Olivia hummed the tune as she walked to her parents' room in order to bid them goodnight. However, the moment she closed her hand on the knob, she heard her mother's angry voice.
"Silver Vales pack?" her mother shouted. "I will not give my daughter to the traitors of the Silver Vales pack. Never! Handing them to her would be an insult to our tribe and whatever we have built so painstakingly in our lands."
"You think I don't know about that, Kaia?" her father's voice boomed in the room, leaving her frozen on the door. She waited for his next sentence, feeling like she was going to wither. "Do we have a choice in this matter? It's either we give her hand to the suitor in Silver Vales or we await her destiny which looks horrible at this point of time! And we all know that if she is not going there, what he would do to her, or to any of us."
Kaia didn't respond to Vaarin. Her body trembled so much that she caught the table's edge to support herself, her pale cheeks mottling with panic.
Vaarin said, "This is the only way to end the war that Murtagh started. And even if he doesn't care about her, at least it will end the war. And it's not that she won't be safe there."
"She will be safe?" Kaia laughed mockingly. "We live in constant fear of them, but you would be a fool to think that Olivia will be safe there, Vaarin. Don't I know how they mock the Whiteclaw pack?" she said in a seething voice. "Our hatred runs deeper than the deep oceans in Zmjia. I highly doubt that she would have a pleasant time there."
Olivia's eyes became moist. Her lips quivered and her hands started shaking. She lifted her hand to open the knob of the door, but Vaarin's words stopped her.
"What is more important Kaia?" Vaarin said in an equally angry voice. "It is better that she is uncomfortable than to have the entire Whiteclaw pack ruined. It is Queen Adrianna's benevolence that she is not interfering in the matters between the packs. If she wants, she can erase all of us in a day. Olivia's marriage will grant us the protection we have been seeking and who knows that our Alpha will be freed after that?"
Olivia was completely riled up. She turned from the door and ran towards the landing, down the stairs to the empty halls below. She ran right out of the main hall to, into the darkness of the night, her light cotton nightgown fluttering behind her. Snow crunched and damp twigs broke under her bare feet, but Olivia didn't bother about the pain they caused. She just continued to run into the wilderness and the blackness that surrounded their mansion, her heart racing wildly. She felt like shifting and then escaping her pack but was that even an option? So much was at stake.
She ran to the safe haven she had chosen for herself, through the dark woods, through the chilly winds, under a gray sky that threatened to send more snow on the ground. It was a path she had remembered very well. It was a path that was etched in her memory ever since she was a child. She stopped right in front of a massive tree, whose trunk was like a hollow cave. The willow like branches of the tree hung naked except for a few brave leaves over which snow was accumulated in clumps. Olivia found her way through the branches and slowly walked down towards the end of the hollow which ended towards the edge of the cliff. She walked through, inhaling the scent of damp wood and dried leaves and mist. She climbed over a thick mossy log that twisted outside the tree just before the cliff. Olivia hauled herself over it and sat atop it.
The cliff opened right into a valley and overlooked the Whiteclaw pack. She perched over it, her feet dangling in the air. Only a few feet away the valley started and right in the center of the valley was River Lifye. It meandered through the several bends as it headed further down to other packs of Silver Vales.
Olivia stared down at the river which was a witness to the fiver year old war and hatred amongst two packs. While Silver Vales had all the packs in its control, Whiteclaw pack fought for freedom. In her heart she knew that it wasn't freedom that Murtagh wanted. He just wanted to have more. His greed had let him astray. He was arrested by the queen for going against her.
Her hands reached her cheeks which were wet from her crying. She brushed her fingers over them roughly, willing herself not to cry. She was being forced to marry someone and that wasn't what she had ever thought would happen to her. As a young girl, she had always thought of finding her mate and falling in love with him. Five years back, along with her friends, when she had shifted for the first time, she had run amuck in the lands of Silver Vales. But then before she could breach the territory, her friends had forced her back to their pack.
She never knew that her life would turn out like this. She hated the very idea of getting married to someone in the Silver Vales pack.
"And just when I thought I was all alone in this hollow."
Olivia went completely still. Startled as hell, she jerked her head back, ready to shift. Her claws scored into the log, as she stopped herself from falling off it towards the valley. She had come to her safe haven thousands of times, but she had never encountered a single soul there, not even wild animals.
She pierced her eyes through the darkness of the hollow and saw a hooded man with a long cloak that fluttered at his ankle as a gust of cold wind rushed in.
Olivia's fight and flight emotions kicked in, but she knew that there was no way she could do it. His scent flooded her senses. He smelled like fire and so masculine.. "Who are you?" she breathed, the hair on the back of her neck rising.
