The whole dinner felt like a sick joke, a dog and pony show. What the hell were they really welcoming them to? If that Jonathan asshole was speaking truth, then every single one of them needed an escape plan from this godforsaken nightmare. Jess's mind was a pinball machine of fear and white-hot animosity. She wished she'd fought harder when those pretend cops laid their grubby hands on her. Should have at least kicked one of those motherfuckers in the balls. Anything to make this moment feel a little less like she'd rolled over and played dead. Now, the regret gnawed at her, a bitter taste of not trying hard enough, of not being cynical enough when some supposed law enforcement tossed her onto a Greyhound.
Her fight-or-flight instinct was screaming bloody murder, a siren in her ears. Every rustle, every hushed word sent jolts of pure, unadulterated reactivity through her system.
Trinity wanted to leave to at least try to escape. See how far they could make it. The manicured lawn stretched out before them, dotted with meticulously arranged flower beds bursting with vibrant hues. Beyond the twinkling lights, the dense woods surrounding the estate loomed dark and impenetrable.
She was stuck at a table with all the other rejects. Defectives! Exiled! The new labels swirled in her head like poison, each one a fresh stab of throbbing pain. What was actually in her blood that made her so different from them? What twisted quirk of fate made all the broken souls at this table somehow the same kind of disappointment?
For Jess, it felt sickeningly familiar, like being a kid again, shuffled from one underfunded, poor excuse for a group home to another. Then, finally, she'd clawed her way to what she'd dared to hope was paradise, only to find it was just another diamond-encrusted cage. Except this time, it wasn't just one sick, psychotic bastard she needed to escape. It was a whole community of them, and she didn't even know where to begin. "What are we going to do?" She muttered under her breath, her jaw tight. The scent of rich soil and blooming jasmine hung heavy in the air, a stark contrast to the metallic tang of fear that clung to her tongue.
Massive wooden tables had been meticulously arranged across the sprawling back garden, shoved right to the furthest edge of the gathering. Many posts had been placed at the outer circle, allowing for twinkle lights to dance around them. It was a lot of effort to make an inviting nighttime garden party so the whole pack could be bathed under the light of the Moon, a symbolism of their wolf nature. The silver orb hung high in the inky sky, casting long, dancing shadows across the manicured lawn.
As the minutes ticked by, the house throbbed with a growing, palpable tension. A low murmur rippled through the other defectives, a mix of anxious whispers and a few strained, eager tones. Even the children, their faces smudged with sleep, looked around with wide, uncomprehending eyes. It would soon be time to be herded to the gathering, this supposed reunion with the family that had willingly tossed them aside like trash. But if Jonathan's grim words held any weight, they were just bringing them back here to be mannequins, playthings for their sick sexual fantasies or violent outbursts. The grand house loomed behind them, its many windows radiating a warm, deceptive glow.
Trinity felt a buzzing in her veins, a restless energy that felt like her entire being was about to rupture, like she was going to claw her way out of her own skin. The feeling was alien, illogical, but it was a tidal wave threatening to drown her. The simmering hatred for these people, her family, was a bitter, corrosive acid in her gut.
The same smug man who'd handed them their room keys and made that grand pronouncement about this dinner was the one who came to collect them. This time, he'd introduced himself as Kael. His smile didn't reach his cold eyes.
He wasn't overtly vicious, but that didn't mean a thing to Trinity. She didn't trust him for a second. His eyes kept flicking her way, a subtle, unnerving appraisal that made her skin crawl. Some of the other captives seemed to notice the unwelcome attention she was drawing and instinctively distanced themselves, hoping to become invisible. Only Ryan and Jess stayed glued to her side, refusing to be intimidated by the threatening aura radiating off this single, towering man. Standing at a monstrous seven-foot-three, he seemed to scream that he could snap their necks without even breaking a sweat, a casual act he wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over. "pervert," Jess muttered under her breath, shooting Kael a venomous glare.
Arriving at the gathering, the divide was stark, a physical chasm between us and them. The defectives. The different. The exiled. And the "normal" ones, the ones who got to stay. As if that wasn't a big enough middle finger, while they were dressed in variations of the same casual clothes, everyone else had chosen to dress like they were attending some fancy garden party, all cocktail attire and forced smiles. And their eyes… hundreds of eyes were fixed on them, a sickening cocktail of confusion, morbid interest, lust, and outright revulsion. A low hum of voices rippled through the gathered wolves, a mix of curiosity and disdain. It was obvious that more than a few of these pristine bastards hated them. With every breath, Jonathan's grim words circled in her head, a not-so-subtle reminder of what was to come, what they had to expect. The air thrummed with an unspoken energy, a silent judgment hanging heavy in the perfumed night.
