The Alpha’s Cursed Queen (Eternal Oath Saga #1)

Chapter 1

Alice

Getting yelled at as soon as I start my shift at Benny’s Diner is a little disconcerting. Especially when I’m not even the one who brought this table its lunch. My eyes land on the upset man’s companion, Willow Elvin, a beautiful, blonde woman with blue eyes that are sparkling in glee right now.

Like me, Willow is a wolf shifter. And so is her current date.

“Sir—” I try to begin, only to be cut off.

“It’s bad enough that your kind stench up the place!” Flint Barlow snarls at me. “But to bring my date cold food when she told you the exact temperature—”

“Sir, I wasn’t here when you placed the order,” I inform him, impatient now, trying not to let his first comment get to me.

My own pack members love reminding me that, unlike them, I don’t possess a wolf spirit. It’s really thoughtful of them, almost as if they’re worried I might forget I am not like them and don’t have the ability to shift.

I sneer secretly at Willow. If it weren’t for the fact that this is the fifth date she has brought to my place of work this month alone, just to insult me, I might think she simply has trashy taste in men. But now I’m starting to think it’s more personal than that.

“You weren’t here?” Flint splutters, his face growing red. “Are you talking back to me, girl?”

I give him a long look. “Flint, I just walked in through the front door. You saw me. I don’t understand why you would think Willow’s cold soup is my fault when I just started my shift. If you want, I can go get the server who took your order.”

Flint looks like he’s going to explode.

I glance down at Willow again. She’s enjoying the whole show, her eyes dancing in a mixture of malice and amusement. It’s no wonder Flint is raising his voice at the weakest member of the pack. A shifter like him, who has never had any female pay attention to him, must be desperate to impress his date. It’s a pity he doesn’t know Willow has a list of men just like him that she likes to bring here and wind up.

“Shut your mouth!” Flint snarls before picking up the bowl of soup and tossing it at me.

My eyes widen fractionally, and I try to duck out of the way, failing miserably. The scalding soup lands over half my face and neck, and I let out a quick, pained scream, stumbling back as I do.

“Oh, no! Alice!” Willow jumps to her feet, pretending to look dismayed. “Are you alright? Flint, how could you do that? I told you it didn’t matter if the soup was cold! Oh, dear! Alice, are you okay?”

I’m trying to rub the spices out of my eyes as my skin burns from the hot liquid. Willow is fussing over me, but I know her well enough not to buy her act. And sure enough, I hear her chuckle.

“That’s not a bad look for you, Firecrotch.” Her voice is low, a soft whisper that only I can catch.

If I could punch her, I would. But since she is the daughter of the Moonlight Pack’s beta, the consequences would be astronomical. I should know. I’ve suffered them once or twice. Or more.

“Alice!” A distressed voice reaches me just as an arm is thrown around my shoulder and a napkin is dabbed over my face. “Come on. I’ll take you to get washed up.”

Sam Olwin is one of the servers who works alongside me. Humans aren’t aware of the existence of wolf shifters among them, but Sam is different. He’s kind of like me in that he is unable to shift. The difference is that, unlike me, he was born to a human mother and a shifter father. Half-breeds like Sam are treated better than those with no wolf spirit, like me. Of course, those born with wolf spirits are accepted into the wolf pack, but those who never gain the ability to shift have to live as humans, shunned by the Wolf Kingdom.

“We’re not done here!” Flint snarls. “She ruined my date’s order. Willow ordered the ultra-hot pepper soup at a specific temperature, and this girl here—”

“This girl is called Alice Lane,” Sam snaps back. “And she’s a person whom you just assaulted.”

“Person?” Flint scoffs. “She’s nothing more than a—”

But Sam isn’t done. “And I was the one who took your order. The soup was hot when I brought it. And it was still so hot that it burned Alice! I’m going to call the police.”

I’m shaking right now. It feels like my skin is curdling. The spices in the soup are adding to this agony. I know for a fact that Willow doesn’t eat spicy food. I bite my tongue, focusing on my situation. I know I will heal in a few hours, but right now, my skin feels like it’s peeling off, and my eyes are on fire.

The mention of the police has Flint backpedaling. “She provoked me into—”

“I’m sure the police will be asking the other diners for their statements,” Sam says darkly.

