Chapter Five

The entire Raseri pack has been in a flurry of panic ever since the night their prisoners escaped two nights ago. Still not counting her chickens before they hatch, Serenia has been on high alert and more obedient than ever the past couple days, afraid that someone will discover the aid she offered to the other pack when they made their escape.

So far, so good. She managed to get the laundry done that night, and with the help of the oversized jacket the man gave her, she warmed up a little and made faster progress, finishing it all before the sun rose, avoiding yet another death sentence in the snow.

With the entire village rallying together to figure out how the Wolfmåne pack made it in and out of their camp completely undetected and no trace of any of them other than the two knocked out guards in the prison, Serenia has had a couple days of peace.

Beta Brant has left for the Alpha house and has not returned since that morning, the Beta house becoming quite peaceful and lax during his time away. Serenia kept her head down and made sure not to involve herself with any gossiping circles within the house, in fear that her expressions would give her away. Serenia has been told many times she is like an open book; it would be asking to expose herself.

But she can't stop thinking about the ominous feeling she kept having. It was the only reason she had sought out the enemy pack, she wanted to know if it was them that the feeling was coming from. She was able to detect that someone had passed through the barrier, something she has never been able to do, and the exact moment they stepped through it, hundreds of yards away from her. But when she had met up with the enemy pack, the forceful tug was no longer there.

Whatever she had felt, it hadn't come from them, but she can't wrap her head around what it might have been then. Were there other members of their pack with them that night? If so, how did they manage to get through the barrier without her help?

Serenia has often heard of some packs having different abilities, one of them being telepathy, the ability to speak through the mind and often control the mind of others. But she always believed them to be nothing more than rumors and excited chatter, something to keep the ladies busy while they lofted around at home and in the village.

But if what they say is true, that might prove her theory, but she has no way to prove it at all. There is never a chance she will meet those men again, she has already overheard and confirmed that they were members of the Wolfmåne pack that had come to take back their pack members that were captured earlier.

Nothing is known about the members themselves, other than what Serenia saw that night. One of the members, seemingly the leader possibly, tried to harness his own inner spiritual power with no struggle or preparation needed, showing that he must be someone of high rank in the pack. It would make sense if he was the leader, but who exactly in the Wolfmåne pack is he? The Beta? Warrior Commander? There is no possible way the Alpha of the Wolfmåne pack would lead a rescue mission himself, unless they had also plan to do damage. That night it was clear the team they sent out was tasked with just rescuing, nothing else.

Although they are the Raseri packs biggest threat and main target, they still aren't a match for the entire pack with a mere small numbered team, with half of them exhausted and injured.

"Did you hear? They're sending out another hunting party, but it's not as simple as that."

Serenia overhears one of the servants whispering down the hall as she is cleaning the floors of the upper levels. She stops her scrubbing and cranes her head to listen more intently.

"Another one? Didn't we just send one out, and they came back with all those Wolfmåne members, right?" Another servant speaks.

'She's right. We usually only send a hunting team out once a week, the parties always big enough to bring back a haul of game each time, lasting the pack more than enough since most like me are starved anyway.'

"Do you think it's for revenge? I heard the Alpha is suspicious to how they managed to get in and out without being detected, the barrier should've stopped them."

Serenia's heart drops to the pit of her stomach. She drops her rag in the bucket and moves towards the door a little more but stops when she hears another door opening down the hall the opposite direction, and dives back to her spot on the floor.

Tilting her head up, she takes a peek at who it might be, and sees her mother being led out of the room by two guards dressed in the formal guard attire of the Alpha house.

'Where are they taking her, and why?'

As if hearing her thoughts, her mother turns her head in the direction of her daughter, a look of horror and guilt crossing her face when she realizes she has been caught. She never expected her daughter to be here on the day she visits the Alpha house, once a week.

A secret she has been trying her best to keep from her daughter for years.

Her mother shakes her head, as if to tell her not to do anything, and let her go. Serenia cowers on the ground, feeling helpless as she watches her mother quietly escorted away by guards.

'Do they suspect her as the traitor? Why would they suspect someone like her, who never leaves the house or done anything out of disobedience?'

Her mother should be amongst the last people they should suspect, but it was Serenia that succeeded in lifting the barrier with whatever spiritual power she has within her. From her memory, she isn't supposed to have any. There is a test that every pack member goes through when they reach the age of 12, to test the strength of their spiritual powers.

