Chapter 5

Elena POV.

We finally landed in the pack house as something jagged, something that never quite settled in my bones. The deltas had still been shoveling me around like I weighed nothing, like I was nothing, until the alpha snapped at them. I didn't expect kindness from him. Not ever. So when he reprimanded them for the rough handling that began all the way from my father’s house, it startled me. Briefly. Foolishly. Because the moment he ordered them to lock me up, confusion surged back, sharp and suffocating.

The house looked the same, unchanged, almost mocking in its familiarity. Large, medieval in structure, with polished wooden floors that glittered under careful finishing. It still radiated that ceremonial life: the constant cooking, the unending hum of activity. I had once imagined belonging here. I had once wanted it. Now, I stood inside it knowing I was walking straight into something that would break me.

Part of me felt a fragile, shameful relief to be associated with the pack house. The other part trembled at the hell I knew Varlok would unleash.

“Turn your back.” His voice cut through me.

Even now, I hear it! Cold, controlled, already claiming ownership over something that was never his. I hesitated. Fear pressed against my ribs, but anger burned hotter. I didn’t understand why he insisted on keeping me close when I could so easily die under him. He didn’t own my life. He had no right to take it.

“What do you want from me?” I shot back, lifting my gaze to meet his.

I remember the way the room reacted. Eyes lifting, breaths hitching, I had broken an unspoken rule.

“You don’t mean to ask this question. Do you?” he said, voice low, dangerous. “You’d better keep your mouth shut and let me do my things if peace is important to you.”

He paused, and I saw something restless flicker beneath his control, then his grip tightened around my arm. It anchored. I felt pinned, like prey caught in iron jaws. Suddenly, he spun me around so sharply I nearly lost balance, my world tilting, my body almost folding into itself.

He studied me after that. My neck. My exposed skin. Like he was memorizing. Like he was deciding.

That was the moment I understood I was not a guest here. Not even a prisoner in the usual sense. I was something to be assessed.

The way he locked me up confirmed it.

The room was large, larger than any I had used in my father’s or mother’s house. Well furnished. Treated wood. Carefully arranged. Almost beautiful. And yet it felt like a cage dressed in silk, because I knew I would be kept there for two months. Two months of waiting. Of not knowing which version of Varlok would walk through that door.

His mother hadn’t approved. I could tell.

She came to see me. I remember sitting there when she approached, her presence softer than anything else I had encountered in that place.

“I’m sure it’s his diseased father he resembles with this rigid attitude,” she said, stepping closer to where I sat.

Her voice had been calm, almost reassuring, and for a moment I wanted to believe her.

“This is nothing to worry about, okay? Once you don’t fear being abandoned here, every other thing, I can bet you, is going to be cool with you.”

I watched her as she turned away, her words lingering in the air like something too fragile to hold. She seemed kind. Gentle. Nothing like her son. And that contrast unsettled me more than cruelty would have.

“Mother,” I called after her.

She turned back, approached again.

Even now, I feel it. The sting in my eyes, the tears that blurred everything before they even fell.

“What would happen to me if Varlok decides to mark me?”

She stopped. Just stood there, looking at me, measuring something I couldn’t understand.

“Elena,” she said finally, “we can expect the best. I know you fear being killed like in the case of Ruse. But we cannot expect the same from one person all the time. The child I raised is not used to brutality of this level he’s been showing lately. I know my son. He’s not like how you all are describing him.”

Hope. That was all she offered me. Hope built on uncertainty. Hope that felt more like a slow execution.

Because I knew the truth, I had caused this. I had run. I had tried to escape into the forest. And in two months, when the new mating cycle began, the heat would come again. There would be no escape then.

As she turned to leave, the tears I had tried to hold back finally spilled, trailing down my cheeks in quiet surrender.

That evening, they brought me food like I was already condemned. No words. No acknowledgment. Just a transaction.

The next morning, it got worse.

The delta came in. The same short one, the one who always led the others in their brutality. I remember the door slamming open. The air shifting. Before I could even focus on him, he grabbed me, bundled me up like I was an object.

“It’s time for morning walk, las.”

I stumbled as he dragged me along. My wolf stirred, restless, furious, wanting to growl, to lash out but I forced it down. There were too many of them here. Too many like him. One wrong move, and I would be torn apart.

I remember thinking that this must be what Mila wanted. This must be the suffering she had imagined for me.

And now, it is happening. Exactly as she wished.

Stepping outside felt unreal, like being granted a glimpse of a world I no longer belonged to. But the illusion shattered almost immediately.

They stared.

Everyone stared.

Not at him. At me.

The other omegas looked at me with pity carved into their faces. It stung more than cruelty. Only Celine met my eyes differently, hers held something real, something human. I clung to that for a second longer than I should have.

People knew. Of course they knew.

I was the runaway girl. The one Varlok had claimed.

I could feel everything at once. Shame, anger, fear layered so heavily it made my steps falter.

“See Elena… so she will be the next Varlok’s wife who will soon…”

The whisper reached me anyway. I turned, our eyes met, and she immediately looked away, shifting awkwardly as if she could erase what she had said.

Wife. Luna.

They spoke of it like destiny.

But to me, it sounded like a death sentence.

I remember thinking becoming luna would not be a rise.

It would be the end.

We kept walking, passing faces that blurred together, and something dark coiled inside me.

I wanted to fight them. All of them.

Not because I could win.

But because losing like this… quietly and obediently felt far worse.