That’s when Willow decides to step in. “I think this was all a misunderstanding. Right, Alice? Involving the police seems like a bit of an overreaction.”

Sam scowls at her. “I’m sorry? Do you not see how badly burned she is? You and your date are responsible for—”

“Let’s ask Alice if she wants to involve the police.” Willow is smiling smugly as she looks at me. “Well, Alice?”

My whole body is stiff from the pain. I would love nothing more than to say yes, but I know what Thomas will do to me if I send the human police after his daughter. I can’t—

“Hello? I want to report an assault at Benny’s Diner on Melrose Avenue.”

The sound of a woman’s voice makes Willow’s eyes flash with quick rage as we all turn in the direction of the customer sitting a few tables away.

I close my eyes in regret.

Well, shit.

Flint starts shouting at the woman, and Willow looks pissed even though she’s trying not to show it. With their attention now diverted toward the kind-hearted customer, Sam whisks me away.

I have a hard time speaking through the pain, but Sam knows what to do. He hands me a very full glass of water once we’re in the kitchen.

“Blink into it. It’ll help.”

I do as he says, and sure enough, the burning from the pepper in my eyes begins to fade away.

“The cops are going to want to talk to you,” Sam says as he hands me a towel to wipe the soup remnants off me.

I glance anxiously back at the door leading to the small hallway that opens into the dining area. “It’ll only make things worse for me, Sam. Just help me get cleaned up so I can—”

He gives me an angry look. “You can’t seriously be planning to let her off the hook again! Have some self-respect, Alice! The woman is a menace. She keeps coming in here with new men and making a scene.”

I study him, my insides churning with humiliation and anger. “You think I don’t want her to pay for what she’s doing to me? She’s got backing, Sam. Her father is the beta of the pack. He’ll make my life a living hell if I get his daughter arrested. He already had the pack stop my college funding because I made a fuss over Willow harassing me last year. I can’t afford—”

I don’t get the opportunity to finish my sentence because the kitchen door is pushed open and a police officer walks through. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and looks around. When his eyes land on me, he blinks. “You the server who had the soup dropped on them?”

I’m about to say no, but my appearance is a dead giveaway.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” He gives me a once-over. “You don’t look too good.”

I shake my head. “I’m fine. I don’t want to press charges.”

“You don’t?” The officer sounds incredulous. “From what I just heard, you had scalding hot soup thrown on you.”

“It was a misunderstanding. The customer’s hand slipped,” I tell him quickly. “It wasn’t his—”

“Sure,” the officer says casually, glancing around the kitchen once more. “Where’s the security footage? I noticed you guys have cameras here.”

The blood drains from my face, and Sam gives me an apologetic look. I don’t understand why till he gestures with his hand. “Right this way, Officer.”

I feel the knife digging in my back. How can he do this? He knows what the Moonlight Pack will do to me if Willow gets in trouble!

I quickly step in front of the policeman, wiping my face with the towel again. “I don’t want to press charges. Shouldn’t that be enough? It’s my choice, right?”

“I’m afraid not.” The man doesn’t look like he cares what I want to do. “I have to file a report.”

“But if I don’t want to press charges, there’s nothing you can do about it,” I argue, feeling foolish as I say the words.

He eyes me. “You look young, so let me give you a word of advice.”

The guy can hardly be a year or two older than me!

“I understand that this job may be important to you, but if someone assaults you, you shouldn’t protect that person. Now, let me do my job.”

After sharing the most useless bit of advice I’ve ever heard, he nods at Sam.

I watch in dismay as Sam leads him to the back office where the security monitors are.

I am so screwed.

*****

I was never loved as a child.

I was never wanted.

My parents abandoned me on the doorstep of the Moonlight Pack’s orphanage when I was just a month old. It’s bad enough if you’re an orphan in a wolf pack, but if you don’t have a wolf spirit, you are at the bottom of the pecking order.

Growing up, I was told I should be grateful I wasn’t killed when the head of the orphanage found me. I was raised alongside the other orphans, but once they picked up on how I was being treated by the adults, they too found a target for their abuse.

