Samiya’s POV

“Leave us,” was the only thing that Meidranhad bothered to say from the moment he whisked me away from my home or what used to be my home, rather.

While I did enjoy the fact that there were no longer any brooding guards walking with us any longer, I didn’t enjoy the silence that accompanied us.

Scarlet, my wolf, also didn’t enjoy the fact that our mate went silent. I could feel her constant nagging at the back of my mind and I couldn’t blame her. Although we had just discovered our mate, the urge to bond with Meidran and his wolf was almost becoming overbearing.

“The moon goddess is truly so wonderful. I’ve always hoped to get a good mate, and what are the odds? Of all people in the world, she made my mate you, Meidran. We might have fallen off at a point, but I’m happy that my mate got to be my childhood best friend at the very least,” I mentioned, hoping that I had in some way given room for some conversation.

If Meidranheard anything that I said, he didn’t show it.

His indifference didn’t help Scarlet’s nagging even in the least.

He continued to walk along the stony path, with me trailing behind him. There were times when I tried to meet up with his pace, but the man made it difficult.

“Meidran, can you please slow down?” I whispered a bit louder this time.

The man finally came to a halt. Slowly, he turned to face me and when our eyes locked, it felt as though all the air in my lungs had been knocked out of me, leaving me breathless.

Soft honey brown eyes met with my small emerald green ones and I began to feel a tingling sensation buzz around the air. It had to be the mate bond. I tried to convince myself with everything inside of me that it was only the mate bond that had me feeling like this, but the fact that my childhood crush on Meidran never really left was one that my heart never failed to remind me of.

It wasn’t just the mate bond. It was the history that I had with this man.

In a few strides, he was in front of me. He let out a deep breath and ran a hand through his silver-blond hair. “Miya… Samiya…”

“Miya,” I corrected, taking a step forward and further closing the gap between us. “You always called me Miya when we were little. I know that we fell off, and although I was angry then, I have come to understand why things happened how they did back then, Meidran. I was… I am an omega, and you were the son of the old Beta of the pack. You had to keep up appearances, and so we had to stop seeing each other, but we don’t have to do that anymore, Meidran.

The moon goddess was nice enough to make us fated mates, so we don’t have to hide any longer or stay away from each other… status doesn’t have to be an issue anymore, Meidran. So please, call me Miya. Please.”

With each word and sentence that I spoke, there was this loud beating of my chest that rang in my ears and echoed in my head. Never in my entire life did I imagine my life going this smoothly without me having to lift a finger and now that fate had decided to align itself with my wishes, I was determined to make the most of it and express my gratitude to the best of my ability.

Meidran’s lips drew into a soft smile, allowing his pearly white teeth to peek through. “Fine. I’ll call you Miya, but I need you to come somewhere with me first before we can discuss any further.”

“Where are we going?” I arched an eyebrow, slightly puzzled.

“Trust me?” Meidran’s smile widened even more.

For a woman like me, one of our most important rules was to never trust anyone, especially the ones who just happened to have an extra tail in between their legs, but this wasn’t just anyone or any other man. This was Meidran.

My Meidran.

Sure he had hurt me in the past, but he hadn’t meant to. Meidran could never do anything to intentionally hurt me. The Meidran I knew couldn't bear it.

Plus, Scarlet would never have allowed me to say no to our mate.

Taking a leap of faith, I nodded.

He held out his hand, and I placed mine in his, giving room for the butterflies in my belly to spread to other places. It was the only thing that finally calmed Scarlet down.

We didn’t walk for long by the time we had reached the central market of Etrana.

Meidran and I were now walking hand in hand, which may have garnered stares from most of the people we walked past. I was used to getting stares from people wherever I went because of my popular status as the pack’s slut. I was used to getting even worse stares whenever I had men accompany me, but what I wasn’t used to was receiving weird stares when I was with Meidran.

The foreboding I felt in my heart worsened when I began to hear some of the whispers.

What is Beta Meidran doing? Doesn’t he know better than to wander about with the likes of her?

Has Beta Meidran’s game gotten so weak that he has to look for services with the wench of Etrana?

Isn’t that the wench of Etrana? I heard that she was the reason why Xavier and his mate started having issues.

