Chapter Text
Sáwel-Dreór
Old English - Compound Word - Literal Translation "Soul-Blood"
Anginn
Noun
Neutral Gender
Meaning: Beginning
You could hear the workers bustling by your room before the sun was even up. The house has been a buzz of activity for days, weeks if you were honest, and the culmination was that night. The big presentation gala for your youngest sister, who was finally of age to be sent off. Other groups were attending the dinner, other alliances would be formed, but the main event was the pack from England coming to see your sister.
There had been letters and contracts sent back and forth for almost six months to get the 141 pack to consider even making an appearance. It wasn't unheard of, your lawyer father enjoyed the chase and making others wait. So many propositions have been made since your first sibling was born that there was probably a whole shelf of fallen through contracts collecting dust in the basement. Your mother's propositions could fill a bank vault, even after her marriage.
Your family is notorious for its bloodline on both sides, so marriages are strictly for breeding. Anyone looking for love was laughed at. Children were stock to be traded, to raise the lineage to new levels. It also didn't hurt that wealth, careers, and a life of luxury came with it. You could learn to love one another, or find a love on the side once your duties were done. There were no side dalliances until heirs were produced, too risky.
"Just getting lunch," you mutter as the chef looks up from his station at the stove. He doesn't give you a second glance. No one does anymore.
Your life these days is not to be seen or heard. Your family wants you out, and the staff have learned to not interact with you aside from the bare minimum. You are supposed to become a memory, one that would get forgotten if plans went your mother's way.
Taking the back stairs back to the family wing, you slip down the hall, stuffing a sandwich in your mouth. You have class in ten minutes, then the rest of your day will be spent working on your thesis. Then perhaps an early bed with a few sleeping pills to drown out the extravagant party that would fill the whole great hall and spill down the lawn.
The last presentation gala that had been arranged was for you. Your mother was so sure that you were just a late bloomer, she wouldn't let it go. Dragging you to look at flowers, sample foods, and dress shopping. Everything. Every detail was planned, down to the lilac colored napkin cuffs. She was sure you'd smell of lilacs like her.
But it never happened.
Your first bleed came and went without a hint of a shift. Not unheard of overall, but not normal in your family line. At sixteen, you started to develop some general shifter habits. Nesting, even if it was so subtle, could be written off as just an odd habit. Scenting others, so your nose had developed the sensitive wolf traits. Even a pack mentality had developed; for someone who had always been a loner, you wanted to be around your family more, but more importantly, you were interested in other Alphas. Although you're now fairly certain that was just normal teenage hormones.
So sure that when you hit eighteen you'd present, your mother invited all the prospects that had reached out to a small dinner. A test, sample, if you will.
All their sons, even some of the elders whose wives were no longer able to bear children, agreed to come. Eighteen was make or break. No Omega that hadn't shifted or presented at eighteen ever did after that. They were a failure, a broken link in the family chain. 'Unables' as they, you, were called, were the ultimate shame.
It wasn't a surprise, though a disappointment, to your family when nothing happened. You weren't drawn to a single Alpha there, least not in the way that it should be. Their scents were muted, and if you were honest, you were disgusted by them. Vague whiffs of oil and mud, burnt earth and rot. It was overwhelming and disheartening, especially when not a single male could scent you. Nothing but your perfume, which they turned their noses up at.
Your gala had been canceled.
Your father spent late hours into the night reworking contracts, trying to promise your younger sister to the ones that wanted you. But people were wary, if one Omega was a failure, what was to say the younger one wasn't. It was hard to guarantee she would be fit when you had fallen through.
But it was an unnecessary worry. Your sister's first bleed, she shifted without an issue. And with another option around, you were finally forgotten, and she was thrust into the spotlight. Fourteen, and she was being shopped around like a piece of meat, lauded above you like the jewel she was.
It had been a relief, really, to have the last dregs of hope finally die when you hit eighteen. No more tears, no more wondering if today was the day. Now you could start working out your plan for moving forward. To begin to figure out life with Unables and humans, and what you wanted that life to look like. College had been the best plan, and after expertly talking your parents into an agreement to let you get your master's, you set down that path. Hiding away in your room and family quarters, barely leaving unless absolutely necessary. There had been plenty of times in the past six years that you didn't see a single member of your family for months.
Just as you are about to log on for your class, adjusting the camera a few times, there is a soft knock on your door. You have five minutes.
"Yes?" You call out, wondering if a new staff member accidentally stopped at your room.
"Leas?" Comes a soft voice, and you shut your eyes, breathing in through your nose.
That fucking nickname would never leave. Your older brother had thought it funny to tease you for your inability. It started when you first bled and didn't shift, and eventually the whole family used it. Easier to call you by a name no one knew when referring to you in public.
You knew your sister didn't mean it. She was seven when it started, and that's all she knew to really call you, as the family used it all the time. It was an Old English word, shifters loved to fall back on their heritage and old traditions. It meant empty or false, which is apparently what you were. A fake, useless Omega.
"I have class in five minutes, Edith," you state as she sticks her perfectly coifed head in your door. You can tell she's nervous, gnawing on her lower lip as she watches you.
"I know, I just," she slips in and shuts the door behind her. There's no getting rid of her now.
"Mom is not going to like you in here," you warn as she pads over in her white robe to flop onto your bed. "Surprised you aren't on a leash." Literally and figuratively.