Wolf shifters value strength and power. Even when it comes to picking mates, they prefer to choose those who are strong, who can bear powerful offspring. I probably would have been handed over to the human authorities if I had not displayed the other traits that my kind has. I may be slower than a wolf shifter, but I’m faster than a human. And I am pretty strong.

Sam, on the other hand, has only the strength of a human. He has shifter blood in his veins, but he has never displayed any characteristic that would force the Moonlight Pack to focus on him. He has been allowed to live as a human, the pack never interfering in his affairs. It’s almost as if he doesn’t exist as far as they’re concerned. Nobody is rude to him. Nobody treats him like a pariah.

However, he has been denied treatment from a healer for his mother. Humans who sleep with wolf shifters and give birth to their children have a very low survival rate. Human bodies are simply not meant to host foreign DNA.

Sam doesn’t understand my position in the pack since he has never suffered the treatment I receive on a daily basis. Like I’m sure I will today. As I walk over to Thomas Elvin’s office, I’m trying to prepare myself for what’s to follow.

His daughter got taken to the human police station in the back of a cruiser yesterday. It doesn’t matter that I refused to press charges against either her or Flint. The humiliation alone is enough.

As the beta of the pack, Thomas is the second-in-command after Alpha Patrick Black. And he’s very protective of Willow.

He once watched his daughter punch me in the throat as a child, and he just chuckled. He’s well aware of the abuse she doles out on me, but he has never intervened to stop her. What he did do was tell the principal of our pack school not to allow me to be part of a local mathematics quiz tournament, simply because his daughter, who is several years older than me, did not make the team.

When Willow complained that a teacher had praised my performance in a play that all the grades participated in, Thomas had a talk with the drama teacher, who then proceeded to make my life a living hell till the end of the term. That had been the one class I actually enjoyed. All because Willow did not like that I was doing better than her.

As I knock on the door, and a voice calls out for me to enter, I take a deep breath.

The first thing I see after stepping into the office is a gray-haired man sitting behind a desk, holding a sheaf of papers. He glances up at me before returning his gaze to the pages in his hands. He doesn’t tell me to sit, simply ignoring my presence entirely. I take the time to study Thomas Elvin’s face in an attempt to gauge how angry he is.

His expression is passive, and as the minutes tick by, the silence that fills the room has my insides churning. I hate this intimidation tactic.

Finally, after a full thirty minutes has passed, the beta of the Moonlight Pack sets down his work and leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers together and studying me.

“What I find hard to understand, Alice,” he begins, his voice soft and non-threatening, “is why you are so insistent on making yourself visible within the pack? It’s almost as if you think being seen is a good thing.”

I know better than to open my mouth in front of Thomas. Standing still, I look at him silently, my hands folded in front of me.

“You should consider yourself lucky that you’re allowed to be part of this pack. You should be grateful that you are treated with some level of respect.” Thomas gets to his feet, and I flinch.

He walks around the room before coming to stand before me. Propping his hips against the desk, he supports himself with his palms on the edge of it and studies me. “Last night, I had to go to the human police station to pick up my daughter.”

This is when I make the mistake of speaking, unable to help myself. “I didn’t want to press charges—”

I see Thomas’s hand lift in the air, and then I hear the loud smack just before I stagger backward, my left cheek burning.

“Did I say you could talk?” Thomas asks pleasantly. “You humiliated my daughter. You, a nobody, had the audacity to harm my child. Why are you so determined to cause a ruckus? Don’t you know what I can do to you?”

My ears are still ringing from the slap when he grabs a fistful of my long, red hair, forcing me to look up at him. All the while, his expression does not change. If someone were listening in from the outside, it would seem as if he’s not attacking me but rather reprimanding me gently with his words. “I told you, when you were six years old and able to understand basic conversation, that I expect you to live like a dead rat. Do you remember that? Or we do need to have that conversation again?”

When I take too long to answer, his grip on my hair tightens, and I let out a gasp.

“I asked you a question.”

Before I can reply, he drags me over to the wall and slams my head against it.

Once. Twice.

I can’t stop him. My hands lift defensively as I try to swallow any sound of pain. Thomas tends to get even more aggressive if I cry out. The first time he beat me up was when I was ten; I had saved enough money from cleaning yards to buy myself a pink backpack for school, the same bag Willow had had her eye on. The backpack was taken from me and destroyed.

