Almila
They all hate me, and I know they do.
Even though I'm the strongest alpha female in the pack, they still hate me.
But I don't want to stop it.
Let them hate me, let them never forgive me. Because I will never, ever, be able to forgive myself.
They hate me because the pack's leader, my father, died because of me.
The pack's Luna, my mother, was left without her mate and forced into endless loneliness.
It's all because of me. I'm the one who drove my mother into this state.
She cries quietly at night because of me. She was left alone, and easy to take advantage of, because of me.
And she is no longer the pack's Luna because of me.
I won't say that I didn't do it on purpose, that I never meant for any of this to happen, that I never wanted things to go this far.
Even if I scream those words thousands of times, every day, every hour… it won't change the fact that my father is dead.
Despite being one of the strongest alpha wolves in the pack, despite having gone through my shift at the beginning of my adolescence, despite possessing an aura intense enough to bring anyone to their knees, I wasn't strong enough.
Because I didn't know how to control that power.
Daughter of a powerful alpha leader, carrying the noble blood of a mother from a renowned lineage, the only child, and the future leader of the pack…
I, Almila, may have been born with more than one golden spoon in my hand, but every spoon I touched bent and broke.
I was twelve the first time I was taken by the enemy pack, the ruling predators of the northern forests. I hadn't shifted yet back then, but everyone had high hopes for me.
They had no doubt that I would become one of the strongest alpha females of the pack, its future leader.
I lived up to their expectations.
That night, the night I was kidnapped, I shifted for the first time.
It was an uncontrollable force, one that belonged to me, yet carried the ancient power my spirit had gathered through thousands of years and countless lives.
It was too much for me to bear, and I couldn't control it.
I slaughtered the ones who took me in a single night.
Their alpha males, their women, their children…
I killed them all without a second thought.
To me, they were nothing but prey.
The fact that they were my own kind didn't matter.
My vision darkened, and I lost consciousness entirely.
I still remember the scent of the blood on my hands, and in the fur of my wolf form before I shifted back.
Even the snowflakes falling from the sky couldn't drown out that smell. The mingled scent of dozens of alpha spirits…
After I slaughtered so many wolves without control, our enemies stopped being just ordinary enemies.
I had become a rarity — something seen only once in generations.
They had taken me merely to make a show, to prove a point, but they had made a grave mistake. Now they had a new mission.
To wipe out my pack.
Blood for blood, tooth for tooth, that's what they said. And I couldn't blame them.
When the truth came out, I offered myself up. I would go to them, surrender, and they would kill me.
That way, my pack wouldn't have to pay a debt born from my sins.
My father refused to accept my attempt at sacrifice.
He said he would go alone and make a deal with the enemy pack. I told him it was a stupid idea, shamelessly so.
Every day before he left, I kept telling him that this was my responsibility. If I had made a mistake, I was the one who should pay for it.
But my father had loved me deeply from the moment I was born, and that was his greatest flaw.
My father left.
That morning, as he stepped out the door, he looked into my eyes and held my hand one last time. He gave me his final smile. His eyes carried the weight of a silent farewell.
It was as if he knew a truth I had no knowledge of — one he had already accepted long before I could even sense it.
They say an alpha leader can make you kneel with a single glance, steal your breath, keep your head bowed.
But when my father looked at me for the last time, he gave me the most tender look he had ever given me in my life.
His final words were, "I want to see my favorite dish on the dinner table tonight, made by your hands."
These hands couldn't stop him.
Almost the entire pack tried to stop him. Just like I did, they told him it was a stupid idea.
They said, "You're walking toward your death, you'll put the whole pack at risk with your loss."
But he didn't listen.
Unfortunately, my father loved me too much.
He found the possibility of me being killed far more terrifying than the possibility of the pack being wiped out.
I wish I had disappeared instead.
That day, for the first time in my life, I felt a fear so deep it nearly split me open.
What if he never came back?
What would I do without him?
Even imagining the loss of anyone in my family always led me to the same thought.
If any of them died… I wouldn't be able to go on living.
But my father did not return alive.
And I continued to live.
That night, just before the snowstorm began, the sky and earth trembled with a howl rising from the depths of the forest.
It was an alpha's cry, but not one of victory.
It was the withering of loss.
After my father died, part of the pack said I should become the new leader.
I rejected them. Having someone who couldn't even control her own power lead the pack would only mean its downfall.
Another part of the pack sided with me. In their eyes, I was no longer as valuable as before. Once I lost my respect, they also forgot that I was someone powerful, someone difficult to reach.
This is why they punished me in their own ways.
They made me do the tasks they didn't want to do, treated me as nothing more than a tool to test their strength, left me without food or water for days, and didn't allow me to see a single ray of sunlight.
Their punishments didn't matter to me.
Because with every punishment they deemed fit for me, I began punishing myself.
Did they withhold food? I didn't eat.
Did they lock me in a shack? I didn't break the door.
I could have stopped everything, yet I didn't.
A pack without a leader came to be ruled by a former Luna who had lost her mate.
By an alpha woman who, with each passing day, lost her identity, her consciousness, her very self because her mate was gone.
My mother gradually lost her mind.