I Do (Not)

New Look

"Do you think he will be kind?"  I ask Sarah, fiddling with my new haircut.  Sarah is the Beta's daughter, and though we wouldn't call each other friends, no one else wants to hang with us because of the family power.  We got stuck together. She's the only known ginger in her whole family line, yet her genes are definitely that of the Beta and his mate. Shorter than me by two inches, she's still both stronger and faster than me by a long shot. She has a thin frame, wearing a green tee and black pants, red hair going down her waist.

"I doubt it," Sarah spouts, utilizing her blunt attitude.  "Wolves with cut hair are considered disgraced, and now the pack has two 'disgraced' Alpha Daughters."  Sarah finishes braiding her hair, blue eyes staring ahead at the pack borderline. Two weeks ago, my older sister had taken a pair of scissors to my hair like a child, rebelling our parents' decision to marry me to the Alpha of a neighboring territory. "But he might have had a reason to if you got the Alpha Gene."

"I don't have the Alpha Gene," I argue, letting go of my hair. It's shoulder length, now, the curls big and framing my face to accentuate some of my nicer features. Despite the new look, I miss the old look. My hair is white, an abnormality in my pack, but normal in my Mother's line of wolves. My mother was a member of the Arctic Pack up north, hardly seen by humans and lived most of their lives in their wolf forms due to the cold climate up there. According to my father, it was quite the culture shock for her when she first came to the Crimson Pack. That being said, the stories she would tell me were the stories I would live for. She'd reference my violet eyes to her own mother's eyes, and she seemed to be the only one in my family quite content to have me the way I am, Alpha Gene or not.

"Which makes your situation even worse," the girl remarks.  "You're practically a disgraced omega being sentenced to death by the Bloodthirsty Alpha Dawson.  You can't even fight."  Hearing her blurt that out loud causes anxiety to cripple me at my core, a weight settling on my chest heavy enough to bring tears to my eyes.  Sarah, however, slaps her mouth shut as soon as she says it, regretting her lack of a filter.  "Bel, I'm so sorry.  You know I don't mean that."

Clearing up my tears, I force the emotions to the back of my head as I nod, dread settling as I see a black car in the distance, slowly heading straight for us. Maybe I'm disgraceful enough to make this man cancel the arrangement altogether. No, if that were to happen, the entire pack would be doomed to waste away. The strength of a pack is only as strong as its Alpha. My father grows weaker with every passing year he doesn't have an heir, and it won't be long before we become victim to the debilus lupus, or "weak wolf" syndrome. There's no turning back after that, and we will either waste away or fall to rogues. A dishonorable way to go for my pack. I am, in my sister's highest regrets, the pack's last hope. To think the fate of the country's third largest pack falls to a frail girl like me. "Let's just get this over with," I force out, watching the border control leave their post to greet the black car, now stopped at the border.  She may not have meant it, but I was definitely thinking it anyway.

**Two Weeks Ago**

"Isabel Crimson!!"  My mother shrieks, running over to me in a panic.  Sobbing on the bathroom floor, I'm cradling the white hair I just picked up off the ground, gingerly caressing the locks that are no longer attached to my head.  "Oh, baby," Mother woos, trying to calm me with her Luna aura.  It only works out of sentiment for my mother, but she still tries as she hugs me from behind, caressing the hair I still have.  "It's okay, Annabel.  We can fix this.  It'll be okay."  She starts shushing, swaying me back and forth when my Father walks in, attempting to gauge the situation.  When he sees me and Mother on the floor, hair in my hands, his face goes red with anger and Mother looks up at him with a glare.  "Isabel," she snarls, her anger towards her oldest child so pronounced it almost scares me.  She's never held that much anger for one of her daughters, let alone the oldest.  I guess taking on a woman for a mate changes things.