Elara's POV

Sam stared at me, his eyes flaring with a mixture of genuine concern and a frustratingly naive sense of justice. He shook his head, the dish towel in his hand gripped so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

“You can’t seriously be planning to let her off the hook again, Elara! Have some goddamn self-respect. The woman is a calculated menace. She doesn’t just come here for the food; she comes here to hunt you. She keeps dragging in these bottom-tier pack guys just to start a riot and humiliate you in front of everyone. When is it going to be enough?”

I looked at him, my insides churning with a toxic cocktail of humiliation, physical pain, and a mounting sense of dread.

“You think I don’t want her to pay?” I hissed, the salt from the soup still stinging the fresh burns on my neck. “You think I enjoy being a punching bag for Beta's daughter? She has backing, Sam. Total, systemic backing. Her father is Thorne Elvyr. He doesn’t just run the pack’s security; he runs the lives of everyone beneath him.

He’ll make my existence a living hell if I’m the reason his precious daughter gets a criminal record in the human world. He already cut off my college grants last year just because I complained about her keying my car. I can’t afford to lose this job, and I certainly can’t afford his ‘personal’ attention.”

I didn’t even get the chance to finish my thought. The heavy swinging door to the kitchen burst open, and a police officer stepped through, the scent of rain and cheap coffee clinging to his uniform. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, his eyes darting around the stainless-steel surfaces of the kitchen until they landed on me. He paused, his eyebrows shooting up.

“Are you the server who just had a bowl of boiling liquid dumped on them?”

My instinct was to lie, to fade into the background as I had done for twenty-two years. But my appearance was a screaming indictment. My skin was an angry, mottled red, and the front of my uniform was plastered to my chest with orange-tinted grease and stray vegetables.

“Do you need an ambulance?” the officer asked, taking a step closer, looking genuinely unsettled. “Kid, you don’t look good. Those burns are going to blister.”

I forced a shake of my head, despite the way the movement made the skin on my neck feel like it was cracking.

“I’m fine. Really. It was just an accident. I don’t want to press charges.”

“You don’t?” The officer’s voice rose in disbelief. “From what the witness on the phone described, some guy intentionally hurled a bowl of scalding soup at your face while his date cheered him on. That’s aggravated assault, not a ‘misunderstanding.’”

“The customer’s hand slipped,” I lied, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “He was just… expressive with his gestures. It wasn’t his fault.”

“Right,” the officer said, his tone turning dry and skeptical. He wasn’t buying the script I was desperately trying to sell. He glanced around the kitchen, his gaze landing on the small black dome in the corner of the ceiling. “Where’s the office for the security footage? I noticed you guys have high-def cameras throughout the dining area.”

The blood drained from my face so fast I felt dizzy. I turned to Sam, pleading with my eyes for him to stay quiet, but he wouldn’t look at me. Instead, he straightened his shoulders and gestured toward the back hallway.

“Right this way, Officer. The manager keeps the DVR in the back office. It’ll show everything from the moment they sat down to the moment he threw the bowl.”

I felt a metaphorical knife slide between my ribs. I couldn’t believe it. How could he do this to me? Sam knew politics. He knew the sheer, unadulterated cruelty of the Moonlight Pack. If Seraphine got caught in a human legal net because of me, I wouldn’t just be the “wolf-less” girl anymore; I’d be a traitor.

I scrambled to get in front of the policeman, nearly tripping over a floor mat.

“Wait! I said I don’t want to press charges! Isn’t that enough? It’s my body, my face, so it should be my choice, right?”

The officer didn’t even slow down. He gently but firmly sidestepped me.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, miss. Once a report is called in and an assault is witnessed or recorded, I have a duty to file. Public safety and all that.”

“But if the victim refuses to cooperate, there’s nothing you can do!” I argued, sounding more desperate and foolish with every word.

He stopped then, looking at me with a pity that hurt worse than the burns.

