I froze. The words hung in the air like smoke after a kill. Dropped the charges? What in the Moon's name were they talking about?
I ran to the Elder's records-den as fast as my legs could carry me, my boots striking the rain-slicked stone like desperate heartbeats. But by the time I arrived, breathless and wild-eyed, the file, my mother's case, had already been torn to nothing. Confetti. That was all that remained of justice. Ribbons of white parchment scattered across the dark oakwood like funeral petals.
Everything blurred. I collapsed to my knees on the woven floor, my fingers clawing at the old Elder's sleeve, my voice fracturing into something raw and unrecognizable.
"You promised. You swore under the Moon you'd help me get justice for my mother!"
Edmund Greycloak, a wolf who had built his name representing the great bloodlines, looked away, unable to meet my eyes. The scent of old parchment and beeswax curdled with something sour. He exhaled slowly, the sound heavy with resignation.
"The one who withdrew the claim was your intended mate. Dorian Ravenmoor." He paused, letting the name settle between us like a blade. "None of us are in any position to stand against the Ravenpack heir. That bloodline's reach runs deeper than you know. I'm truly sorry, Miss Hollowthorn."
And just like that, with a small nod to his warriors, two of them took me by the arms and walked me out to the street. Their grips were firm but not cruel. They had done this before.
But I wasn't giving up.
There had to be someone in this Moon-forsaken territory who still had a spine. Someone who hadn't been bought, threatened, or broken by the Ravenpack's iron grip.
Hands shaking, I called every connected advocate I could find on my communicator, wolves who'd defended pack capos, who'd gotten blooded killers cleared, who supposedly feared nothing. One by one, they turned me away. The replies were all the same, delivered in hushed, apologetic tones.
"Sorry, Miss Hollowthorn. Dorian Ravenmoor made it very clear. Anyone who touches that case will find themselves on the wrong side of the pack by sunrise. We can't help you. Do you understand?"
I dropped to the ground outside the last den, my knees hitting cold stone. My palm landed on jagged rock, blood seeping from the cut and mixing with the grime of the alley, yet I barely felt a thing. The physical pain was nothing compared to the hollow ache consuming my chest. Somewhere beneath my ribs, my wolf had gone silent, curled in on herself the way she did only when something had been ripped away that we could never get back.
When I was sixteen, my sire threw Mom and me out of our den like we were nothing. The same day, Mira and her mother moved in, his mistress and her base-born daughter, finally claiming what they'd circled for years.
I still remember Mira, just thirteen, smirking from the top of the stairs as we carried our belongings past her. Her eyes glittered with triumph, and in that moment I learned the truth that had been hidden from me my whole childhood. My sire, Garrick Hollowthorn, had kept a second she-wolf for years. We were the true-bonded family, but we were also the ones to be cast off.
Mom and I ended up in the borderlands with nothing but the clothes on our backs and whatever dignity we could scrape together. One freezing night, huddled beneath a collapsed bridge for warmth, we stumbled into the middle of a snatching. A crew of wolves in dark leathers, trained ones, clearly, were dragging a young male toward a waiting carriage. Even in the dark, even half-frozen and starving, I caught the scent of high bloodline on him, and knew the face from every pack rumor that traveled the territories.
Dorian Ravenmoor. Heir to the Ravenpack. Being taken by a rival pack's rogues.
Mom didn't hesitate. She threw herself into the fight, snarling like a she-wolf possessed, screaming for me to run and howl for help. By the time the Ravenpack warriors arrived, she'd driven off three armed rogues with nothing but her bare hands, her teeth, and a broken shard of glass. She nearly died doing it. They cut her open again and again, but she wouldn't stop. Wouldn't let them take him.
Afterward, Dorian brought us inside the Ravenpack territory, against his parents' furious objections. Vesper Ravenmoor looked at us like we were stray rogues he'd dragged in from the wild, her scent of cold orchid and polished silver sharp with disdain. But her son, her precious heir, insisted. He said he owed us a life-debt under the Moon.
Mom turned down his offer to keep us as dependents of the pack. She had too much pride for charity. Instead she became a den-keeper in the Ravenpack estate, earning her place with honest work. I crossed into Dorian's private academy. Day after day, I watched that gentle, kind boy, the one who carried wildflowers to my mother's bedside while she healed, who sat reading to her in a low voice, grow into someone I couldn't help falling for.
He loved me back. On my twentieth Moon Blessing Day, before my mother and the whole household, he knelt and took my hand. His voice was steady, his eyes bright with sincerity, and his scent of black pepper and cold ash wrapped warm around me then.
"I swear under the Moon," he said, "I'll spend the rest of my life protecting you. You'll want for nothing. You'll fear nothing. This I promise."
