My Mother's Blood, His Pack's Ruin

I froze. The words hung in the air like smoke from a spent fire. Withdrawn the blood oath? What in the Moon Goddess's name were they talking about? I ran to the arbiter's den as fast as my legs could carry me, my paws of grief pounding the rain-slicked stone like desperate heartbeats. But by the time I arrived, breathless and wild-eyed, the file, my mother's blood-oath record, had already been fed to the flames. Ash. That was all that remained of justice. Curls of charred parchment scattered across the dark oak desk like funeral petals. Everything blurred. I collapsed to my knees on the woven floor-pelt, my fingers clawing at the arbiter's sleeve, my voice fracturing into something raw and unrecognizable. Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, my wolf made a sound I'd never heard her make, a low keening that had no name. "You promised. You swore before the Moon Goddess you'd help me get justice for my mother!" The arbiter, a wolf who'd built his rank on serving the great packs, looked away, unable to meet my eyes. He exhaled slowly, the breath heavy with resignation. "The one who withdrew the complaint was your intended mate. Lucan Bloodfang." He paused, letting the name settle between us like a blade across the throat. "None of us stand in a position to defy the Bloodfang Alpha-heir. The pack's reach runs further than you know. I am truly sorry, Miss Thornwood." And just like that, with a small tilt of his head to his wolves, two of them escorted me out into 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 godforsaken territory who still had a spine. Someone who hadn't been bought, threatened, or broken by the Bloodfang Pack's iron jaw. Hands shaking, I sent word through every bound advocate I could reach, wolves who had spoken for council enforcers, who had won the freedom of made killers, who supposedly feared nothing. One by one, they turned me away. The replies came back the same, delivered in hushed, apologetic tones across the sending-stones. "Sorry, Miss Thornwood. Lucan Bloodfang made it very clear. Any wolf who touches that case will find themselves on the wrong side of the pack by the next moonrise. We can't help you. You understand." I dropped to the cold stone outside the last den, my knees striking the ground. 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. When I was sixteen, my father cast Mom and me out of our den like we were nothing. The same day, Mirella and her mother moved in, his mistress and her baseborn daughter, finally claiming what they'd been circling for years. I still remember Mirella, just thirteen, smirking from the staircase 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 father, Garrick Thornwood, had kept a second she-wolf for years. We were the trueborn family, but we were also the disposable ones. Mom and I ended up in the wildlands with nothing but the pelts on our backs and whatever dignity we could scrape together. One freezing night, huddled beneath a broken bridge for warmth, we stumbled into the middle of a snatch. A crew of wolves in black, killers, clearly, were dragging a young wolf toward a waiting carriage. Even in the dark, even half-frozen and starving, I caught the scent and knew the face from the council talk. Lucan Bloodfang. Alpha-heir of the Bloodfang Pack. Being seized by a rival pack. Mom didn't hesitate. She threw herself into the fray, fighting like a she-wolf possessed, screaming for me to run and howl for help. By the time the Bloodfang warriors arrived, she'd driven off three armed wolves with nothing but tooth and claw and a broken shard of glass. She nearly died doing it. They cut her over and over, but she wouldn't stop. Wouldn't let them take him. Afterward, Lucan brought us into the Bloodfang territory, against his parents' furious objections. Vesper Bloodfang looked at us like we were strays he'd dragged in from the gutter, her scent of cold bergamot and frostbitten lily sharpening with contempt. But her son, her precious heir, insisted. He said he owed us a blood oath before the Moon Goddess. Mom turned down his offer to keep us as dependents. She had too much pride for charity. Instead she served as an Omega in the Bloodfang den, earning her place with honest labor. I crossed into Lucan's academy. Day after day, I watched that sweet, gentle wolf, the one who carried wildflowers to my mother while she healed, who sat by her bedside reading to her, 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 of Omega servants, he knelt and took my hand. His voice was steady, his eyes bright with sincerity. "I swear before the Moon Goddess," 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 clubs, drinks with allied wolves. When he came back, something was different. His scent of scorched oak carried a sour note I couldn't place. He started speaking of Mirella differently. "She's not who I thought she was," he said one night, loosening his collar as he paced our chamber. "She's working three keeps to pay for her own schooling. Can you believe that? The daughter of a wolf like Garrick, scraping by like a common stray." "And listen to this." His eyes lit with something I didn't recognize. "Some ranked wolf tried to proposition her, said he'd set her up as his kept she-wolf, shower her with moonstones. She stood and struck him across the muzzle in front of everyone. What a fierce female." Then he added, his tone shifting to something almost accusing, "I know the two of you never got along. But maybe it's because you never gave her a real chance. If you spent some time with her, maybe you'd see how lovable she is." My gut was screaming that something was off. My wolf paced beneath my skin, hackles half-raised, because the sister who'd smirked at my ruin was playing a long game. But I brushed it aside. Told myself I was only being paranoid. That the 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 Lucan had acquired a bracelet. Not just any bracelet, an ancient piece that had once belonged to highborn she-wolves of an old bloodline. A princess of the line had worn it to her crowning. It was worth more than most wolves earned in a lifetime. So naturally I thought, maybe he bought it for my Moon Blessing Day. A grand gesture, the kind he used to make when we first fell in love. But on the day itself, Mirella posted to the spirit network. That exact bracelet, worth a fortune, irreplaceable, mine by every right of love and loyalty, was clasped