Avery’s POV

“What the hell-” my father cursed as he stomped up the stairs.

My father and stepmother burst into the room. I tried to back away as they advanced on me in the small space.

Zara snatched at my arm and whirled me around so that the bite was more visible in the light.

My father took a look at the bite mark, stunned.

“This mark looks like it was left by a strong wolf,” he muttered incredulously. “Who marked you?”

When Zara and her mother heard the word ‘strong’, they stared at me with stunned and dirty looks.

I didn’t want to answer, could barely believe it myself, but I had learned to speak when spoken to in this house.

“I don’t know.” I whispered.

“Where is he then?” His voice rose to a bellow.

“Probably still by the pond in the forest, but I’m not sure….”

“I bet he just ran off,” Zara sneered, “I told you, a human like you would never be wanted by anyone.”

The first kick from my father caught me off guard. My father was quite a strong Gamma, and I immediately fell to the ground on the other side of the room.

“How dare you say you know nothing after being marked!” my father bellowed. “I should’ve never accepted you into my family. I knew you’re just destined to be a lowly whore like your mom!”

The second kick descended swiftly as I yelped and curled like a worm on the ground.

“This is the gratitude I get for raising you!”

I teared up thinking about my mother.

My mother is just a normal servant in my pack. She accidentally slept with my father while he was drunk and conceived me.

My father, as the gamma of the pack, never wanted a servant like her. So he angrily announced that she’d seduced him, and she was demoted to work as an omega slave in our pack.

The old Alpha, out of mercy, asked him to at least keep me and raise me in his family.

I was almost never permitted to see my mother, but I remembered her kindness when I sneaked a few chances to visit.

“Avery should be demoted to a slave too, just like her mom, since she is a slut who got herself marked and abandoned.” Zara suggested to her father.

Zara had long hated that I was Ryan’s girlfriend, wanting him instead for herself. Now I suppose she had gotten what she’d wished for.

“No daughter of mine will be a slave!” my father hissed. “First wolf-less, now this! I can’t let you tread on my honor as the pack’s Gamma anymore.”

I flinched away from his kicks, but had long ago learned not to run. It would only make him angrier. I could feel my back welting under his blows.

Finally, he slowed down, breathing heavily. He leaned towards me, roughly gripping my jaw in his hand and stared for a long moment at the mark on my neck.

Then a cunning and cruel expression crept over his face.

“At the mating ball, find a man who will accept you, marked slut,” my father growled. His fingers bruised my face with the force of his grip, “and if you do not, then it will be my duty to remove you from this world.”

He had threatened to kill me before, but this time I could see in his flat stare that he meant it.

A knot of ice formed at the base of my spine. Fear and panic warred with outrage and anger within me.

I could not outrun him. I could not fight him. I had nowhere to go.

And the mating ball……

Our Silvermoon Pack had a tradition of intermarriage with Nightwolf Pack.

The Nightwolf Alpha must pick a wife from Silvermoon in every three generations and vice versa.

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