"We're wolves! You're my father, you're the Beta, you aren't going to do anything? You aren't going to make Alpha Jermain fight?"

My father shook his head, "Gianna, there's a great deal you don't know, that we've kept from you."

"I know we're wolves and we don't let other wolves take what's ours without a fight! I'm an Oracle and I have to tell a warrior this?" I sputtered. Shadowless wasn't some tiny little pack. We were a large pack, a strong pack. We didn't just roll over because some other pack has told us to.

"Mind your mouth, Gianna." He growled at me.

His growl would have sent me cowering, but now it had no effect. A warrior who would not fight? A male who would just tuck his tail between his legs? I looked at my father, and part of me didn't even recognize him anymore. His prestige and power over me eroded. He should have been angry at Alpha Jermian, he should have challenged his cowardly Alpha, but instead, he just growled at me.

Alpha Gabel of IronMoon. Angry or not, the name still sent cold shivers through me.

Three years ago, the IronMoon had been a small pack living in some cold, northern forests. Just a bunch of punks who fought amongst themselves, and usually killed each other before they hurt anyone else. Then Alpha Gabel had appeared. He trained his warriors to be brutal and fierce, then had turned them onto the small neighboring packs. Devoured those packs, moved on to larger and larger prey.

He didn't kill the packs he conquered.

The IronMoon tortured their victims.

The IronMoon broke their victims.

Alpha Gabel made it easy to avoid his wrath, and the inevitable indignity of begging for mercy. Surrender, swear allegiance and pay annual tribute to the IronMoon. He left the packs to rule themselves, and life for them continued on as normal. Except knowing they had been leashed like dogs.

Now the smallest packs surrendered, and some even swore allegiance before Gabel got around to threatening them.

Rumor was Alpha Gabel wanted to build an empire and crown himself King Alpha, but the idea was so silly everyone scoffed at it. There hadn't been a King Alpha in five hundred years. The last time there had been three, each with their own kingdom, until a war had broken out between the three. Nobody had won, the kings had died, the wolves nearly gone extinct and the kingdoms destroyed, never to be rebuilt.

Nobody since had attempted to be a King Alpha. Nobody believed it was possible in the modern world.

Alpha King ambitions or not, Gabel had been menacing packs of Shadowless' size for the past year, and with our territory not far from IronMoon, it was just a matter of time. A fight with IronMoon was inevitable.

At least that's what I had thought until that evening.

There would be no fight. Alpha Jermain of Shadowless would surrender to Alpha Gabel of IronMoon without so much as a growl.

I couldn't believe it, and I refused to accept it. No one expected Oracles to be courageous, we weren't warriors, afterall. But weak, timid Oracles would be lost on the Tides, drown in the Moon's Eye, go insane from the whispers and visions. I also came from a long line of warriors, that fire burned within me, and I couldn't imagien Alpha Jermain--my Alpha, the one I obeyed without question-- kneeling down in front of Alpha Gabel. Not without Gabel ripping out his hamstrings so Jermain had no choice but to kneel.

"Gianna," my father tried to take a stern tone with me, "This is how it's going to be. You don't know as much as you think you do."

He always said when he wanted to get out of an argument with me. He still treated me like I was a stupid child. I was eighteen. I had been born a Seer: a female wolf blessed with visions and whispers from the Moon. At sixteen I had finished my training and taken the vows to become an Oracle. I wasn't a child. 

My father looked at me as if he saw me from the far side of a mirror. 

Things were about to get much, much worse than just a quick surrender. 

"Alpha Gabel has sent his demands," He told me before I could speak, "He will be here tomorrow. He wants all the young, unmated she-wolves presented to him."

"What!" I gasped.

My father didn't even look me in the eye.

There was only one reason Gabel would demand that. Only one. Horror rocked me, absolute terror seeped into my bones, followed by disgust and despair. Shadowless would present Gabel with all its females without a challenge? We weren't worth fighting over? Not even one single drop of blood?

My heart broke, flaked into a hundred pieces and dropped into an empty part of me.

