Capítulo 5: Chapter 5: Homecoming

Arisara

“Chavoret! Prepare the guard wolves to defend against an attack! Mee Noi, ring the siren! And Ginggaew, for f*ck’s sake, send these bothersome pests back to their homes!” The pests, my despicable husband and Thonburi’s new Alpha, was referring to were the congregation of millions waiting outside the city center for the coronation ceremony. Prayut patiently waited for six months, hypocritically sitting by my father’s bedside, praying for him to take his final breath. Finally, the pack was his, as much as it was mine.

“D*mnit! Was I speaking French?! GO GO GO!” Seeing him order the lower ranks of my pack was disheartening and repulsive; I didn’t want my followers to conflate me with this monster just because we were married.

“What should we do with the Alpha’s body?” Omega Anuman inquired, pointing to my lifeless father whose hand was still dangling off the bed.

“Burn his shabby a*s in the cellars for all I care! Just don’t let it make a stench. Understood?!” Prayut dishonored my father’s resting soul. As much as I despised my father, speaking ill of the dead would only conjure future misfortune. A true ignorant brute my husband was.

The deafening drone of warning sirens pierced my ears. The pure fear in the eyes of my people, who expected a coronation, and instead, received a funeral. Of course, there would be no royal procession or vigil, as was customary after the death of an Alpha, because Prayut had no sense of righteousness or principles. His only concern was the threat of retaliation from the neighboring Pattani pack.

For as long as Thonburi was in power, Pattani was a pack of miscellaneous outcasts, attracting castaways all throughout Siam. Hence, my father and Prayut had fun taunting them. I’ll never forget the day when Prayut returned to the packhouse with a Pattani prisoner.

My father, impressed by his son-in-law’s seizure of this young woman, no more the age of twenty-five, assembled the whole packhouse to applaud his venerable Beta, Prayut. The woman, with a satin gag in her mouth, and arms knotted by a coarse cable of twine, had bloody tears descending her cheek. Behind the scars, she was beautiful, and I wasn’t the only one to notice. Prayut approached her, thrusting his oversized hand around her petite neck, and whispered tauntingly, “You’re too fine to be of Pattani blood!” Taking his left pointer finger, he propelled it into her most vulnerable part, laughing diabolically and shrieked, “Let’s see if you’re still pure!”

She wriggled in pain, as my husband slid his hand around her neck down to her stomach. Her tears only intensified as Prayut stood motionless keeping his hand on her midsection. “Oh, what do we have here?! Is it a baby bump?!” Prayut tsked repeatedly shaking his head in disappointment. “It really is a shame, isn’t it? A beauty like you had to be tainted by Pattani scum.”

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” I cried, having had enough of this beast’s behavior. Prayut’s eyes darted towards me, irritated by my disturbance.

“Don’t mind her, son. She doesn’t know how to have fun like us!” my father interjected, removing the ‘in law’ from my husband’s title as a display of his approval.

Grabbing the young lady from the locks of her hair, he tossed her aside and blasted her to the ground with a vigorous kick from his steel-toed boot. That was the last sight of her I could endure before running out of the gathering room, hurling scraps from my stomach.

After enduring years of humiliation and torture from my father and Prayut, Pattani amassed strength by loyalty. They accepted rejected wolves who desperately desired a sense of belonging, giving them food, shelter and instruction, creating a pack with steadfast bonds. Although Thonburi has the largest pack, Pattani’s is the most lethal due to their kinship with one another. My father raised an army of self-serving mercenaries, whereas Pattani raised a family.

And now, they’ve had enough.

The memory alone made me nauseous. I shook my head with vigor, escaping the vivid nightmare, returning to my senses. The packhouse, much like the rest of the city upon hearing the news of my father’s death, was in an unsettled state of disarray.

Approaching the chaos from the west of Thonburi’s perimeter, the direction of Phetchaburi, was a courageous man. He came alone, without backup, and was unarmed. This guy must have balls the size of an elephant to enter into enemy territory like this! In all honesty, his audacity turned me on ever so slightly.

My body tensed up. It felt like a stomach ulcer with how constricted my lower body was. Manow, my wolf, was trying to get a word in when the bold man approached and I restrained her from speaking.

Coming into vision, I saw his wavy hair, the color of blonde-roasted coffee beans. His skin tone was blinding, pale for the pack he represented, reflecting the sun like he spent all his time indoors reading books. The scars on his face meant he was either battle-tested, which contradicted my comment about him being a bookworm, or that he enjoyed masochistic fantasies in his sex life. However, his lack of facial hair hinted at virginity, ruling out the latter. His height was taller than average for Siamese men, but more striking was his body, lean and lanky like a stalk of lemongrass. He wasn’t intimidating, but he looked fearless, like someone who had been through the hardest sh*t and couldn’t be wounded anymore.

“WOLVES, ON GUARD!” Prayut commanded his battalion. Gamma Chavoret was at the front of the pack, already having shifted into his menacing wolf form. Although he had aged, his midnight black fur, needle-like talons, and fangs as sharp as an ice pick, made Thonburi’s death pack commander a daunting creature to stand across from. However, this mystifying man continued with his tranquil gait, like he was taking an afternoon stroll along the Chao Phraya River.

As the man parked himself within an arm’s length of myself and my husband, I was transfixed on his eyes, the deepest shade of purple, which made me double take. No, it couldn’t be...The only one I met with purple eyes was Anu-...No....He died four years ago! Gamma Chavoret said he witnessed the death with his own eyes!

Manow, tried battling her way back to the surface to speak, as I resisted, keeping her quiet amidst the tense developments happening in front of me,

“Mmmmmm....mmmm...mmma,” her voice, muffled by my suffocating push to keep her silent.

This wasn’t just any messenger from Pattani. No.....

“TTTTT....TTT...TAKE ONE STEP CLOSER AND YOU’RE DEAD!” Prayut stuttered, back-pedaling like he was staring into the eyes of death itself. The incredulous look on his face was enough for me to know that he came to the same realization I had.

It was Anurak.

In the coolest voice, he stared my husband in the eyes, and announced his homecoming.

“So, we meet again.”

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