Chapter 2

My new room was exactly five square meters. It was a windowless storage closet tucked deep in the servant quarters, smelling heavily of bleach and damp concrete.

According to the laws of the North, your gland dictated your humanity. An 8.2 like my sister Sylvia was practically royalty. A 0.3 like me? I was a biological error. My status got bumped down to a D-class ration card. No clan protection, no housing allowance, just enough basic nutrients to keep a slave breathing.

But I didn't care about the food. I cared about the pills.

A sharp, burning ache radiated from my lower spine all the way up to the back of my neck. My "heat" was coming. .

That was what my supposed "Omega heat" felt like without the pills. For eight years, I had swallowed heavy, chalky hormone stabilizers. My mother, Vivian, had always shoved them down my throat, insisting my low-grade gland was erratic and dangerous.

I grabbed my cracked terminal. Over the last two months, skipping meals and taking extra shifts in the clan laundry, I had scrounged up exactly two hundred pheromone coins. Just enough for my next cycle of pills.

I tapped the screen to transfer the funds to the pharmacy.

Transaction Denied. Balance: 0.00.

I froze. I refreshed the screen. Zero.

I shoved the terminal into my pocket and sprinted out of the servant quarters, heading straight for the main estate.

The heavy oak doors of the central parlor were wide open. A sickeningly sweet, expensive scent filled the air—Premium Alpine Pine incense. Sitting on the velvet sofa were my parents, Victor and Vivian, sipping spiced wine. Sylvia sat between them, a perfect, angelic smile painted on her face.

"It smells wonderful, darling," Vivian cooed, stroking Sylvia's hair. "You are just too good to us."

"You stole my money," I said.

My voice cut through their perfect family scene. Three heads turned to look at me.

Sylvia let out a soft, mocking laugh. "Stole? Aria, really. You left your terminal unlocked in the bathroom earlier. I simply reallocated clan resources. Why waste coins on useless medicine for a broken gland when I could buy something the whole family enjoys?"

"Thoughtful girl," Vivian agreed, not even glancing my way. "Unlike you, Aria. What have you ever contributed to this house, Aria? Nothing but a foul stench."

A surge of hot, blind rage snapped my last thread of control. I lunged forward, my hands aiming straight for Sylvia's smug face.

I didn't even make it a foot.

Bam

Victor slammed his glass down. A dense wave of Beta pheromone pressure hit me like a semi-truck. Betas rarely had strong suppression, but against a 0.3 Omega, it was absolute. My knees slammed into the hardwood floor. I couldn't breathe. My chest felt like it was caving in.

Sylvia practically skipped off the couch. She didn't look scared; she looked thrilled. She crouched behind me. From her perfectly tailored pocket, she slipped out a thick, rusted pheromone extraction needle.

"So aggressive," she whispered in my ear.

Stab.

She jammed the blunt metal directly into the raw, peeled skin on the back of my neck.

I bit down on my tongue so hard I tasted copper.

Before I could even flinch, Sylvia threw herself backward onto the expensive rug. The needle clattered away. "Ah! Daddy!" she shrieked, squeezing out a flawless barrage of fake tears. "She scratched me! She tried to bite my arm!"

Vivian gasped in horror, rushing to pull Sylvia up. Victor stood up, his face dark with fury. The pheromone pressure doubled, pinning my face against the floor.

"You vicious animal," Victor spat. "You want to act like a feral beast? Then you'll be treated like one. If you have enough feral energy to assault your sister, you have enough energy to carry her to the outpost clinic."

The clinic was twenty kilometers away.

Right across the Pheromone Wasteland.

Ten minutes later, I was standing barefoot at the edge of the clan's protective dome. The wasteland before me was a barren stretch of toxic dirt, jagged rocks, and chemical fog. It was the designated punishment route for low-ranking wolves.

Sylvia climbed onto my back, locking her arms around my neck.

"Walk," Victor’s voice blared from the loudspeaker of the hovering cruiser idling right behind me.

I took a step.

Crack!

An automated energy whip lashed out from the front of the cruiser, striking the dirt a mere inch from my bare heels.

I gritted my teeth and walked.

One kilometer. Five kilometers. Ten kilometers.

The toxic soil shredded the soles of my feet. Every step I took left a dark red footprint in the dust. The hot, chemical wind burned my lungs. But the physical exhaustion was nothing compared to the torture on my back.

Hidden from our parents' direct line of sight, Sylvia pulled the blunt needle out again.

Every time I slowed down, she casually jabbed it directly into my torn gland. She didn't push deep enough to kill. She just dug it into the exposed nerve endings.

"Aw, is the little waste-blood tired?" she whispered, twisting the metal into my skin. "Walk faster, mule."

Blood dripped down the back of my neck, soaking into the collar of my cheap shirt. I didn't stop. I didn't stumble. I just kept walking until my mind went completely numb.

By the time the bright neon cross of the clinic appeared through the fog, night had fallen.

I dropped to my knees in front of the sliding glass doors, letting Sylvia slide off my back. She instantly swapped her sadistic smirk for a fragile limp, wailing as Victor and Vivian rushed out of the cruiser to catch her.

They practically carried her toward the entrance.

I pushed myself up on shaking arms, heavily limping toward the doors to get my feet treated. And maybe beg for some basic stabilizers.

Victor turned around, placing a hand on the glass door. He looked down at me like I was a cockroach.

"Don't bother coming in," he said coldly. "I canceled your D-class card an hour ago. The clinic doesn't treat unregistered strays."

The glass doors slid shut. The electronic lock beeped, sealing them inside.

I stood there in the chilling wind, shivering violently. My bare feet were ruined. My neck was a bloody mess. I slumped down against the cold exterior wall of the clinic, staring at the blood coating my trembling hands.

The heat in my body was rising. The withdrawal from the pills should have paralyzed me by now. But it wasn't a paralyzing cold. It was a suffocating, violent heat originating from my dormant gland.

I stared into the darkness of the wasteland. For the first time in eighteen years, a terrifying thought crossed my mind.

Am I really an Omega? Why did those stabilizers never actually suppress anything?

The rumble of an engine pulled me out of my thoughts. Victor's cruiser pulled back out of the clinic garage. But instead of driving away, it stopped right in front of me.

Victor stepped out. Behind him stood two figures clad in filthy, torn rags. A massive, scarred man and a scrawny, hollow-eyed woman. They reeked of cheap alcohol and rotting meat.

"Aria," Victor said, gesturing to the two strangers. "Meet Logan and Greta. Since you hate the Silver Moon laws so much, I went through the trouble of finding your true bloodlines. Strays belong with strays."

Sylvia leaned out of the cruiser window, a band-aid perfectly placed on her unbroken arm. "Kneel to them, Aria! Beg your new mommy and daddy to take you to the slums."

Logan licked his cracked lips, his greedy eyes immediately locking onto the bloody, exposed gland at the back of my neck.

"Yeah," Logan grunted, stepping forward. "Come here, little pup."

I didn't look at Logan. I slowly stood up on my bleeding feet and faced Victor and Vivian.

Then, I dropped to my knees.

Thud.

I slammed my forehead against the concrete ground.

Thud. Thud.

Three heavy, deliberate kowtows. The traditional wolf rite of absolute severance.

I raised my head. Blood from my forehead mixed with the sweat on my face.

"When you cancel my ID, I stopped being a member of the Silver Moon clan," I said, my voice eerily calm. "With these three bows, I repay the blood and bone you gave me. From this second on, we have absolutely nothing to do with each other."