Tears carved silent rivers down my face as I clung, half-conscious, to the stranger's shirt, the fine wool damp beneath my trembling fingers. His scent wrapped around me, cedar and cold iron and the static hush before a thunderstorm, the only solid thing in a world that had gone to ruin.
"Re… venge…" The word escaped my lips like a dying Moon Goddess invocation, barely formed, yet heavy with the weight of a blood oath. Somewhere deep inside me, my wolf stirred against the dark and answered with a low, broken sound.
When I opened my eyes again, all I saw was white, too bright, too sterile. The bitter sting of healing herbs and silver-scrubbed stone flooded my senses, the air of the Healing Hall a stark contrast to the darkness that had swallowed me whole.
I turned my head slowly, wincing at the dull ache that radiated through every fiber of my body, and reached for my crystal communicator. A message from Lucan waited on the screen, sent the night before.
[I've got Pack business to handle tomorrow. Go try on the ceremonial robe by yourself. Our bonding is approaching, so pull yourself together. Stop with the dramatics and bind yourself into the Bloodfang Pack with some dignity.]
I stared at the message for a long moment, my face an unreadable mask, then dragged my finger across the screen and watched the words disappear into oblivion.
But just beneath it, something else caught my eye, a post from Mirella's spirit-network account.
Lucan had taken her on the Pack's storm-hawk to chase the northern lights in some frozen corner of the wildlands, far from prying eyes.
In the ethereal green haze of the aurora, their silhouettes stood close together, intimate as conspirators. Matching moonstone bands glinted on their fingers, fingers tightly intertwined like the roots of a poisonous vine.
The caption pierced through me like a stiletto blade:
[He told me I'm the only one for him. He promised to protect me from all the cruelty in this world. How could I ever let go of a man like that?]
Below it, a cutesy account bearing cartoon couple avatars had commented:
[And no matter how far you try to run from me, I'll find you. I'll tie you to my side forever. So don't even try, silly girl.]
I didn't need to verify the source. I knew that tone, that possessive flair, that dark promise wrapped in honeyed words. That was Lucan.
I could tell from the typing style alone.
I remembered the day I asked him to use matching couple avatars with me. He had rolled his eyes, his handsome face twisting with contempt.
"What are you, a fresh-shifted pup? Can't you see I'm handling Pack affairs? Now leave!"
And yet I had once dreamed of running beneath the stars with him along the high ridges, a stolen moonlit moment away from the shadows that governed our lives. I had planned every step of it. He said he was too busy. Every time, that was the excuse: too busy.
Now I finally understood the truth that had been staring me in the face all along. He could be romantic. He could be tender and devoted. He just never chose to be that way with me.
I set the communicator down on the stiff Healing Hall linen, trying to blink back the sting behind my eyes.
That's when I noticed the envelope sitting quietly on the bedside table, cream-colored and costly.
Inside it was a storm-hawk passage. Departure in two days.
And a small note, written in an elegant hand:
[You're welcome. Hope you like the gift. For your mating —D.]
So I was right. The man who had carried me through the darkness and delivered me to safety was none other than Dorian Ashmoor, the ghost who had returned from the dead to become Lucan's worst enemy. The sole survivor of a slaughtered bloodline, come back to collect.
I sent him a quiet thank-you, my fingers hovering over the keys longer than necessary, and signed myself out of the Healing Hall not long after.
Then the mating coordinator called. The ceremonial robe my mother had ordered for me, commissioned from the finest Omega seamstress on the edge of the territory, paid for with years of her modest savings, had been altered to fit. It was ready.
It was the last gift she left me before the Bloodfang Pack let her die. I had to claim it.
But when I stepped into the seamstress's den, the soft chime above the door ringing out, I froze.
There stood Mirella, twirling in my robe. The air went thick with overripe jasmine and that sweet rot beneath it, honey poured over something dead.
