Tears carved silent rivers down my face as I clung, half-conscious, to the stranger's shirt, the fine wool damp beneath my trembling fingers. His scent wrapped around me, cedar and cold iron and the static charge before a thunderstorm, steadying me even as the world went dark.
"Re… venge…" The word escaped my lips like a dying prayer, barely formed, yet heavy with the weight of a blood oath sworn under the Moon.
When I opened my eyes again, all I saw was white, too bright, too sterile. The sharp tang of healing herbs and scrubbed stone flooded my senses, a stark contrast to the darkness that had swallowed me whole. A Healing Hall. My wolf stirred beneath my skin, uneasy in a den that smelled of strangers.
I turned my head slowly, wincing at the dull ache that radiated through every fiber of my body, and reached for my crystal communicator. A message from Dorian waited on the screen, sent the night before.
[I've got pack business to handle tomorrow. Go try on the mating gown by yourself. Our ceremony is approaching, so pull yourself together. Stop with the dramatics and join the Ravenpack with some dignity.]
I stared at the message for a long moment, my face an unreadable mask, then dragged my finger across the screen and watched the words disappear into oblivion.
But just beneath it, something else caught my eye, a post from Mira's spirit-network page.
Dorian had taken her on the pack's private storm-hawk to chase the aurora in some frozen corner of the northern territories, far from prying eyes.
In the ethereal green haze of those dancing lights, their silhouettes stood close together, intimate as conspirators. Matching moonstone bands glinted on their fingers, fingers tightly intertwined like the roots of a poisonous vine.
The caption pierced through me like a stiletto blade:
[He told me I'm the only one for him. He promised to protect me from all the cruelty in this world. How could I ever let go of a mate like that?]
Below it, a cutesy account bearing paired cartoon avatars had commented:
[And no matter how far you try to run from me, I'll find you. I'll tie you to my side forever. So don't even try, silly girl.]
I didn't need to verify the source. I knew that tone, that possessive flair, that dark promise wrapped in honeyed words. That was Dorian.
I could tell from the typing style alone.
I remembered the day I asked him to use matching avatars with me. He had rolled his eyes, his handsome face twisting with contempt.
"What are you, a pup? Can't you see I'm handling pack affairs? Now leave!"
And yet I had once dreamed of standing beneath the northern lights with him, a stolen moment away from the shadows that governed our lives. I had planned the route down to the smallest detail. He said he was too busy. Every time, that was the excuse: too busy.
Now I finally understood the truth that had been staring me in the face all along. He could be romantic. He could be tender and devoted. He just never chose to be that way with me.
I set the communicator down on the stiff linens, trying to blink back the sting behind my eyes.
That's when I noticed the envelope sitting quietly on the bedside table, cream-colored and expensive.
Inside it was a passage ticket aboard the storm-hawk. Departure in two days.
And a small note, written in an elegant hand:
[You're welcome. Hope you like the gift. For your mating ceremony. — L.]
So I was right. The wolf who had carried me through the darkness and delivered me to safety was none other than Lucan Ashborne, the ghost of a slaughtered bloodline who had returned from the dead to become Dorian's worst enemy.
I sent him a quiet thank-you, my fingers hovering over the keys longer than necessary, and checked myself out of the Healing Hall not long after.
Then the ceremony coordinator called. The gown my mother had ordered for me, commissioned from the finest seamstress in the borderland market, paid for with years of her modest savings, had been altered to fit. It was ready.
It was the last gift she left me before the Ravenpack let her die. I had to pick it up.
But when I stepped into the boutique, the chime above the door ringing softly, I froze.
There stood Mira, twirling in my gown.
"Selene… you came." She spun in front of the gilded mirror with a saccharine smile, her voice dripping with venom disguised as honey. Her scent reached me first, overripe jasmine and sugared decay over a faint trace of iron, and my wolf bristled, low and silent, hackles rising beneath my skin.
"I just had to make sure it fits, you know. Trying to help you out."
She tugged the neckline lower with deliberate provocation, revealing fresh red marks scattered across her chest like a constellation of sin. Her tone turned mockingly bashful.
"Oh no, it's Dorian's fault, he's just too passionate. I told him to be gentle…"
I stared at her performance, cold and unblinking as a statue carved from marble.
"You really did inherit your mother's talent for stealing other she-wolves' mates."
Her smile twitched, then curved into something crueler, the mask slipping to reveal the predator beneath.
"Oh? Didn't you hear?" She placed a hand over her stomach with theatrical tenderness. "I'm carrying Dorian's bloodline heir."
"And your blood oath?" She laughed, the sound like shattering crystal. "It's fake."
She flashed a crystal orb in her palm. A dim back room of some pack club. Mira draped across Dorian's lap like a trophy.
He was drinking, his lips brushing against her temple with casual affection.
"Do your best and bring the pup into this world. When it's born, I'll gift him the Ravenpack hunting grounds. Everything."
Mira asked in a coy voice: "But… what about my sister?"
Dorian chuckled, the sound dark and dismissive. "I never truly bound myself to her. I've been slipping suppressants into her milk for moons. She can't conceive. When the time comes, I'll just claim we took in an orphaned pup."
It was like being struck by lightning. My head spun. My legs nearly buckled beneath me, and I had to grip the edge of a display case to stay upright. Deep inside, my wolf went utterly still, the kind of stillness that comes right before something breaks.
So that was it.
Whatever love had existed between us had died a long time ago. I was just too blind, too desperate to believe in the fairy tale, to notice the corpse rotting at my feet.
I sucked in a sharp breath, straightened my spine with the dignity my mother had taught me, and forced a smile onto my face.
"Well, congratulations. Becoming the next Luna of the Ravenpack is just around the corner."
"But that gown is mine. Take it off," I said, my voice dropping to ice.
I lunged forward to reclaim it, but before my fingers could even brush the fabric, one of her warriors, assigned by Dorian himself, drove his boot into my stomach.
The force knocked me flat against the polished floor. Pain exploded through my gut like a grenade. I could feel everything twisting, shifting, as though my insides had been rearranged by the brutal impact.
Mira picked up a pair of shears from the seamstress's table. Her tone was gleeful as she traced the blade over the delicate silk, savoring the moment.
"Dorian said no matter what I do, he'll clean up my mess. That's what it means to have the protection of the pack."
The sharp edge tore through hand-stitched lace. Slashed through soft silk that my mother had saved for years to afford. With each cut, she shredded the last gift my mother had ever given me, the only piece of her I had left. From somewhere far down inside me, my wolf let out a sound I'd never heard it make, a low, broken keening that had no name.
I just lay there on the cold floor, watching the pieces flutter down like snowflakes in a graveyard.
Even my hatred felt dull now, numbed by the crushing weight of everything I had lost.
Mira strutted out of the boutique, her heels clicking against the marble like a victory march, leaving nothing but wreckage in her wake.
I dragged myself back to the mountain den across the territories… or rather, what used to feel like home.
Once I got there, I tore open every drawer and chest with trembling hands, yanked out every gift Dorian had ever given me, the jewelry that now felt like shackles, the fine furs that were nothing but gilded cages, the carved trinkets from those early days when I still believed his lies.
One by one, I threw them all in the trash.
Behind me, I heard footsteps approaching.
Familiar ones.
