No one moved in the hall their, gaze fixed on the lingering chaos and aftermath of violence. All eyes were silently watching as a faceless maid swiftly moved with a mop and bucket, cleaning away the alpha son's blood.
As Luca's screams of desperation grew quieter and quieter, Boris still held Trinity tightly to his chest, unwilling to let her go. He hadn't truly grasped the extent of what could happen until now. If Ryan hadn't warned him, if he hadn't known… Boris found himself thinking he owed Ryan a debt he might never be able to fulfill, despite his lingering reservations about the man.
Alpha Adrian's nostrils flared, not just in anger, but in a raw, unsettling disgust. The lingering scent of Luca's desperation, mingled with the potent, defiant allure of Trinity's heat, was a repugnant concoction. That his son, a full-blooded wolf, had been so utterly undone by a defective's scent was an insult to everything Adrian believed in. It was unnatural, a grotesque mockery of the pack's very essence.
He glared at Trinity, as if she had deliberately orchestrated this humiliation, as if her very existence was a challenge to his authority. He couldn't see her face, still pressed against Boris's chest, but he openly seethed.
"What a strong effect you have!" Alpha Adrian spoke, his voice clipped, directed pointedly at Trinity. He wanted to punish her for the embarrassment, to strip away the unnatural power she seemed to wield.
"I apologize, Alpha," Boris found himself saying, unsure exactly what he was apologizing for, but acutely aware of the Alpha's simmering rage.
Trinity couldn't see anything, and she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. She wanted to push out of Boris's arms, but intuition told her it was best to stay utterly still and let the dust settle.
"Should we..." Alana's voice trailed off as Alpha Adrian stared her down menacingly. She wasn't sure what to do; everything around them felt too heavy, suffocating.
Jess couldn't help herself. She'd been strictly warned to stay in her room, told that as long as she was in there, no one would be able to hear or smell her. But as the guttural growls and violent clashes reached her ears, she just couldn't stand it anymore.
Opening the door at the top of the stairs, she stepped down, curiously peering towards the commotion. All she saw was a maid on all fours, cleaning up what looked like blood. The scary Alpha guy was staring intently at Trinity, who was, for some reason, being held by her dad. And her mother looked like a deer caught in headlights.
Alpha Adrian's nostrils flared again, and his gaze snapped up the steps to see the dean girl staring down at them. "Come here, now," he ordered, his voice echoing with absolute authority.
Jess flinched, but slowly, hesitantly, she descended the last few steps. She came to a stop a few feet from the group, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
"It has come to my attention, Boris, that the current methods of… integration for our defective population are insufficient. They breed weakness, they breed… incidents such as this." Adrian gestured vaguely at the blood on the floor, his gaze returning to Trinity with a renewed coldness. "This pack values strength. It values usefulness. And for too long, a segment of our population has been allowed to exist in… idleness."
He paused, letting his words hang in the air, allowing their weight to settle. Then, his voice sharpened, losing its casual cadence. "Effective immediately, all defectives of age, male and female, will be required to participate in the Warrior School entrance examination. Pass or fail, they will participate in the initial training sequence."
A soft gasp escaped Trinity's lips, quickly stifled by Boris's hand on her arm. The Warrior School. Boris knew the very name was synonymous with brutal conditioning for wolves, let alone those who couldn't shift. The training was designed to break the strongest of their kind, to weed out the weak. For defectives, it could be a death sentence.
"Alpha, with all due respect," Boris began, his voice strained, "the defectives… they cannot shift. They lack the physical attributes. This would be…"
"A test of their resolve, Boris," Adrian cut him off, his eyes narrowing to slits. "Perhaps a brutal one, but a necessary one. If they cannot contribute strength, they must at least demonstrate obedience. And if they cannot even do that…" He shrugged, a gesture of chilling indifference. "Then their existence truly is a drain on the pack." His gaze was fixed on Boris, a clear message in his eyes: This is their punishment.
