Seraphina POV:
"On your knees!" Bella shouted.
Before I could react to Lola's claws, Bella kicked the back of my knee. It was a cowardly move, typical of a Gamma who only felt strong when the odds were two against one.
My leg buckled. I hit the marble floor hard.
The humiliation was instant. I, the heir to the Vitiello throne, the daughter of the King, was kneeling before a barmaid and her lackey.
"That's better," Lola sneered, looming over me. "This is where you belong. Beneath us."
She grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head back, exposing my throat. Her claws dug into my scalp.
"I should tear your throat out right here," Lola hissed. "Save Dante the trouble of firing you."
"If you touch me again," I said, my voice dropping an octave, vibrating with a warning that no human should possess, "you will pray to the Moon Goddess for death before I am finished with you."
Lola paused. For a second, genuine fear flickered in her eyes. She felt it—the static electricity that was starting to crackle in the air around me.
Then her eyes dropped to my chest. To the silver locket that had swung loose when I fell.
"What is this trash?" She reached out and grabbed the pendant.
"Don't touch that!" I screamed.
It wasn't fear for myself. It was fear for them. Fear for the building. That locket contained the only thing keeping the monster inside me from leveling the city block.
"A goodbye present from mommy?" Lola mocked. "It looks cheap. Just like you."
She yanked.
The silver chain was old. It snapped with a sickening *ping*.
"No!" I lunged for it, but Bella stomped on my hand, grinding her heel into my fingers.
Lola held the locket up to the light. "Let's see what you're hiding."
She dropped it on the floor.
Time seemed to slow down. I watched the silver oval fall, end over end. I saw it hit the polished marble.
Lola lifted her stiletto heel.
"Give it back!" I begged. "You don't know what you're doing!"
"Oops," Lola said, deadpan.
She brought her heel down.
*Crunch.*
The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet lobby. The ancient silver shattered. The dried Moonshade Herb inside—a priceless botanical treasure from the old world—turned to dust.
For a second, I felt an agonizing hollowness, as if my heart had been ripped out with the silver. That locket was the last piece of the soft, human girl I had tried so hard to be. I grieved her death for exactly one heartbeat.
Then, the shockwave hit.
It started in my chest. A heat so intense it felt like I had swallowed a star. The barrier that had held back my White Wolf lineage for seven years evaporated.
The air in the lobby changed instantly. The temperature dropped twenty degrees. The smell of cheap perfume was obliterated by a new scent.
My scent.
It rolled off me in waves. Winter frost. Fresh blood. Ancient pine. And the overwhelming, crushing weight of pure, undiluted power.
I stopped struggling. The pain in my hand vanished. The pain in my heart vanished.
There was only the Wolf.
My eyes snapped open. The brown contact lenses I wore couldn't hide the change. My irises flooded with liquid silver, glowing like twin moons.
I stood up. Bella stumbled back, her instinct screaming at her to run. Lola froze, her foot still on the broken pieces of my mother's necklace.
*The masquerade is over,* my wolf purred in my mind. *Hunt them.*
"You broke the seal," I said. My voice wasn't my own anymore. It carried the Alpha Tone—a resonance that vibrated in the bones of everyone in the room.
Lola trembled. "What... what are you?"
I smiled, and my teeth felt sharper. "I am your reckoning."