"Selene… you came." She spun before the gilded mirror with a saccharine smile, her voice dripping with venom disguised as honey.
"I just had to make sure it fits, you know. Trying to help you out."
She tugged the neckline lower with deliberate provocation, revealing fresh marks scattered across her chest like a constellation of sin, the bruised imprint of teeth at her throat where no true bond should sit. Her tone turned mockingly bashful.
"Oh no, it's Lucan's fault, he's just too passionate. I told him to be gentle…"
I stared at her performance, cold and unblinking as a statue carved from marble. My wolf had gone utterly still beneath my skin, the way prey goes still.
"You really did inherit your mother's talent for stealing other females' mates."
Her smile twitched, then curved into something crueler, the mask slipping to reveal the predator beneath.
"Oh? Didn't you hear?" She placed a hand over her stomach with theatrical tenderness. "I'm carrying Lucan's pup. His heir."
"And your blood oath?" She laughed, the sound like shattering crystal. "It's fake."
She flashed a recording on her crystal orb. The dim back room of some pack hall. Mirella draped across Lucan's lap like a trophy.
He was drinking, his lips brushing against her temple with casual affection.
"Do your best and bring the pup into this world. When it's born, I'll gift him the Bloodfang territory. Everything. Every hunting ground, every claim."
Mirella asked in a coy voice: "But… what about my sister?"
Lucan chuckled, the sound dark and dismissive. "I never truly bound myself to her. There's no mark on her neck and there never will be. I've been slipping wolfsbane suppressant into her milk for moons. She can't conceive, can't even take a heat. When the time comes, I'll just claim we took in a stray pup."
It was like being struck by lightning. My head spun. My legs nearly buckled beneath me, and I had to grip the edge of a display case to stay upright. Inside me my wolf let out a single thin whine and folded down into silence, as if it too had finally understood there had never been a bond to grieve.
So that was it.
Whatever love had existed between us had died a long time ago. I was just too blind, too desperate to believe in the fairy tale, to notice the corpse rotting at my feet.
I sucked in a sharp breath, straightened my spine with the dignity my mother had taught me, and forced a smile onto my face.
"Well, congratulations. Becoming the next Luna of the Bloodfang Pack is just around the corner."
"But that robe is mine. Take it off," I said, my voice dropping to ice.
I lunged forward to reclaim it, but before my fingers could even brush the fabric, one of her guards, a brute Lucan himself had set at her side, drove his boot into my stomach.
The force knocked me flat against the polished floor. Pain exploded through my gut like a grenade. I could feel everything twisting, shifting, as though my organs had been rearranged by the brutal impact.
Mirella picked up a pair of shears from the seamstress's table. Her tone was gleeful as she traced the blade over the delicate silk, savoring the moment.
"Lucan said no matter what I do, he'll clean up my mess. That's what it means to have the protection of the Pack."
The sharp edge tore through hand-stitched lace. Slashed through soft silk that my mother had saved for years to afford. With each cut, she shredded the last gift my mother had ever given me, the only piece of her I had left, and beneath the shears I caught the fading ghost of her scent woven into the cloth, silver cherry-blossom and warm hearthsmoke and clean linen left in the sun, thinning into nothing with every stroke.
I just lay there on the cold floor, watching the pieces flutter down like snowflakes in a graveyard.
Even my hatred felt dull now, numbed by the crushing weight of everything I had lost.
Mirella strutted out of the den, her heels clicking against the stone like a victory march, leaving nothing but wreckage in her wake.
I dragged myself back to the cliffside den… or rather, what used to feel like home.
Once I got there, I tore open every drawer and chest with trembling hands, yanked out every gift Lucan had ever given me, the jewels that now felt like silver shackles, the fine pelts and bags that were nothing but gilded cages, the soft stuffed creatures from those early days when I still believed his lies.
One by one, I threw them all in the refuse.
Behind me, I heard footsteps approaching.
Familiar ones.