My father kept speaking, "Gabel is un-mated. I guess he is looking for the right she-wolf. He's been doing this in all the other packs. It's part of our deal with him."

I couldn't breathe. I just sort of wheezed. Who was this wolf talking to me? I thought he had been my father, the First Beta, a warrior, a male wolf. I didn't know him now.

"Yes. Gia, he didn't ask about you, he might not know. He's most interested in Amber. I hope you can understand that this is for the good of the pack."

The good of the pack! How could it be for the good of the pack? No, I didn't understand. How could giving up packmates be good for the pack? We were wolves. We didn't just let other wolves take what was ours without a fight, especially not our packmates and kin. We didn't just line up females for perusal because another Alpha demanded it be son.

Fathers didn't sell their daughters.

My eyes welled with the tears of betrayal. "We aren't even worth fighting for? You aren't even going to make him pay a drop of blood for us?"

He met my gaze. He was already beaten. Gabel hadn't even shown up yet and the Shadowless First Beta crept around like a beaten dog. "Be ready at ten, Gianna."

* * * * * 

Normally I didn't like people in my room. I had all my Seer tools there, and if someone accidentally touched a bowl or rune or stone, it would mean weeks of not using that item while I purified it. That night was an exception. I was also one of the few youngsters that had their own room, and being up on the third floor, it was private as well.

In the darkness a few of the young she-wolves who would be presented huddled around my bed. Amber, the oldest of us, sat at the foot of my bed. Some of the older girls, who wouldn't be presented, but were still scared out of their minds, had also snuck up the stairs. If the ranked adults knew what we were doing, they didn't make the trip up to the third floor to scold us for whispering midnight gossip.

Amber was twenty, beautiful, a warrior, and destined to be a Luna somewhere. She had olive skin and exquisite dark eyes, was tall and the first time I had heard the word "statuesque" I had thought of Amber. That word was created to describe her. She was intelligent, brave, kind, everything a Luna should be. Even though she had been told Gabel had asked about her, she was calm and more concerned with everyone else.

"Alpha Gabel has been doing this to all the packs," she said in the dark, "He hasn't found the right she-wolf yet."

"Have you seen anything, Gianna?" one of the other young women asked me in a whisper. "If he's going to take one of us?"

I shook my head, "It wouldn't work. Oracles cannot scry for themselves. Since I'm in the group tomorrow, the Moon won't show me anything."

The first rule of being an Oracle was to never look for yourself. An Oracle's own future was inherently unstable because whatever we saw could change with one simple choice. More importantly, choosing hoping to avoid one outcome might lead us to create a future we liked even less. I wasn't going to make things worse for us by breaking one of the rules.

"Nothing?" one of the younger ones whimpered. "You don't even have a clue?"

"No." I had no idea what was going to happen, not even a whisper or hint from the Moon. My gifts were as still as the hot night air outside.

It wasn't just that night that the Moon would show me nothing. The entire past month the Moon had closed Her Eye to me. I saw nothing in my scrying bowls. The Tides tossed me back onto the shore, and obscured themselves in fog. I heard no whispers, caught no ghostly scents and my dreams were just dark and misty, and I wandered endlessly in them. The future was in terrible flux and changed from heartbeat to heartbeat. It changed faster than my visions could take shape. I had translated this to Alpha Jermain to mean that Shadowless would play a key part in determining the future, and I wouldn't be able to see any further until Shadowless did their part.

Or, as it turned out, Shadowless didn't do a damn thing.

I didn't tell anyone that. The future being in flux wasn't automatically a bad omen. But just then, bad things were coming, and it'd just frighten everyone even more.

"It's not fair." one of the she-wolves whispered.

Amber shushed her.

A hot breeze drifted through the open window. It carried the scent of wolves. Strange wolves, males.The scent pulled at me: prestige, power, strength.

The IronMoon were already here, waiting for dawn. 

/*****

Oh haiiii there.

I'm sort of circling back and fixing up the first few chapters. This one is quite different from the original (if you remember the original!) 

Please don't beat me if you were hoping for an all new chapter. SOON.

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