After My Death, My Alpha Mother Finally Regretted It

The underground arena was so quiet you could hear a claw scratch against stone. The only sounds were the sharp drag of talons across the walls and the heavy rasp of labored breathing.

I floated somewhere above it all, looking down at my own body standing in the center ring.

That body looked dead. Hollow eyes locked on the contestant across from it, while its right hand moved on its own, throwing strikes like something else was driving it, fast enough to leave afterimages.

A competitor in the adjacent ring caught the movement out of the corner of their eye. They glanced over and immediately swallowed hard, their face going pale.

They probably thought I was using some kind of berserker combat technique.

I wasn't. It was just muscle memory, the kind that gets carved into your body after years of brutal, high-volume training. Pure conditioned reflex.

This was nothing more than a dead body mechanically executing the habits it had learned while alive.

I had already been run to death two days before the Trials began.

The Submission Mark carved into my heart had burned through every last scrap of my life force.

What stood in that ring now was nothing but a shell, a hollow puppet being driven by my mother through the Submission Mark.

Twenty minutes before the final bell, my shell, under the Submission Mark's command, stiffly threw down the last contestant and became the only participant to finish every Trial event ahead of schedule.

Outside the arena, the crowd pressed in thick. Record Keepers clutching crystal orbs surged forward and surrounded "me," pressing their recording crystals close to those pale, bloodless lips.

"Contestant, you're the first person to score a perfect run in this year's Trials. How would you rate the difficulty?"

"Your speed was incredible. Any special technique you'd like to share?"

Dozens of crystal orbs lit up blue.

My body stood frozen in place, jaw working slightly. My vocal cords had collapsed at death, so not a sound came out.

The Record Keepers exchanged uneasy looks. The silence stretched into something awkward.

Then a shrill female voice sliced through the crowd like a blade.

"Move! Everyone move!"

My mother shoved her way through, dressed in her deep crimson Alpha's robe, face glowing. She snatched the amplifier out of a Record Keeper's hands and smoothly pulled the cold, rigid body into a side embrace. Her smile spread all the way to the creases at her eyes.

"Don't mind her, she's just so locked in from the Trials, her focus hasn't come back down yet."

"I'm her mother. Any questions, you can ask me."

Every crystal orb swiveled toward her.

She stood up straight and launched into what she clearly considered her magnum opus, the Gospel of Raising a Wolf.

"Everything this child has achieved, it's from the strict training I gave her from birth."

"Diet, living conditions, all carefully controlled. High-protein, high-rank prey, moonlight bathing, not one of them skipped."

"She didn't need to worry about anything. Every day, all she had to do was train as hard as she possibly could."

"I have a complete system. I'm the strongest Alpha in this pack, and my daughter will be too. That's why she moves like that. That's the Moon Goddess's blessing I fought to get for her."

I watched from the air above, and felt something close to suffocation.

My mother's eyes were lit with greed and vanity, the way someone looks at a masterwork weapon they spent years forging.

She had no idea that the perfect instrument she had so carefully sharpened was already rotting from the inside out.

To maintain the image of "genius warrior" in front of the crowd, she kept one hand hidden in her sleeve, fingers clenched tight around the Submission Mark's control rune, feeding a constant stream of commands: Stay upright. Stay upright.

The interview lasted a full thirty minutes.

The crowd finally dispersed. My mother dropped the smile, reached over, and yanked hard at my shell's arm.

"Stop playing dead. Get back and prep for the Water Trial this afternoon."

She turned to leave, and at that moment a faint sound reached my ears.

Click.

It was the sound of wolf bones setting rigid, of muscle fibers beginning to contract. A death countdown that only a wandering soul can hear.