What will his father say when he hears about this?

The rumors about me never bothered me in the past. I knew what I was, and I wasn’t ashamed of it. What worried me deeply was how Meidran was taking all of this.

Lowering my head, I held Meidran even tighter as we trudged forward. His body stiffened by my side, but I ignored it, trying to convince myself that it didn’t mean anything.

Maybe fate wasn’t on my side all this time after all, and maybe I was just too quick to rejoice because that was the only explanation I could give myself for what happened next.

A man ran forward, stepping in front of us, and from the tunic he wore, accompanied by a row of golden buttons and a sword strapped to his waist, I could only imagine that he was one of the Alpha’s guards.

The man took a bow, before standing up and clearing his throat. “I would hate to interrupt your rendezvous with er…” he took one glance at me before returning his gaze to Meidran, “With um… the wench of Etrana, but your father is looking for you. He needs to see you now and… he doesn’t look too happy either.”

Meidran withdrew his hand from mine, and although I felt a small shot of pain run through my heart at that one action, the sparks on my hand still lingered.

With blood rushing to my cheeks, I took a step away from him and kept my hands behind me.

“Thank you for the information. You can go now,” Meidran informed the guard, to which he took another bow and left, but not before sparing me another curious glance.

“So we will be going to the palace now? Is that where you wanted to take me all along?” I pressed, trying to clear the air of awkwardness that had somehow slipped in between us.

Meidran shoved his hands into his pockets and the free-spirited smile he once offered me was now replaced with a tight-lipped one. He shook his head. “No. No, that is not what I had in mind at all.”

The sense of foreboding I had earlier grew, wrapping its claws around my heart until I felt a small ache.

Looking around, I had come to notice that the stares had become even more. It felt as though a center stage had been somehow created and Meidran and I had somehow been pushed into it, with an eager audience to watch our show unfold.

I swallowed.

Forcing out a laugh, I tried to forget the fact that everyone was now watching us. “So where… where were you planning on taking me then?”

He scoffed. “It doesn’t even matter now. I thought that I could fix this mess quietly. I thought that I could change the stupid mess that the moon goddess created, but I can’t. I just can’t! I cannot pretend to be interested in a woman like you, much less want to be seen out in the open with you for goddess’s sake!”

I had felt pain before. I had felt it when my father left my mother and me. I had felt it the first time I had to sleep with a man just so my mother and I could see a good meal for the next day. Hell, I had felt it when I was fourteen and when Meidran ignored me for the first time and later on stopped talking to me, but this, this felt different.

My eyes watered and, once again, I looked around to see the crowd around us getting even bigger.

Fuck my luck.

“Samiya, this cannot be happening. Our... our mate can’t possibly mean that,” I heard Scarlet whimper, but she was wrong. Unlike me, she was naive. She didn’t see the world for what it truly was. Cruel and unforgiving.

“Just let me handle things, Scarlet,” I mindlinked her, not wanting my anger to seep into my tone, but I felt that I must have failed horribly at that.

I only heard a soft sound of disagreement before she went completely silent.

Holding my head high and grasping onto whatever pride I had left, I choked, “Is it because I’m an omega, Meidran? I thought none of that mattered anymore. Is the way I was born so hard to look over? Is it my fault that I was born like this?”

Meidran removed his hands from his pockets, folding his arms across his chest. The corners of his lips twitched and he rolled his eyes. “It’s not just that, Samiya. It’s the fact that you felt like whoring yourself out was ever a good idea in the first place. In that regard, you had a choice. You always had a choice.

I cannot be mated to someone who is tagged as the wench of Etrana! I refuse to taint my reputation in such a way and have a mate who didn’t value herself enough to keep her purity for the right person.”

Each word hit my chest with the intensity of a newly sharpened dagger. Feeling slightly faint, I held my chest and took a step back. The pain I felt began to mix with a heated anger. I was tired of being regarded as less than and being blamed for the decisions I had to make just to survive. I was tired of being trampled on and being treated like dirt.

Tears began to run down my cheeks and my breathing got even heavier. “And when you left me back then when we were kids? What was your reason for that?!” I screamed.

