Chapter 5: The Price of a Crown

The scouts I had left alive crawled back to the Silver Crest borders like broken insects. I watched them through Jace’s eyes, perched invisibly atop the manor’s stone gargoyles. They didn't carry weapons; they carried a contagion of terror. Grin, once the Pack’s most feared enforcer, had to be carried into the Great Hall on a stretcher, his skin gray and his heartbeat stuttering from the lingering effects of Kaelen’s paralyzing toxins.

Inside the manor, the air was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and desperation. The "Royal" scent of the Alpha, which used to command instant obedience, now smelled like rotting cedar.

"She... she is not the girl we knew," Grin wheezed, his voice echoing in the silent, freezing hall. "She has shadows for soldiers and the forest itself as her blade. Fenris... she isn't just surviving. She is ruling."

Fenris didn't respond. He stood by the frosted window, his gaze fixed on the Blackwood Ravine. He looked older. The lack of the land’s blessing had stripped the luster from his hair and the muscle from his frame. Beside him, Bella was a ghost of her former self. She had wrapped a thick wool scarf around her neck to hide the weeping sores left by the locket, but the rot was spreading to her spirit. She was no longer the shimmering star of the pack; she was a reminder of the theft that had doomed them all.

"I want her brought here in chains," Bella hissed, though her voice lacked its usual venomous bite. "Kill the outcasts. Burn the ravine. Just bring her back so she can fix this!"

"Fix it?" Fenris turned, his golden eyes flashing with a spark of his old rage. "She is the fix, Bella. We didn't just lose a servant. We lost the heart of the territory. And now, the other packs are smelling our weakness."

He was right. On the western border, the Iron Ridge Pack was already moving their markers. They knew the Silver Crest was starving.

Back in the Ravine, I felt the shift in the wind. The "Deprivation" was complete; now came the "Acquisition."

"They are starting to turn on each other," I said to the shadows of my war room.

Thane stepped forward, the firelight from the hearth—fueled by enchanted peat that never went out—casting long, jagged shadows across his face. "The lower-ranking wolves are whispering of mutiny, Elora. They want to send a delegation to beg for your return. Not as a mate, but as a savior."

"I am no one's savior," I replied, my fingers tracing the edge of the obsidian throne. "I am their consequence."

Kaelen entered, carrying a vial of shimmering, iridescent liquid. "The first harvest of the Ravine is ready, My Queen. This is the essence of the glowing fungi. One drop in a well can sustain a wolf for a week without meat. We have enough to feed an army."

"But not their army," I noted.

"No," Kaelen smiled thinly. "Only those who swear the oath of the Outcast."

This was the turning point. I didn't just want Fenris to suffer; I wanted his people to choose. I wanted them to look at the "nothing" girl and see the only path to survival.

"Jace," I projected my thoughts toward the manor.

"I'm here, Queen," his voice sparked in my mind.

"Start the whispers. Tell the mothers and the elders that there is bread in the Ravine. Tell them there is warmth. Tell them the gates are open to anyone who leaves the Silver Crest brand behind."

"It will be a bloodbath," Jace warned. "Fenris will kill anyone who tries to desert."

"Then we will be there to catch them when they fall," I said.

That night, the first group of deserters arrived. It was an elderly couple and a young mother clutching a pup wrapped in rags. They were trembling, expecting to find a den of monsters. Instead, they found Thane waiting at the entrance with torches and Kaelen with bowls of steaming, nutrient-rich broth.

As they ate, I stepped out from the inner sanctum. I was draped in the shadow-fur cloak, my mother’s ring—which I had summoned back to me through the earth—glowing softly on my finger.

The old woman looked up, her eyes widening. She dropped to her knees, her forehead touching the cold, damp stone. "Luna... we didn't know. We were told you were a curse."

"The curse is the man who let you starve while he sat on a golden throne," I told her, my voice echoing with a power that made the very Ravine vibrate. "Here, you work, you fight, and you eat. But you never, ever bow to an Alpha again."

By morning, the group of three had become thirty. The word was spreading like wildfire through the starving pack. The Silver Crest was leaking its lifeblood, and for every soul that joined me, my own power grew.

I sat on my throne, feeling the three bonds of my Mates pulsing in perfect rhythm with the heart of the mountain. Thane stood to my left, his hand on his sword; Kaelen to my right, his vials ready; and Jace, somewhere above, watching the borders.

We weren't just a pack of outcasts anymore. We were a nation. And the time for hiding was over.

"Thane," I said, my eyes turning a brilliant, predatory white. "Prepare the march. We aren't waiting for Fenris to come to us. We are going to meet him at the border. I want to see his face when he realizes he's leading a pack of ghosts.