Chapter Three: The Mark of the Deceiver

Burning flesh smelled like meat left too long in the summer heat. I knew I would remember that smell for the rest of my life.

The Pack Ascendancy wasn't cancelled. Tristan made sure of that. He didn't want to humiliate me in private. He wanted the whole pack to watch.

The great hall of the Ashenmoor Pack was packed to the walls, hundreds of Alphas, Lunas, and allied council members in their finest silks, all staring down at me as guards dragged me across the cold marble floor in nothing but a blood stained slip.

The silver chains clanked against the stone with every step, pulling me toward the dais where Tristan stood in his ceremonial black and gold furs. He looked every inch the Alpha King. His eyes, though, were dead. Frozen over. There was nothing left in them I recognized.

Beside him, an iron brazier glowed white hot, coals hissing as a guard pulled a heavy rod from the flames. The tip glowed an angry orange, and at the end of it sat the rune for Traitor, already shaped, already waiting for skin.

"People of the Allied Council." Tristan's voice rolled through the vaulted ceiling, carrying enough Alpha power that half the room lowered their heads without meaning to. "Today was supposed to be the day I crowned my fated Luna. Instead, I stand before you to expose a parasite."

A gasp moved through the crowd as Tristan grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my head back so the whole hall could see my face.

"Seraphina Sterling." He said my name the way a man spits out something rotten. "You stole the identity of your dead sister. You defiled the sacred bond of a fated match. You crawled into my bed like a thief in the night and let me call you my wife."

"Tristan, please." I searched the crowd for anyone, anyone at all. I found my father in the front row instead, his face calm, almost pleased. He had traded my life for his name and he wasn't even going to pretend otherwise. No one in that room was going to help me. I had known that before I opened my mouth.

"For your crimes against the crown and the sacred laws of the Moon Goddess." Tristan took the glowing iron from the guard's hand himself, and something about the fact that he wanted to do it personally made my stomach drop further than the threat itself. "I reject you. I strip you of your family name. And I strip you of your beast."

My whole body went cold.

"No. Tristan, no, not my wolf. Please, don't take her."

I'm here.

Her voice brushed gently against my mind, steady despite the fear trembling through our bond.

"Kaia..." I sobbed.

Always.

Tristan pressed his palm flat against my chest, and a wave of dark, crushing Alpha magic tore through my skin and into the marrow of my bones, searching for the very core of my soul.

Kaia threw herself against it with a furious snarl.

Fight!

I fought with everything I had. I reached for her, clinging to our bond as Tristan's power forced its way between us. It felt like trying to hold shut a door against a flood.

Pain ripped through my chest as Kaia screamed somewhere behind my ribs. Tristan's magic closed around her like a fist, dragging her away no matter how tightly I held on.

No!

Her cry tore through me.

I reached for her again, trying to catch even the smallest thread between us.

Seraphina—

The bond snapped clean, and the warmth that had lived beneath my skin since birth vanished as though someone had pinched out a candle.

I wasn't human anymore. I was something worse than human. A shifter with nothing left to shift into. I felt hollow, defenseless, like a husk wearing my own face.

Then the glowing iron came down, slamming into the center of my forehead.

Thought vanished beneath a blinding explosion of pain. My lungs seized as the white-hot metal seemed to burn straight through my skull. My skin hissed against the iron before the smell of burning flesh hit me, and the sound that ripped out of my throat didn't even sound like mine. My vision turned white, swallowing the hall until I couldn't tell how much time had passed.

When he pulled the iron back, I dropped to the marble, coughing, the smell of my own scorched skin thick in my throat. Blood and blistered fluid ran down the bridge of my nose and pooled beneath my cheek on the stone.

"Cast her out." Tristan threw the iron down; it hit the floor with a clatter that echoed through the whole silent hall. "Throw her into the borderlands. If the rogues don't finish her by nightfall, the frost will. She's dead to this pack. Dead to this family. Dead to me."

Two guards hauled me up by the arms and dragged my limp body out of the hall while five hundred people watched and not one of them said a word. As the oak doors began to swing shut behind me, sealing off every warm, lit, civilized thing I had ever known, I caught one last look at Tristan. He was already wiping my blood from his hands with a white cloth.

He didn't look back at what he'd thrown away.

You should have killed me, Tristan, I thought, the mud of the borderlands closing over me as the guards let go and my body hit the ground.

Because I'm going to survive this.

And when I do, I'll make you regret the day you let me live.