Evelyn POV:
For the better part of an hour, I moved through the chamber with a mechanical purpose, folding linens and securing clasps, a deliberate focus meant to wall off the raw, hollowed-out space that had opened beneath my ribs. I counted the heavy gold coins and secured the property deeds he had left behind. It was a fortune sufficient to raise a dozen pups, let alone one.
I placed a hand gently over the flatness of my belly. I had the means to raise my child far from the cruelties of this place.
But as the sun began to set, the master bedroom grew colder, the shadows deepening in the corners. The great bed, with its massive mahogany pillars and damask hangings, now resembled a tabernacle of cold memory, a place where warmth had died. I could not abide the thought of staying in this room another night.
I grabbed my thick woolen cloak and made my way to the castle courtyard. I ordered a carriage to the edge of the pack lands. The wheels groaned over the uneven cobblestones for the better part of an hour before the carriage lurched to a halt.
I stepped out into the damp night air. Before me stood the pack's busiest tavern, a place where low-ranking wolves and travelers gathered. A cacophony of rough music, laughter, and the smell of roasting meat spilled from the timbered doorway.
I walked inside and took a table in a shadowed alcove. Ordinarily, I would have ordered a draught of strong mead to warm my blood. But the Oracle's warning was a fresh sting in my mind. I had to protect the nascent life within me. When the serving boy approached, I asked for a cup of warm goat's milk.
The tavern was loud, but my hearing, sharper than any human's, picked up a disturbance near the bar. Three large men in the leather armor of high-ranking Warriors were laughing, their voices overloud. They had cornered a young boy holding a tray of dirty mugs.
The boy was an Omega—a truth declared not by any mark, but by the stoop of his shoulders and the way the others in the room looked through him as if he were made of glass.
"Look at this trembling pup," one Warrior mocked, tossing a silver coin onto the floor. "Pick it up with your teeth, Omega, and perhaps I'll permit you to clean my boots."
Silver was a poison to our kind. To touch it was to invite a burn that festered for weeks. The boy stared at the coin, his hands shaking, but he kept his chin lifted.
I recognized him. His name was Arthur. He was a scholar wolf, brilliant with ancient texts, but his low birth condemned him to servitude in this tavern.
Looking at his stubborn, desperate eyes, a memory struck me with the force of a physical blow. The tavern's smoky air dissolved, replaced by the memory of a rain-slicked alley eight years past. I saw myself, a girl of a high house, shrouded in furs, halting the pack guards as their boots fell upon a starving rogue. The price I paid for his life felt, then, like a pittance. That rogue had been Lucius.
My chest tightened with a suffocating ache. I rose from my table and walked over to the bar. I pulled a small piece of fine parchment from my pocket and quickly wrote an address, stamping it with the old wax crest of my house.
I slid the parchment onto Arthur's tray, atop the soiled mugs.
"If you grow weary of serving fools," I said, my voice clear enough for the Warriors to hear, "come to the Eastern Estate. I have need of a scholar."
The Warriors' laughter died in their throats. They recognized me as the Luna, though the news of the rejection had clearly not yet filtered down to this level. They lowered their heads, a sudden, nervous silence falling over them.
Arthur looked from the parchment to my face, his eyes wide with a disbelief that slowly gave way to profound gratitude.
I did not wait for his answer. I drank the last of my warm milk, pulled my hood over my head, and walked out into the cold night.
I climbed back into my carriage. As the horses began to move, the silence of the conveyance allowed the memories to return. The day my house was attainted, my family framed and slaughtered. Standing on the high castle parapet, the wind tearing at my gown, ready to step into the void. Lucius, grabbing me from behind, burying his face in my neck, his own shoulders shaking with sobs as he swore to protect me for all his days. He swore he would crown me his Luna.
A single, hot tear slipped down my cheek.
Then, without warning, a brutal pressure struck the new-formed barriers of my mind—not a clean blow, but a grinding, splintering force, like a great stone being forced through a space too narrow for it. I gasped, a hand flying to my temple.
It was Lucius. He was using the crushing force of his Alpha will to batter his way into my thoughts.
His voice tore through the fissure, raw and broken. Where are you? I said nothing. If he wanted me gone, he would have to live with the silence. But his desperation clawed at the edges of my mind, and I knew this was far from over.
Then, beneath the roar of his panic, I caught something else—a thread of thought not meant for me, slipping through the breach he had torn in his own defenses. A single, fragmented sentence, drenched in a despair so absolute it turned my blood cold: ...if she stays, the altar will take her before the first snow...
I sat upright in the carriage, my heart slamming against my ribs. What altar? But the fissure sealed shut, and his presence vanished, leaving only the echo of a terror that matched my own.
