Chloe POV
The dungeon was a freezing, silent tomb.
The air was thick with the faint, suffocating scent of silver dust.
Every breath I took burned my throat, and my skin felt as if it were constantly being pricked by hot needles.
My Inner Wolf was curled up in the dark corners of my mind, whining, a low threnody of misery.
I had lost track of time. The agonizing headache came and went in waves, leaving me completely drained.
Suddenly, the heavy iron door creaked open.
A harsh beam of light cut through the darkness, blinding me for a second.
Ivy walked in, holding a metal tray.
The five-year-old pup, Leo, trailed behind her, holding onto her dress.
Ivy tossed a metal bowl onto the dirty floor.
The smell hit me instantly.
It was raw meat, but it was turning green and smelled of decay.
I leaned against the damp stone wall, my breathing ragged.
"Are you feeding me the leftover garbage of an Omega?" I asked, my voice hoarse but dripping with the pride of a White Wolf.
Ivy covered her mouth and let out a soft, mocking laugh.
"You really think you are still the mighty Luna?" she sneered, stepping closer.
"Your title is nothing but an empty joke now," she whispered.
Leo stepped forward and kicked the bowl of spoiled meat, spilling it near my bare feet.
He bared his tiny teeth and let out a weak, pup-like growl.
"Eat it, you ugly old witch!" he shouted, the words clearly not his own, but a lesson drilled into him by another.
I ignored the brat. My eyes were fixed on Ivy's neck.
Resting against her collarbone was a glowing Moonstone necklace.
It was carved with the ancient crescent wolf totem of the Silver Moon Pack.
My breath caught in my throat. That totem was unmistakable—every wolf born under the Silver Moon banner was marked with it at their awakening ceremony. I had traced those same crescent lines on my mother's necklace a thousand times as a child, pressing my small fingers into the grooves while she told me stories of our ancestors. It was the sacred gift my mother gave me for my fifteenth awakening ceremony.
Adrenaline, sharp and metallic, flooded my veins, giving me a sudden burst of strength.
I snapped the frayed ropes binding my wrists and lunged forward.
My White Wolf instincts took over as I tackled Ivy to the ground.
I grabbed the platinum chain and ripped it off her neck.
My sharp nails accidentally grazed her skin, leaving a shallow red scratch.
Ivy immediately threw herself backward against the wall and let out a deafening, theatrical scream.
"Help! She is trying to kill me!" Ivy shrieked.
Leo's eyes widened in panic, and he threw his head back, releasing a loud, panicked howl for help.
Within seconds, heavy footsteps thundered down the stone stairs.
The Alpha, Hunter, rushed into the dungeon like a dark storm.
He saw Ivy on the floor, a tiny drop of blood on her neck.
Without a word, he unleashed his terrifying Alpha aura.
The pressure in the room became so heavy my lungs refused to expand.
He stepped forward and slapped me across the face with brutal force.
My head snapped to the side, and I crashed onto the cold floor, right into the puddle of rotting meat.
A metallic taste filled my mouth as warm blood spilled over my lips.
Ivy crawled over to Hunter, burying her face in his chest.
She exuded a sickly-sweet odor of distress, a scent that felt like a sticky film in the air, deliberately concocted to trigger an Alpha's protective urges.
"I just wanted to bring her some food," Ivy cried softly.
"But she knocked it over and tried to choke me for my necklace. It calms my anxiety."
I spat the blood out of my mouth and clutched the Moonstone tightly in my fist.
"It is mine!" I yelled, my voice shaking with anger. "Look at the back! It has the Silver Moon totem! It was my mother's—I would know it anywhere! "
Hunter froze. He looked down at my hand, his brows pulling together in doubt. For a fleeting instant, his eyes flickered toward the totem, and I saw something shift in his expression—a crack in the granite, a whisper from his wolf that he could not quite hear.
Ivy's scent spiked with a sudden sour note of panic.
She quickly hid her scent and looked up at Hunter with wide, innocent eyes.
"If the Luna wants it so badly, she can have it," Ivy whispered, wiping a fake tear. "I just want peace in the Pack."
Ivy's cloying scent thickened, wrapping around Hunter like a silken noose, and the crack in his expression sealed shut. Hunter's eyes softened as he looked at Ivy, completely blinded by her manipulation.
He turned his gaze back to me, and his eyes were filled with disgust.
"You have no shame," he growled, stepping toward me.
Before I could move, he brought his heavy leather boot down on my hand.
He ground his heel into my fingers.
I saw a muscle jump in his jaw, a flicker of something that might have been retraction, but Ivy's scent thickened at once—a cloying, desperate sweetness—and the brief hesitation in his eyes hardened into something akin to granite.
I screamed as I felt the bones in my hand grinding against the stone floor.
He forcibly pried my bleeding fingers open and snatched the Moonstone away.
He turned around and gently fastened the necklace back around Ivy's neck.
Hunter looked down at me, the brown of his irises seeming to recede, consumed by an encroaching ring of hard, metallic gold.
"My biggest regret in this life is not seeing your true, vile nature before the Marking ceremony," he spat.
He scooped Ivy into his arms, treating her like a fragile piece of glass.
"Keep her starved," he ordered the guards at the door.
The heavy iron door slammed shut, plunging me back into the freezing darkness.
My crushed hand throbbed with a sickening rhythm.
Suddenly, a rattling cough seized my chest, and a viscous, metallic fluid forced its way past my teeth, splattering onto the stone. Where it landed, the damp floor seemed to curdle, the faint light from the corridor dissolving into a formless stain.
My vision blurred into dark shadows.
Father... Mother... please come save me, I cried out through a broken, empty Mind-Link, waiting for a response that never came.
In the suffocating darkness, I clutched my crushed hand to my chest and made a silent vow to the Moon Goddess. If I ever escaped this tomb, I would make every single one of them pay. I did not yet know that my vengeance would only come at the cost of my life—or that the Alpha who had just crushed my bones was already feeling the first, faint echo of my pain through a bond he had been taught to ignore.