“Do you not understand how the rank system works?! Did you really think that the son of a Beta could spend his days playing around with some stupid omega who couldn’t even pull through the simple classes we had back then!”

Wiping the tears from my cheeks, I scoffed. “So, that was the real reason you left me when we were kids. You were scared to be associated with some stupid low-class omega, isn’t it? I was never good for you from the beginning, isn't it Beta Meidran?” I stressed his name and title like the two words put together disgusted me.

The fool clenched his fists by his sides. “Yes. Yes, that’s it. The fact that you were born an omega made things terrible for you and now that you made the wise decision to become the famous prostitute of the town, you’re even more disgusting to me. Now you can get over whatever fucked up and deluded version you had of us in your head.”

I felt my wolf getting even weaker as Meidran continued to speak. My heart broke into a million pieces, falling to the pits of my belly and effectively killing all the butterflies in my belly.

My head began to ache and I was sure that my eyes had become bloodshot, but I didn’t care. Keeping my head held up high, I narrowed my eyes at Meidran. “I fucking hate you, Meidran Hall!”

Meidran tried to walk past me, but I wasn’t done just yet.

“You’re trying to walk away from me again, aren’t you? That’s what you do best, isn’t it? You just walk away from everything you know you don’t have the balls to face!”

The murmurs in the background grew even louder, but I was far too gone now. I was lost in a pit of my own pain and self-pity.

Meidran turned to face me again. This time his eyes were heated with an emotion that almost made those brown orbs appear black, and almost immediately, I could sense what was coming next.

“Do it,” I seethed.

“I, Beta Meidran Hall of the Etrana Pack, reject you, Samiya Cordova, as my mate and I hereby break any bond we might share.”

Scarlet was no longer silent. A loud howl rang in my head and I felt her threatening to take over, but I was strong enough to keep her in check.

What I wasn’t strong enough to do was keep my emotions in check.

My resolve weakened, and I took a step back clutching my chest as though it could lessen the pain that was already beginning to fester. Weakness overcame me and I found myself falling to my knees. I could feel a burning sensation running through my veins, replacing the sparks that I once felt, and in my head only one word rang. Revenge.

“I, Samiya Cordova, wench of Etrana, the lowly omega you so terribly despise, accept your rejection, Beta Meidran.”

Samiya’s POV

Breasts.

There were breasts everywhere I turned, and I was supposedly the slut.

It had been two years since Meidran rejected me in the largest market square in Etrana and two years since I had begun plotting my revenge.

Every year, on the third day of every first month, a contest begins where all female werewolves, or were-women as I liked to call us, would fight for the Alpha’s heart. It was a game where all women had to convince Alpha Zain himself that any of us could make the perfect Luna, but the man always found a sneaky way to wiggle out of it. At best, contestants could only make it to his collection of concubines.

But not this year.

Because this year, I was going to show all of Etrana exactly how to mate with an Alpha and use my new status to ruin Meidran.

Upon my arrival at the Alpha’s castle, I was taken to a special area of the building where there just so happened to be other women willing to compete to be the Alpha’s chosen mate. Fortunately, this year the women willing to compete were a lot less, but they also happened to be quite desperate too.

There were about seven to ten other women in the hallway who were still dressed in their formal attire, which didn’t appear to be all that formal. Most of the women around me had their breasts almost slipping out of their dresses and, if my eyes served me correctly, there was a woman who had her nipples on full display with most of her dress being see-through.

I couldn’t bash any of their tactics though. I was definitely not the most morally upright person in the land and werewolves were indeed sexual beings.

Plus, my outfit wasn’t the most modest either. My mother and I had opted for a body-hugging dress with a high slit and a deep, plunging neckline while I kept my ginger-red hair in a high sleek bun. The dress I had on was seductive enough to capture a man’s attention, but clearly more modest than anything I had seen tonight.

The sound of metal hitting glass stopped the chatter in the hall and made all eyes search for the cause.

Standing in front of all of us, holding a glass cup and a metal fork was none other than Meidran. My purse almost slipped from my hands when I caught sight of his silver blond hair, but I was quick to prevent the small accident. What I wasn’t quick to prevent, however, was the toe-curling pain that erupted in my heart.

A howl from Scarlet echoed in my head and, all of a sudden, I found myself in the same market square from two years ago.