Her hands trembled, a pathetic display of fear. She pressed them flat on the table, splaying her fingers in a futile attempt to calm the storm raging inside her. What she didn't notice, what no one at the table noticed, was the subtle, almost imperceptible growth of her nails. Fueled by her growing panic, they seemed to lengthen, just a centimeter or two, but enough to give them the sharp, lethal edge of a dagger. Her eyes darted around frantically. Ryan's hand settled on her shoulder, a silent attempt to ground her. The contact stopped the unnatural growth before anyone could see, before Trinity herself even registered the change. Her shaky fingers roamed over her steak knife, trying to slowly slide the blade off the table. The silverware gleamed dully in the artificial light, a potential weapon in a world that suddenly felt hostile.
Ryan's eyes, however, were glued to Trinity's every twitch. He couldn't let a moment pass without checking on both girls, making sure they didn't do anything to get themselves killed. "It wouldn't help," Ryan murmured, his gaze fixed on the glint of the knife.
"what else are we supposed to do, Ryan?" Jess hissed, her eyes darting around the opulent garden with undisguised fury. "Sit here and wait to be used?" She spat and irritation pushing away her plate.
Begrudgingly, Trinity took a deep breath, releasing the knife. If Ryan said it wouldn't help, she would believe him. She was just trying to find some sense of protection, something that was within her control. The scent of roasting meat wafted from a nearby grill, a grotesque juxtaposition to the fear churning in her stomach.
Ryan's words dragged Trinity back to the present. She couldn't help scanning the crowd, desperately searching for a face that might resemble her own. Were her parents somewhere amongst these well-dressed people? Could they even recognize her after all this time? Every single face she looked at, she wondered if there was another captive who mirrored their features. A sick, twisted game of guess who.
The more she thought about her family, the more a long-dormant feeling clawed its way to the surface. A feeling she'd buried so deep, she'd almost convinced herself it never existed. But it was there, a raw, festering wound of pure, unadulterated rage. That lingering sense of longing had withered and died years ago, replaced by a cold, simmering hatred. Eventually, even that had faded into a numb apathy. But if she'd really been ripped from her life, just dumped into this pile of rejects, then all that remained was this white-hot, all-consuming fury. How could they, after all this time, just decide her life again? The gall of these people.
If she was worthless to them without this stupid gene, then they had no right to think they could know her, because she didn't want to know them. She didn't want to know a thing about them. She had a life, however shitty and hollow it might have been. It was a choice she had made, and she deserved the right to live it the way she wanted to, because no one, not a single soul, got to decide how her life would proceed again.
Her anger made her skin prickle with an uncomfortable heat. She hadn't felt this raw in a long time. Her mind rarely ever strayed to the people who had abandoned her, so this sudden resurgence of hatred felt unsettling. Twenty-three years hadn't been enough to make it disappear. The twinkling lights above seemed to mock her inner darkness.
Twenty-three years. Trinity was twenty-three years old. Twenty-one years since they'd left her at that hospital. She'd made her own peace with it. At least, she'd thought she had. The idea that her own blood was part of this arrogant, violent pack made her stomach churn with a new level of revulsion.
She was so engrossed in battling the tidal wave of her emotions that fear hadn't truly registered. Only when she watched Jess try to sneakily hide the knife did the tendrils of fear begin to creep in. But it didn't consume her. White-hot rage had taken its place, a blazing inferno that left little room for anything else. Anyone who dared to look into her eyes would see the blazing heat of a woman who wanted to burn the whole world to the ground. If everything Ryan and Jonathan had said was true, her parents were some kind of purest freaks. They were strong. And maybe that didn't give her the right to be this mad, because what could she really do? She couldn't fight them. She couldn't get away. She was stuck. But that didn't eliminate the feelings churning inside her. Something inside felt irrevocably broken, unable to be pieced back together after this kidnapping, whatever the hell it had demolished inside her.
"Let's just wait for now. Nothing has happened," Ryan spoke softly, but he knew, with a chilling certainty, that no matter how low his voice, his words didn't escape the wolves surrounding them. Their senses were beyond anything he could imagine. But he knew they could hear him, so he chose every word with excruciating care. He didn't want to give anything away, but he couldn't let his friends do anything stupid.
He didn't want to say anything inflammatory. If there was one thing his brother had always drilled into his head, it was that a wolf's pride was a dangerous thing, and it wasn't worth the risk to offend them, especially when you didn't have the power to cushion your words. And in this environment, he was weaker than every single one of them.
"Nothing?" Jess spat the word back at him, her voice raw and harsh. "Look where we are? I have a feeling I can't just go home!" Her voice cracked on the last word, and she cleared her throat roughly, fighting back the tears that threatened to turn her into that scared little broken thing again.
