The Alpha's Blind Fate
Chapter 58: The Red Sisters (2)

Chapter 58: The Red Sisters (2)

I listened to ’On the nature of daylight by Max Richter’ while writing this Chapter.

ZINA

Silence descended between them at Zina’s last words. But with that was a sense of confusion that she gleaned from Seraph’s side. Laced to it was probably the maid servant’s unasked question.

The question would be along the lines of why was Zina telling her about the Red Sister’s in a discussion prompted by talking about the WolfKnight’s... her supposed family.

Seraph would find out soon enough.

"No one says a thing about these girls that are taken away?" Seraph asked, not because the cruelty was strange to her, but because the girl had all but grown in the Arctic North, a place where cruelty wss masked under the disguise of well-placed laws.

No, cruelty in the north was not lawless. Slaves such as Seraph herself were acquired under the backings of stringent and ancient laws that stood staunch in time and space.

"The Greenlands is not like the Arctic North," was Zina’s response, "where I come from, it is each pack for itself... each territory for itself, each Alpha for himself. It’s very much unlike the Arctic where there is kingdom."

"Oh..." Seraph simply said, at a loss for words.

"My Pack painted the Red Sisters as some sort of monsters they were to guard against in order to protect their daughters. I myself was in appreciation of that fact for I was just a girl myself. It was said that the Red Sisters meted out the worst kind of training on female pups below the age of ten. In fact, they had a preference for an abnormal... like me."

In the face of Seraph’s silence and the dim sound of hooves and paws about them, Zina continued the tale, no longer her twenty-four year old self. No, the girl that now spoke was eight year old Zina WolfKnight who believed she was surrounded by a family that adored her.

"We were told that any girl that the Red Sister wishes to initiate into their way must pass three rites of passage. The first is the passage of the mind where everything the girl loves is ripped away from her cruelly until all she is filled with is the gnawing need to obliterate everything around her..." Zina trailed, her fingers clammy from sweat, "the young girl must have no emotions. Not love, nor even hate. She can’t like anything, or want anything. Servitude, obedience, ruthlessness, viciousness... those are the only qualities the girl is allowed to feel."

"And all of these are done before the young girl reaches the age of ten?" Seraph asked carefully, slight disbelief tinged to her words.

"Yes." Zina answered in a slightly shaking voice, "If not, the girl is considered a failure and is eliminated from the game. Yes, that’s what they call it... the game."

Seeing as twisting her fingers was doing nothing to assuage her tension... Zina allowed her fingers to creep up to her shoulder—the space between her neck—where the mark was nestled at. She caressed it instead, stunned at how yet again, it strangely calmed her.

She cleared her throat to continue her story. "Any girl who completes the first rite of passage can murder their father or mother whom they once loved dearly without questions. They just do it because their mind has been reduced to a hollow mess where love has become a conventional word."

"And the second rite of passage?" Seraph inquired carefully, her voice coaxing and patient.

Zina smiled, scoffing lightly. "After the first rite of passage, the second and third become surprisingly easy... if you could say that. The second passage trains the girls to become assassins, and the third teaches them to become seductresses."

"They’re just pups?!" Seraph billowed in outrage. Even though she had been a slave, Seraph had not experienced cruelty beyond maltreatment and physical abuse. Not that sexual abuse didn’t happen to slaves, but they were not as popular as it was in the Greenlands compared to the North.

"You could tell that to their families who are enjoying the gold used to sell their daughters." Zina said blandly, "I mean, I myself would not have been standing here before you. I was almost sold to the Red Sisters myself." Zina said without emotion.

"What?" Seraph said in disbelief, "that is not possi..."

Zina crudely cut her off, "Not possible? Why? Because I am now the Theta? Believe me back then I was no better than the slave you were."

"Do not say that," Seraph protested fiercely, "you’ve always been the Great Seer...."

Zina chuckled harshly, cutting her off. "The Great Seer?" Zina scoffed, remembering that fateful day when a woman of refined smell had visited the WolfKnight pack. She had offered them two hundred brams of gold coins, and the WolfKnight’s had refused causing Zina—who truly believed her pack to be not less than a pauper—to feel so special and loved.

It wasn’t until the betrayal six years ago did Zina realize the real reason behind the refusal. It wasn’t that her pack had been reluctant to sell her to the Red Sisters, it was that they were counting their wins and losses.

A one-time payment of two hundred brams of gold coins was nothing compared to the fifty brams of gold coins that Zina’s real family sent to her pack every month.

"The Red Sisters visited my pack." Zina began to tell Seraph, "They said they wanted me, that I fit into their description of the future generation of Red Sisters. That even though I was blind, my excellent senses were all they needed. That the fact that I was without a wolf was all the better. That night, I was eavesdropping on them when the Alpha said to them the following words,

’It would be a loss to sell her for just two hundred brams of coins. Can’t you offer more?’"

Zina laughed, something hard gripping at her heart. "You see, back then my heart stuttered. But I quickly brushed it off. I said to myself that the Alpha was simply beating around the bush with them. The man who I had come to see as a father couldn’t possibly want to sell me off to the Red Sisters of all people. But guess what happened next?"

"What happened?" Seraph said in a pained voice so low that Zina almost missed it.

Zina sniffed. "The Red Sister said, ’Three hundred brams last. And that is because we really want her’. My dying heart came alive when the Alpha said it still won’t go. How utterly foolish of me to think it was because he cared and not because he was calculating his losses and gains in the long run. Even if I was so foolish, I was supposed to know that something was wrong the moment the Alpha offered that they take the omega of the pack instead."

Zina remembered her childhood archenemy, Fionna. The lowest omega of the pack whose sickly parents died after they gave birth to her. Fionna’s mother went first, before the drunk of a dad followed after. Fionna always picked at Zina, and she couldn’t fault the girl much.

Being the lowest and pitiable in the pack, the only person Fionna could pick on was the girl without a wolf... the aberrant that was Zina. She would put out a leg to topple Zina who would fall on her face, sometimes she would put an insect in Zina’s food. No matter how much she was punished, Fionna never relented in making Zina’s life hell. It was like her life mission.

"What happened to the Omega?" Seraph asked tentatively as if afraid to poke at a sore topic.

Zina, who was able to breathe until that moment, suddenly started feeling suffocated in the carriage. Her hands reached out, drawing the window by her side open. She stuck her head out, breathing in mouthfuls of air as the carriage ran along at terrifying, dizzying speed that wasn’t at all evident in the confines of the carriage.

The sound of hooves and strong paws was even more terrifyingly loud and mighty.

Zina shut the window close harshly, successfully shutting out the noise. Recovering herself, Zina answered. "Seven year old Fionna was sold for a hundred brams of gold coins."

Seraph gasped, the sound of her hands flying to slap against her mouth resounding in the carriage.

"Seven...?" she muttered trailing.

"Do you understand it now?" Zina spoke in the silence after, "I would rather die than ask the Wolfkinght’s to protect me. And I would rather destroy them than step up to ask them for their sharp-bladed help."

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