Adrian then took a deliberate step further into the foyer, his eyes sweeping the elegant space. He moved with an almost unnerving grace, his attention falling on Jess. "And what have we here, Boris? The dean girl herself. I was under the impression Jess was to be returned to her family home for… reunification. Or have your new associations made you forget your obligations, Beta?" He paused, his gaze raking over Jess, whose family had boasted of their pure bloodline for generations, only for Jess's existence to be their scandalous secret. "It seems, Boris, you are collecting defectives. A rather curious hobby for a Beta of this pack, wouldn't you agree?"
Before Boris could respond, the front door swung open again. A large, burly wolf warrior, his face expressionless, stepped into the entryway. He didn't speak, didn't offer a glance to anyone else. His eyes fixed on Jess, and with a swift, powerful motion, he reached out, his hand gripping her arm. His hold was rougher than necessary, bordering on painful, as he turned her without a word and began to pull her through the door. Jess gasped, stumbling as she was unceremoniously yanked from the house. The door swung shut behind them with a definitive thud, severing her from the Beta's home.
Adrian watched her departure, a flicker of cruel satisfaction in his eyes. He turned his full attention back to Boris and Trinity. "As for you, Trinity," he stated, his voice carrying the weight of his authority, "this week of… isolation will be your time to prepare for the Warrior School. I expect you to arrive ready to prove your worth." He held her gaze, a silent, chilling threat passing between them.
With a final, dismissive glance, Adrian turned, the maid practically leaping out of his path. "I trust you understand your responsibility, Boris. My patience is not inexhaustible." He was charged, with enacting Adrian's every will.
He exited the house with the same imperious air with which he had entered, leaving behind a silence far heavier than before. The front door closed with a soft thud that echoed like a gunshot in the stunned quiet.
Boris stood rigid, his hand still on Trinity's arm, his face pale with a mix of fury and despair. The air, though no longer thick with blood or the Alpha's oppressive presence, still vibrated with the raw, brutal power that had just swept through their home.
Trinity remained pressed against Boris, her own heart hammering. She watched Adrian's tall, looming form until it disappeared beyond the closed door. In that moment, a chilling understanding settled deep within her. In the human world, she had faced abuse, disdain, even outright cruelty, but never this absolute, unquestionable power. But didn't even require violence. Her life, once hers to navigate, however imperfectly, had been ripped from her without a word of consent. Now, she understood what it truly meant to be Boris – to stand there, a silent observer of your own unraveling life, powerless to speak, powerless to act, a mere pawn in a game you had no hope of winning. It was a suffocating realization.
She had felt no real, true affection for her father since being thrust back into this life. Their bond, if it could even be called that, was a proximal, a formality. Yet, as she registered the rigid tremor in his arm, the barely contained fear emanating from him, a spark ignited. A shared vulnerability. A shared powerlessness against this insurmountable force. In this stripped-down moment, where all pretense had been torn away, Trinity felt a nascent connection, a fragile bond forming with the man who held her. It was the first time she had ever felt truly connected to him, not as a duty, but as a fellow victim.
Alana, however, saw none of this. Her mind was a whirlwind of frantic calculations, a terrifying inventory of losses. The Alpha's words—"collecting defectives," "curious hobby"—rang in her ears like a death ring to her aspirations. She, an unranked wolf by birth, had clawed her way to the elevated status of Beta Female through sheer luck and a strategically advantageous career. Her position was everything, her shield against the contempt she'd known her whole life. And now, thanks to Trinity's existence, thanks to this humiliation, it was all at risk. The comfortable life, the respect, the fear in other wolves' eyes, the very foundation of her carefully constructed world – could it all be revoked? Her hands wrung themselves, her gaze darting from the closed door to Trinity, then to Boris, seeing only the crumbling walls of her social standing.
The silence that followed Adrian's departure was not empty, but filled with the silent screams of shattered comfort and looming dread.