“You look young, so let me give you a piece of advice. I know you’re probably scared of losing your job or getting in trouble with your boss, but you should never protect someone who treats you like trash. Now, move aside and let me do the job I’m paid for.”

He followed Sam into the office, leaving me standing in the middle of the kitchen, shivering despite the heat of the stoves. I was so incredibly screwed.

I grew up in the shadows of a world that valued teeth and claws above all else. I was never a child who was cherished or tucked in at night. My introduction to the world was a cold doorstep at the Moonlight Pack’s orphanage, wrapped in a thin blanket when I was only a month old. Being an orphan in a wolf pack is a hard life, but being an orphan without a wolf spirit is a death sentence for the soul.

In our world, the “Change” usually happens in the mid-teens. It’s a rite of passage, a blooming of power. I waited for years, watching my peers grow larger, faster, and more predatory, while I remained fundamentally, stubbornly human. The head of the orphanage, a bitter woman who viewed me as a drain on resources, often reminded me that I should be grateful she didn’t leave me in the woods for the coyotes when she realized I was a “dud.”

Wolf shifters are obsessed with the bloodline. They choose mates based on the potential for strong offspring, favoring Alphas and high-ranking Betas. I was a genetic dead end, a pariah in my own skin. I probably would have been dumped at a human foster home if I hadn’t shown a strange, residual strength. I wasn’t a wolf, but I was faster than any human track star and stronger than I looked. It was the only reason the pack kept me around as a source of cheap, expendable labor.

Sam was different. He was a “half-breed,” the product of a shifter father and a human mother. While he couldn’t shift, he occupied a middle ground. He was allowed to live among humans, and the pack generally ignored him as if he didn’t exist. Nobody went out of their way to torment him, but nobody helped him either. When his mother fell ill, the pack healers refused to see her. They viewed human bodies as fragile, incompatible vessels that couldn’t handle the “divine” DNA of a shifter.

Sam didn’t understand that my silence wasn't a weakness , it was a survival strategy. He hadn’t spent his childhood being used as a training dummy for the Beta’s children.

The next day, as I walked toward the pack’s administrative building to face Thorne Elvyr, my heart was a frantic drum in my chest. News traveled fast in the pack. Everyone knew that Seraphine had been taken to a human police station in a cruiser. It didn’t matter that she was released an hour later after her father made a few “calls.” The stain on her reputation was there, and in Thorne Elvyr’s mind, that stain was my fault.

Thorne was the second-in-command to Alpha Patrick Black, a man who ruled with an iron fist and a cold heart. Thorne was worse, mostly because he enjoyed the cruelty. He was fiercely, irrationally protective of Seraphine. I remembered when we were ten; Seraphine had punched me in the throat because I had a better grade on a spelling test. Thorne had watched from his porch, chuckling as I gasped for air on the grass.

He had systematically dismantled any chance I had at a life outside the pack. When a teacher praised my acting in a school play, Thorne had “suggested” to the drama coach that my presence was a distraction. I was removed from the cast the next day. When I qualified for a prestigious math tournament, he ensured the pack wouldn’t provide the transportation or the fees, simply because Seraphine hadn’t made the cut.

I knocked on his heavy oak door, my hand trembling. A cold, detached voice told me to enter.

Thorne Elvyr was sitting behind a massive desk carved from dark timber, a stack of pack ledgers in front of him. He didn’t look up when I stepped inside. He just kept reading, his pen scratching against the paper with agonizing slowness. He didn’t offer a chair. He didn’t acknowledge my presence at all.

I stood there, the silence stretching until it felt like a physical weight pressing against my lungs. This was his favorite game: the slow, silent erosion of a person’s composure. I stared at his graying hair and the sharp line of his jaw, trying to guess exactly how much pain he intended to inflict today. My skin was still tender from the soup, a constant reminder that in this office, I wasn’t a person. It was a problem that needed to be solved.