Elyse POV
The drive through the blizzard was a blur of whiteout conditions and suffocating dread. When I finally pushed open the heavy oak doors of the Blackwood Keep, a dead, icy silence fell over the Great Hall.
The massive stone fireplace roared, but it did nothing to thaw the hostility in the room. Hilda Blackwood sat upon her carved oak throne, her cloudy eyes narrowing as she registered my solitary arrival.
"Where is your Alpha, Elyse?" Hilda’s voice was a venomous hiss that echoed off the vaulted ceilings.
"Matriarch, the storm—" I started, my voice trembling as I clutched my thin shawl.
A cruel chuckle suddenly echoed through the pack's mind-link. It was my cousin, Dixon Blackwood, leaning against a stone pillar with a smirk. *Maybe he's busy comforting his pathetic Omega mistress, Grandmother.*
The words were a lit match in a powder keg. Hilda’s face twisted in absolute fury. She slammed her obsidian snake-head cane against the stone floor. The sharp crack silenced the entire room.
"A Luna who cannot even leash her own Alpha brings shame to this bloodline," Hilda snarled, her gaze devoid of any familial warmth. "If Alpha Jace will not bleed for this alliance, you will bleed for his disrespect. Take her to the Terrace for *The Correction*."
"No! Please!" I begged, but two massive Pack Warriors were already hauling me backward. They dragged me out the heavy glass doors and threw me onto the Terrace of Correction.
The blizzard hit me like a physical blow, the sub-zero wind instantly soaking my thin black gown with snow. But the cold was nothing compared to the agony waiting beneath me.
"Kneel," a warrior barked, forcing me down onto the stone slabs.
A blood-curdling scream ripped from my throat. Embedded in the cracks of the stone were threads of pure, lethal silver. The moment my bare knees hit the metal, my flesh began to sizzle. The visceral, soul-shattering burn of the silver shot up my spine, paralyzing my inner wolf.
I collapsed forward, my hands hitting the silver-laced stone, earning another agonizing hiss of burning skin. Through the massive glass doors, I could see them. My family. The visiting Alphas and Lunas. They stood in the warmth of the firelight, swirling their champagne, watching me burn and freeze simultaneously.
Time lost its meaning. Forty minutes bled into an eternity of white snow and red agony. My body temperature plummeted. The smell of my own scorched flesh made me gag. As the edges of my vision darkened, my mind cruelly replayed Jace’s voice—choosing Ciera’s fake tears over my life. He knew what Hilda would do. He sent me here to die.
I closed my eyes, ready to let the darkness take me.
Then, the ground trembled.
Twin beams of blinding white light pierced the howling blizzard. A deafening, metallic screech shattered the night as a massive black Maybach rammed into the Keep’s impenetrable iron wolf-head gates. The heavy wrought iron tore off its hinges like wet paper, the vehicle roaring up the driveway like a mechanical beast.
It drifted violently on the ice, tires tearing up the snow, and slammed to a halt mere feet from where I lay bleeding.
The Keep’s defenses were obliterated in seconds. Inside the hall, the champagne glasses shattered. The onlookers rushed to the glass, their faces pale with sudden terror.
The driver’s side door of the Maybach swung open. A man stepped out into the raging blizzard. He was massive, built like a dark god, and the sheer, suffocating aura of pure, unadulterated power rolling off him made the very snowflakes seem to freeze in mid-air.