around her slender wrist. In the image, a male 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 on the untouched cake. Lucan never came home. It was the first time he ever forgot my Moon Blessing Day. After that he always had some excuse for missing our important moons, the anniversaries, the celebrations, the milestones that mark a life shared between two wolves. There was always a council sit-down that ran late, a problem with the pack patrols, an emergency that demanded him. At the same time Mirella's spirit network kept updating with careful, calculated cruelty. His familiar shape in the background of her images. His unmarked fingers around a cup of wine in dens I'd never been taken to. His body behind fogged glass, the image cropped just enough to keep deniability. Six moons ago we had sealed our blood oath, the bond-vow that would tie me to the Bloodfang Pack forever. He told me he wanted to give me the perfect Mating Ceremony. A rite worthy of the future Luna. Now I know there won't be a ceremony at all. I picked up the sending-stone and called his private line. My voice, when I spoke, was cold as the grave. "You wanted my bloodline claim in the Bloodfang territory, didn't you? The tribute rights 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'd given me the day he finally won me over, those rights. A share of the pack's legitimate holdings, the kind of standing that made a she-wolf untouchable. I told him it was too much, that I didn't need his fortune, only his heart. But he held my hand tight and insisted I seal the papers. That gentle voice still echoes in my mind like a cruel ghost of who he used to be: "Baby, if you want the stars or the moon, I'll reach up and pull them down for you. What are a few claims next to that?" I know now, what we had, it was real. Once. But wolves change. Hearts grow cold. And love? Love is never immortal. It can be killed like anything else. The boy who once held me like I was 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 I ended the call, my sending-stone lit with a message from Lucan. [Calmed down yet? I've arranged the burial ground and paid the funeral rites. Satisfied now? Stop testing my patience, Selene.] Another followed almost at once: [Did you not see my message? Get to my office at the club. Now. Seal the non-prosecution oath for Mirella. This matter needs to disappear.] 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 me, my wolf went utterly still, the way an animal goes still before it stops trying to survive. 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 Goddess's name should I seal that oath for her? She killed my mother. She murdered her, Lucan. And if I say no, what then?" I laughed, the sound bitter and broken. "You going to press my bloody finger to the parchment yourself? Hold me down while your warriors force my hand?" The silence on the other end was deafening.

He severed the mind-link. Cold. No hesitation. The silence that followed was absolute, the kind that settles over a den when a death sentence has been passed before the Moon Goddess. Seconds later, my communicator pulsed against my palm. A crystal-clear image bloomed across its surface, edges sharp and damning. An investment pact. My mother's name beside Mirella's, bound together in ink and betrayal. Bold letters burned at the center like a confession beaten out of a dying wolf: All claims of fortune carry risk. Every loss born of personal misjudgment is the bearer's own burden. My mother's mark sat at the bottom. Her paw-seal pressed into the parchment like a blood oath she never understood she was making. He'd been preparing for this. The Bloodfang Pack's bound advocate, that cold-eyed arbiter who'd buried a hundred sins beneath mountains of sealed parchment, was ready to crush me like I was nothing more than a stray sniffing too close to the bloodline's business. Still, I went to the Bloodfang territory. Their lawful front rose at the heart of the lower grounds, a towering monument of glass and black stone that housed the empire of trade they showed the rest of the world. The lift carried me upward like a condemned she-wolf climbing toward the executioner's stone. The doors parted at the fifteenth floor, and there she stood. Mirella. She was draped in custom silks, the fabric clinging to her like a second pelt. The pouch at her hip held more gold moons than most warriors earned in a year of bloody work. And there, glittering on her wrist like a trophy torn from a corpse, the princess bracelet. My bracelet. She looked like a Luna born. Like someone whelped inside the inner circle, not a baseborn half-blood who'd clawed her way in through seduction and blood. Her lips curled the moment our eyes met, a serpent's smile. Beneath it her scent reached me first, overripe jasmine with that sweet rot rising underneath, honey drizzled thin over something gone foul. "Oh no, Selene," she cooed, her voice dripping with poisoned honey. "You look awful. Guess it's true what they say. When a she-wolf gets old, the bloom fades. No wonder Lucan lost interest." She tilted her head, feigning concern with the skill of a wolf who'd learned to lie before she'd learned to walk on two legs. "Still haven't laid your mother to rest beneath the moon? Want me to help plan the rites? I mean," she pressed a manicured hand to her chest, "we're nearly packmates, after all." My hands curled into fists at my sides. Rage, white-hot and blinding, boiled up from somewhere deep in my chest until it threatened to burn me alive from the inside out. My wolf surged against my ribs, a snarl building low in my throat that I swallowed whole. "You knew it was a trap," I hissed through clenched teeth. "You knew. It was a slaver's con, a scheme that tricked my mother into surrendering every coin she'd saved. Every gold moon she'd earned on her knees, scrubbing the Bloodfang floors." Mirella's expression shifted into wounded innocence, but the corner of her painted lips twitched with barely concealed amusement. "How could you accuse me like that?" she breathed, pressing her hand to her heart. "I was only trying to help. Your mother wanted to earn more for your mating dowry. She came to me, Selene. What was I supposed to do, turn away that sweet old Omega?" My chest tightened like silver chains were being drawn around my ribs. Blood rushed to my head, pounding in my ears like the war-drums before a Blood Moon hunt. "Goddess," Mirella sneered, dropping the pretense