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prologue
Maria(Ruby’s mother)
Twenty Years Ago
“Oh Maria, she’s getting so big,” said my friend Nadia as she gazed at my daughter sitting on the grass, plucking dandelions with a serious look. “I wished my son, Tyler, was this calm when he was a baby.”
I smiled as I looked at my beautiful daughter with pride, “She’s already three years old. It feels like I just had her yesterday.”
“Time flies so fast,” said Nadia. “It’s like that with children.”
I turned my head towards the playground as her son played with the other kids on the swings. It was a beautiful summer’s day. Families were gathered for the annual barbeque and having a great time.
But then I looked over to the other end of the park to see my three alpha husbands chatting with our pack leader, Henry.
“I hate it when they talk to Henry too much,” I said. “He puts ideas in their heads.”
“These alphas are going to talk to each other regardless,”said Nadia. But at her words, Henry turned his gaze towards us as if he had heard us.
“He’s coming,” I said, pushing a stray hair out of my face and scooping up Ruby onto my lap protectively. Her chubby arms flailed in protest as she cried, so I reluctantly set her back down to continue destroying the flowers.
“She’s growing so fast,” commented Henry with a chuckle when he neared my daughter.
Nadia and I glanced at each other, not sure what he had planned to do. A ripple of fear went through me. I was never calm when it came to Henry.
His once-black hair was gone, and he was completely bald now. He wore a black shirt paired with khaki shorts. A few wrinkles lined his face, but he still retained an air of youthfulness about him. Even though he was of short stature for an alpha, he held an air of authority wherever he went.
“Yes, she is,” said Benjamin, gazing at our daughter with a glow in his eyes.
“Ruby would make a good match for my son,” said Henry after contemplation, and I stopped breathing. “Twenty years from now, she can be his omega.”
“Which son?” I asked in trepidation.
It was common for Henry to have a say in which pack omegas were supposed to be with. But I was hoping my daughter would have time to grow up before she was promised a pack.
“Marrok,” he said, and I swallowed. I wanted to cry when I heard that name. Matching up my beautiful daughter with his psycho thirteen-year-old son, Marrok, sounded monstrous to me.
There was silence for a few minutes.
No one opposed Henry’s decisions because his word was law. I wanted to scream that it was never going to work, but I forced myself to keep quiet before I made the situation worse. I knew my husbands felt the same way, and they would do something about this.
“That sounds nice,” my husband said in a vague voice. Only Icould read my husband, and I knew he wasn’t happy with Henry’s decision.
I looked over at Marrok, sitting quietly at the playground, watching the other kids. He had a blank expression on his face as he watched them. He was a scrawny, mischievous teenager who killed animals for fun. There were whispers amongst the community that he had killed and gutted his pet kitten when he was just nine years old.
I didn’t want someone like that matched to my daughter.
Everyone’s voices faded around me as I tried to comprehend my daughter’s fate in just a few years. She would never be able to enjoy her life and be with the pack of her dreams.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I snapped out of my thoughts, not realizing that I was holding Ruby in my lap. Henry had already left, and Nadia walked away after the horrifying news.
“Maria,” whispered Benjamin, sitting next to me on the picnic blanket. I watched as Henry went off to talk to the rest of the families, making his rounds. “Maria, listen to me.”
“Ben,” I said, tears welling in my eyes as I held my baby closer to my heart. “I can’t let her be with Marrok. He’s a monster.”
“I know,” said Benjamin, grasping my forearm. “I’m not allowing it to happen.”
“But we can’t go against him,” I said in a low voice to avoid the chance of Henry hearing us. “He will break apart our family and destroy us if we try anything to sabotage it.”