It’s clear where Willow gets her sadistic streak from. At least Thomas only beats me if I’ve upset his daughter, whom I try my best to stay away from.

“I didn’t call the police, Thomas!” I try to tell him, but the next blow has my vision blurring with blood, and my tongue now feels thick in my mouth.

“You have some audacity.” He looks annoyed. “I don’t care who called the police. You should’ve stopped them. I don’t care if you didn’t press charges. My daughter was at the police station. My daughter. She had no reason to be there.”

I should keep my mouth shut. I should agree with him and apologize. But even though this pack has been quite successful in breaking me, there is still some spirit left alive within me.

“She wasn’t the one arrested!” I manage to say before I get punched in the throat and fall to the ground. But I’m not done yet. “Only Flint was arrested!” I gasp. “Willow just went with him.”

My head is spinning as I try to get to my feet.

Beta Thomas crouches beside me, something thin and sharp in his hand. “It doesn’t matter, Alice. You are the reason she stepped inside that filthy place. You still don’t understand, do you? Willow is my precious daughter. You should’ve stopped her. You should’ve begged her if that’s what it took. Instead, you did nothing. When it comes to you and Willow, you’re not even worthy enough to lick the bottom of her shoe. My child was traumatized because of you. She had to deal with all sorts of human police matters. All because you couldn’t bear to have some soup thrown on you? If you can’t do your job, then quit and starve.”

As soon as he finishes his sentence, he lifts his arm and thrusts something into the palm of my right hand. A high-pitched scream is torn from my lips.

He has stabbed me with something. My vision bloody, I don’t understand what it is at first. I’m barely able to think past the pain, and then I see the letter opener sticking out of my hand.

Nausea washes over me.

Thomas shoves me away from him, gets up, and dusts off his suit. I clutch my wrist, trembling and staring down at my hand, only looking up when he makes a clucking sound. “Give me that letter opener.”

Sometimes I wonder if it would have been easier if I had just been killed when my parents left me at the pack orphanage. Or did they want me to survive and suffer for having been born?

“I don’t have all day!” the beta snaps, and I cringe.

Wrapping my left hand around the letter opener, I press my lips together and yank it out. My teeth sink into my tongue as I try to distract myself from this vicious pain. I manage to get to my feet, and I walk over to the desk. Just as I’m about to place the sharp object on it, Thomas shakes his head.

“Throw it in the trash there. It’s got your dirty blood on it.”

My body grows cold.

There are times when I’m convinced I’ve grown numb to the insults, the taunts, and the constant degradation. But in moments like this, I feel like a child, all alone and vulnerable, with the world hurling sticks and stones at me.

I throw away the letter opener and turn to leave. My steps are uneven, my vision half obscured by the blood in my eyes. I step out of the office and decide I’ll have to go see a healer. If Mary is available, she will patch me up. Otherwise, I’ll have to get some gauze and disinfectant from the local human pharmacy.

It’s June, and it’s sweltering hot, even in the evening. Despite the sweat streaming down my nape, I wish I had a jacket or something to conceal my badly injured face from the gawking shifters. It sucks that shifters prefer living in close proximity to each other. Each time I get a beating, it’s public knowledge. While there are always a few sympathetic faces, most of my pack feels that my humiliation is well-deserved. I don’t know what they expect me to do. Kill myself?

It hasn’t come to that yet.

Since my kind prefers to reside close together, it means I run into pack members everywhere I go. I am fortunate in one regard, which is that my job and my apartment are both located outside the pack’s inner territory. They might have considered this a punishment, but to me, it’s nothing short of a relief. I don’t mind living among humans. They’re kinder to me than my own people.

The Wolf Kingdom existed long before the humans populated our land. But unlike our kind, humans multiply like rabbits, and over time, we had to concede to human rule, and the Wolf Kingdom faded into obscurity. Soon enough, the humans forgot about our kind, relegating us to their myths and legends.

However, the Wolf Kingdom had simply withdrawn into the background, never letting go of its reins. With multiple packs under its vast umbrella, it controls the continent’s economy, entertainment, and politics, much like its counterparts in Europe and on other continents.

