Marina carried the weight of the council's urgent decree, but for her, it resonated with the chilling echoes of a brutal past. The news she would deliver to her packs wouldn't be met with the same shock as in other territories. The Great Purge had stained her lands a deeper crimson, her ancestors having embraced the 17th Queen's command with a horrifying zeal.
The 17th monarch, may her spirit find eternal peace in Nyx's luminous meadows, had reigned during a time of unprecedented crisis. It was the era of the defectives – wolves born without the sacred gift of shifting, their connection to their true forms severed at birth.
Those were uncertain times, when the mingling of bloodlines, though not entirely unheard of in ancient history, became a source of profound unease. It was a stark contrast to a forgotten age, a time when different creatures had moved freely among each other, a level of interspecies understanding lost to the mists of time. Perhaps not a utopia, but a coexistence that now seemed like a distant dream.
Marina herself had been a mere pup, barely fourteen summers old, when the tide began to turn. More and more wolf mothers gave birth to children who felt… wrong. They lacked the vital wolf spirit, the inherent strength that defined their kind. They felt like strangers wearing familiar pelts.
The bond, that intangible yet instantly recognized connection that bloomed when a pup reached its second year, was fraying. It was this innate sense of belonging that solidified a pack, extending its protective embrace beyond the immediate family. But the rise of the defectives eroded this fundamental connection. It was akin to a beloved relative returning with an unfamiliar soul, a chilling disconnect that sowed seeds of distrust.
Before the 17th Queen's ascension, defectives were rare anomalies. But during her reign, their numbers exploded, a terrifying surge attributed by some to the mixing of species, by others to the perceived lack of divine connection in humans. Whatever the cause, it was tearing at the very fabric of pack identity. Panic, sharp and primal, gripped the wolf world.
In that maelstrom of fear, the 17th Queen issued her decree: all defectives were to be exiled to the mortal settlements. Any pup who failed to manifest their wolf form by their second year was to be cast out, forced to live as a human, severed forever from their heritage.
When Marina's ancestral line received this decree, they interpreted its spirit with a brutal, unwavering conviction. All the defectives within their territory were rounded up, their frightened whimpers echoing under the cold gaze of the setting sun. They were slaughtered en masse, denied even the solace of the Goddess's light in their final moments.
It was an act of unsanctioned cruelty, a bloodbath born of fear and the chilling absence of the pack bond. These defectives, despite their familiar appearance, felt like outsiders. And in the brutal calculus of survival, only the pack mattered.
Some defectives, older and more cunning, had managed to flee, seeking refuge in human settlements or more tolerant territories. But the infants, the countless newborns of that era in Marina's region, were all silenced.
Marina carried the ghosts of those cries, the abrupt silence that followed, a stark reminder of the brutal choices made in the name of the pack. Right and wrong, good and evil – they held little sway against the primal imperative of belonging.
Entering the council house nestled in the heart of Russia, the weight of that history settled upon Marina like a shroud. She moved with a grim purpose, ascending to the second-story balcony overlooking the hushed territory. Taking a deep breath, she unleashed the Alpha's howl, a raw, mournful sound that rattled the windowpanes and echoed across the land. It was a call steeped in the memory of loss, a summons to Alphas who understood the brutal cost of fear, a decree delivered on ground already stained by the blood of the different.