Trinity wanted to comfort her, but she felt useless. As much as she wanted to help Jess, she desperately needed help herself. She wanted to be comforted, too, but the words wouldn't come, not even to herself, let alone Jess. So she just looked at her sadly, a mirror of their shared misery.
Alpha Adrian smiled, a slow, sinister curve of his lips as he surveyed the scene from the top floor of the pack house. From his vantage point, he could see every single one of them at their tables in the backyard. He had deliberately placed the defectives at the back, a clear, visual declaration of his opinion of them.
He wanted the rest of the pack to strive for power, for strength. He wanted everyone to understand that weakness was not tolerated. This was a hierarchy, and the defectives landed decisively at the very bottom of it. This little gathering wasn't about reuniting families; it was about shaming. It was to make those with stronger houses and cleaner bloodlines know precisely who they should not mix with, who was tainted and who was pure. The arrogance of the man was palpable, even from this distance.
Walking down the flight of stairs, he spotted his beta standing restlessly by the door. Boris was fidgeting, a rare display that spoke volumes of the turmoil churning beneath his usually stoic surface. Adrian could sense the beta's inner wolf, straining at its leash, desperate to find its cub. The sight only fueled Adrian's simmering rage towards Trinity, a desire to punish her for existing, for tainting his trusted beta, because Boris, despite his strength, was just like the rest – cursed with the blood of a sick, disgusting defective in his lineage. He, too, needed to be shamed.
The bond between alpha and beta was unique, a sacred trust that transcended mere friendship or pack loyalty. It was about life and death. The beta was the alpha's sword in battle, and his sword had developed cracks, something Adrian had no intention of ignoring.
The first crack had formed the moment his daughter had been born, a split in Boris's loyalties. It was normal, a hurdle most betas overcame, ultimately placing their alpha above their own family because believing in the alpha was protecting their family. But in Boris's case, something had gone wrong. An unexpected, unwelcome wrinkle: Trinity. She had cracked his perfect sword.
But when his useless daughter had been declared a defective, Boris hadn't reacted the way he should have. He hadn't recoiled in disgust; instead, he'd wanted to hide her within the pack. Because his beta's standing was so close to an alpha's, it had amplified his sentimentality, making his bond with his defective offspring stronger than the rest of the pack's.
It was a lie that defectives couldn't be sensed by the pack. Alphas and betas could feel them, not as strongly as the rest of the pack, but the faint, nagging presence was always there, a negligible thought at the back of their minds, something so easily dismissed that it made parents neglect their defective children. It was a well-kept secret that alphas and betas could feel a defective's presence in their bonds. Adrian had felt a surge of grim satisfaction that he had never spoken this truth to his beta.
He knew Boris harbored a tender spot for the dregs of the pack, wanting everyone to grow and be great, a naive nature so unlike his own. Adrian believed the weak should be left behind, not coddled and falsely raised to a greatness they would never achieve. Because of Boris's innate softness, Adrian had never told him the truth about defectives, and he never would. Every time Boris had ever mentioned feeling a bond with his daughter, Adrian had been quick to dismiss it as his imagination, to the point where sometimes even Adrian seemed to forget himself. A dry chuckle escaped Adrian's lips at the irony of how easily he could lie, even to himself. He knew it was the first step towards a greater truth. His truth.
The problem wasn't that they couldn't feel them; it was that they couldn't feel us. They wouldn't feel an alpha's presence pressing down in their minds, couldn't communicate through the pack link. It was an anomaly, and anomalies were not something that could be overlooked. They could disobey, and a pack was only as strong as its weakest wolf. And they weren't even truly wolves, not really. So, they simply weren't worth the risk of keeping around.
Smiling thinly at his beta and his personal warriors, the four of them walked out the door, entering the backyard without so much as a glance at the small, huddled group of defectives.
Conversation died in their little corner of the garden as four men emerged from the imposing pack house. Trinity had heard people refer to it as such, understanding the significance of it as their central hub. One man walked with a proud, arrogant stride before the other three. She only recognized one of the four – the man who'd introduced himself as Beta Carter. The one leading the way sent a prickle of unease down her spine, an instinctive warning to stay away. He was tall, like everyone else here, but even more so, almost a giant at eight feet. His blonde hair was shaved close at the sides, a short, controlled length on top that barely brushed his forehead. His smile was cunning, the predatory curve of a snake ready to strike. He was dressed impeccably in what looked like a custom-made suit, his shiny black shoes looking as if no dirt could ever touch them. This had to be Alpha Adrian. The air around him thrummed with a subtle, dangerous energy.
When their eyes met, an icy tendril snaked up Trinity's spine. Something primal within her screamed danger, a threat she couldn't ignore. It made her want to shrink back in her seat, to break the connection. Her hatred for this man, this arrogant prick who led the pack that had discarded her, flared like a wildfire.
