บท 3: Fox Demon (Ch.3)

~Present Day~

"Wake up, princess!"

Neveah awakened to the rude voice of her governess,

The wrinkle faced middle aged she-wolf glared down fiercely at Neveah and Neveah could practically feel the hateful glare despite the haze of sleep that still settled heavily on her.

Neveah's eyes fluttered open to meet the glaring eyes of her Governess staring straight down at her and Neveah's face furrowed into a confused expression.

After the exhausting journey from the healer tribe after receiving her father's summon, Neveah had finally arrived the Eclipse palace in the early evening and she had barely gotten in a few hours of sleep before she was being so rudely aroused at midnight.

"Are you hard of hearing princess?!" The Governess yelled when Neveah did not immediately react to her presence.

Neveah heaved an exhausted sigh as she slowly sat up on her bed, rubbing away the haze of sleep from her eyes.

"It's midnight Governess, whatever it is you want, could it not wait till morning?" Neveah asked in an exhausted tone, flopping back down on her bed and pulling the beddings over her head.

The Governess gritted her teeth in rage, staring down at Neveah with disgust, she stormed over to the washroom and emerged with a bucket filled to it's brim with water.

"Creator's fur!" Neveah screamed in shock as the freezing contents of the bucket was overturned over her, the cold water seeping through her beddings and soaking her thin clothing as well as the beddings beneath her completely.

"Governess!" Neveah yelled in annoyance as she lifted a glare to the annoying she-wolf.

Neveah saw the movement of her Governess' hand before it reached her and she quickly jumped out of the way when she caught sight of a slap heading her way.

The Governess glowered in rage when Neveah successfully escaped her hit.

"You will do as I say or I will beat you to submission!" The Governess warned in a dark, threatening tone, her eyes glowing slightly, revealing her wolf was already at the surface.

"And mar my skin? However would you explain that to my father?" Neveah asked in a smug tone,

If there was one thing Neveah knew about her father, it was the fact that she was valuable to him and majority of this value was owed to Neveah's peerless beauty.

"You!" The Governess began but Neveah cut her off.

Neveah pulled off her sheer night gown, tossing it to the side and exposing her bareness to view.

The cold air brushing over Neveah's naked skin caused her to shiver slightly but she ignored it.

"You know just how much my father values every last inch of me..." Neveah began, trailing her hand down her bare neck in a slow pattern, an evil smirk on her lips.

"I do understand that you are acting under my beloved stepmother's orders to make my life a living hell, however if you pull this stunt again..."

"I will engrave your name on my skin and tell my father you did it to me, you know better than anyone that there is not a single scar on my body because my father has ordered it so..."

"With your name marring the Alpha King's price, let's see how your queen saves you then." Neveah said with a dark look in her eyes.

Neveah knew to her father, she was equivalent to a shiny trophy to be polished and shown off.

The only reason he had kept her untill this moment and spared no efforts to raise her as a proper princess should be raised was in the bid to sell her off in marriage for an alliance someday.

Neveah was breathtakingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that made hearts stop and kick up beating at a faster rate, a seductive but innocent looking beauty, the greatest weapon against any man.

Neveah sometimes felt her father saw her mother in her, that he believed she could be used as a weapon to seduce his enemies just as her mother had succeeded in seducing him.

Then there were other times he would say she was nothing like her mother, while her mother had been submissive and soft spoken, Neveah was a spit fire,

She was fearless and never backed down despite the fact that being a human, she was almost always at a disadvantage to anyone she faced off against.

However most of the times, he just plainly ignored Neveah's existence, like a shiny trophy forgotten on the shelf till it was needed again.

Till he needed Neveah to put on a perfunctory smile and grace some occasion with some powerful man he hoped Neveah could find a weakness against.

"You witch! You have grown into the fox devil the Queen knew you would, you are a disgrace to the pack! Your existence is reprehensible!" The Governess yelled in a tone thick with disgust.

Neveah chuckled darkly at the words of her Governess, words like this were hurled at her more times than she could care to remember every single day by every wolf of the Eclipse Fang Pack.

They all believed she was a filthy spawn of the devil, even worse than trash, all because she was the bastard child of their precious Alpha King, the stain on his highly respected name.

They all believed she was a seductive demon, all because her beauty was unearthly, just like her mother's has been...

The very beauty that let her mother seduce the great Eclipse Alpha King into betraying his own mate, an act of which Neveah was the result.

"I am every thing you taught me to be Governess. A sly, cunning and seductive fox devil. For all I am, I have only you to thank...after all, you raised me." Neveah replied with a smirk.

Neveah had never known her birth mother, she had been dumped at the gates of the Eclipse palace at birth with a letter bearing her name and the truth of her birth.

The truth that revealed that the great Eclipse Alpha King had taken carnal knowledge of a human woman even while mated to his Queen, the most sacrilegious act, a betrayal to the sacred mate bond.

The Governess had been entrusted with Neveah's weaning and care from that moment even until now when Neveah had clocked her seventeenth summer.

"And I regret every single day that I did not take the chance to drown you in your bath!" The Governess spat out in fury, her breaths coming out in pants as she tried to restrain her wolf.

"Well you could still kill me now, I am only a human and you are a wolf shifter. There's not much I can do if you wish to kill me." Neveah pointed out with a casual shrug.

"But you don't dare, do you...? Why? Because my father will rip you to shreds and decimate your family, he's ruthless even to his own daughter so just who exactly are you?" Neveah taunted smugly,

"You are a witch! You and your whore of a mother!" The Governess roared furiously.

Neveah's brows twitched slightly but she quickly suppressed her anger, Neveah had been trained to never reflect her emotions on her face,

And so Neveah revealed a smug smile, her expression unfazed, as though the words spoken of her birth mother did not affect her at all.

"The Alpha King decrees the Alpha Queen is my mother and no one is to ever say otherwise...to think you just called your Queen a whore, you are lucky I do not snitch on my attendants Governess." Neveah said in an amused tone.

The Governess opened her lips to protest but no words would come out and so she stood there, gaping like a fish out of water.

"You should have killed me when you had the chance, but now it's already too late...so just keep shut and deliver your orders like the good dog you are." Neveah said with a smile.

"You..." The Governess began but was quick to swallow down her words knowing that she could never win against Neveah in a battle of wits.

"The Alpha King orders for the princess to attend the banquet hosting the Alphas of the Eclipse domain, I am here to help you get dressed." The Governess bit out through gritted teeth.

Neveah smirked, tilting her head to the side as she took in the tight fists of the Governess who struggled to restrain her wolf.

"Oh...so that is why father summoned me back in such a rush..." Neveah said thoughtfully,

"You detest me so much and yet you still get sent to cater to my needs, my step mother must really hate you." Neveah added, shaking her head in amusement as she headed to her washroom.

Neveah paused halfway, turning back to face the still raging she-wolf.

"Oh and Governess, you don't have to call me princess if you don't want to...you can just call me filthy Omega or bastard child like everyone else does." Neveah added as an afterthought before she headed into her washroom and slammed the door shut behind her.