This allows both the pack and the member being tested to know when they will experience their first shift, and how potential their wolf could be. This also measures your rank and the level of training you can enter. When it had come time for Serenia to be tested, it was revealed that she has no spiritual power within her, deeming her unfit to train at all and useful for nothing more than chores.

This also meant, she may never experience her first shift or awaken her inner wolf. Now just weeks away from her 18th birthday and she still hasn't awakened her wolf, she has already been deemed a failure, a fake descendant.

'But if something really did awaken in me and I used it that night, they might have mistaken it for mom's power. I don't have any, how could it be me?'

The more she thinks about it the worse the situation seems for her mother. But what is there for her to do? Run to the Alpha house and confess everything? That may end her life, but it might not put her mother in the clear. The pack, already furious and opposed to her mother for giving birth to a defective wolf, might turn on her as a traitor as well.

She has nothing to offer in exchange for her mother either, without giving away that she spoke with the intruder's that night. Once again feeling utterly useless, Serenia reserves herself to weeping on the floor, trying her best to put forth some effort into her cleaning so she doesn't get scolded if someone walks by, but her limbs feel numb and her chest heavy.

Before she knows it, she hears footsteps coming up the stairs and does her best to wipe the tears still streaming down her face away and keep her head down while scrubbing. She sees the familiar attire of the Alpha guards and instantly lifts her head to see one of them carrying her unconscious mother back to her room.

Fearing the absolute worst, anger bursts through her and she cries out to the guards while running up to them.

"What have you done to her?"

Before she can even get close to her mother, she is smacked away by the other guard, landing hard on the ground.

"I see how the Beta disciplines his servants in this house. You dare speak out against an official guard of the Alpha?"

Just the thundering feel of his voice beating down in her is enough to make her want to cower into herself, but she needs to stand her ground, for her mother's sake at least.

Knowing from experience how to deal with these situations, she kneels down and bows her head against the ground. "That is my mother sir, please, can you tell me what happened to her?" she asks in a more mild-mannered way.

The guard frowns but gives the other one a look before nodding his head.

"Can't tell you what happened, but you can help her to her room instead, ask her when she wakes up in a few hours." The guard holding her roughly hands her mother over to Serenia and they both leave without another word, not bothering to help her by even just opening the door.

With great struggle, she slumps her unconscious mother over her shoulder and grasps the handle with the other hand, pushing the door open and dragging both themselves across the room to the bed. Serenia really comes to realize how weak she is as she tries to get her mother's body into bed and is practically winded by then.

She covers her with the thin blanket she is given, looking at the condition of the mattress she lies on every night. Judging by the small barren room entirely, her mother lives in similar conditions to herself. The only difference is Serenia's room is in the basement, the coldest and dampest area of the entire house, while her elder sisters are given comfortable rooms on the upper levels of the house.

Since her mother is also on the upper level, her bedroom being on the second floor, she assumed she was at least living in decent conditions, but to think she has been suffering all the same makes her heart ache for the silence of her mother, never once hearing her mention or complain her shabby room.

Whereas Serenia can remember countless times she complained to her mother about her room, asking her often to help her with sewing fur and straw into her clothes and blankets, but never even thinking to do the same for her, not knowing anything she was keeping from her.

The guards said it would be a few hours until her mother woke up and only a few more hours until nightfall, and the possible return of the recent hunting party, the timing is perfect for her to go out and try to catch a few rodents for more fur.

She gives her mother a kiss on the forehead and makes sure she is tucked in more before running back to her cleaning duties. She gets them done as fast as possible and races back to her bedroom to change her clothes for hunting, rummaging under her bed for the dull dagger she keeps for this exact reason. It was something she made herself out of a sharp piece of glass she found from a discarded glass bottle, sanding it down and molding it into a knife, then taking a strong piece of wood and doing the same to make a hilt, tying them both together with twine.

It works as best as it can for skinning animals, but when it comes to hunting, she took her time to make a bow and some arrows out of wood and rocks, often foraging for more materials while she hunts. Someone of her status isn't allowed to carry weapons of any kind, meaning she has to keep all of her hunting gear hidden and go out at dusk to avoid anyone else seeing her.

Once she is done her chores and has changed, it is already a few minutes until dusk. Grabbing her things, she sneaks out of the house through the cellar door, like she has done many times before, and runs off into the forest behind the Beta house. She knows from past hunts that most small animals rush to a source of water around this time, wanting to get there before the night falls and predators can get them much easier.