like a mask she'd grown tired of wearing, "that old bitch loved you like you were the whole world, didn't she?" She leaned in close, her breath hot against my ear, that cloying jasmine thick enough to choke on. "One day," she whispered, "I trampled the Alpha-Patriarch's favorite peonies. On purpose. Ground them right into the soil." Her voice was velvet wrapped around a blade. "The head of the Omega servants said he'd dock her three moons' wages. Your mother begged. On her knees. Right there in the garden, dirt under her claws and tears running down her face." My vision blurred. The world narrowed to a single point, Mirella's smiling face. "I learned later she hadn't taken a single rest-day in moons," Mirella went on, giggling like she was sharing a delicious secret. "Just to hoard coin. For you. For your mating to a male already warming my bed." She pulled back, her eyes glittering with malice. "And when I told her to crawl through the garden like a beaten cur?" Mirella's smile widened. "She did it. Just like that. Hands and knees through the mud, while I watched." My world crumbled. All those times my mother had smiled and told me not to worry over a thing while I planned my mating to Lucan. All those times she'd insisted everything was fine, that the Bloodfangs treated her well, that serving a powerful pack was an honor for an Omega like her. I never knew. I never knew what she had endured for my sake. The lift doors parted with a soft chime, and something inside me snapped clean in two. Deep beneath my skin my wolf let out a sound I'd never heard her make, a low keening with no name. I raised my hand, eyes blazing with three years of swallowed rage. "Mirella, you're a monster." But before my palm could even graze her cheek, she hurled herself backward out of the lift, crying out like a wounded animal as she clutched her unmarked face. "Selene, I said I was sorry!" she sobbed, her voice carrying down the marble corridor with theatrical precision. "I even knelt to you, and still you're so cruel. Do you truly want me dead that badly?!" Pack members, warriors in fine coats, bound advocates who knew better than to step into bloodline business, turned to stare. "If you want me dead so badly, then fine!" Mirella staggered upright, swaying. "I'll die for your mother! I'll pay the blood debt myself before the Moon Goddess!" She lurched at the wall as though to crack her own skull against the stone. "Mirella!" A figure rushed in from the edge of my vision. Broad shoulders, the scent of scorched oak and copper, that faint sour note of ash gone cold. The silhouette that had once meant safety and love. Lucan. He caught her against his chest like she was something precious. Something worth protecting. Then he turned, and his shoulder drove into me with the force of a male who'd learned violence at his sire's flank. I wasn't braced for it. My head whipped back, cracking against the lift's brass rail with a sickening thud that rang through my skull. The world tilted on its axis. Warm blood, my blood, trickled down the back of my neck and soaked into the collar of my dress. Lucan rounded on me, his eyes bloodshot, the edges flickering gold with rage. The same eyes that had once looked at me with tenderness. The same hands that had once cradled my face now curled into fists at his sides, knuckles whitening as if claws strained to break free. "Selene Thornwood," he spat my name like a curse, "how dare you. Apologize to Mirella. Now." It was as though she were his mate already. His Luna. The she-wolf who would stand at his side when he took his sire's territory. And me? Just some maddened thing. Some hysterical servant's daughter to be dealt with before she shamed the pack further. Mirella sobbed against his chest, her fingers clutching the front of his coat, her body trembling with manufactured terror. "I know she's just hurting," she whimpered, pressing her tear-streaked face into the hollow of his throat. "I already swore I'd pay for it. I'd take on every job I could, even the ones no other wolf will touch. The filthy work. But she," her voice cracked beautifully, "she still struck me. And cursed me. Said I should drop dead." Lucan's arms tightened around her. His jaw clenched. His eyes, dark as the river where the pack drowned its problems, fixed on me with undisguised fury. "Have I not repaid you enough?" he snapped, his voice carrying the weight of a wolf used to being obeyed. The air around him thickened, his Alpha-heir aura pressing down on the corridor until the watching wolves dropped their gazes. "Look at yourself, Selene. You're just like your mother. Petty. Greedy. Always playing the wounded one, always begging for a scrap." He took a step toward me, and Mirella's jasmine clung to his skin, sour beneath the sweetness. "You two earned the punishment." My breath caught in my throat as though a blade had been laid to my windpipe. The corridor spun, but I stayed rooted to the blood-slicked marble, too stunned to move. "Petty and greedy?" I whispered, staring at the male I'd loved, the male I'd been promised to since I was nineteen winters old, like I was seeing him for the first time. "Is that truly what you think of me? That seeking justice for my mother, an Omega who died in your pack's service, makes me some coin-hungry creature gone mad?" Tears blurred my vision, turning the world to watercolors. But I refused to let them fall. I would not give them the satisfaction. Something flickered in Lucan's face when he saw me fighting to hold myself together. A shadow of the male he used to be. A ghost of whatever conscience still haunted him. But the moment Mirella whimpered against his chest, a soft, wounded sound built to twist the knife, his expression hardened back into stone. "I saw you try to strike her," he said flatly. "I don't care what your excuse is. I don't care what story you've talked yourself into believing." He took another step, close enough that I could see the vein pulsing at his temple. "This is the last time I'll say it. Apologize." My heart clenched as though it were being crushed in a vice, squeezed until nothing remained but pain and the bitter taste of betrayal. Somewhere far beneath it, my wolf had gone utterly silent. I looked at him. At the male who had sworn to protect me. At the Beta-blooded Alpha-heir who would inherit a territory built on blood and broken oaths. At the stranger wearing my intended mate's face. "And what if I don't?" I said coldly.