We may be hidden from the human eye, but we are still very much in control. My people take pride in this, but I don’t. What use is it being all powerful when they can’t even treat one of their own with basic decency?

I try to call Mary, one of my few friends in the pack, but she doesn’t pick up. I send her a message, and when there is no response, I realize I may have to go to the healing center. I let out a quiet groan.

I make my way to the edge of the territory, where there will be fewer people around. Weaving through the trees, I try to stay out of sight of the few shifters moving about. My hand is hurting, and when I look down at it, I can tell that the wound is not healing. Instead, I see the beginnings of infection.

Shifters have fast healing, but that’s only one side of the coin. If we get an infection, that also progresses quickly. It has something to do with our immune systems. I need to see Mary right away. She’s the only one who can help me. If I go to the healing center, they’re going to give me a tough time. They’ll treat me because they have no choice, but the way they’ll move around me, touching me gingerly as if I carry some sort of special cooties, is too disheartening right now. And the last thing I need at the moment is more harsh words thrown at me.

I check my phone, but there’s still no response from Mary. My heart sinks as I look at my infected hand.

What do I do? Should I just go to the human pharmacy and get some bandages and something to disinfect the wound with? My head is lowered as I walk, so I don’t see the person hurrying in my direction until I bump into him.

The man is built like a tank, and while he doesn’t budge, I fall on my ass.

For a moment, I don’t know what hit me. Groaning, I curl on my side, my body wracked with pain. I couldn’t have hit a person; that had to have been a brick wall.

“Are you alright?” It’s a man’s voice.

As he leans closer, I catch his scent, and I feel a strange, unknown sensation within me. Despite what I feel for certain is a broken rib, I crack an eye open and come face to face with a dark-haired man with light green eyes. He’s looking straight at me, and I stare up at him.

“Are you real?”

He blinks. “What?”

Maybe I hit my head too hard. That would make sense. I’m seeing things. Because that’s not a man; that’s an angel. His face looks like it’s been sculpted by the Gods with painstaking care. All those sharp angles and beautiful curls.

Dazed, I continue to look at him. “You’re pretty. You’re very pretty.”

His face turns red, and he coughs, “You must have hit your head pretty hard.” He takes my hands and helps me to my feet. As he steadies me, I realize that this is not some dream. Flustered, I try to move away, but my head is spinning. He grabs me by my upper arms. “Woah, there.”

When he gets a closer look at my face, his expression changes. “What happened to you? Were you attacked?”

His question has me falling back to Earth, the haze giving way to stark reality.

A shifter.

He’s a wolf shifter, like me. But he’s not from my pack.

I push him away. “I’m fine. Sorry. I must’ve hit my head.”

I try to move past him, but he stops me. “Let me take you to a healer.”

Those green eyes are filled with concern. He’s looking at me as if I matter, as if my pain matters.

My lips start to move, and then I press them together. I don’t want to see the same disgust in his eyes as I’ve seen in the eyes of others of my kind. I don’t think I’ll be able to bear it right now.

However, he doesn’t let me go. His hand wraps around my wrist, and he frowns. “Somebody hurt you. Do you need help?” Before I can say anything, his eyes move lower. “Your hand. It’s infected. You need to see a healer immediately.” He takes a cloth from his pocket and ties it around my palm. “This will stave off the infection till we get to the healer.”

My breath is stuck in my throat as I watch him carefully wrap the cloth around my palm and tie it securely, his forehead creased in concentration. My heart is beating incredibly fast, each thump vibrating in my ribcage.

This man is handsome, but not in the rough, rugged way most shifters are. His is a kind of ethereal beauty. As his fingers graze my palm, each touch gives me a burst of euphoria. I’ve never reacted like this to any male before, and it’s overwhelming.

He looks into my eyes as he says, “You need to report this attack on you.”

I part my lips, about to say something I know I’ll regret. And then something occurs to me.

I don’t know this man, but I do know that when he finds out I don’t have a wolf spirit, the concern and worry in his beautiful eyes will be replaced by disdain and coldness.

I back away from him. “I’m fine. Really.”

Reality is crashing down around me.

He tries to stop me, but I begin hobbling away, feeling like my heart will burst.

He calls out after me, but I break into a run.

I can’t handle his kindness. I just can’t. My heart is too tired.

So very tired.