Serenia rushes towards the rapids where she did laundry the other night, remembering the path she believes the enemy pack had taken when they had made their escape, coming into contact with her. While she is looking out for small movements and sounds, she also looks around for anything they might have left behind a scent or trace of them being there.

But thanks to yet another huge snowfall, the scent and trace of anything since than has disappeared entirely. She continues to make her way to the river but comes to a stop when she is hit with a very familiar scent, the strange tugging force from that night coming back. She sniffs the air and listens intently for any sound around her, stretching her hearing as far as she can, but nothing.

Standing there for a few more minutes, the scent continues to get further away but the forceful tug in her chest remains, if anything she feels like it is growing the further the scent gets away, urging her to follow it. Without thinking, she takes off running in the direction of the alluring scent, not bothering to think about who or what could be waiting for her if she reaches it.

The closer she gets to the scent, the calmer the feeling in her chest is. This pushes her forward, and before she realizes it, she has reached the barrier. Coming to a dead stop just before the edge, she sniffs around again.

The scent is coming from beyond the barrier, and at this point, she can now smell multiple more scents and something else, a strange copper scent that tastes like battery acid on her tongue.

She realizes where she has smelled a familiar scent to this, coming off of the returning member of the hunting parties.

The smell of blood. A lot of it.

~*~

Serenia returns to the Beta house just as the sun is setting, with only two rabbits in her hand. It isn't as much as she hoped, but she had spent most of her time chasing the unfamiliar scent, only to end up racing back once she had smelled the overwhelming scent of blood coming from just past the barrier, too far for her to see but close enough for her to detect that horrible stench.

She fears this was also the reason there weren't as many critters roaming around as there usually are, due to whatever battle is possibly going on in the forest at the moment. Her thoughts instantly went to the hunting party that was deployed a few hours ago, and wonders if what the servants were gossiping about is true.

The party wasn't sent out to hunt, it is a revenge party on the Wolfmåne pack for infiltrating their pack and stealing their members back. Serenia doesn't understand why the Raseri pack can't just leave the Wolfmåne pack alone, not having the proper education either to understand the centuries long fued between the two packs, and why the Raseri seem so infatuated with stealing the Wolfmåne pack members ast torture playthings and slaves. Like Serenia, they have more than enough low power and disappointing pack members of their own to turn into slaves and servants, why take from other packs?

She has always assumed it's purely due because the Raseri pack are nothing more than filthy mongrels with the instinct to inflict pain on others and wreak chaos everywhere they go. If that is the case, then why are her and her mother so different from them? Even though they have both been subjected to abuse and harsh treatment, they have never thought or been urged to lash out and abuse anyone else themselves.

This may mostly be due to the lack of confidence and spiritual power they have within themselves, but if they really are true born members of the Raseri pack, they should feel the same overflowing instinct of rage and destruction. Even her sisters and step mothers act out physically when they are jealous or angry, but do so to a certain degree to avoid punishment and overstepping themselves.

'Maybe I'm not really a member of this pack,' she thinks to herself, hiding out in the storage shed to skin the rabbits amongst the freshly laid hay to disguise the smell of blood.

Serenia would love if she isn't a true member of this pack, but that would also raise many questions. If she isn't a true member, where is she from then? Where is her mother from? That means there is a chance her mother has suffered a lot worse than just being forced to marry into a terrible household. Serenia doesn't want to imagine her mother having to go through the horrors she sees many of the slaves taken from other packs.

Finishing up her last rabbit, she stops when she hears a ton of commotion coming from outside, growing closer and louder by the second. She takes off the last bit and hides the remains outside in the snow, stuffing the bodies of fur into her sack before venturing over to the firepit to see what all the noise is about.

It doesn't take her long to realize that the hunting party is back, but that isn't what picks up her feet and drags her towards the growing crowd.

The familiar and alluring scent from earlier is back and stronger than ever, no longer masked by the stench of freshly cut animal and hay in a confined space. Whoever or whatever the smell is coming from, it is amongst the gathering group.

Serenia tries to push her way through the crowd to the front and at least get a glimpse of who has arrived to try and pinpoint where the smell is coming from. She manages to make it through enough to peek down between other's arms and elbows to see the newly captured group of people the hunting party has come back with.

Her eyes scan the crowd as her nose sniffs the air profusely, until her eyes come to land on a crystal-eyed, silver-haired boy with his arms and mouth bound, kneeling on the ground at the front of the group, his eyes blazing as he glares up at Rune Iversen above him.

One word whispers ever so faintly in the back of her head, resonating within her.

Mate.