"She's not just the daughter of some servant. She's the reason my mother is dead. And you expect me to bare my throat and beg her forgiveness?!" The words tore from my throat like shrapnel, and somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf threw herself against her cage. Mirella didn't even have time to part her painted lips. Lucan's eyes went glacial, the cold, flat stare of a wolf who'd learned to kill his own instincts long before he'd learned to kill anything else. "I warned you," he said, his voice like steel dragged across frozen stone. "Don't test my patience." Then he turned to his enforcers and gave the order with the casual cruelty of a wolf born into blood. "Go to the funeral den. Bring her mother's body back here." Every word was a fang dipped in venom. "She won't learn until she's broken." His lip curled with contempt as he looked at me, looked through me. "You think someone like you deserves to stand as Luna of the Bloodfang Pack?" "Feed the corpse to the dogs." He meant every syllable. His pack moved without hesitation, their heavy footfalls echoing through the stone foyer like a death march. These weren't wolves who questioned orders. These were enforcers who'd buried bodies in unmarked graves at the edge of the territory and slept soundly after. "No! No, please!" I lunged forward in blind panic, only to be seized by another enforcer. His grip crushed my arm with practiced brutality. I heard the crack before I felt it. Agony exploded through me like wildfire through dry brush, and my wolf's snarl twisted into a sound I'd never heard her make. Tears blurred the carved beams overhead into smears of gold and shadow. I cried so hard I couldn't draw breath, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but beg. "Lucan, please! Don't do this to my mother. She's, she's already gone. Isn't that enough?!" Mirella tilted her head with saccharine sweetness, barely concealing the triumph curving at the corners of her mouth. Beneath that overripe jasmine of hers, the sweet rot underneath turned my stomach. "Lucan… the dead deserve their rest. Perhaps we should show mercy?" He turned to her with a theatrical sigh, his hand finding the small of her back with easy possession. "You're too soft. That's why she walks all over you." Then his attention snapped back to his enforcers, who had paused at the threshold. "Well? What are you waiting for? Do I need to draw you a map to the funeral den?" The bark of command rolled off the walls of the Bloodfang den, and his Alpha aura cracked through the air like a whip, every lower wolf in the room flinching toward the floor. His voice cut through me like shattered glass, scattering the last fragments of the love I'd clung to for ten desperate years. He knew. He knew my mother was my only weakness, the single soft place in my armor. And he didn't hesitate to drive the fang straight through it. I broke. I bowed. My spine bent, my head dropped, my pride bled out onto the cold stone floor at Mirella's designer heels. My wolf went silent inside me, and that silence was worse than any howl. "Please," I whispered, tears falling in hot rivers down my cheeks. "Please just leave my mother in peace. Let her rest." Each word was a razor in my throat. "I'm sorry. I was wrong." Wrong for hoping for fairness in a world built on blood debts and Moon Goddess oaths. Wrong for believing, foolishly, pathetically, that maybe, just maybe, he'd choose me over her. As I bent forward in supplication, the blood-soaked collar of my robe pulled away from my skin, baring the wounds beneath. Lucan's eyes flickered. For a split second, something almost human surfaced in those dark depths, surprise, perhaps, or the ghost of the boy he'd once been. "Is this enough for you?" I straightened with every last ounce of strength left in my shattered body, meeting his gaze with a disgust I could barely keep behind my teeth. His jaw tightened. He gestured sharply to his Beta's bound advocate. "Bring the oath." Only when I pressed my bloody fingerprint onto the parchment, signing away my bloodline claim to the pack's holdings, signing away my mother's legacy, did the tension finally ease from his brow. "You're bleeding," he observed, as if noting a change in the wind. "I'll send for a healer." He released Mirella and moved toward me, reaching out with the hand that had once cradled my face like I was something precious. I slapped it away. "Save your concern for your precious half-blood," I spat. "Better hurry. Wait any longer and those theatrical bruises might fade before anyone important sees them." I turned to leave, my vision swimming, my legs threatening to buckle. Mirella's foot shot out with serpentine precision. I tripped hard, pitching forward toward the unforgiving stone. Lucan's instincts fired, the reflexes of a wolf trained since pup-hood to protect what was his. He reached out. Then stopped himself. His hand froze inches from my falling body. He stepped back. "Fine." His voice was ice. "Handle your wounds yourself." I forced myself upright, swallowing the scream that clawed at my throat as pain lanced through every nerve. He watched me from the threshold, Mirella tucked possessively against his side, the scorched-oak and copper of his scent now soured with cold ash. "I'll accompany you to choose your ceremonial robe tomorrow," he said, as if we were discussing the night's hunt. "The mating ceremony won't plan itself." He turned and was gone, the door of the den swinging shut on his impassive face. My body swayed, the dizziness from blood loss rising in nauseating waves. The lanterns above fractured into a thousand spinning shards of light. In the blur of agony, memory dragged me backward, back to a different time. Back to when we were young and the world hadn't yet taught us its cruelest lessons. Lucan was