But all that started changing a year ago.
He went out one night, some gathering at one of the pack's social halls, drinks with the warriors. When he came home, something was different. He started speaking of Mira differently.
"She's not who I thought she was," he said one night, pacing our chambers, working the knot from his collar. "She's working three jobs to pay for her schooling. Can you believe it? The daughter of a wolf like Garrick, scraping by like some lowborn omega off the borderlands."
"And listen to this." His eyes lit with something I didn't recognize. "Some connected male tried to proposition her, said he'd set her up as his kept she-wolf, drown her in gifts. She stood and slapped him across the face in front of the whole hall. What a fierce little thing."
Then he added, his tone shifting to something almost accusing, "I know you two never got along. But maybe it's because you never gave her a real chance. If you just spent some time with her, maybe you'd see how lovable she is."
My gut was screaming that something was wrong. Even my wolf paced beneath my skin, hackles up at a scent on him that didn't quite belong, something sweet and rotting under the black pepper, jasmine gone overripe. The sister who'd smirked at my ruin was playing a long game. But I pushed it aside. Told myself I was being paranoid. That old wounds were making me see enemies where there were none.
And then, not long after, one of the mated females in our circle told me Dorian had come into a rare moonstone band. Not just any band, an ancient piece that once belonged to a high-bloodline Luna of the old packs. A she-wolf had worn it at her crowning. It was worth more than most wolves earned in a lifetime.
So naturally I thought, maybe he bought it for my Blessing Day. A grand gesture, the kind he used to make when we first fell in love.
But on the day of my Moon Blessing, Mira posted to the spirit network. That exact band, worth a fortune, irreplaceable, mine by every right of love and loyalty, was wrapped around her slender wrist. In the image, a male's hand held hers, fingers laced together with intimate familiarity. I knew those hands. I'd held them a thousand times.
That night I waited until the last candle burned itself out, the wax pooling beside the untouched feast. Dorian never came home.
It was the first time he ever forgot my Blessing Day.
After that, he always had some reason for missing the dates that mattered, our bond-anniversary, the moons we marked together, the milestones that mark a life shared between two souls. There was always a council that ran late, trouble with the warriors, some emergency demanding him.
At the same time, Mira's spirit network kept updating with careful, calculated cruelty. His familiar shape in the background of her images. His unmarked fingers around a wine glass in halls I'd never been taken to. The line of his body behind fogged glass, the picture cropped just enough to keep its deniability.
Six moons ago we'd sworn our blood oath, the bond-pledge that would bind me to the Ravenpack forever. He said he wanted to give me the perfect Mating Ceremony. A rite worthy of the next Luna.
Now I know there won't be a ceremony at all.
I lifted the communicator and called his private line. My voice, when I spoke, was cold as the grave.
"You wanted my share of the Ravenpack hunting-grounds, didn't you? The claims you signed over to me?" I didn't wait for his answer. "I'm signing them back. All of them."
It was a "gift" he gave me the day he finally won me, those claims. A portion of the pack's lands, the kind of security that made a she-wolf untouchable. I told him it was too much, that I didn't need his holdings, only his heart. But he gripped my hand and insisted I mark the oath.
That gentle voice still echoes in my mind like a cruel memory, the ghost of who he used to be.
"Little one, if you want the stars or the Moon herself, I'll climb up and pull them down for you. What are a few hunting-grounds next to that?"
I know now, what we had was real. Once. But people change. Hearts grow cold. And love? Love is never immortal. It can be killed like anything else.
The boy who once held me as if I were his whole world, he's long gone. Swallowed by time and ambition and the poison my sister dripped into his ear night after night.
Just as the call ended, my communicator lit with a message from Dorian.
[Calmed down yet? I've arranged the burial ground and paid for the rites. Satisfied now? Stop testing my patience, Selene.]
Another followed almost instantly:
[Did you not see my message? Come to my den at the hall. Now. Mark the no-claim agreement for Mira. This matter needs to vanish.]
Something in me finally broke. The last thread holding together the she-wolf who'd loved him, who'd believed in him, who'd built her whole life around his promises, it snapped. Deep inside, my wolf threw back her head and let out a sound I'd never heard her make before, a low keening with no name.
I called him. My voice was shaking with rage, but beneath it was something harder. Something forged in the fire of betrayal.
"Why in the Moon's name should I mark that agreement for her? She killed my mother. She murdered her, Dorian. And if I say no, what then?" I laughed, the sound bitter and broken. "You going to press my bloody hand to the parchment yourself? Hold me down while your warriors force the mark?"
The silence on the other end was deafening.
