Chapter 3

I woke to the scent of poultices—moss, crushed yarrow, and something bitter. The pain was a dull, all-over throb.

I forced my eyes open. I was in a dim, earthy room. Old Grey knelt beside the low pallet, his gnarled hands carefully applying a cool paste to the burns on my arm.

“Grey…” My voice cracked.

“Hush, pup,” he murmured, not looking up. His eyes, kind and tired, were focused on his work. “I know. You have to stay for the sunrise after his birthday.”

The door exploded inward.

It wasn’t a knock. It was the sound of splintering wood. Six Pack enforcers, led by Leon’s Beta, filled the small space. They hauled me off the pallet. Another grabbed Old Grey, pinning his arms.

Leon strode in. He backhanded me across the face. The force sent me sprawling onto the dirt floor, my jaw singing with pain.

“So this is the rat’s nest,” he sneered, looking around the humble den. “I wondered where you were getting your poison.”

He walked over to where Grey was held. Without a word, he drew a slender silver dagger from his belt and plunged it into Grey’s shoulder, right near his heart.

A scream tore from my throat, raw and animal.

I scrambled toward him, but Leon’s foot came down on my back, pressing me into the ground.

“Tell me,” Leon said, leaning his weight on the dagger in Grey’s flesh. Grey gasped, his face turning ashen. “Was it his idea? Teaching you how to fake the rituals?”

“Let him go!” I sobbed, the dirt gritty in my mouth. “He saved your life! He helped me prepare the tonics when I was too weak!”

Leon looked down at me, a cruel, calculating light in his eyes.

“Fine.”

He pulled out his phone and tossed it at my head. It skittered across the floor.

“Record a confession. Admit you’re a fraud. That this old Omega taught you tricks to entrap an Alpha. Do it, and I’ll let the Pack Healer see him.”

“Elara, no…” Grey choked out, blood bubbling at his lips. He shook his head weakly.

Leon twisted the dagger.

A fresh wave of blood, darker now, spilled down Grey’s front. His eyes started to lose focus.

“Stop! I’ll do it!” I screamed.

I fumbled for the phone. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely tap the record button. I held it up to my face, my tears and the dirt making streaks.

“I… I confess. I am not a true White Wolf heiress. The healing… it was a trick. Old Grey taught me… to fake the signs… to bind an Alpha…” The words were ash in my mouth.

Leon smiled. He finally pulled the dagger free and gave a curt nod. “Take the old fool to the Pack infirmary.”

They dragged Grey out. I stumbled after them, the phone clutched in my hand like a dead thing.

The Pack Healer’s lodge was cold. A young apprentice thrust a thick slab of etched stone into my hands. “The healing rites require moon-silver and blood-moss. The stocks are low. Provide payment, or the deep healing cannot begin.”

I froze. I had nothing. The Pack had frozen my access to everything.

Slowly, I turned to Leon. He stood in the doorway, Selene wrapped around him like a vine.

“Leon… my accounts… please…”

He laughed. The sound echoed in the stone room.

“A favor? From you? Okay. But beggars need the right posture.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Your kind has been sucking my Pack dry for a century. A video isn’t enough. Get on your knees. Apologize. To me. To my ancestors whose trust you betrayed.”

I looked past him, through the open door, where I could see Grey’s still form on a cot, the bandages already soaked through.

I dropped.

My knees hit the hard stone floor. “I’m sorry. I deceived you…”

Selene’s sweet, clear voice cut through mine. “Just words? Shouldn’t a proper apology be… physical?”

Leon’s grin widened. “You heard her. One hundred. And make them count.”

I bent forward. I brought my forehead down against the unyielding stone.

Crack.

“One.”

Crack.

“Two.”

I lost count. The world narrowed to the impact, the spreading warmth of blood on my face, the sound of bone meeting rock. By the end, I was moving on instinct alone.

“One hundred,” Leon announced, boredom in his voice.

I crawled, my vision swimming, to Grey’s side. I looked up at Leon, a growl building in my ruined throat. “Now! Pay them!”

“Alright. I’ll go get the silver from my vault.”

He turned to leave. Realization, cold and final, dawned on me.

I lunged, catching his ankle. “You’re stalling! You never meant to—”

“Tsk.” He shook me off easily. “Is that any way to talk to your Alpha? Do you want the payment or not?”

The fight left me. My grip slackened.

“I want it. Please. Hurry.”

He took an hour. An hour in which Grey’s breathing grew shallower, more ragged. When Leon returned, he threw a small pouch of raw moon-silver dust at my feet.

I crawled with it to the Healer’s apprentice.

The young wolf took it, checked Grey, and shook his head. “The bond to life is too faint. The silver cannot anchor it. He is gone.”

Something in me broke.

I launched myself at Leon, my hands curled into claws, aiming for his eyes. “You killed him! You murderer! I’ll rip your throat out!”

He caught my wrists effortlessly, his grip like iron. His eyes glowed with pure menace.

“Kill me? Elara, you owe me first.”

He threw a scroll at my feet. It unfurled, covered in dense, official-looking script.

“A century of support for your ‘noble’ bloodline. Food, protection, land rights. Since you’ve admitted it was all a fraud, it’s time to repay. With interest.”

“If you refuse…” He held up his phone, my tear-streaked, bloody confession video paused on the screen. “…this goes to every Pack elder. And then we’ll see how your remaining ‘family’ in the mountains likes hosting Pack justice.”

My whole body trembled. I tasted blood and defeat.

“I’ll repay it. After your birthday. I’ll find a way.”

“After my birthday?” Leon scoffed. “You think I’m giving you more time to scheme?”

“I have nothing right now!”

“Then I’ll collect what’s available.”

He nodded to his enforcers. They bound my hands with rough rope and shoved me into the back of an all-terrain vehicle.

A deep, primal dread began to coil in my gut. I knew these woods.

We were heading toward the sacred burial grounds.

Toward my mother’s resting place.