“Get a hold of yourself! He is not our mate anymore!” I yelled at Scarlet, but she was the kind of wolf to always act like a three-year-old pup.

“But the moon goddess-”

“Fuck the moon goddess! Now, behave so that I can get us a better mate!” I cut her off, preventing her from saying anything that could make the pain I felt possibly feel even worse.

Scarlet went silent for a few moments and I began to worry that I might have been a little too harsh on her. I loved her, but sometimes tough love was the only way to work things out with Scarlet.

“I trust you, Miya. I know you’ll only do what’s best for us,” I finally heard Scarlet say with a sigh of resignation.

“Thank you,” I replied in a more cheerful tone than I had used earlier.

My focus returned to the asshole standing in front of us all with a cocky smile plastered on his face. It hurt to see him so happy after what he had done to us. A big part of me still wished to see him have some form of regret or remorse after what he had done, but I knew that that couldn’t happen so fast. Not now at least.

I had been keeping myself updated on news about him ever since the rejection and, unfortunately things had been going smoothly for him ever since then. He even received a special award from the Alpha recently. One could say that he was living the perfect life, but that was all about to change very soon.

“Good evening ladies,” the bastard started, his eyes roaming through the crowd of women. Not once did his eyes land on me. Had he and his wolf forgotten me so easily? Was it really true what my mother had said that no one would remember so easily because I had become quiet and settled with the likes of a sad old gamma over the past two years? None of the women here could even easily point me out as the wench of Etrana.

The lack of attention intrigued me.

“I know that we are all excited to start the games that will decide who the alpha’s chosen mate will be, but for now, we will all be getting some rest, and tomorrow morning, we can all gather here for instructions on what the first game will be. Our staff will be going around and handing out keys to your new rooms. Get some rest and tomorrow morning we shall all meet again,” Meidran explained before stepping down from the stage.

Like the bastard that he was, he began mingling with some of the contestants.

Hypocrite!

If he only liked modest virgins and couldn’t be seen around women like me, then what was he doing around women dressed half-naked anyway?

Before I had a chance to turn red due to the anger bubbling inside of me, a young man approached me and handed me a key. I offered him a small thank you before turning my heels. As much as I despised Meidran and wanted to trick myself into believing that he didn’t affect me in the slightest, I couldn’t bear to see him so happy any longer, and it would have been even much worse if he noticed me. I wasn’t ready to confront him. Yet.

The room I was assigned to was almost the same size as the one I had back home. I had originally expected a bigger room with a few roommates, but if smaller rooms meant no roommates, then I was game. I enjoyed my privacy.

I waited for about two hours to go by before I stepped outside in one of my finest robes. If I truly wanted to win this game, then I needed to think and act fast and leaving things up to chance in the first game tomorrow simply had to be one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard.

I had barely left the sleeping area of the contestants when I heard a strangled moan. Choosing to ignore the sound, I took a few steps forward, but it was the sound of shattering glass that prevented me from moving any further.

“Please, more!” I heard the small voice moan, making me laugh.

“Couldn’t she wait,” I snickered, mindlinking Scarlet.

“Maybe it was one of those times. You know we have them too, Miya,” she countered.

I rolled my eyes. “You know we’d never try something like this in times as drastic as this. Plus, in the worst-case scenario, I’d use my hands. This woman is definitely getting hot with someone else.”

“You’re right. I was just trying to make things look better.”

“I may be a whore, but even I know there is no way to make this look good.”

While I was aware that I had a mission to set into pace, drama like this was something that I could never look over. Plus, I had a feeling that this could somehow help me win the contest in one way or another.

The moans got louder as I followed the distinct sound of the woman’s moans and, luckily for me, the sounds were coming from a room that just had the door slightly ajar. With a smile, I bent forward slightly and took a peep.

What should have filled me with instant gratification, instead filled me with instant regret.

Inside the room, pounding one of the contestants against the wall was Meidran. The alpha’s beta, Meidran Hall. The fool claimed that he had to have a virgin as his mate, but he couldn’t even bother to keep himself for his mate.

A soft whimpering from Scarlet met my ears followed by a familiar pain returning to my chest.

