LOGINMy Alpha mother had a mark burned into my heart, a Submission Mark, all to guarantee I'd claim first place at the Ascension Trials. The mark was simple in its cruelty: whenever my heartbeat dipped below the intensity of combat training, it would scorch the flesh around my heart. No drifting off. No rest. Not even an extra breath during sparring. When I passed out from exhaustion, she'd pull out an iron whip soaked in silver solution and lash it across my hands. She called it "awakening the wolf's instincts." "You're a she-wolf. If you fail, you become the lowest thing in this pack and every male wolf will have the right to walk all over you." "Every drop of blood you shed is a stepping stone to the top." "Iron doesn't become a blade without fire. I've already begged the Moon Goddess for her blessing. Why can't you just push harder?" Today was the first round of the Ascension Trials on the pack's sacred calendar. I was the first contestant to break out of the underground arena, and instantly the pack's Record Keepers swarmed around me. My mother stood just outside the arena. Flush with pride, she triggered the Submission Mark and pushed my combat reflexes to the absolute limit of my wolf form. "Look at my daughter move, like she has Moon Goddess guidance. All thanks to my one-of-a-kind Branding Enhancement technique." But Mom... two days before the Trials started... Your mark, running at full power, burned my heart to nothing and stopped it cold. What more could you possibly want?
View MoreTime moved as it always does, quietly, without asking permission.A few years later, it was early summer again.The pack's sacred calendar turned to another round of the annual Ascension Trials. The entire settlement cleared the way for those competing.Outside the arena, the crowd was just as dense as ever. Wolves from every family watched anxiously, hoping to see their children shine.But somewhere along the outer edge of the crowd, there was no longer a woman in a deep crimson robe, no one with a strange set of rune tokens in her fist and that particular fire burning in her eyes.Beneath an old cypress tree outside the containment ward, Coach Kane stood alone in the dappled shade.His hair had gone completely white. His shoulders had curved with the years. His face carried every season that had passed.He held a bundle of pure white moonflowers, damp with morning dew, and looked toward the arena's closed gates with quiet, grieving eyes.The early summer wind moved through the cypres
The interrogation room went quiet as a grave.My mother stared at the suicide scroll and the death record on the table. The muscles of her face had begun to move without her permission.The evidence was absolute. The live broadcast footage from the pack's communication channels had already ignited a firestorm, and the pack's anger was a physical thing, nearly enough to crash every broadcasting node the enforcement hall ran.Then hurried footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.Coach Kane, as the key witness, was brought into the observation room next door.Through the thick one-way mirror, he laid out everything, a devastated, relentless account of every cruelty she had put me through over the years."She destroyed Jasmine with her own hands. She has no right to call herself a mother. She is nothing but a fanatic.""She stripped that child of every right to develop her perception gifts. She used two lives as steps to stand on."Every word went through the amplification spell, every s
Coach Kane's words hit the crowd like a thunderclap, and the noise died.I floated in the air above, my soul-shape already growing transparent at the edges.After the satisfaction of seeing this come to its end, those words caught me off guard too. What rose up in me wasn't triumph anymore, just an exhaustion that went to the bone and the hollow emptiness of someone about to dissolve.Then a strange pulse reached me from my side.A young male ghost, clean-featured, dressed in an old-style training uniform, was standing quietly next to me. I hadn't heard him arrive.He looked almost exactly like me.A small crescent moon birthmark sat at the corner of one eye, the blood-lineage mark of the Hale bloodline.He gently reached out and touched my shoulder with the tips of his fingers.Because of the shared bloodline, the moment we made contact, a wave of memory crashed into me, enormous and terrible.The truth was this: he was the real Kai Hale.My brother. And my actual name was Lily Hale.
Nobody moved.Every crystal orb was pointed directly at the wreckage on the ground.The decay hit the air all at once, thick in the stifling heat.Record Keepers clutched their stomachs, retching, dropping their equipment and staggering backward.My mother's feverish smile locked in place and stopped moving.She stared at the ruined body, then at the gray powder on the stone where the mark had been, her pupils jerking and shaking."No. That's not possible."The thought hit her and she moved, lurching forward, dropping beside it, hands clawing frantically at the ash as if putting it back together could somehow undo what had happened."Jasmine, get up. Everyone's watching. Are you trying to humiliate me?"She looked like a gambler who had just lost every chip. She threw herself against the ground and grabbed at the shell's arm to drag it upright.The moment she pulled, there was a sound like wet cloth tearing.The entire right arm came away from the body in her hands, trailing blackened,












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