just nineteen when his sire began grooming him to inherit the pack. He'd worked through endless nights learning to lead, the running of the territory and the darker dealings both, his eyes perpetually rimmed with exhaustion. One evening, I burned my hand making broth for him in the den's kitchen. Just a small blister, barely worth mentioning. Yet somehow, he found out. He broke off a sitting with three of the Council Elders and ran the whole way home as if a rogue pack were at his heels, tearing through the dark of the territory in his fur. He took my hand and cradled it like I was made of spun glass. "I'm so sorry. I should've protected you," he said, his voice rough with guilt, a low rumble breaking under the words. "I swear before the Moon Goddess, as long as I'm breathing, I'll never let anything hurt you again." Then he pulled me into his arms. Warm. Strong. Trembling just slightly with the force of his conviction. That embrace, and that oath sworn under the moon, had branded themselves into my memory like a scar. But that boy was long dead. He'd grown into a cold, calculating wolf who looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was disposable. Like I was a loose thread waiting to be cut. Now, he was the one hurting me the most. I stumbled toward the side entrance of the den, the one the Omega servants used. The edges of my vision darkened, collapsing inward like a dying star. But before I hit the ground, I fell into someone's arms. A stranger's arms. Firm and unfamiliar, carrying cedar and cold iron and the static hush before a thunderstorm. Something darker beneath it. Something dangerous. Before the blackness swallowed me whole, I heard a single whisper against the shell of my ear, a voice like smoke and shadow. "Do you want revenge?" The words curled around me like a devil's bargain, offered at the crossroads of desperation and death. "In exchange for that bloodline claim you just signed away… I'll help you find the proof of who really killed your mother."

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 hush before a thunderstorm, the only solid thing in a world that had gone to ruin. "Re… venge…" The word escaped my lips like a dying Moon Goddess invocation, barely formed, yet heavy with the weight of a blood oath. Somewhere deep inside me, my wolf stirred against the dark and answered with a low, broken sound. When I opened my eyes again, all I saw was white, too bright, too sterile. The bitter sting of healing herbs and silver-scrubbed stone flooded my senses, the air of the Healing Hall a stark contrast to the darkness that had swallowed me whole. 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 Lucan waited on the screen, sent the night before. [I've got Pack business to handle tomorrow. Go try on the ceremonial robe by yourself. Our bonding is approaching, so pull yourself together. Stop with the dramatics and bind yourself into the Bloodfang Pack 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 Mirella's spirit-network account. Lucan had taken her on the Pack's storm-hawk to chase the northern lights in some frozen corner of the wildlands, far from prying eyes. In the ethereal green haze of the aurora, 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 man like that?] Below it, a cutesy account bearing cartoon couple 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 Lucan. I could tell from the typing style alone. I remembered the day I asked him to use matching couple avatars with me. He had rolled his eyes, his handsome face twisting with contempt. "What are you, a fresh-shifted pup? Can't you see I'm handling Pack affairs? Now leave!" And yet I had once dreamed of running beneath the stars with him along the high ridges, a stolen moonlit moment away from the shadows that governed our lives. I had planned every step of it. 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 Healing Hall linen, 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 costly. Inside it was a storm-hawk passage. Departure in two days. And a small note, written in an elegant hand: [You're welcome. Hope you like the gift. For your mating —D.] So I was right. The man who had carried me through the darkness and delivered me to safety was none other than Dorian Ashmoor, the ghost who had returned from the dead to become Lucan's worst enemy. The sole survivor of a slaughtered bloodline, come back to collect. I sent him a quiet thank-you, my fingers hovering over the keys longer than necessary, and signed myself out of the Healing Hall not long after. Then the mating coordinator called. The ceremonial robe my mother had ordered for me, commissioned from the finest Omega seamstress on the edge of the territory, 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 Bloodfang Pack let her die. I had to claim it. But when I stepped into the seamstress's den, the soft chime above the door ringing out, I froze. There stood Mirella, twirling in my robe. The air went thick with overripe jasmine and that sweet rot beneath it, honey poured over something dead. "Selene… you came." She spun before the gilded mirror with a saccharine smile, her voice dripping with venom disguised as honey. "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 marks scattered across her chest like a constellation of sin, the bruised imprint of teeth at her throat where no true bond should sit. Her tone turned mockingly bashful. "Oh no, it's Lucan'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. My wolf had gone utterly still beneath my skin, the way prey goes still. "You really did inherit your mother's talent for stealing other females' 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 Lucan's pup. His heir." "And your blood oath?" She laughed, the sound like shattering crystal. "It's fake." She flashed a recording on her crystal orb. The dim back room of some pack hall. Mirella draped across Lucan'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 Bloodfang territory. Everything. Every hunting ground, every claim." Mirella asked in a coy voice: "But… what about my sister?" Lucan chuckled, the sound dark and dismissive. "I never truly bound myself to her. There's no mark on her neck and there never will be. I've been slipping wolfsbane suppressant into her milk for moons. She can't conceive, can't even take a heat. When the time comes, I'll just claim we took in a stray 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. Inside me my wolf let out a single thin whine and folded down into silence, as if it too had finally understood there had never been a bond to grieve. 