CHAPTER FOUR: Where Betrayal Burns.

Celeste woke to the smell of smoke.

The smoke was not the soft one that circulated the cottage hearth. This was thick, black, and acrid, like metal burning. Celeste shot up, her instincts kicking in before her brain did. 

She crossed to the window.

The sky was red.

It wasn't dawn. This was a fierce red glow from the pack's gate, like something was burning and the sound she had mistaken in her sleep for wind was not wind at all.

"Celeste."

Her mother was already in the doorway, fully dressed, a bag strapped across her chest. Her mom stood in the doorway, bag ready, face tight. Her eyes darted around, checking everything, including Celeste.

"We have to go," Maera said. "Right now. Don't take anything."

"What's happening!"

"Ravencrest. They're at the gate. They're already through the gate." Her mother crossed the room in three steps and grabbed her hand. "We have to go now Celeste."

The village was chaos.

Maera yanked her hand, pulling Celeste through the chaos,  weaving between wolves running in every direction. Some were heading toward the fire. Most were running from it. Children were crying. Someone was giving orders in a voice stretched thin with panic.

Celeste kept running and tried not to look.

She looked.

The main hall was on fire, flames shooting up to the roof and lighting up the whole square. Two of the guard outposts on the east side were already gone, nothing left but burning wood. She could see warriors fighting at the far end of the road, battling wolves she didn't recognize. They were bigger and darker, fighting like they had no care for themselves or anyone else. It made her stomach drop..

Ravencrest wolves fought like they had done this many times before.

Because they had.

"Don't stop," her mother said tightly.

They reached the trees on the south side. Maera knew a path here, one she'd walked on midnight healer calls. She led now without looking back, feet sure in the dark. Celeste followed, branches snatching at her, the burning sky flashing above through leaves..

They were almost at the boundary.

Almost.

Wolves burst from the trees on the left, fast and quiet. Three of them, big, masked and in Ravencrest's black armour. They blocked the path.

Maera stopped hard pulling Celeste behind her.

"Run," her mother said quietly. Just to her. Just under her breath.

"I'm not leaving you"

"Celeste." Her mother's voice was low and fierce and full of something Celeste had never heard in it before. Something that sounded like fear. "Run."

She didn't get the chance.

They were brought to the common ground.

Celeste had stood here just yesterday. Had stood at the back of the crowd and listened to Thorne dissolve their betrothal in front of everyone. The stone platform was still there, the torches still in their brackets, except everywhere was on fire.

Everything else was unrecognisable.

Silvermere wolves knelt in rows across the 

ground, hands bound, heads down. Warriors she had known her whole life. Elders. Packmates. Some of them were injured. She could smell the blood from ten feet away and her hands itched to help.

A stranger stood at the front, on a platform, like he'd owned it. She'd never seen him before.

She saw how tall he was first. Then his dark hair. Then how he stood. 

The guard pushed her forward and his head turned at the movement, and his eyes found her across the ruined common ground.

Amber.

Warm and sharp at the same time.

The world tilted.

It slammed into her, no warning, no soft build-up. Like a wave crashing, sudden and total. The bond snapped loud, making her stumble. Every nerve pointed there, at him, screaming it in a voice louder than anything she'd heard.

His jaw tightened. The scar across his left eye pulled with it.

He had felt it too.

She watched something move across that controlled, commanding face, a crack in the surface, there and gone in less than a second. His amber eyes stayed on hers and they were burning now, not with warmth but with something more complicated, something that looked like a man calculating.

Him, some deep, wordless part of her said.

Him, her wolf said, straining toward the bond with everything it had.

No, said every other part of her, louder.

This was the man whose army had just burned her home to the ground. Whose wolves had dragged her mother out of the trees. Whose boots were standing on the platform of her pack's common ground while her packmates knelt in the dirt around him.

She straightened her spine. She looked him dead in the eye.

And she took a step backward.

His eyes narrowed. Just slightly.

"Bring them forward," he said.

His voice was low, no need to raise it—wolves stopped moving when he spoke. She hated how hers reacted, something inside pulling toward him before she could stop it.

They were pushed to the base of the platform. Celeste kept her chin up. Kept her eyes on his face. She would not look at the ground. She would not give him that.

He looked at her for a long moment.

"Your name," he said.

"You burned my home down," she said. "You don't get my name."

Somewhere behind her someone inhaled sharply. One of his warriors. Probably not used to hearing that tone directed at their Alpha.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Almost.

"Celeste Ashveil," her mother said from beside her, quietly. "Her name is Celeste Ashveil. Please. She's done nothing."

He didn't look away from Celeste, eyes locked on hers like they were the only thing that mattered. She felt the bond pull tight, like it was alive, and she hated it, hated him, hated herself for reacting.

"Ashveil," he said slowly.

He stepped down from the platform. And stood directly in front of her. Up close he was even taller than she had registered, broad across the shoulders, the dark tattoos from the collar of his armour climbing up the side of his neck. The scar across his left eye was deeper than she had seen from a distance, an old wound, long healed.

She held her ground.

"He will find her where betrayal burns, " he said quietly. So quite, she was the only one who heard it.

Her blood went cold.

"You're coming with me," Kaelan Draven said.

It was not a question. It was not a request. And the worst part, the part that made her want to scream, was that the bond humming through her chest pulled toward him even now, even with the smoke still in the air and her packmates on their knees behind her, pulling like it had already decided.

She lifted her chin higher.

"I won't," she said.

A scream tore from somewhere behind her.

Her mother.

Celeste’s head snapped up.

Maera was on her knees now, a blade pressed to her throat by one of the Ravencrest warriors. Blood had already begun to bead where the silver edge kissed her skin.

“Don’t,” Celeste breathed, the word breaking out of her.

He looked at her for one more long moment.

Then he nodded to his guard, and they closed in around her.

Celeste Ashveil was taken from the ruins of her home by the man the Moon Goddess had apparently decided was her fated mate.