"She had to go make a call. Apparently, the florist sent the wrong arrangement for my table." Edith answers as she grabs one of the many pillows on your bed. You itch with irritation as she upsets your perfectly messy pile. It's a hodgepodge, but everything is, was, exactly where you wanted it.
"Three minutes," you warn as you log into the class and cut off your camera.
"What if they don't like me? Or I fail to present?" Your sister finally blurts out, sitting up and holding your pillow so tight to her stomach she looks like she's going to rip it.
"Don't start," you answer, trying to hide the bitterness. You know she's nervous, but she's looking for reassurance in the wrong place. She's just rubbing it in your face that she will succeed, you know she will. She only wants to come into your room to assure herself that she won't fail as badly as you.
"I mean it," she whines as she fists the pillow. "I mean, I know I shift, and I've had...urges," she does her best to not sound improper, but you know what she means. Particularly strong Alphas can pull on the presentation early and send Omegas into faux heats, nothing that a suppressant couldn't take care of. Which you know Edith has had to be suppressed twice. Those were two horrible weeks in the house.
"Then what are you worried about? You've got one of the strongest packs coming to meet you," you state as the class conversation starts. "The contract is written. They know more about you than you probably even know, down to your genes and blood type. They just need to sign on the dotted line after they see you. Then you're off to some castle or something in England to live out your princess fairytale. I bet you'll even get ballgowns," you add with a small eyeroll.
You know this is what she came for, for you to assure her she's the perfect little Omega and drag yourself through the mud to make her feel better. Easier to not be nervous when someone else has it worse than you, and you aren't at risk of falling as low as they do.
"But what if," she starts, and you have to fight back a snarl.
"I have class, Edith. Go whine about your worries about your perfect life to someone else. I'm sure the twins would love to fawn over you," you snap, which makes her whip her head back as if you had physically hit her.
"Fine," she quips and throws your pillow to the floor. "Enjoy your class," she sneers as she looks at your computer. "And your night with your pills and books."
You don't answer her as she stomps out of the room, slamming the door behind her. It doesn't hit you until you are about to wrap up your lesson that was probably the last time you'd see your sister in person. Ever. If the contract was accepted and signed, she would leave with her new pack that night, and you'd be out of the house and the family before she came for a visit.
A few hours later, you're hunched over your laptop, tired eyes going crossed, as you work on the third draft of your thesis. The sun has started to set, and the paper lanterns all over the lawn have been lit. The gala is beginning soon, early arrivals have already started rolling in.
With so many pheromones flying around the house, you shove a precautionary towel under your door and close the vent to your room. It'll get stuffy, but it's better than trying to literally inhale a room freshener to get the scents out of your nose. How shifters could stand those smells, and be attracted to them, you'd never know. Perhaps it was a small blessing you hadn't presented. What if you smelled like wilted lilacs and rotten apples like your mother?
After sending off your newest written section to a peer to review, you shut down your laptop. It's getting late, and if you don't take the sleeping pills now, you won't be able to drown out the party.
Peeking through your curtains as you swallow the two pills dry, you watch the partygoers mingling on the lawn. They are all dressed to the nines, gowns that cost a year's tuition at your college, and suits that aren't much cheaper.
Even in the growing crowd, you can see your mother. She's in a blood red dress that shimmers in the dying sun, and your sister Edith is at her side in an iridescent opal beaded gown. The picture of a perfect mother and well bred, pure daughter. If they only knew what Edith got up to with your Beta siblings.
As if on queue, your eldest brother steps into view with his brood trailing behind him. Last you knew he had five children, but it looks like his wife is pregnant again. Hopefully, for her sake, it wasn't another set of twins. Six or seven children five and under sounded like a personal hell.
"Fuck," you mutter as three sets of eyes snap up to your window.
You twitch the curtains closed, hoping no one noticed, but you know better. You know the twins had seen you and told your father immediately. Just a matter of time before someone on the staff comes up to 'check' on you. Which meant they would make sure you took your pills, hustle you to bed, and cut all the lights.
Out of sight, out of mind was your life mantra.
Curling up in your nest of pillows and blankets, you set the projector on the ceiling to watch the night sky. Your pills don't take long to set in, but to be safe, you tug the noise canceling headphones over your ears and watch the stars slide along above you, lulling you to a dreamless sleep.
Sometime later, you half wake to find you have burrowed deep under the pillows. It's stiffling hot, and your ears hurt from the pressure of the headphones. Surely it's late enough for the party to be over, so you yank them off and drop them on your nightstand. As you stretch out and whine, you catch a whiff of something. It's familiar, so familiar, yet somehow foreign. As if something in your body recognizes it, but your brain has no memory of it.
"Get out of my room," you mumble, sure that one of your mother's watchdogs had slipped in. It wouldn't be the first time you had a chaperone to make sure you kept to your room.
"Now, now, little wulf," comes a voice that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. "There's no need to be rude."
You don't know that voice. You don't know the scents that crash over you, almost suffocating as you try to catch a fresh breath of air out from under the blankets. A pillow slides to the floor as you scramble to sit up, legs kicking to back you up to the headboard to steady yourself.
Then you see them in the dim light. Four men are standing at the foot of your bed. They are perfectly still, silent, watching you with a predatory gaze as if they were assessing you. Everything screams for you to run, but some primal part of you says that they will only chase you. And they'd enjoy it.
That's when, in your sleepy haze, you put together that they aren't men.
They are Alphas. The 141 pack of Alphas.
And they are standing in your room looking at you like you were their next prize.