Chapter 2

Anya’s POV.

Every time I tried to breathe, it hurt.

Blindfolded, bound, and thrown stomach-down across the back of a horse, I had learned very quickly to keep quiet. Every plea for freedom had only earned me a fist to my ribs.

By the time the horse skidded to a halt, I was terrified, bruised, and completely disoriented. Ruthless hands yanked me down, dragged me inside a building, and ripped the blindfold from my eyes.

I blinked, forcing my blurry eyesight to focus on my surroundings. As my gaze darted upward, taking in massive stone archways and candle-lit chandeliers, I realized I had to be inside some kind of ancient castle.

Maids lined the corridors in drab, floor-length dresses and stiff linen aprons, like something out of a history book. Their shoulders were hunched and their faces deathly pale, staring down at the stone floor and avoiding all eye contact. Shouting and cursing echoed from deep within the hallway, accompanied by the sound of a woman wailing.

“Walk, whore.” One of the men shoved me from behind.

As we approached the oak door where the shouting was coming from, it burst open.

A young woman ran out, sobbing hysterically. Her hair was disheveled, and blood poured from her nose. As she sprinted past me, my stomach turned. Visible beneath the collar of her dress were dark, purple bruises snaking across her neck and jawline.

The beefy man stopped right at the open doorway, rapping his knuckles against the wood. “Boss?” he called out, a smug grin on his face. “Can we come in? We brought a surprise for you!”

“Get in here before I skin you both alive!” a booming voice roared from inside.

The men shoved me through the threshold. Sitting behind a wooden desk was a heavily built man with a wild, untamed beard. His dark eyes locked onto me, burning with unbridled fury.

His posture suddenly stiffened, his breath hitching in a beat of hesitation.

His gaze tracked down to my powder-blue sundress, bouncing straight up to my Nordic blonde hair, and finally landed on my face. Slowly, a maniacal, rumbling laugh escaped his chest.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the boss breathed, his lips curling into a sinister grin. He peered at my captors. “Is she what I think she is?”

The thin man slunk forward, bowing his head. “Yes, Alpha Garrick. She’s the replacement.”

Alpha Garrick cackled, slamming his fists onto the desk. “She is a beauty!” He barreled around the desk and clamped his hand around my jaw. “Absolute perfection!”

I gasped as his fingers squeezed hard against my bone, forcing my mouth open. Looking down, I swallowed a sob at the sight of his knuckles. They were coated in fresh, wet blood.

The blood of the woman he had just beaten.

“Yes… yes!” Garrick sneered, inspecting my face like a piece of meat. “With a face like this, she will easily pass for my dead daughter.”

My stomach violently sank.

His dead daughter? Panic overrode my terror, and I forced the words past my aching jaw. “What… what do you want with me? Who are you?”

Garrick ignored my question, his grip tightening until a faint pop sounded inside my jaw. A gurgle of pain pushed up my throat as he released his hold, turning back to his desk with a sudden look of disgust. “That useless wench of a daughter. I had to beat her for her insolence, and the worthless bitch had the audacity to go and die on me right before the wedding!”

He threw his head back, laughing darkly as he pointed at me. “But look at you. You’re going to save my life, you tempting little thing!”

“Let me go,” I demanded, my voice cracking as I tried to twist my arms out of the ropes. “You can’t keep me here!”

Garrick snorted, his eyes darkening with immediate irritation. “Shut your mouth, girl.”

“No. I don’t belong to you!” I cried out, trying to back away from him. “You can’t just keep me here. People will find out!”

It was a terrible mistake.

Alpha Garrick lunged for me, his hand twisting into my hair to yank my head back. Agony flared through my scalp as he violently whipped me back and forth, forcing me to stare into his maddened eyes.

“When I tell you to shut up, you shut up!” he roared, his hot, foul breath blasting against my face.

Tears blinded me as I whimpered in terror, my hands hopelessly bound behind my back. “Stop! Please, stop!”

With a disgusted grunt, he threw me to the floor.

I crashed down hard, my knees slamming against the unforgiving stone. Blinding pain shot up my thighs as my body hit the ground, leaving my head spinning.

Garrick didn’t give me a second to recover. He bent down, hovering inches from my face, his voice dropping to a low, lethal hiss. “From this day forth, you are Melinda, daughter of Alpha Garrick of Stonehaven. That is your name. That is your life.”

“No,” I choked out through my tears, my pride and desperation fracturing all common sense. “My name is Anastasia!”

Garrick’s face twisted in pure rage.

Before I could react, his heavy, iron-toed boot drove straight into my collarbone. The force threw me flat onto my back against the cold floor. The first kick stole the air from my lungs. The second kick sent a splintering pain straight through my chest. By the third brutal kick, I couldn’t take it anymore. The agony was blinding.

“Okay! Okay!” I screamed, curling into a desperate, pathetic ball. “I’m Melinda! I am Melinda, daughter of G… Garrick of S… Stonehaven!”

Garrick stopped. He stepped back, letting out a booming, satisfied laugh. “Good girl. I’m glad I finally got through that thick skull of yours.”

He smoothed down his heavy, old-fashioned shirt, unfazed by the violence he had just inflicted. “You will stick to that identity. I do not care who you are and where you came from.” He paused, his eyes narrowing onto me. “If anyone asks, you were born powerless. You have no magic and no wolf. If you do, you better hide it like your life depends on it—because let me make it abundantly clear—it does. Other than that, you can babble whatever nonsense you want. The townfolk already knew Melinda was insane anyway.”

Through the awful pain my body endured, a sudden wave of profound sorrow washed over me. I felt sorry for whoever the real Melinda had been. She seemed to be a mirror image of me, brutally abused by a sadistic parent and deemed a lunatic by everyone around her.

I managed a weak nod, even though my mind spun in confusion. What did he mean by no magic and no wolf? None of it made any sense!

Garrick turned his back on me, waving his bloody hand toward my captors. “Take her. Have the maids prepare her for the wedding.”

The two men swooped forward, hauling my broken, throbbing body off the floor by my elbows. I whimpered as the movement shifted my injured ribs, but they didn’t care, dragging me out into the corridor and summoning three pale, trembling maids to take custody of me.

As the women took hold of my shoulders, a fresh wave of horror paralyzed me.

What wedding? Who on earth was I being forced to marry?

This couldn’t mean anything good. Considering the crude brutality of my captors and the monster standing inside that room, I could only imagine the horrific beast of a man they were planning to pawn me off to.

How had my life devolved into this nightmare in a matter of minutes? How did I get to this wretched place, and how was I ever going to escape this living hell?