She could barely stand to look at him. There was just this feeling of death, or maybe just pure, unadulterated viciousness, radiating off him. It brought back the memories, that monster from her youth, the psycho who had held her captive. Her mind whispered the name he used to call her – Jamie – the sound so clear in her ear that she physically flinched, turning in her seat, convinced he was right over her shoulder. Her stomach churned with nausea. The man on the leader's right seemed different, though. He had large, gentle brown eyes framed by thick, dark lashes, a flat nose, and clear skin. He seemed friendly. She couldn't help feeling like Beta Carter wasn't bad. Even though they were kidnapped, he had tried to welcome them to what he called the moon-blessed pack.
The two others stood behind him; they seemed stoic and battle-tested. If this were another day and time, she would have thought they were knights fighting for their kingdoms. They seemed so rigid, but not in the modern military way, more of a fairy-tale hero knight in shining armor kind of thing.
As a group headed to the makeshift platform, only the two men stood on it. The other two knights stood at either side, rigid as ever, ready to serve their king.
"Moon blessed, I've gathered everyone. As some of you know, I have welcomed back those who have been lost."
Adrian smiled to himself as he said the word "lost." The word made him want to chuckle. There was nothing lost about these people. They were meant to stay gone. It was an irony he knew others would recognize
"Our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, have been reunited with us. Even though the goddess is blind to them, we surely aren't." Everyone was meant to see them, to treat them as what they were: nothing. A symbol of shame, or a thing of amusement. Either way, they had no true value.
The leader spoke in a tone of reverence, but it felt false. Trinity didn't understand what he meant by them being blind to the goddess.
She knew it couldn't have been anything kind. Some people around the tables chuckled, while others nodded. Some even looked sad. Whatever it meant, it wasn't something positive. Whatever they lacked, it seemed everyone here knew the answer, and it had left them out of these people's god's favor.
"Though they may never know The Meadows of Nyx, they are still pack. And we will find ways for them to be of service to the pack, as we all strive to be."
People around the tables began to clap and applaud, as if he had said something momentous. Ryan wasn't like the girls. He knew everything he said was vicious and rude. All he really said was, welcome back people we kicked out. And the welcome was to say that we are not loved by our god, and that we would never be able to enter heaven. Along with the reminder that they were meant to be used. He wasn't even subtle about it. His intent was vicious. He might have used a tone that suggested sadness, but none of it needed to be said. And in Ryan's view, it wasn't true.
His parents had taught him that some people believed that they were mistakes of their god. But if their god was all-powerful as everyone believed, then something didn't add up. This speech made his teeth hurt because he clenched them so tightly.
"Before we eat, and dance, Beta Carter will call the names of pack members, and their new family member."
For those who did not wish to be reunited with their lost members, there was a tense silence that built up in the area, along with the budding excitement of those who missed their forgotten children. The colliding of opposite feelings was palpable.
Alpha Adrian sat down in his chair on the stage. He wanted to embarrass those who had created defectives. He wanted those in the pack to know of their tainted blood. He wanted a warning to the pack:
We may have to invite them in, but we do not need to bring them to our table.
Boris felt conflicted. He knew that Adrian was doing this to belittle and embarrass people of the pack, but he didn't think it was shameful to have a child without a wolf. He never pretended he didn't have a daughter, like some of them here. These weren't new family members; they'd always been there.
Reading from his list, he did as directed:
"George Creed."
Suddenly, the forgotten table at the back became very noticeable. All those who had never even turned to glance at them all turned at once, wondering who George Creed was.
The teen boy from the living room, who had everything to say, stood up. He didn't look as defiant as he did at the house. He seemed young and scared. This moment, she knew what it felt like to be him: so young and hopeful, wishing every night that your family would find you. And for him, it was coming true. No matter how much bravado he showed before, he wanted a family. Anyone as young as him would.
"Please come forward," Beta Carter said clearly.
Slowly, he made his way to the stage, standing next to the beta. Unlike the table of defectives, everyone in the pack knew each other. Everyone knew the Creeds. No one was anonymous in the pack. There were no more than 3,000 people in their pack. Everyone went to the same church, the same stores, and all their kids went to the same schools.
The Creed family stood up. His parents looked older, both seeming to be in their 60s. When they stood up, they had bright smiles on their faces. They seemed happy to see their son. They waved at him, walking over to him. The boy smiled, a genuine, heartwarming smile.
It made Trinity wish she had been younger. The kid couldn't have been older than fifteen at best. If she had met her parents when she was that age, she would have been excited. A lot would have happened by then, but hope for the future can make you forgive a lot, and she would have been excited to be noticed. She felt resentful. It was hard for her to feel happy for him because envy filled every inch of her. She knew this would not be how her reunion would go. She wouldn't let it.