Mag-log inAurelia's point of view
The door clicked shut behind me.
I backed away from Grayson, my breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat.
“I told you no,” I hissed, voice shaking.
He stalked forward, the gleam in his eyes no longer playful. The predator had dropped the mask. His footsteps echoed against the cold stone floor as he moved toward me again.
“You think I care what you told me?” he murmured, gripping my wrist. “You’ve been teasing me for two years, little wolf. You owe me.”
“I owe you nothing,” I spat.
But he didn’t stop.
His hands moved to the collar of my blouse, and I jerked away, but he shoved me roughly against the desk. My elbow hit the edge and pain lanced through my arm.
“No one says no to me,” he growled in my ear.
I struggled beneath him, panic flooding my chest. “Let me go! Someone will hear!”
He chuckled. “That’s the idea.”
The door burst open.
The sharp clack of heels was followed by a gasp sharp enough to slice through the tension.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Grayson froze.
A woman stood in the doorway, clad in a sleek black dress that shimmered with embedded jewels. Her eyes blazed with fury. Sheila.
His wife.
“I asked a question!” she roared.
Grayson stepped back, hands up, but his eyes were already darting to me, calculating. I scrambled away from the desk, trying to adjust my blouse.
“Sheila, it’s not what it looks like.”
But she was already storming inside.
“It looked like you were about to mount a maid on your office desk,” she snapped.
“She came onto me!” he shouted. “You know how she is, always lurking. Always bending over when I pass.”
I gasped. “That’s a lie!”
“She seduced me,” he said, pointing at me like I was some diseased thing. “She’s been doing it for months.”
“Liar!”
“Enough!” Sheila barked. Her heels slammed against the floor as she marched to me. “How dare you try to climb into my husband’s bed!”
“I didn’t—!”
She slapped me.
The pain exploded across my cheek, heat blooming under my skin.
“You filthy little snake. You think you’re special? Just because you have a pretty face and bastard children?” Sheila’s voice turned cold. “Guards!”
Two warriors stormed in.
“Take her to the dungeons. Put her in solitary. She’ll answer for this in front of the whole pack.”
“No! Please! My children—”
“If you care for them,” Sheila hissed, “you’ll shut your mouth.”
They dragged me away by my arms as Grayson straightened his jacket, wiping away imaginary dirt. I didn’t miss the way he refused to meet my eyes.
Coward.
They threw me into a cell with stone walls and no light. I sat curled in a corner, my knees pulled to my chest, shivering with anger and fear. I didn’t know where they’d taken Kael and Sera.
I cried until my voice was gone.
The crowd was already gathered when they dragged me into the courtyard.
I blinked against the sunlight. My children stood at the front, their arms held tightly by guards. Kael’s eyes were red from crying. Sera clung to her brother, confused, terrified.
Lilian tried to push her way forward, screaming, “She’s innocent! You know it! Don’t do this!”
Two guards grabbed her arms and restrained her.
Sheila stood on a raised platform, hands clasped in front of her, regal and venomous.
Grayson sat beside her in silence.
Sheila’s voice rang out.
“This trial has been called for Aurelia, a kitchen maid and outsider, who attempted to seduce and shame the Alpha of the Crimson Howl Pack.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
I stepped forward. “I am not guilty.”
“You’ll speak when addressed!” Sheila barked.
A procession of servants stepped forward, each taking turns to lie.
“She always slacks off,” said one.
“She steals bread at night,” claimed another.
“She flirts with guards when no one is looking,” whispered a third with a smirk.
None of it was true.
“She’s a good worker!” Lilian screamed, struggling against the guards. “You’re all lying! You’re just afraid of her!”
Sheila’s eyes narrowed. “Restrain her further. She’s a friend of the seductress. Let her share the consequences.”
My knees buckled.
I turned to the crowd. “You know me! I work harder than any of you! I never—”
“You bore children with no name,” someone shouted.
“She’s cursed!”
“Let the Alpha’s wife pass judgment!”
Sheila raised a hand and silence fell.
“Aurelia, your presence in this pack was tolerated out of mercy. That mercy ends today. You are stripped of your name, your position, and all dignity.”
I stared in disbelief.
“You will now serve the pack not as a wolf, not as a woman, but as a slave. From this day forth, you are Slave 579.”
“No,” I whispered.
“Bring the branding rod.”
“No!”
Two warriors grabbed my arms and held me down.
My children screamed. Kael lunged forward before he was dragged back.
“Don’t hurt my mama!”
A red-hot iron rod, glowing with the number 579, was brought from the flames.
I thrashed. “Please! Don’t do this!”
Sheila’s eyes glittered with satisfaction.
The iron touched my forearm.
The pain was unimaginable.
I screamed so loud, the world tilted. My flesh sizzled. I smelled burning skin.
Kael screamed for me. Sera wailed like her soul was breaking.
And I—
I bit my lip until it bled.
When it was over, the guards let me drop to the ground like discarded meat.
Sheila stepped closer and crouched beside me. “Now you’re just what you were always meant to be. Nothing.”
She walked away.
And I lay there, half-conscious, as the number 579 burned into my skin, branding me forever as a slave.
