Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
High up the walls, portraits of famous alphas and priestesses looked down on me. Were those disappointed glares on their faces?
“Judgmental pricks.” I skipped over them and tipped my head, soaking in the gorgeous night sky painted on the ceiling.
“This way, please.” Nia tugged on my arm, leading to one of the four grand staircases dominating the grand entrance.
I should’ve snapped at her not to touch me, but I couldn’t summon the will to any more than my wolf could peel her eyes open. The same tranquil calm that infected her infected me. I didn’t want to yell at Nia. Why would anyone want to yell at Nia?
“These are the stairs to the priestess or epsilon dorm,” she said. She pointed to the other three. “That’s for the alphas, the betas, and omegas. We’re not allowed to enter any dorm but our own.”
“We or just me?”
She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
Alpha, beta, epsilon, and omega. All of us shifter wolves, but all of us different from the other. In addition to the elemental powers gifted to us by different mother wolves throughout the generations, there were our natural-born wolf powers.
Alphas could command with a voice that had to be obeyed. Betas had a similar power, but not similar enough to make them alphas. Their words also had power, but more of a persuasive one. If a beta poured enough whispers in your ear for long enough, you’d wake up one day and find yourself falling in line with their way of thinking.
There were limits on that of course. A beta couldn’t persuade you to do something you’d never in a million years do—like kill your own mother or rob a bank. While an alpha can make you do something you’d normally never do.
But still. If there were any doubts or openings lingering in your mind, a beta’s voice would slip right in and fill in the gaps.
With an alpha telling you what to do, and a beta making you believe you wanted to do it, they were a strong, unbeatable pair. The only choices to lead a clan.
And making up the overwhelming majority of our clans were omega wolves—who had a power of their own.
It was hard to put into words, but the best comparison is the natural instinct we feel when we come across an infant in distress. We jump to making sure they’re okay, fed, and cared for. Pretty much every species that didn’t wish to die out has an instinct to care for their young and ensure they grow to lead the next generation.
Somehow, omegas have an ability to trigger that instinct in alpha and beta wolves. They feel they had to lead them, protect them, watch over them, and above all, not harm them.
It seemed a strange arrangement to an outsider looking in. All of us banded together the way we were even though we spent most of our time living as mundanes, and could do so permanently. How simple it would be to leave the forests and take up the regular, boring lives that earned the mundanes their names.
But the wolves would never do it. I myself refuse to do it. One year sheltering among the mundanes and pretending to be them, and I was driven out of my fucking skull with boredom.
True living was feeling the wind whipping through my fur. It was becoming one with the moonlight and basking in my goddess-given power. It was being strong enough to do whatever the fuck I wanted whenever I wanted.
As strange as it all seemed, the elemental wolves have survived for a millennium—strong and enduring—while the vampires hid in their holes, the demigods fought a never-ending war, and the fae slowly died out. One thing the wolves could say that every other being on the planet couldn’t... was that we’d never been to war with each other.
We never fought each other for territory, wealth, or riches. We never bothered with stupid power plays. We all had our place in our society, and we didn’t ask for more. Everyone including the wolves like me.
The epsilons. Or another way to describe us—the lone wolves.
For whatever reason, epsilon wolves were born with their own power. The power to resist alpha and beta wolves. If an alpha told me to jump, I’d bend my knees, prepare to jump, and then go— hold on, wait. I don’t feel like jumping. And walk off.
True wolves would kick a lone wolf out of the pack. But for us shifters, that wasn’t so easy when the epsilon was your mother, sister, daughter, or wife. At the end of the day, we weren’t animals. Humanity is what makes us human. Instead when a female epsilon was born, and they were always female, we were named priestess—since Luame herself was a lone wolf. And when I was born an epsilon with no belly button, I became the high priestess.