A Sin of Her Own

Chapter 1

10 years later

Titania couldn't help but let a scowl mar her features.

The wolf in front of her made her upper lip curl; his cowardice tasting foul on her tongue. Her wolf made her distaste known as the rogue clogged the room with the offensive scent of wet dog, another point against the male.

She sat there unimpressed, waiting for words to tumble out his mouth. Titania was running out of patience to deal with trespassing so early in the morning. While the morning light shone brightly through her cabin window, creating beautiful heat on her skin, she couldn't help but shiver at the lack of food in her belly – a recipe for her vile temperament.

The man, not many years older than her, physically shook before her, unable to contain himself before the Alpha female. As he took in her eery features that were trained on him, he couldn't control the fear that he wore on his face like a mask. To him, her presence was one that many spoke about, but none had described her accurately.

They said she was powerless. Vulnerable. A whore. A lowly female. A wolf hiding behind her isolated land. 

Yet there she sat; a predator poised to bite his head off with one wrong word. The male had never felt such hidden animosity simmering within those crystal eyes. A gaze which burned from the iciness and sorrow they projected. 

While captured by the female's beauty, he had realised too late that he had fallen for her trap. Beauty did not equal innocence, not in any way shape or form. Her dominance now suffocated him, and his wolf was belly up to her in seconds, submitting his neck. With a staggered breath, he shrunk into himself to try to escape her pointed wrath – a fruitless effort in the confines of her crowded office.

The scent of his urine now stained Titania's wooden floor and her eyes narrowed. With a feigned sigh, she straightened, having had enough of the wolf who had already taken up too much of her precious time.

"Since words seem to have escaped you, I will ask. Why were you caught over my pack lines?"

She kept her tone hard and impassive, ignoring the urge to just dispose of the male instead of bothering with pointless questioning but held that passing thought to the back of her mind.

"I....I....was..." His stuttering was grating on her nerves, but she continued to sit rigid. She found his increasing distress somewhat amusing. How the times had changed.

"I will ask once, and only once more. Why were you on Duskfall pack lands?" She spat.

Her Beta, Eóghan, stood perfectly still beside her. A hulk of a man with traditional Celtic copper hair and a beard to match; with several beads adorned in its nest. With hawk-like precision, he continued to observe the interrogated wolf. No pack could be too careful with rogues. Especially after rumours that had circled through some of the European packs.

Power-hungry Alpha's didn't refrain from showing their grandeur, politics constantly behind the scenes within the city packs. With this, came hired wolves for arms and a dark market for everything and anything. A marketplace for rumours and weaknesses within the packs, currently the hearsay focused on a banished Alpha rounding rogues up: shaping the insane and banished into what could be, a lethal pack, and Titania couldn't help but lick her lips at such a challenge. More reasonable rumours had talk of Alpha's using rogues of dirty work: from child kidnappings, theft to murder.

After Duskfall's last encounter there, four years previous, Titania refrained from interacting with many of the packs and their Alpha's. Duskfall went off the grid which only encouraged the whispers. Titania became a ghost, a folktale, popular for packs to discuss but never meet for themselves. She only graced them for compulsory council meetings, but they were once in a blue moon.