||AERA'S POV||

I jerked awake and found myself gasping for air.

“My lady, are you okay?”

The touch of Maggy’s callous hand against my arm placed me back in reality. I looked around and sighed in relief. I was inside a car and not on a cliff, on the verge of falling.

‘I’m fine. I’m fine. It was just a dream!’ I kept telling myself.

I looked outside the car as Maggy caressed my back to soothe me. The reality sunk me back into my seat.

“I hate where my life is going,” I said, frustrated.

Maggy sighed, her brown eyes losing spark. She could probably empathize with my pain. Although she was my maid for as far as my memory could recall, she was also my best friend.

“Everything’s gonna be alright, my lady,” she encouraged me.

I looked away and closed my eyes again. Most of my memories of the war were gone after I was injured. But I knew the war took away half my identity. I couldn’t get in touch with my wolf anymore.

At this point, I was essentially a weakling, a mere human. The death of Amber Hunters' Alpha, my father, decimated our pack. The Crimson Fangs, the most powerful pack in the werewolf realm, constantly threatened us with invasion.

Maggy had a sorrowful look when she sat back in her proper seat. She sighed. “It’s hard to even remember the time when the three most powerful packs were living in perfect harmony.”

She was right. The Crimson Fangs, Amber Hunters, and Starry Banes once lived in harmony, as I was told by the pack elders. But everything changed when the war between our pack and the Starry Banes occurred.

The Starry Banes were wiped out, but we lost our Alpha. The casualties were not few in number, and our pack was in a vulnerable state. If the Crimson Fangs or if other packs would connive to attack us, we had no way of fighting back.

"Now that the harmony was broken, I have to marry someone I don't even know?" I expressed my dismay.

Maggy looked at me with defensive eyes as if she was looking for the right words to defend the decision of my pack to sell me off. Finally, her shoulders dropped in defeat as she probably decided to be on my side instead of trying to justify the pack.

"Who knows?" she shrugged. "You said the Alpha was good-looking. You might actually like him."

I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes. Good looking? Huh! What’s good about having good looks if he’s an obnoxious asshole?

After I lost my wolf, I suffered from excruciating physical pain. I became a disabled wolf. The only way to serve our pack was to agree to the arranged marriage. So I did. And here I was, inside a car, being transported to the world’s most dangerous werewolf, Alpha Hezekiah of the Crimson Fangs.

“You’ll be fine, Aera. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t even know the guy,” I ranted. “How could I marry someone who is not my mate?”

“We’re in the 21st century, honey,” Maggy playfully responded. “The mating tradition had evolved.”

“Magda, you say that because you haven’t found your mate yet."

She loudly gasped and caressed her arms up and down in a rushed manner. “I just had goosebumps!” She shrieked, staring at me with wide playful eyes. “Please, my lady, don’t ever call me with my full name again. It’s terrifying!”

She was being mischievous again. It was her usual attempt to make me forget the dreadful thing happening in front of me. But as always, I stubbornly stuck with the topic.

“What if I suddenly find my mate? How am I supposed to resist our bond?”

“You know what,” she said, intending to change the conversation, “worry about your mate later. For now, the pack comes first. I think this is a good thing. Don’t you feel excited? You’re going to become a Luna.”

I grimaced. “When I can’t even shift anymore?” sarcastically, I pointed out.

“Well…” she could only mutter. “Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed while looking outside. “We’ve reached our destination.”

I looked at where she was looking. My heart started beating so fast, making it nearly impossible for me to keep up and breathe.

I dreaded this very moment since I found out I was going to be sold off—well, sold off was a bit too pitiful, but yeah, I was practically sold off by my pack.

Maggy, like the good maid she was, hurriedly got out of the car to open my door, which I hated all the time. Before she could arrive at my side, I opened the door myself and stepped out.

She sheepishly smiled. She was wired to think and act like a servant all her life, and I had always tried to deconstruct that mindset. As you can see, I hadn’t succeeded just yet.

A group of men in suits, led by a sturdy man, the tallest of the group, approached us. His face was stoic and harsh like it had experienced a lot of anguish in the world.

“Welcome, Aera of the Amber Hunters, to the Crimson Fangs Community,” the sturdy man said with his guttural voice.

I hated how he didn’t acknowledge Maggy’s presence. With a bit of rudeness, I cleared my throat and upped my chin. “This is Magda. She’s going to accompany me.”

The man glanced at Maggy, then said, “I heard about your maid—”

“She’s my friend," I intercepted. "Refer to her as my BFF.”

The man’s forehead slightly creased, probably confused by the unknown word, so I supplicated, “BFF as in best friends forever.”

Finally, his face found a bit of light from my explanation. “Pardon. I heard about your BFF accompanying you.” His voice had a trace of confusion and awkwardness from saying the acronym BFF.

Maggy leaned into my ears and whispered. “That’s the Beta, Owen,” she informed me.

I internally gasped. He’s the Beta? Oh no!

Now I had to change the way I was looking at him. I fluttered my eyelashes a few times to change my suspicious eyes to being respectful.

I bowed to him, although belated, and even though I despised doing it.

“What are you doing?” the Beta told the other men. “Bow to the future Luna.”

The other men were slightly flustered, but they immediately regained composure and showed their respect to me.

“Please,” the Beta said, “Come with me.”

I glanced at Maggy, who gave me a reassuring smile. Then we set out and followed along. The community was much like ours but fancier, bigger, and obviously more populated.

The Beta led us to a type of transportation that looked like a golf cart but larger in size. We didn’t have this type of transit in our community because we never had the need.

In this community, it was the same. Perhaps, this transit was for formality, the fancy value, and for the special guests to ride on.

Maggy scooted closer to me and whispered again. “Isn’t it much more efficient to just use our abilities to go wherever?”

I elbowed her when I noticed the Beta looking at us. Maggy, sometimes, didn’t know how to behave. She was just like me.

While riding the whatever-this-transit-is-called, I took the opportunity to look around the community. The family huts were either made of wood or stone but were modern-looking. These huts were perfectly symmetrical and in perfect lines like they were engineered by a crazy perfectionist.

Our community also utilized stones, mud, and wood to create modern huts. However, ours weren’t as arranged as here.

There were specific measures of the houses and where they should be built. Even the spaces between the huts were insanely proportional. It was like everything was planned from the very beginning.

Everything about the place was too perfect, which was nuts! And impossible! At least in my eyes.

Aside from the perfect placement of everything from the statues to the linings of the roads, it was a normal community with busy wolves. We passed by the nursing home, the school for baby wolves, and the busy market.

After the active town, we then went through a foresty area. The transit, driven by the Beta, stopped.

“By the way, this transportation carriage is called a Cargo Cart. The pack has been using this for cargo transport in the past, hence, the name, but our engineers further developed it to carry wolves from one place to another. ”

I rolled my eyes but only in my head. I couldn’t dare do it in front of the Beta.

Did anyone ask? But fine. Thanks! At least I know now.