Chapter 10: The Night the Wolves Came

POV: Nyx

I was four years old when I learned that silence could scream.

It started with a crash downstairs. Then my mother’s voice became sharp, terrified in a way I had never heard before. My father’s low urgent reply. And then a sound that wasn’t human at all. A growl that vibrated through the floorboards and into my bones.

My mother burst into my room with wide eyes.

She didn’t waste time. She yanked me from the bed and dragged me toward the hidden panel behind the wardrobe I never knew existed.

"Mama"

"Quiet." Her hands were shaking as she pushed me into the dark space. She pressed her forehead to mine, just for a second. "Stay silent no matter what you hear and do not come out. I will always love you"

The panel slid shut and I stayed quiet.

I stayed quiet while the fighting started. While my mother screamed and my father roared. While wet, violent sounds filled the house and then… nothing.

Just silence.

The kind of silence that feels heavier than noise.

I don’t know how long I stayed curled in that darkness but it was long enough for my legs to go numb and for the warmth in my chest to turn cold.

When the panel finally opened, it wasn’t my mother’s face I saw.

It was Isolde Calloway’s.

Behind her stood Edric, staring down at me like I was a rare artifact he’d just dug out of the dirt. His eyes moved over me slowly, calculating.

Not with love but with satisfaction.

I didn’t cry or scream. I just looked back at him, four years old and already learning how to file things away.

He didn’t see a little girl that night.

He saw an asset.

The memory spat me back into the present like it always did, violently.

I was sitting at the writing desk in my room at the Crane estate, the white feather still clutched in my fist. The candle had burned low. My heart was hammering like I’d just run for my life.

I dropped the feather onto the table and stared at it.

I had always been someone’s tool. The Calloways took me because my blood was useful. They sold me to Lucian Crane because I was useful.

And now here I was again, useful.

But for what?

Lucian said he wanted to destroy me. That part I understood. His hatred was honest and clean.

But the rival pack representative’s words from the gathering kept echoing in my head:

*There are people who would pay well to know why the Alpha king married … If you want out of this marriage, you know where to find us.*

There was an official story.

And there was the real one.

I had spent my whole life being the last person to understand the game being played around me.

But not anymore.

I stood up slowly, the feather still staring up at me from the desk like a challenge.

I was done being moved across someone else’s board.

If there were secrets in this estate, about me, about why Lucian truly married me, then I was going to find them.

Mara stirred warmly in my chest, almost like she was agreeing.

For the first time since I arrived here, I wasn’t just trying to survive.

I was preparing to hunt.