My feet no longer felt the bite of the snow; they had long since gone numb, becoming heavy anchors dragging behind me. Every cough that erupted from my lungs was like an earthquake shattering my fragile ribcage. Despite the venomous words he had spat at me moments ago, Varg did not let me fall into the white abyss. He reached down and gathered me up—not with the tenderness of a lover, but with the territorial grip of a conqueror seizing a priceless yet despised trophy of war.
As I drifted in the murky waters of my consciousness, leaning against his chest, I realized his heat was no longer just a threat. In this frozen hell, the embers of a High Alpha were a sanctuary. He moved through the primordial forest like a predatory shadow, the furnace within him keeping the spark of my life from flickering out.
As dawn began to bleed slowly across the horizon, a massive structure rose through the skeletal trees. This was nothing like Kael's pack house—that warm, rustic home decorated with antlers, where every face felt like kin and every hallway smelled of cedar and kinship.
Varg's estate was a monument to cold elegance. Constructed of reinforced steel and vast panes of tinted glass, the structure stood like an obsidian dagger plunged into the heart of the Alberta wilderness. The massive glass walls acted as dark mirrors, reflecting the forest's eerie silhouette back upon itself. It didn't look like a place where wolves lived. It looked more like the secluded manor of a reclusive, aristocratic dynasty. There were no dirty werewolf children running barefoot in the dirt here. There was only silence and the scent of power.
When Varg breached the massive iron gates, the sentries didn't utter a single word. They simply knelt, their movements synchronized and hollow. They didn't look like wolves; they looked like soldiers. Each seemed to know their duty with a single glance from their Alpha—a wordless telepathy forged in iron discipline.
I forced my fever-scorched eyes open, taking in the marble corridors, the glittering crystal chandeliers, and the sterile grandeur radiating from every corner.
"This place..." I whispered, my voice cracking like parched earth. "This isn't a prison. This is a luxury prison."
"I don't run a five-star hotel here," Varg growled, his voice echoing off the polished stone. "And you have no right to lower my Google ratings, girl. I hope you didn't bring any bedbugs from that pathetic shack you called a home. I don't need your 'reviews.' Keep your mouth shut."
He didn't stop as he carried me up the wide marble staircase.
"This is your new world, freak," he said, his words ringing through the high ceilings of the gilded halls. "There are no hyacinth-scented Omegas to nurture you here. There is only power and my law. Soon enough, you will miss Kael's dusty doormats, because within this luxury, even your bones will learn to freeze."
He took me to the top floor, to a massive suite overlooking the forest canopy. When he dropped my body onto the silk sheets, the melting snow from my blonde hair soaked into the expensive fabric, leaving dark, watery stains.
Varg leaned in, his breath brushing against my burning forehead as he whispered: "Welcome home, Vespera. Everything you see belongs to me, just as you do. Bury your human dreams beneath these marble floors. Because you will leave this room either as my Luna... or as a corpse."
The coldness of the marble walls, combined with my fever, created an acidic sensation on my skin. I lay shivering on the silk bed like an animal that had escaped the Alberta winter only to be consumed by the fire within. Varg loomed over me like a massive tower, watching me as if I were a malfunctioning piece of machinery.
"Please..." I moaned, the words cutting my throat like shards of broken glass. "Just... something for the fever. An aspirin... those little white pills from the pharmacy. Or just... lemon mint tea. Chloe used to make it... Please."
Varg recoiled as if I had cursed at him. He stepped closer with a hunter's grace, his massive shadow looming over the bed like a living nightmare.
"Aspirin?" he bellowed. The sheer volume of his voice made the priceless crystals in the room vibrate. "Those toxic chemicals belong in the garbage heaps humans call bodies, Vespera! You are a wolf. Even in that strange blood in your veins, some shred of honor must remain. Would you quench the fire nature gave you with a human invention?"
"I am not an Omega! I am human!" I sobbed, tears leaving hot tracks down my temples. "I want mercy, Varg! Just a little softness... You don't even try to speak to me like a human!"
"It seems mercy and obedience have never manifested in you," Varg hissed. He reached for a heavy copper chalice and pressed it to my jaw.
With a swift and brutal motion, he cut his own palm. His blood began to flow, filling the chalice with a rhythmic splash—a dark, thick crimson waterfall. A heavy, metallic, and primal scent filled the room, so potent it made my head spin.
"Drink," he commanded. "This is the only medicine the strongest Alpha of the North will give you. This will heal you. Drink my blood."
The wolf within me had never stirred. I had never felt the bloodlust, nor had the scent of blood awakened any latent appetite within me. I didn't know what I was, and my soul was screaming in the depths of a bottomless pit. The weight on my back was like the shifting of tectonic plates. My soul was like a manuscript written by a drunken author—riddled with errors, unforgivable and fundamentally flawed, a draft abandoned by God.
I could not shift. I had no craving for blood.
All I wanted was a bowl of chicken soup, a cup of mint tea, and those damn aspirins.