I pulled my collar closed.
"Dana Ironclaw. On your mating night, you knelt three times before the Moon Goddess and the gathered pack. You looked Clarissa in the eye and swore you would trust her, protect her, never doubt her. That you would be hers alone, for the rest of your lives."
"All those vows dripping with devotion. Did you feed every last one of them to the dogs?"
I didn't wait for his answer.
My gaze dropped to the strands of his hair still tangled between my fingers, torn loose only moments ago.
"No matter."
"Every wrong done to her, I will repay in full."
Dana's brow furrowed. "You—"
Lucretia wrenched herself free of his arms and threw herself at my feet.
She flashed me a taunting smile, but the words that left her mouth were a tearful wail:
"Sister, whatever grievance you have, take it out on me! Don't hurt the Alpha!"
I was happy to oblige.
Without a heartbeat's hesitation, I swung my hand and slapped her across the face.
Then I hurled the entire bowl of heart's blood over her.
Lucretia screamed.
The blood was still warm. It dripped from the silver pins in her hair, ran down her temples, soaked through the ceremonial Luna robes until the silk clung to her skin.
She raised a hand on instinct and wiped at her face, smearing the blood into a grotesque mask. Beneath the iron stench of it, her own scent leaked through — crushed roses layered over something metallic and wrong, like perfume sprayed over blood.
Dana stared at Lucretia, drenched and trembling.
As though she were the one who'd been bled. As though she were the one who'd been hurt.
Every ounce of tenderness in his eyes belonged to her. Every shred of his pity, his bias.
"Clarissa, you've bullied Lucretia since you were pups. And now you use whatever affection I still hold for you to humiliate her again and again!"
"Since you drew heart's blood and still refuse to save her, then I will have every last one of those wretched spawn dug up and ground to dust. Let's see you use them to terrorize Lucretia then!"
"Guards! Exhume the remains of the First Pup, the Second Pup, the Third Pup, the Fourth Pup, and the Fifth Pup. All of them!"
"Burn them in silver flame. Boil them in wolfsbane oil. Then summon the Shaman to lay the foulest curse he knows, so they can never be reborn. Not even as spirits under the Moon Goddess's light!"
A savage pain detonated in my chest.
It wasn't mine. It was my sister's.
I froze.
Was Clarissa's wolf soul still inside this body?
Then why, no matter how many times I called for her, had she never answered?
With every word Dana spoke, the pain deepened, as if something were being ripped apart inside me, slow and alive. Deep beneath my ribs, in the place where a wolf should howl, there was only a raw, shredded silence — and then a grief so vast it had no sound at all.
Lucretia sat crumpled in the pooling blood, biting her lip, sobbing as though each breath cost her dearly.
"Alpha, my sister truly despises me beyond all reason!"
"But... but the Shaman himself said those five pups died because of the elder sister's wickedness. That her sins provoked the Moon Goddess's wrath..."
"That's why they were smothered one by one, trampled during the hunt, thrown from the cliffs... I grieve for those poor pups so deeply..."
Dana's chest heaved violently. He erupted.
"Even after you've humiliated her to this degree, Lucretia still weeps for those pups! That is a heart of pure sincerity!"
"And you? All you do is use your own pups as weapons for revenge! You don't deserve to be called their mother!"
Two lines of blood-red tears spilled from my eyes, beyond my control.
Those were my sister's tears, shed for her five murdered pups.
I clenched my fists until the strands of hair bit into the flesh of my fingers.
I laughed. The sound was jagged, ugly.
"Sister Clarissa! Your five pups are barely cold in their graves, and you... you can still laugh?!"
Lucretia's tears flowed without end, her expression the very portrait of unbearable grief.
But I saw it clearly. The triumph glinting in her eyes.
The same look her mother had worn, all those years ago, when the two of them had wielded their fragile, pitiful act to steal Father's affection and driven Mother to weep alone every night.
"I'm laughing," I said, "because you fools don't know what you've done. You woke me up."
I raised my hand and pressed a finger to my own chest.
"Dana Ironclaw. Do you know what a Soulbreaker Thorn is?"
"It is silver laced with concentrated wolfsbane, driven into the seven chakra points of a wolf's spiritual body, designed to pin a living soul apart — scattering all three spiritual essences and all seven mortal forms until nothing remains."
"I was trying to save you, and you threw it back in my face!" Dana's eyes were full of bitter disappointment. His scent had turned acrid, the cold iron sharpening into something unbearable. "That ritual was meant to purge the darkness festering inside your wolf. And it didn't do a damn thing!"
