Harper POV:
The degradation didn't happen in steps. It happened in a landslide.
At the morning meeting, I tried to take my seat next to the Alpha, a place that had been mine by right.
But Kasey was already there.
She looked at me with wide, innocent doe eyes, feigning confusion, before flickering her gaze to Eli.
Eli didn't even acknowledge my presence. "Sit in the back, Harper. The Alpha table is for those who contribute to the Pack."
The shame flashed hot across my cheeks. I lowered my head and walked to the back, sitting among the Omegas. They shifted away from me as if failure was contagious, leaving me isolated in a sea of people.
"Alpha," Florence Stark, Eli's mother, stood up. She was a woman made of iron and spite, her spine stiff with self-righteousness. She had never liked me. I was too bookish, too soft.
"We must address the issue of the Luna," she announced, her voice carrying to every corner of the hall. "The Pack is weak. A Luna who cannot protect her pup is a liability. It is Pack Law."
"Mother," Eli warned, but his tone lacked bite. It was a token protest.
"She is broken, Eli," Florence pressed, her eyes drilling into me. "Her wolf is dormant. She is essentially human. And she carries a curse. The curse of negligence."
Eli looked at me then. His gaze was heavy, devoid of the love that used to live there.
*Stand up,* he commanded through the link.
The Alpha Command seized my limbs like invisible strings. I stood, trembling, fighting my own muscles.
"Admit it," Eli said aloud, his voice echoing in the silence. "Admit to the Pack that you failed us."
"I... I failed," I whispered.
"Louder!"
"I failed the Stark Pack!" I screamed, tears streaming down my face, the confession tearing at my throat.
"Take her to the Water Cells," Eli said, waving his hand dismissively, as if I were nothing more than a nuisance. "She needs to reflect on her sins. Perhaps the water will remind her of what she took from us."
My blood ran cold. The Water Cells were ancient dungeons beneath the lake level. The water there was laced with trace amounts of Silver. For a wolf, Silver burns like acid. It prevents healing. It is torture.
Two warriors grabbed me. I didn't fight. I couldn't.
They dragged me down the stone steps and threw me into the dark, damp cell. The water rose to my waist. The moment it touched my skin, I hissed. It wasn't just cold; it sizzled, a constant, chemical burn that seeped into my pores and ate at my nerves.
Hours turned into days. I shivered in the dark, my legs numb and raw. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Leo floating.
"Hungry?"
The grate above opened. Kasey peered down, holding a plate of roast chicken. The smell made my empty stomach cramp violently.
"Please," I croaked, my lips cracked and dry.
"Oops."
She tilted the plate. The food fell into the dirty, silver-laced water, ruining it instantly. "Butterfingers. Oh well. You don't deserve to eat anyway. Eli and I just had a lovely dinner. He's so... vigorous lately."
She smirked, the light from above casting shadows over her cruel face, and slammed the grate shut.
But the worst was yet to come.
Two days later, the door opened. Eli stood there, flanked by Florence and Kasey.
"Get her up," Eli ordered.
I was dragged out, dripping wet, my skin red and raw from the silver water. They marched me to the pack cemetery.
There, by the small, fresh mound of earth that was Leo's grave, stood two warriors with shovels.
"No," I gasped, panic spiking in my chest. "No, Eli, what are you doing?"
"Mother says the pup's spirit cannot rest because he was birthed by a cursed womb," Eli said, his face blank, like a mask carved from stone. "We must purify the grounds."
"Don't touch him!" I screamed, lunging forward.
"Alpha Command: Freeze," Eli said calmly.
My body locked up instantly. I was a statue, forced to watch as the shovels dug into the earth. The sound of metal hitting dirt was deafening.
They hit the small wooden coffin. They pulled it up.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I just wanted to see him one last time.
But Kasey stepped forward, blocking my view. She held a heavy ceramic urn.
"We cremated the remains, Eli," she said, her voice dripping with false sympathy. "Just to be safe. The coffin is empty. We couldn't risk the soil."
She opened the urn.
"No!" I screamed inside my mind, fighting the command until my brain felt like it was bleeding. My dormant wolf stirred, whining in agony.
Kasey looked at me, a cruel smile playing on her lips. She walked to the nearby storm drain.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to sewer," she whispered.
She tipped the urn.
The gray ash—my baby, my Leo—poured into the dark, stinking grate.
"NO!"
The command shattered under the force of my grief. I collapsed, clawing at the pavement, trying to reach the drain, but it was gone. Washed away into the filth.
"Disgusting," Florence sneered, looking down at me as if I were the filth. "Look at her. She has no dignity."
Cody, a young boy about six years old, stepped out from behind Kasey's legs. I knew him. He was an orphan the Pack had taken in... or so I thought.
"Get her, Cody," Kasey whispered.
The boy shifted partially, his claws extending. He slashed at my face. Pain exploded across my cheek, hot and blinding.
"Good boy," Eli said. He looked at me, lying in the dirt, bleeding, wet, and broken. "You are no longer Luna. You are nothing."
Florence stepped forward. "Strip her. She doesn't deserve the Pack colors."
They tore the clothes from my body, leaving me shivering in the night air. I curled into a ball, trying to hide my nakedness.
"Throw her to the border," Eli commanded. "If the Rogues want her, they can have her."
I was dragged by my hair to the edge of the territory. The warriors swung me and threw me into the mud of the No Man's Land.
As I lay there, listening to the distant, hungry howls of Rogues, something inside me snapped. It wasn't my mind. It was my heart.
The sadness evaporated, replaced by a cold, hard stone of hate.
I looked back at the Pack house lights, glowing warm and inviting in the distance.
*I will survive,* I vowed to the night air, the promise tasting like iron in my mouth. *And I will burn you all to the ground.*