The pain worsened even more when I saw Meidran whispering sweet things into the woman’s ear before thrusting into her once more. A traitorous tear ran down my cheeks, and although I knew that it would be a wise decision to leave as fast as possible, I couldn’t get my feet to move.

As fate would have it, in the middle of his rendezvous, Meidran’s face turned, and his eyes and mine locked. His lips parted slowly and his eyes widened. It might have been from the pleasurable time that he was currently experiencing or from the shock of seeing me. Either way, if he didn’t know that I was a contestant before, he clearly knew now. It was only then that my brain seemed to work again, and my feet came back to life.

With as much speed as I could muster, I ran away from the door and the hallway altogether, while wiping away any signs of sadness from my face.

Somehow, I managed to get to one of the main hallways of the castle. Leaning on one of the walls, I drew in a deep breath while reminding myself of the reason I stepped out of my room in the first place.

Maybe fate was on my side after all, because the moment I turned my head to take a good look at the place I had wound up in, my eyes took notice of a man in a black tunic decorated with golden buttons with a sword strapped to his side. One of the alpha’s men.

He seemed to take good notice of me too, because his eyes widened before he quickly looked away.

Maybe he knew who I was. Maybe I wasn’t as forgotten as I initially thought I was.

Inhaling and exhaling, I mustered up all the charm I could and approached the unsuspecting man with a smile. “Good evening,” I greeted him in a low but cheery tone.

He gulped, his eyes blinking rapidly like someone had shoved something hard down his throat. “Good evening, ma’am.”

Maybe this was going to be a lot easier than I thought.

“You can look at me, you know. All I wanted was to ask for a few directions.” I waved a hand in the air, laughing. The man laughed along with me, but anyone could tell that it was clearly forced.

Slowly, the man turned to look at me and I widened my smile, hoping that somehow that would make him feel comfortable.

He swallowed.

“You are the wench of Etrana, aren’t you? I’ve heard so many good things about you. I heard that you’re able to make any man fall and looking at you now, I see why they say it’s true. Now, I know why men would willingly spend everything they have just to spend a night with you,” he rambled on, and suddenly I started to prefer seeing him quiet.

I let out another laugh and tucked a few strands of my hair behind my ear. At least none of what he heard involved details of my sad rejection.

“Thank you so much for the um… flattery. Well, what you have heard is true and the Alpha needs to see me tonight and I may have forgotten directions to his room, so I was wondering if you could show me?” I asked with a smile still plastered on my face.

His eyebrows creased and he gulped once more. “I’m not sure…”

With a long sigh, I stopped him from speaking entirely. Placing my fingers on my robe, I opened the material slowly, watching his eyes follow my every movement. Reaching into my inner garment and the area just above my breasts, I took out a few hundred dollar bills. Taking the guard's hands, I placed the money in it. “And will this suffice?”

Samiya’s POV

Sometimes it felt as though everyone in the pack thought with what was in between their legs rather than the brains that they just so happened to be born with.

Although I could tell that the guard would have willingly taken a night with me rather than my money, he took the money regardless and when I told him that the alpha and I had a special ritual we did, every night we met, the fool didn’t bother to ask any questions and did exactly as I needed him to.

This plan was absolutely crazy.

Scarlet made it her sole mission to inform me of every possible event that could make this entire plan go wrong and while she made a few solid points, I was determined to get the job done. Plus, I had gotten some kind of protection just in case anything went wrong. It wasn’t foolproof, but it would just have to work.

“When did my intuition ever fail me?” I mindlinked Scarlet in a snarky tone.

“When our mate rejected us,” she snorted.

“Just shut the fuck up!”

The guard had led me to the royal kitchen and, apparently, the alpha had a special Shilajit tea that he had taken to his room every night and I of course, had to pretend that I already knew that. When the guard mentioned it, a crazy idea popped up in my head that had a few kitchen staff as well as the guard helping me, offer me a look that let me know that they were questioning my sanity.

“Alpha Zain has gotten used to all my crazy ideas and if you don’t believe me, you should trust that the Alpha himself would punish me if he sees a stranger in his room. I also promise not to mention your involvement in this with anyone,” I told the guard and the female staff, staring at me with incredulous looks.

