Marked By The Three Ruthless Alphas

“You promised me I’d be free, isn’t it?.”

My name is Razia and this is the story of how I lost my life while still alive.

I bled the first time they told me I was cursed and those words came from my own mother. I was just eight years old. I cried and begged but all fell to deaf ears. I was dragged out of the pack house with everyone watching and bruises on my knees as though I was a common thief and that too for something I knew nothing about.

Not because I fell, or fought, or shifted. I wasn’t allowed to do any of those things.

I bled because they cut me.

A silver blade across my inner thigh. Deep enough to mark. Not deep enough to scar.

“This is so the moon remembers you,” they said. “So she’ll know what to avoid.”

That was the night they locked me in the tower like an outcast for a thing I knew nothing about.

And I’ve been here ever since.

The air in the room was never warm. No matter how many times I was told to pray, or obey, or beg for mercy, the cold always stayed. It had sunk into the stone. Into my skin. Into my bones.

Sometimes, I think the walls listen.

Sometimes, I think they’re the only ones who ever have. I had no friends and each passing day I prayed for the day I’ll wake up from this nightmare.

I sat on the floor like I always did. Knees tucked under me, hands folded, back straight.

I didn’t shiver. I didn’t blink too much, because too much blinking made them say I was “ungrateful for light.”

The light in the tower didn’t come from the moon. It came from a small candle near the ceiling always lit, always too far to reach.

I hadn’t seen the sky in years, neither had I showered. I was only allowed to shower once every year. I knew I stinked like five dead pigs. Funny how I was the daughter of the Alpha.

I wasn’t allowed to shift, either. They said if I did, I might infect the land with my blood.

But tonight… was different.

Tonight, the one night I had been looking forward to, I turned eighteen.

Tonight, I was supposed to be “purified.” Whatever that meant.

I didn’t dare hope.

Hope had gotten me punished before.

Still, when the lock clicked and the door creaked open, my breath caught.

And there he was.

Alpha Thorne, my supposed guidian and uncle.

He was tall, Calm and also Dangerous in the way wolves with perfect control always are.

He stepped inside, his black cloak sweeping behind him and his boots silent on the stone floor.

His silver eyes landed on me, it was cold at first, then soft.

Soft like pity. Or possession. I couldn’t tell.

He raised me. Fed me. Taught me to speak, kneel, breathe the right way. If anyone in this world loved me… it had to be him.

And yet, I never knew what he was thinking.

“Ravia,” he said, closing the door behind him. “You’ve been so patient.”

I nodded once. “Thank you, Alpha.”

My heart was racing so fast, I just wanted to be out of this dungeon and so I was hoping and waiting for him to say the words.

He approached slowly, like I was something fragile or dangerous.

“You remember what today is?”

“Yes. My birthday.” I managed to. Fathom a little smile. I’m here I didn’t know what birthday meant because I just marked days on the wall to know I was getting close to my redemption.

He smiled. Just barely.

“The day your curse breaks,” he whispered.

My chest tightened.

“The day I get to leave the tower?” I asked, voice smaller than I meant.

He nodded and held up a soft, black cloth.

“A blindfold?” I whispered.

“For the ceremony,” he said. “You’ll only wear it for a while. Until you reach the moonlight.”

Moonlight.

I hadn’t felt it since I was a child. Since before… the bleeding. Since before they told me I was born wrong.

I swallowed hard. “Will it hurt?”

He stepped closer, brushing hair from my shoulder.

“No,” he murmured. “You’ve already done the painful part. Now it’s just… surrender.”

His fingers tied the cloth around my eyes.

The world went black, again.

He led me through the door.

I tried to count the steps, but my head felt light. Maybe it was the herbs they’d made me drink earlier. Or the fact that my wolf was too silent.

She used to speak to me in dreams.

Now she was just… quiet.

As if she was afraid of something I hadn’t seen yet.

All of a sudden, we stopped walking.

I heard a door open. Then heat, real heat brushed my skin. The air changed and It didn’t smell like the palace anymore.

It smelled like smoke.

And blood.

Then I heard it, the soft clinking of chains. Murmurs. Low voices. Footsteps circling me.

I could hear a woman laugh in the background as well.

“She doesn’t even know, does she?”

I wondered what was going on. But still I was very optimistic. I couldn’t wait for these to be over.

“Poor cursed little thing,” someone else whispered. “Still thinks the ceremony is sacred.”

What ceremony? What is this?

I stepped back slightly, but hands caught my arms.

The hold was rough and firm and I immediately teased up.

“Alpha Thorne?” I whispered.

“I told you,” he said beside my ear, “tonight is the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?” My voice cracked.

A pause.

Then a laugh, low and cruel.

“Of freedom,” he said.

More laughter.

But I wasn’t laughing and I was wondering what was so funny.

Because another set of hands was untying my dress from behind.

“No !” I choked out.

Thorne held me steady.

“Be still,” he said. “You want them to like you.”

“Who ?”

Everything was so vague. I was practically losing my mind at that point wondering what was going on.

“You’ll be on stage soon.”

Stage?

I couldn’t breathe anymore.

No. No, this isn’t real. This isn’t the moonlight. This isn’t freedom.

I started to cry hoping to wake up from the nightmare. I used to have quite a number of nightmare in the dungeon so I guessed this was one of it, or maybe I was wrong.

I continued crying, not loud but Just the kind of crying that slips out when your body realizes before your mind that something terrible is happening.

“You said I’d be free…” I whispered.

Thorne leaned down.

His lips brushed my temple.

“I lied.”

The cloth around my eyes tightened as someone pulled the knot. My knees gave out and immediately I felt myself being stripped completely lately naked while still

blind folded.