because of me? The hungry children on the streets, the poor farmers, the beggars at the gates, they were all suffering because of my existence. My chest tightened and I could feel a pain in the back of my throat. All this while I had been the cause of my people suffering? Was I even worth it? “Why did father not tell me this?” I pondered out loud as my chest burned up. Queen Wicily shrugged. “He didn’t want you to feel guilty. “ “But I am!” I retorted, tears stinging my eyes. “It’s all my fault.” Anexia was trying to comfort me but I locked her in my mind and sobbed profusely. Stepmom broke the silence, her hands resting on my shoulder. “There is a way to rectify it. “ I lifted my gaze from the floor and met her dark eyes that had the shape of a serpent. “How?” She reached for my hand and forcefully pulled me back to the window. “Look down there, right at the centre of those thousands of soldiers.” I narrowed my eyes and followed the Queen’s instructions. “Do you see the man atop the black horse?” She asked, a thrill pulsing in her voice. “The man whose face is hidden behind a mask?” Indeed there was a man on a stallion, sitting still and quiet. From that distance, I could tell he wasn’t like the rest of them. Although they were all dressed similarly, he didn’t have the skull mask, neither did he bear axes or hammers. Birds circled around him in large numbers, clawing aggressively as they crashed into one another. His presence was lethargic. If death had a body, it had to be him. Goosebumps grew on my skin as I watched him from afar. “Who is he?” I asked slowly as I swallowed in saliva to moisten my dry throat. Queen Wicily giggled. “The man who has come to collect his debt.” I shot her a quick glance. “But we have no money.” “He doesn’t want money, dearie.” She laughed out. “It’s too late for that now.” My gaze shifted back to the man on the horse, and I couldn’t help but notice how unfazed he was despite intruding into our pack. No man dared break into the Crescent pack, but at this point I was questioning if this being was anything normal like us. “What then does he want?” I whispered the question I had been dreading to ask. “You.”