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 Bloodfang Pack is just around the corner." "But that robe 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 guards, a brute Lucan himself had set at her side, 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 organs had been rearranged by the brutal impact. Mirella 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. "Lucan 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, and beneath the shears I caught the fading ghost of her scent woven into the cloth, silver cherry-blossom and warm hearthsmoke and clean linen left in the sun, thinning into nothing with every stroke. 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. Mirella strutted out of the den, her heels clicking against the stone like a victory march, leaving nothing but wreckage in her wake. I dragged myself back to the cliffside den… 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 Lucan had ever given me, the jewels that now felt like silver shackles, the fine pelts and bags that were nothing but gilded cages, the soft stuffed creatures from those early days when I still believed his lies. One by one, I threw them all in the refuse. Behind me, I heard footsteps approaching. Familiar ones.

Lucan paused at the door, one hand resting against the carved oak frame, claws catching faintly in the grain. "What did you throw away?" I didn't even look at him. "Just some garbage I should've gotten rid of long ago." He didn't seem to care. As if suddenly remembering something, he added casually, "I heard Mirella accidentally damaged the ceremonial robe. But don't worry. I've had the den-weavers rush a new one. It'll be ready in time for the bonding." He slung his jacket over one shoulder, the silk lining catching the dim light. The faint sour note of ash gone cold drifted off him, scorched oak and copper, and not once did it carry anything of mine. "Remember, tomorrow night's the gathering at the ancestral den. Don't be late. I've got pack business, so I'm not running home tonight." He took his keys and left. Not once did he glance at the overflowing bin behind me, the one filled with everything he'd ever given me. The next night, eight bells past dusk. I arrived at the Bloodfang Pack's grand hall alone. The moment I stepped into the moonlit garden, I saw them. Lucan and Mirella. Dressed in matching ceremonial finery, bathed in the warm lantern-light like a pair holding court before the Council. The cream of the great packs milled around them, goblets of moonwine glinting like scattered ice in the evening air. Vesper Bloodfang's face twisted the moment she scented me. Her smile dropped like a cracked mask. Cold bergamot and polished iron rolled off her, frostbitten lily sharpening as her gaze ran over me with undisguised disdain, cataloguing every flaw, every perceived slight against her precious bloodline. She wore a collar of pale stones Mirella had gifted her, a gaudy thing that screamed of new blood trying to buy the honor of old. "You're an hour late. No surprise. No manners at all, just like your mother the thief." But Lucan told me the gathering started at eight. I clenched my fists, my nails biting into my palms, my own wolf going taut and silent beneath my skin. A long time ago, I'd mentioned in passing that Mirella's mother had been a kept she-wolf, one who'd bared her throat for a mated male. The next day, Vesper Bloodfang's missing jewels had "miraculously" surfaced beneath my mother's pillow. Lucan knew my mother had been framed. He never defended me. Not once. But now, I didn't grovel. I didn't lower my gaze or drop my shoulders the way a good little Omega servant's daughter should. I looked straight into Vesper Bloodfang's cold eyes, then right at Mirella's smug little face. "I'm not here to be insulted," I said, my voice cutting through the garden's polite murmur like a blade through silk. Then I looked Mirella dead in the eye. "My mother was not a thief. She didn't raise me to seduce males like some she-wolves raise their daughters." The words had barely left my mouth when a vicious slap exploded across my cheek. My ears rang. My body hit the ground hard, the trimmed grass cold and damp beneath my palms. