Her words struck like a blade between the ribs.
For a moment, rage consumed me, a wildfire that burned through every nerve, every thought, every shred of restraint I'd ever possessed. No sound escaped my throat. Only fury, raw and blinding, coiling in my chest like a serpent preparing to strike. Deep beneath my skin, my wolf surged upward with a snarl I had never heard her make, hackles rising, teeth bared at a world that had taken everything.
Then I snapped.
I lunged at Mirella.
Fists clenched. Nails sinking into flesh like talons, the half-shifted claws pricking at my fingertips.
I seized her hair, wrenched her down, clawed at her face, her throat, anywhere I could reach. The silk of her ceremonial robe tore beneath my fingers like the lies she'd woven around my life. That sweet rot beneath her jasmine scent filled my nose, honey poured thick over decay, and my wolf gagged on it.
"You monster! Give me my mother back, you stronza!"
But before I could draw blood, before I could carve the truth into her treacherous skin, agony exploded through my spine. Then my ribs. The Alpha's guards were on me in an instant, their boots connecting with bone, their fists driving me to the cold marble of the Council Hall until I curled into myself like a broken marionette.
Gasps rippled through the gathering like wind through dead leaves.
Lucan shoved past the crowd, his face carved from granite.
He didn't spare me a glance.
He went straight to Mirella, sobbing, trembling, performing the role of wounded dove with practiced perfection, and gathered her into his arms as though she were spun from the thinnest moonglass.
When his eyes finally cut toward me, they held the warmth of a midwinter grave.
"You've gone too far." His voice was quiet. Lethal. "Kneel. Apologize to her. Now." His Alpha aura rolled outward as he spoke, thickening the air, pressing down on every wolf in the hall until lower ranks dropped their gaze and shrank back.
I stared at him through blood-matted hair, disbelief clawing at my throat.
He wasn't finished.
"Your mother was weak. She got cast aside and died chasing scraps. Now you're blaming Mirella for your own blood's failures? Everyone here witnessed what you did." His lip curled with disgust, a low growl threading beneath the words. "Are you proud of yourself, Selene? Is this the respect you bring to our bond?"
The hall hummed with whispers, growing louder and uglier with each passing heartbeat, vultures circling carrion.
"I heard her mother once lifted jewels from the Luna's own collection," one she-wolf murmured, her voice deliberately carrying across the marble. "Word is she died during some botched theft, turned up with her flesh sold off to a slaver-pack like livestock. Honestly? Sounds like she had it coming. Disloyal blood runs true."
"And the daughter's cut from the same cloth," another voice added with venomous satisfaction. "Ungrateful little puttana. An Omega raised to sink her claws into a wolf above her rank. Just like her whore of a mother."
I remained on my knees, the cold seeping through silk into bone. I wanted to scream, to tell them they were wrong. That my mother wasn't a thief. That Liana Thornwood had served the Bloodfang Pack for twenty moons of years with more loyalty than any of them would ever understand. That I wasn't some scheming Omega trying to climb above my station.
But my throat was dust. My voice, stolen. Somewhere deep inside me, my wolf howled and howled, and not a sound of it reached the air.
Lucan's patience frayed like old rope.
"Apologize, Selene. I'll count to three." His words fell like hammer blows. "One... two..."
Disappointment seared through every fiber of my being, a betrayal more complete than any blade could deliver.
I gave in.
My knees cracked against the unforgiving marble. I lifted my chin, then drove my forehead down in a bow so violent I tasted copper flooding my mouth.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Blood mingled with tears, blurring the world into watercolors of crimson and gold.
I raised my head with a smile that felt like broken glass cutting my own face.
"Is that enough, Lucan? Did your precious comare receive sufficient tribute?"
He froze. Something flickered behind his eyes, a crack in the ice, a ghost of the pup who'd once held my hand in his mother's moonlit garden. His pupils contracted as though he finally saw me. Saw the ruin he'd made of us both.
He took half a step forward.
But Mirella's fingers dug into his arm, her voice quivering with manufactured terror.
"Lucan, I'm frightened... look at her eyes. She's lost her mind..."
He hesitated. The crack sealed over, smooth as fresh ice on a winter pond.
He stepped back. Drew her closer against his chest.
His gaze slid away from mine like oil on water. When he spoke again, his voice was hollow. Mechanical. The voice of a wolf already washing his hands.
"Go home. Try not to bring any more disgrace to this Pack."
I rose. Somehow. My legs trembled like a newborn foal's, but I refused to fall. Not here. Not before these jackals in their fine robes and hand-stitched finery.
I turned to face him one final time.
The wolf I'd loved for a decade. The Alpha-heir I'd been promised to since I was a pup. The future Alpha who couldn't recognize loyalty when it knelt bleeding at his feet.
Then I walked away.
The crowd parted before me, not from respect, but from revulsion. As though my grief were contagious. As though my mother's murder might somehow stain their precious pack rank.
Let them look.
Let them remember this moment when the reckoning came.
The night bit with savage cold when I reached the funeral pyre on the edge of the territory. I stood in silence as my mother, Liana Thornwood, faithful Omega servant, devoted parent, the wolf who'd once saved a Bloodfang pup-heir from a rival pack's raid and received nothing but contempt in return, turned to ash.
The flames consumed her. Orange and gold and terrible.
When her remains scattered into the dark waters of the cove, so did the last tether binding my heart to this world.
Gone. Just like that. And inside me my wolf, who had howled until she had no voice left, simply lay down in the dark and went still.
At midnight, I slipped the betrothal ring from my finger, the moonstone token of a blood oath that had never been honored. I set it gently inside the nightstand drawer of the den I'd shared with Lucan's ghost for three hollow years.
No need to stand before the Moon Goddess and sever it properly. His devotion had never been real to begin with.
How convenient.
I wheeled my single suitcase to the front door of the Bloodfang den, my footsteps echoing through halls that had never truly been my home. Even now his scent clung to the walls, scorched oak and copper and that sour note of ash gone cold, and for the first time it turned my stomach.
My communicator buzzed.
Lucan: [Did you get your wounds treated? Mirella says she forgives you. Let's put this behind us and focus on tomorrow.]
Lucan: [I picked up a new robe for the ceremony. Hand-beaded moonsilk lace. Gorgeous. I'll have it sent over.]
No reply.
A moment passed. The communicator buzzed again, more insistent.
Lucan: [Asleep already? Why aren't you answering? It's our Mating Ceremony tomorrow, the bond between our packs becomes official before the Council. Be good, Selene. Don't embarrass me again.]
I blocked him. Every channel. Every link tied to his name. I pried the crystal core from the communicator, snapped it cleanly in half between my fingers, and dropped the pieces down a storm drain as I walked toward the waiting carriage.
Just like him. Discarded. Forgotten.
A black obsidian carriage idled by the iron gates, its engine purring like a patient predator.
I slid into the leather interior.
"To the private airfield."
The territory lights raced past my window, smearing into ghosts against the rain-streaked glass. Ten years of memories, of stolen kisses in moonlit gardens, of whispered promises, of love that had rotted from the inside like a poisoned apple, dissolved into shadow.
I watched the Bloodfang den disappear behind me.
"We will never meet again, Lucan." My voice was steady now. Cold as the cove waters that held my mother's ashes. "And by sunrise, your wedding gift will arrive. Right on time."
The carriage merged onto the highway, carrying me toward a new life.
Behind me, a bloodline prepared to burn.