They all gave each other looks and that was when I chipped in again before they got a chance to register how truly crazy all of this was. “And besides, if anything goes wrong who are people most likely going to believe? The wench of Etrana? Or a few loyal staff of the alpha with clean records?”

“Fine,” one of the female staff sighed.

She lifted the white cloth covering the trolley and gestured for me to go in. “If you get the Alpha angry, then it’s your funeral.”

“Thank you. I assure you that the alpha will be pleased,” I told them all with a smile before preparing to get in. However, a small but slightly deep voice stopped me.

“Promise me that we will still see each other after this?” I turned to find the guard that had led me to the kitchen looking at me with sympathetic eyes and a hopeful smile.

“Just how delusional is this man?”

“Very,” Scarlet answered in a heartbeat.

I forced a smile. “I will try to,” was the only thing I said to him before hiding myself in the trolley.

From my experience, a delightful surprise could act as a perfect form of seduction. I had spent the last two years gathering all the details I could possibly get about the alpha and one of them just happened to be that he had been a closed-off person ever since his fated mate, Esmeralda, a powerful witch, turned against him and almost destroyed our pack.

I had heard that before that, the alpha was a man who enjoyed all the joyful things that life had to offer, but he had distanced himself from all of that ever since he got his heart broken in the worst way possible and tonight, I planned to offer him a taste of what he had lost in the past.

Not long after I had hidden inside the serving trolley, it began to move and the moment it stopped, I felt my heart skip a beat.

I felt someone kick the trolley and I took in a deep breath. “We’re here. You can come out now.”

Running over the plan in my head again, I pushed the white cloth in front of me aside and stepped out of my hiding place. Finally standing again, I straightened my back and then took the time to study my new surroundings.

In one word, I could describe the alpha’s room as simply beautiful. Arched windows lined the walls, bathing the room in a soft moonlight glow accompanied by the dozens of lights from the grand chandelier above our heads. Heavy white drapes of rich fabric cascaded from the ceiling, their folds capturing the light in a way that made them glow as well.

A golden harp about my height sat in one of the corners of the room and its strings seemed to call to me, but I resisted the urge to play. In the middle of the room sat what had to be the biggest bed I had ever seen, accompanied by a headboard with delicate carvings of wild roses. It felt as though I had somehow slipped into one of the fairytales my mother would read to me when I was a pup.

“We will be leaving now. Please try not to die,” one of the female staff said, pulling me out of my trance.

I only nodded with a small smile and waved the two women goodbye.

Once the two women had left, I grabbed the small cushioned seat close to where the harp was situated and, although there was still a tempting voice that told me to at least run my hands through the strings of the instrument, I ignored the voice and focused on the task I had at hand.

Untying my robe so that it flowed freely by my sides and showed the black lingerie I wore inside, I took out the flute and blindfold I hid inside of it.

“It’s now or never,” I told Scarlet.

“I trust you, but please don’t get us killed,” she replied softly.

“Not encouraging, Scarlet, but believe me, I won’t.”

Sitting on the cushioned chair, I put on the blindfold and began to wait for my queue. Using Scarlet’s super senses, I listened closely for any sign of movement, and it was only when I heard faint footsteps at the beginning of the hallways that I began to play the flute.

Notes from Lakme’s The Flower Duet escaped my lips and ran through the hollow wood that was my flute. If everything worked right this night, then it could only mean that my intuition was right, and I had chosen the perfect piece to play.

There wasn’t a moment where I stopped playing my flute. I played the instrument until the moment the footsteps got so loud to the point where I could feel them and I heard the bedroom doors open and close.

It was him. It was Alpha Zain Shuzen. The one Alpha in all of Etrana’s history to ever fall for a witch and choose to isolate himself from members of his pack right after. I could feel his powerful aura. I could feel his presence enter and take up all the space in the room to the point where it almost choked me, but what I couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t stopped me or said anything.

His footsteps grew even closer until he was right in front of me and, although I was blindfolded, I knew that he was staring. I felt his eyes all over me. It was hard to ignore, but still, I kept playing. That was until I heard his voice.

“Who are you?”

It was a simple question and his tone was soft, yet the force in his voice made me stop in an instant.