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. Lucan stood over me, expression cold and condescending, the face of a male raised to believe his word was law, his judgment absolute. For one breath his eyes flashed amber, and the weight of his Alpha aura pressed down over the garden like a sudden drop in temperature. "You spread rumors about her! Don't you know it makes her suffer? How long are you gonna keep this going? Do you want her to kill herself?" I pushed myself up, my face burning with rage. "She suffered? She?!" I barked out a laugh, bitter and broken, the sound of something inside me finally snapping. "She suffered from her own stupid choices! And you, you know exactly what she did. My mother is dead! I lost everything and you're just going to stand there and let her play the victim?!" The whispers started, quiet at first, like a ripple across still water, then louder as the gathered wolves leaned in, ears pricking toward the scent of fresh scandal. In this world, gossip was currency, and I'd just handed them a fortune. Lucan's jaw clenched tight, a muscle ticking beneath his skin, a low growl threading under the words. "Leave," he growled, his voice barely above a whisper but carrying the weight of a threat. "Go calm yourself down. You've embarrassed yourself enough in front of the guests." The garden buzzed with the chatter of the great packs, every connected wolf of the bloodlines watching the spectacle with barely concealed delight. Mordecai and Vesper Bloodfang quickly stepped in with goblets of moonwine, smiling stiffly, smoothing over the disruption like masters covering a crack in the den wall. "Let's not ruin the evening. Come, everyone, drink up!" Wolves swarmed Lucan and Mirella with congratulations. "To the bonded pair!" "Blessings on the future Alpha and his Luna, such a perfect match!" Lucan had always said he wanted our betrothal to be a "surprise." He never told a single soul about us. And now? He smiled like a gentleman, standing beside Mirella as if she'd always been the intended mate, as if the blood debt his pack owed my mother before the Moon Goddess had never existed. He didn't even try to explain. She clung to his arm like she belonged there, her fingers curled possessively around his sleeve, her overripe jasmine and that sweet rot beneath it twining through his scorched-oak scent until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Under the glittering lanterns, they looked like a picture-perfect pair, the Alpha-heir and his beautiful Luna-to-be, a bond that would strengthen the Bloodfang name for generations. While I stood there like a wet stain on a white pelt. I let out a breathless, bitter laugh and turned to go, but a hand blocked my way. Mirella. She smiled like she'd already won, like she'd been winning since the day she first bared her throat for my intended. "Leaving so soon?" she cooed, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "But I haven't told you how that old woman died." My heart stopped. The garden noise faded to a dull roar, replaced by the thundering of my own pulse. Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, my wolf went utterly still, the way prey goes still before a snare closes. "What did you just say?" She leaned in close, her perfume cloying and thick, sweet rot crawling up the back of my throat, her voice low enough that only I could hear, a whisper meant for the damned. "I told her if she wanted the money back, she'd have to film herself doing something… special. You know, the kind males pay for." She grinned, her teeth white and sharp in the lantern-light. "But she got all high and mighty. She refused and even had the nerve to insult me and my mom." A twisted laugh escaped her painted lips. "So I gave her what she deserved." She sighed dramatically, as if recounting a minor inconvenience rather than a murder. "Did you know? She barely made it through fifty males before she collapsed. Still had the nerve to clutch my leg and beg, beg me to return the money to her 'sweet daughter.'" She made a clicking sound with her tongue, savoring the memory like fine moonwine. "Pathetic, really."

Her words struck like a blade between the ribs. For a moment, rage consumed me, a wildfire that burned through every nerve, every thought, every shred of restraint I'd ever possessed. No sound escaped my throat. Only fury, raw and blinding, coiling in my chest like a serpent preparing to strike. Deep beneath my skin, my wolf surged upward with a snarl I had never heard her make, hackles rising, teeth bared at a world that had taken everything. Then I snapped. I lunged at Mirella. Fists clenched. Nails sinking into flesh like talons, the half-shifted claws pricking at my fingertips. I seized her hair, wrenched her down, clawed at her face, her throat, anywhere I could reach. The silk of her ceremonial robe tore beneath my fingers like the lies she'd woven around my life. That sweet rot beneath her jasmine scent filled my nose, honey poured thick over decay, and my wolf gagged on it. "You monster! Give me my mother back, you stronza!" But before I could draw blood, before I could carve the truth into her treacherous skin, agony exploded through my spine. Then my ribs. The Alpha's guards were on me in an instant, their boots connecting with bone, their fists driving me to the cold marble of the Council Hall until I curled into myself like a broken marionette. Gasps rippled through the gathering like wind through dead leaves. Lucan shoved past the crowd, his face carved from granite. He didn't spare me a glance. He went straight to Mirella, sobbing, trembling, performing the role of wounded dove with practiced perfection, and gathered her into his arms as though she were spun from the thinnest moonglass. When his eyes finally cut toward me, they held the warmth of a midwinter grave. "You've gone too far." His voice was quiet. Lethal. "Kneel. Apologize to her. Now." His Alpha aura rolled outward as he spoke, thickening the air, pressing down on every wolf in the hall until lower ranks dropped their gaze and shrank back. I stared at him through blood-matted hair, disbelief clawing at my throat. He wasn't finished. "Your mother was weak. She got cast aside and died chasing scraps. Now you're blaming Mirella for your own blood's failures? Everyone here witnessed what you did." His lip curled with disgust, a low growl threading beneath the words. "Are you proud of yourself, Selene? Is this the respect you bring to our bond?" The hall hummed with whispers, growing louder and uglier with each passing heartbeat, vultures circling carrion. "I heard her mother once lifted jewels from the Luna's own collection," one she-wolf