# Chapter 1: The Tribute's Chains
The cage smelled like death, but Lyra had long since stopped noticing. Six days in iron and rattling wood had taught her that survival meant counting bars, not breaths.
Twenty-three vertical. Fourteen horizontal. One for every year she'd survived in the Scablands before they caught her.
The transport jerked over another rut, and the Omega beside her whimpered—a high, broken sound that reminded Lyra of wounded prey. She'd made sounds like that once, back when pain still surprised her. Now she just counted. Counted bars. Counted heartbeats. Counted the ways she might die before nightfall.
Dawn light filtered through the gaps in the wooden panels, painting stripes across six filthy bodies crammed into a space meant for cargo. The stench was overwhelming—fear-sweat, unwashed skin, and the acrid tang of the silver-laced chains that kept them docile. Lyra's wrists burned where the metal touched bare flesh, but she'd learned not to struggle. Struggling only made the burns worse.
"Water," someone croaked. "Please."
No one answered. There was no water. There hadn't been water since yesterday's brief stop, when a Beta guard had kicked the cage and laughed as they begged.
Lyra pressed her face against the bars, seeking fresher air. Through the gap, she watched the landscape transform. The barren wastes of the Scablands—her home, her hell, her kingdom of dust and survival—gave way to something she'd only heard about in whispered stories. Trees. Actual trees, tall and green and abundant, lining a road that looked maintained. Tended.
Wealth. This was what wealth looked like.
"We're close," the Omega beside her whispered. Her name was Mira, maybe. Or Myra. Lyra hadn't bothered to learn. Learning names meant caring, and caring meant weakness. "Can you smell it?"
Lyra inhaled despite herself. Beneath the cage's stench, she caught something else—wolf musk and dominance, so thick it coated her tongue. Alpha territory. Strong enough to make her wolf whimper and retreat deeper into her consciousness, where it had hidden for most of her life.
The transport lurched to a stop.
"Up!" a male voice barked. "Tribute's here. Let's get this over with."
The cage door screeched open. Sunlight blinded her. Hands grabbed her arms—rough, careless—and hauled her out onto packed earth. Her legs buckled. Six days in the cage had stolen her ability to stand, but the guards didn't care. They simply dragged her forward, chains rattling, feet scraping uselessly.
When her vision cleared, Lyra's breath caught.
The Red Moon fortress rose before her like a monument to power. Black stone, massive and angular, carved into the mountainside itself. Guard towers bristled with armed sentries. Everywhere she looked, Lycans moved with purpose and confidence—Betas in formation, Alphas with their heads high, their auras pressing down on everything around them like invisible weights.
She'd never seen so many predators in one place.
"Move, Dreg."
A boot caught her in the ribs. She stumbled forward with the other Omegas, down stone steps into the belly of the fortress. The air grew colder. Darker. The walls closed in until they were shuffling through corridors lit by torches, the smoke stinging her eyes.
They descended into a basement that reeked of old fear. Dozens of Omegas huddled in the darkness, pressed against walls or curled on the floor. The servant quarters. The holding pen for tributes.
Lyra was shoved inside. She caught herself against the wall, chains swinging, and took in her surroundings with the practiced assessment of someone who'd survived worse. Stone floor. Iron-reinforced door. Barred windows near the ceiling, too high to reach. No obvious exits except the way they'd come.
A trap. But then, her whole life had been a trap.
"First Conclave?" an older Omega asked. She had kind eyes—the dangerous kind, the kind that still hoped. "You need to listen to me, girl. When they take you up there—"
"I know," Lyra cut her off. "Keep my head down. Submit. Survive."
The older Omega—Mira, she'd said her name was Mira—frowned. "It's more than that. The Alpha's Voice—"
A crash made them both flinch. Across the room, a Beta servant had thrown a wooden bowl at another Omega, the younger girl now cowering with soup dripping from her hair. The Beta drew back her foot for a kick.
No one moved to help. No one even looked.
Lyra turned away and found a empty corner, sliding down the wall until the chains allowed her to sit. This was the hierarchy in action. Omegas at the bottom. Servants above them. Betas above that. And somewhere high above, so far removed they might as well be gods, the Alphas who owned everything.
She'd been at the bottom her whole life. This was just a different cage with different bars.
Through the high windows, she heard sounds—voices, thousands of them. Music. The rumble of a crowd gathering. Her wolf stirred uneasily in her chest, sensing something massive happening above them.
"The Great Conclave," Mira whispered, settling near her. "Every Alpha pack on the continent is here. They say King Kael himself will—"
The door slammed open.
"Tribute selections," a Red Moon enforcer announced. His eyes were cold as he scanned the room. "You, you, and you." His finger stabbed toward Omegas at random. Each one he pointed at went pale. "And you, Dreg."
He was looking at Lyra.
She didn't fight as they hauled her to her feet. Didn't resist as they stripped away her filthy rags and scrubbed her skin raw with cold water and harsh soap. Didn't flinch when they dressed her in a thin white shift that left nothing to imagination, marking her as prey for the assembled predators above.
She just counted.
Three servants. Four guards. One doorway.
They locked silver-inlaid iron around her throat, her wrists, her ankles. The metal burned like brands, and this time she couldn't help the small hiss of pain that escaped her teeth.
"Sensitive, this one," a guard laughed. "The Dregs always are. No tolerance built up."
Mira appeared beside her, also chained, also dressed in white. She squeezed Lyra's hand—the first genuine touch of comfort Lyra had felt in years. "Survive today," she whispered. "Tomorrow might be different."
Lyra didn't believe in tomorrow. She believed in the next minute, the next breath, the next count.
They were herded toward stairs. Light spilled down from above, and with it, the roar of thousands of voices. The chains rattled with each step, a percussion of helplessness.
"...direct from the Scablands..."
"...packless Dreg..."
"...Red Moon's mercy..."
Words filtered down, none of them kind. Lyra's jaw tightened, but she kept her head down as they'd taught her. As she'd learned through years of surviving in places that wanted her dead.
The stairs ended. Sunlight exploded across her vision.
She stumbled onto a massive dais of polished marble, chains catching on the steps. The sound hit her like a physical force—jeering, laughing, a thousand Lycans gathered in a grand amphitheater carved into the mountainside. Banners from every pack fluttered in the breeze. Alphas sat in tiered seating, their auras pressing down on her like stones.
And at the center, elevated above them all on a throne of black iron, sat a figure that made her wolf flatten in pure submission.
King Kael. The Alpha of Alphas. The conqueror who'd bent the entire continent to his will.
He was carved from winter itself—sharp features, ice-pale eyes, dark hair pulled back to expose the brutal elegance of his face. A woman sat at his right hand, beautiful and predatory, her hand possessive on his armrest. Advisors flanked him. Guards surrounded the throne.
He looked utterly bored.
The announcer's voice cut through the jeers like a blade: "A packless Dreg from the Scablands—a gift of mercy from the Crescent Ridge Pack."
The crowd erupted in fresh mockery. Lyra's chains burned, the silver searing her skin, but not as hot as the weight of a thousand Alpha eyes stripping her bare.
She kept counting. Kept breathing.
And tried not to notice the way the Alpha King's gaze had just shifted from boredom to something else.
Something that made her wolf whimper in terror.