Sierra POV:
Lucas shoved Jessica behind him and charged toward the treeline, his boots churning the damp soil.
When he saw me standing there, the brief flicker of guilt in his eyes was instantly consumed by a tide of crimson rage that tightened the skin across his cheekbones.
"Are you stalking us?" Lucas roared, the force of his voice shaking condensation from the pine needles. "Did you follow our scent with that pathetic Omega nose of yours?"
My gaze remained fixed on the fang, a yellowed stain against Jessica's pale collarbone.
"I came to pray," I said, my voice unnervingly steady.
"You came to make a fool of yourself," Lucas sneered. "Did your stray lover abandon you so soon? I told you, Jessica is the future of this pack. Her blood is pure."
Jessica peered from behind his shoulder.
She touched the fang at her throat, her eyes welling with expertly feigned tears.
"Oh, Sierra, I am so sorry," she whimpered, even as her scent soured with the unmistakable tang of contempt. "I had no idea this grimy old tooth was a keepsake of yours. Here, you must take it."
She made a show of fumbling with the cord.
Lucas's hand shot out, clamping around her wrist.
He turned his full fury on me, letting out a deafening growl that vibrated in my teeth.
"You will take nothing from her," he commanded. "That fang belongs to the Luna. It is hers by right."
I did not lower my gaze.
I did not expose my throat in the time-honored gesture of submission.
I looked directly into his blazing eyes.
"Give it back, Lucas," I said, my voice cold and hollow as a winter well. "That relic was bought with my blood. It has no place on the neck of a fraud."
Lucas's face contorted, first with shock, then with a deeper, more profound fury at my defiance.
The veins stood out on his neck like thick cords as his wounded pride curdled into violence.
His eyes bled from red to a terrifying, burning crimson.
"Kneel!"
It was not a word but a physical weight, a pressure wave that sought to buckle my knees and snap my spine. The Alpha's Command slammed into me, an ancient magic designed to force my muscles into involuntary collapse, to compel the lesser wolf to submit.
My knees trembled violently.
I bit down on the inside of my lip until the warm, metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, using the pain as an anchor against the crushing force.
I remained standing.
I looked past him, my eyes finding Jessica's.
"Does it not frighten you, Jessica?" I asked, my voice a mere whisper. "To wear a charm paid for with another's flesh? The Goddess has been known to curse those who steal from the dead."
The color drained from Jessica's face.
She let out a genuine shriek of terror and scrambled backward, her hands clawing at her own throat as she tried to rip the necklace free.
"Get it off me! Lucas, take it off!"
In that moment, some final tether of reason in Lucas snapped.
He lunged at Jessica, tore the leather cord from her neck with a savage jerk, and spun toward the mountain's precipice.
With a scream that was more beast than man, he hurled the fang into the thick, gnarled bushes overhanging the deep chasm.
"Hear me, Sierra!" Lucas spat, stabbing a trembling finger toward my face. "If you were to bleed out at my feet, I would still never mark you! You will never be my Luna!"
He seized Jessica's arm and dragged her away down the mountain path, their forms quickly swallowed by the fog.
The silence that rushed back was absolute.
I walked to the edge of the cliff.
Ignoring the freezing wind that tore at my dress, I braced myself against a moss-slicked boulder and lowered my body to the earth, dragging my useless leg behind me. Every movement sent a fresh bolt of agony through my damaged knee, but I swallowed the whimper that rose in my throat. I dug my fingers, already bleeding, into the sharp thorns and cold, wet dirt.
After ten minutes that felt like an eternity, my fingertips brushed against the cold, familiar shape of bone.
I pulled the mud-caked, cracked fang from the earth.
As I held it in my palm, *I felt something deep within my marrow, a foundational strut, give a sickening crack and then begin to splinter. And in that splintering, I sensed not an end, but the first tremor of a coming avalanche. *