Aurelia's point of viewYears pass differently when the war ends. In the days before Draco, time was an enemy that stalked my heart. Every sunrise felt like a reminder that something terrible waited in the dark. Every night was a dream of losing what little I had found. After the coronation, after the ash settled and the dead were buried with more honor than any king had ever given them, time became gentle. It stopped clawing at me and began to wrap around my days softly, like the warm tail of a sleeping wolf around her cubs.The palace we built was nothing like Damien’s. No marble floors that echoed like accusations, no gilded balconies that separated kings from the people who bled beneath them. Silas insisted every hall be wide and framed with forest wood, so pups could run and chase each other without fear of guards shouting at them. I insisted the witches have their own sanctum in the west wing, not beneath it, not outside the walls. Those who survived Draco’s coven became teacher
Aurelia's point of viewThe birthing pains were not like blood and battle. They were not sharp or sudden or violent. They were slow and relentless, like a tide that refused to turn back, like the earth itself clawing its way through me. Silas held my hand through every wave and never once looked away. His palm was steady, his forehead damp, his eyes full of fear that was so much deeper than what he ever showed on the field. I cried and laughed and threatened to bite the midwives if they dared tell me to breathe again. It took hours, perhaps a lifetime, but at the end of it all there was a sound that did not belong to the war or to the curse. It was new. The cry of a newborn. The tiny lungs of a life untouched by Draco, untouched by Bianca, untouched by the stain of blood that had tainted my line for so long. It was the sound of a miracle.She was small. Smaller than Sara had been. Smaller than Kael. Her hair was dark like mine, but her aura was gentle, like warm sunlight on snow. When
Aurelia's point of viewThe world felt like it had been hollowed out. Noise returned slowly, like a tide coming back to shore after being pulled to the moon. I could hear the clashing of metal, the cries of dying witches, the sound of wolves panting for air. Yet my body was weightless, as if someone had uprooted me from my own bones. I stared at the place where Draco once stood, the fog thinning into nothing, leaving behind a crater of scorched earth. The sealing runes still flickered beneath my skin in faint silver lines. They pulsed like a heartbeat. His heartbeat. His curse. Bianca’s legacy. I did not know which one terrified me more.Silas was the first face I recognized. His arms caught me before my knees hit the ground. He was trembling. He whispered my name as though it was the only word he knew. His forehead pressed against mine and I felt the heat of his breath, the smell of blood and dirt and smoke. I wanted to tell him I was fine. I wanted to lie the way warriors lie to the
Aurelia's point of viewThe clash of our bodies was no longer a battle. It was prophecy. It was the end of every nightmare he had ever planted in the minds of wolves and witches. Draco struck with shadows that slithered across the ground, coiling like snakes around my ankles. His voice slid into my ear like poison syrup.“You bleed faster now. Pregnancy weakens you. Tell me, Luna, do your pups feel the fear in your womb?”I didn’t answer. I ripped the serpents apart with raw magic, scattering them into vapor. Each one dissolved into a foul cloud of sulfur and burnt roses, Bianca’s favorite scent. Draco inhaled it like incense.“You smell like her,” he murmured, and the fog around us revealed glimpses of the battlefield. Wolves limped with broken limbs. Witches lay pale and unmoving. Bodies cooled in the dirt. He savored the carnage. “This is what immortality looks like. Loss without consequence.”“Then die,” I whispered.He laughed, and his claws lengthened.“You cannot kill what is a
Aurelia's point of viewDraco’s roar shivered through the mist, and mine answered it. The moment our blades collided, the world around us trembled like something ancient waking under the soil. Metal shrieked. Air cracked. Time itself writhed.Draco lashed his hand in a crescent, and the dirt tore from beneath our feet, rising like walls of black marble. I dodged left, slamming my claws into the stone, anchoring myself before his second strike carved through the air.“You were not meant to fight me,” he snarled. “You were meant to stand beside me.”His voice echoed in seven different tones were old, young, monstrous, pleading the kind of mind poison he had whispered to thousands. It was meant to work on me as well.I attacked instead. My claws flashed across his sternum, slicing open the flesh he’d just healed. His blood hissed like acid when it hit the ground. He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me until my feet dangled.“You are the future,” he growled. “The first full creature bo
The mist peeled away like torn skin, revealing an expanse of scorched earth beneath our feet. No army. No allies. No moonlight. Only the flicker of dying embers, ribs of blackened stone, and the man who had hunted every piece of my soul since before I could speak his name.Draco.He didn’t rush me like a wolf would. No brute force, no reckless lunges. He moved like a man who had already won, hands loose at his sides, shoulders relaxed, eyes cold. In the silence, I heard the beat of my own pulse echo through the fog.“Breathe, Aurelia,” he said almost gently. “You cannot win if your fear leads your blade.”“It’s not fear,” I murmured, sliding my wrist, letting my claws grow. “It’s anticipation.”He smirked. “Ah, then perhaps there is hope.”He shot forward not to attack, but to test. His first strike was a sweep of corrupted air, a blast of ash-black energy that coiled around my ankles. I jumped before it solidified, twisting in the air, and landed low. He expected me to dodge. He didn







