Chapter 2 2 – Cast Into Death

Chapter 2

I looked around, searching for Lana. I thought maybe... just maybe... we could switch places. But she barely spoke to me anymore-not since the day she tried to kill me.

The hallways were silent, as if the entire house was breathing on its own.

I passed by the old portraits, the wilted flowers in the crystal vase, and wondered when that place had stopped feeling like home. The sound of laughter made me stop.

It came from the music room.

I approached quietly. The door was slightly open, and through that narrow gap I saw Lana sitting on the bench by the window, her body poised in that graceful, calculated way of hers.

Two young men were with her-childhood friends-faces I knew well enough to predict the malice that followed each laugh disguised as a joke.

"I can't believe it," one of them said, laughing loudly. "Your useless sister is going to marry the Alpha."

"It's almost poetic," the other added. "A dead soul gaining a throne she doesn't even know how to use."

Lana didn't respond.

She simply crossed her arms and stared into the distance, with a faint smile-the kind that hides too much contempt to fit into such a delicate expression.

She looked bored, or maybe just satisfied to let others say what she herself was thinking.

"So, Lana?" one of them pressed. "Don't you feel bad? Your half-dead sister marrying the Alpha? I thought you'd want to be in her place, being queen."

She lifted her gaze, and for an instant, I swear the air in the room seemed to change temperature.

Her voice came out calm, almost sweet, but sharp as glass.

"Maya won't live a single day of that marriage, so it's nothing for me to envy."

The two of them laughed, as if she had told the best joke of the night.

"Cruel as always," one of them said. "Don't you pity her?"

Lana just shrugged, a slow, almost elegant gesture.

"Pity is a waste."

I stood there, leaning against the wall, feeling my chest tighten-not from pain, but from a strange clarity.

She was right.

Maybe I really wouldn't live a single day of that marriage. It would be nothing but torment and death.

And if the Alpha was everything people said he was, perhaps that was for the best.

I didn't want to change my fate by putting it on her shoulders. She might end up suffering because of me if I did that.

I didn't want to be a name whispered behind closed doors or a shadow of something that was never meant to be mine.

But there was nothing I could do-except accept it and finally face that Alpha.

I took a step back, just enough for the wooden floor to creak. No one noticed.

I slipped away in silence, my heartbeat calm, as if I had already given up on feeling anything at all.

When I reached my room, I had already forgotten why I'd left it.

I closed the door, pressed my forehead against the wood, and took a deep breath.

Then I simply let it go.

Some things, I learned too early, are easier to forget than to understand.

I began getting ready to leave for the Kan mansion with my parents.

I wore a simple dress of light fabric and white slippers. I pinned a golden flower in my hair just to look more presentable.

They said the wedding dress had been made by an important man, probably using measurements my parents had sent him.

No matter how luxurious it was, fear consumed me.

Our whole family set out for the grand Kan mansion. A council of leaders awaited eagerly for the union.

Upon arrival, the property's vastness revealed itself in a silence that felt almost sepulchral.

Only servants and guards moved about, small figures against the mansion's endless corridors.

It was a labyrinth of opulence, draped in gold and shadows.

But I didn't care about all that luxury. With every second that passed, my mind returned to the only man I could touch without pain.

The dress arrived that morning, inside a huge box-white as snow, wrapped in silver ribbons and sealed with the golden crest of the Kans, the empire of the most feared Alpha among all packs.

They say he's cruel, that his voice can silence an entire hall, that even the ground bends beneath his steps. They say many things.

But me... I only know that the moment he touches me, I will die.

It could be today, or tomorrow.

I opened the box almost absentmindedly. The dress shimmered as if it had swallowed the night sky, its tulle embroidered with tiny stones that caught the light like stars.

When I lifted the lid, a sweet fragrance filled the air-blending with the scent of fear that had lived inside me for years.

The fear of touch.

The fear of pain.

Because no one has been able to touch me since I was born.

Not even the wind seems able to reach me without burning from the inside out.

My body rejects contact; my skin reacts to touch with pain, as if the world itself reminds me that I don't belong to it.

Except for him.

Since birth, I've been cursed-with a magical dagger embedded in my chest, piercing my heart-and no magic has ever been able to remove it.

Not even my mother understands why I was born this way. She hid me, to protect me-or perhaps because, from the moment I was born, I didn't open my eyes until I was nearly fourteen.

The dagger reacts to any touch, and because of it, even my parents could never hold me.

But thanks to Lana's attempt to get rid of me, I was given both a torment and a blessing that marked me forever.