I do not remember the journey back to the pack house. I only remember the brutal, jarring agony of my broken body being dragged through the snow by rough hands. My vision swam with dark, dizzying spots. The silver shrapnel burned in my veins, a liquid fire that refused to go out, eating away at my flesh and my soul. I tried to gasp, to plead for the pack healer, but my throat was a sealed tomb. No sound. No wolf. Just an echoing, terrifying emptiness where my other half had lived for years.
We reached the grand front steps of the pack house. Vincent stood there, his arms crossed over his massive chest, his jaw clenched in fury. I looked up at my fated mate, my eyes begging for mercy. Blood soaked my torn Omega uniform, leaving a grisly trail on the pristine white snow.
Instead of horror, his face twisted in pure, unadulterated disgust.
"Stop this pathetic performance, Elora," his Alpha tone rumbled, vibrating against my aching skull. "You failed to draw the rogues out, and now you're throwing a tantrum? Refusing to speak? You think playing the victim will make me forget you abandoned us?"
I shook my head frantically. I clawed at my throat, my tear-filled eyes wide with panic, but only a dry, wheezing breath escaped my lips. *I can't speak! She's gone!* I screamed in my mind, but the pack mind-link was entirely dead to me.
"Alpha, she's bleeding heavily. We should take her to the Healer," Beta Marcus suggested, stepping forward with a hesitant frown.
"No," Vincent snapped, his voice slicing through the freezing air like a blade. "She doesn't deserve the pack's medical resources for a few scratches she probably caused herself. Amber, you handle her. Patch her up in the Omega quarters. Maybe some isolation will cure her sudden, convenient muteness."
Before I could even brace myself, the warriors hauled me up and dragged me down to the damp, drafty basement. They threw me onto the cold stone floor of my room. The heavy wooden door slammed shut, and the lock clicked into place.
Amber dropped her sweet, innocent facade the second we were alone. She walked toward me, her heels clicking sharply against the stone. She set a metal basin on the floor. The water inside shimmered with a sickly, metallic sheen.
"You really thought you could ruin my plans, didn't you?" Amber whispered, her voice a venomous hiss. She dipped a rough rag into the basin. The sharp, toxic scent of liquid silver hit my nose, making my stomach heave.
I scrambled backward, my spine hitting the freezing wall. I opened my mouth to scream, but the silence remained absolute.
Amber smiled—a wicked, triumphant stretch of her lips that made my blood run cold. "Go ahead. Scream. Call out to your precious Alpha through the mind-link. Oh wait... you can't."
She lunged forward and pressed the soaked rag directly into the deepest, most shredded gash on my shoulder.
My back arched violently off the floor. The pain was blinding, a white-hot explosion of pure agony that tore through my nervous system. I thrashed against her hold, my mouth stretched wide in a silent, agonizing shriek. Hot tears poured down my cheeks as the silver-laced water melted into my raw flesh, intentionally burning away any chance of natural healing.
"Vincent is mine," she sneered, twisting the rag deeper into my wound. I convulsed, my fingernails scraping desperately against the stone floor. "Colter is mine. This pack is mine. And you are nothing but a broken, wolfless freak."
She spent an hour meticulously cleaning my wounds with the poisoned water. When she was finally done, I was a trembling, broken heap, unable to even lift my head.
Later that evening, the heavy door opened again. Two warriors dragged my limp, shivering body up the stairs and threw me onto the polished hardwood of the grand hall. The entire Blood Moon Pack was gathered. The room buzzed with angry whispers. I knelt on the floor, clutching my bleeding ribs, too weak to stand.
Amber stood at the front of the room, clinging to Vincent’s muscular arm. She looked radiant, wearing my ancestral Luna necklace, while I was covered in bloody, makeshift bandages.
"I tried my best to help her," Amber cried, her voice trembling perfectly. A single, flawless tear slipped down her cheek. "I cleaned her wounds, but she just glared at me. She refuses to speak to anyone. She’s completely shut us out of the mind-link."
The pack muttered angrily, the sound swelling like a dark tide.
"She's faking it," Amber sobbed, burying her face in Vincent’s chest. "She wants us to pity her. She wants to make you look like a monster, Alpha. She’s pretending her wolf is gone just to punish us for moving on!"
I looked around the room, desperate for a single friendly face. But the few pack members who had once looked at me with sympathy now glared with outright contempt. To a werewolf, faking the loss of a wolf was the ultimate blasphemy. It was a sick, twisted lie in their eyes, a mockery of the Moon Goddess's gifts.
"Is this true, Elora?" Vincent demanded. His voice echoed off the high ceilings, dripping with venom. "Are you really this manipulative?"
I stared at him. The man I had loved. The man I had frozen myself to save. I tried with every ounce of strength I had left to form a single word. *No.* But my vocal cords were dead. My wolf was a ghost. I just wept silently, my shoulders shaking with the weight of my shattered heart.
"Disgusting," a warrior spat from the crowd.
"Attention-seeking Omega," another muttered.
Vincent’s jaw locked. His eyes were colder than the ice I had slept in for eight years. "You disgust me," he snarled, turning his back on me. "Keep your silence, then. But you will do it at the absolute bottom of this pack. You are dead to us."
Amber looked over Vincent’s broad shoulder. As the entire pack turned their backs on me, she gave me one last, victorious smirk. I lowered my head to the cold floor, entirely trapped in my cage of silence.