murmured, her voice deliberately carrying across the marble. "Word is she died during some botched theft, turned up with her flesh sold off to a slaver-pack like livestock. Honestly? Sounds like she had it coming. Disloyal blood runs true." "And the daughter's cut from the same cloth," another voice added with venomous satisfaction. "Ungrateful little puttana. An Omega raised to sink her claws into a wolf above her rank. Just like her whore of a mother." I remained on my knees, the cold seeping through silk into bone. I wanted to scream, to tell them they were wrong. That my mother wasn't a thief. That Liana Thornwood had served the Bloodfang Pack for twenty moons of years with more loyalty than any of them would ever understand. That I wasn't some scheming Omega trying to climb above my station. But my throat was dust. My voice, stolen. Somewhere deep inside me, my wolf howled and howled, and not a sound of it reached the air. Lucan's patience frayed like old rope. "Apologize, Selene. I'll count to three." His words fell like hammer blows. "One... two..." Disappointment seared through every fiber of my being, a betrayal more complete than any blade could deliver. I gave in. My knees cracked against the unforgiving marble. I lifted my chin, then drove my forehead down in a bow so violent I tasted copper flooding my mouth. "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Blood mingled with tears, blurring the world into watercolors of crimson and gold. I raised my head with a smile that felt like broken glass cutting my own face. "Is that enough, Lucan? Did your precious comare receive sufficient tribute?" He froze. Something flickered behind his eyes, a crack in the ice, a ghost of the pup who'd once held my hand in his mother's moonlit garden. His pupils contracted as though he finally saw me. Saw the ruin he'd made of us both. He took half a step forward. But Mirella's fingers dug into his arm, her voice quivering with manufactured terror. "Lucan, I'm frightened... look at her eyes. She's lost her mind..." He hesitated. The crack sealed over, smooth as fresh ice on a winter pond. He stepped back. Drew her closer against his chest. His gaze slid away from mine like oil on water. When he spoke again, his voice was hollow. Mechanical. The voice of a wolf already washing his hands. "Go home. Try not to bring any more disgrace to this Pack." I rose. Somehow. My legs trembled like a newborn foal's, but I refused to fall. Not here. Not before these jackals in their fine robes and hand-stitched finery. I turned to face him one final time. The wolf I'd loved for a decade. The Alpha-heir I'd been promised to since I was a pup. The future Alpha who couldn't recognize loyalty when it knelt bleeding at his feet. Then I walked away. The crowd parted before me, not from respect, but from revulsion. As though my grief were contagious. As though my mother's murder might somehow stain their precious pack rank. Let them look. Let them remember this moment when the reckoning came. The night bit with savage cold when I reached the funeral pyre on the edge of the territory. I stood in silence as my mother, Liana Thornwood, faithful Omega servant, devoted parent, the wolf who'd once saved a Bloodfang pup-heir from a rival pack's raid and received nothing but contempt in return, turned to ash. The flames consumed her. Orange and gold and terrible. When her remains scattered into the dark waters of the cove, so did the last tether binding my heart to this world. Gone. Just like that. And inside me my wolf, who had howled until she had no voice left, simply lay down in the dark and went still. At midnight, I slipped the betrothal ring from my finger, the moonstone token of a blood oath that had never been honored. I set it gently inside the nightstand drawer of the den I'd shared with Lucan's ghost for three hollow years. No need to stand before the Moon Goddess and sever it properly. His devotion had never been real to begin with. How convenient. I wheeled my single suitcase to the front door of the Bloodfang den, my footsteps echoing through halls that had never truly been my home. Even now his scent clung to the walls, scorched oak and copper and that sour note of ash gone cold, and for the first time it turned my stomach. My communicator buzzed. Lucan: [Did you get your wounds treated? Mirella says she forgives you. Let's put this behind us and focus on tomorrow.] Lucan: [I picked up a new robe for the ceremony. Hand-beaded moonsilk lace. Gorgeous. I'll have it sent over.] No reply. A moment passed. The communicator buzzed again, more insistent. Lucan: [Asleep already? Why aren't you answering? It's our Mating Ceremony tomorrow, the bond between our packs becomes official before the Council. Be good, Selene. Don't embarrass me again.] I blocked him. Every channel. Every link tied to his name. I pried the crystal core from the communicator, snapped it cleanly in half between my fingers, and dropped the pieces down a storm drain as I walked toward the waiting carriage. Just like him. Discarded. Forgotten. A black obsidian carriage idled by the iron gates, its engine purring like a patient predator. I slid into the leather interior. "To the private airfield." The territory lights raced past my window, smearing into ghosts against the rain-streaked glass. Ten years of memories, of stolen kisses in moonlit gardens, of whispered promises, of love that had rotted from the inside like a poisoned apple, dissolved into shadow. I watched the Bloodfang den disappear behind me. "We will never meet again, Lucan." My voice was steady now. Cold as the cove waters that held my mother's ashes. "And by sunrise, your wedding gift will arrive. Right on time." The carriage merged onto the highway, carrying me toward a new life. Behind me, a bloodline prepared to burn.