Chapter One

Seraphine ~

The moon was full the night my life broke apart. The air around the grand hall was thick with tension.

The triplets sat on their elevated dais, shadows of power and disdain etched into their sharp features. Kaleen, the eldest of the Thorne triplets, cold and unyielding, stared down at me like I was already nothing.

He was the first to reject me.

“By the Moon Goddess,” he said, “I cannot claim you, Seraphine Vale. You are… cursed. I reject you.”

Instantly, I felt a dagger slice through my chest. The first curse ignited instantly. I opened my mouth and tried to scream, to demand justice, but no sound came. Kaleen’s rejection had stolen my voice.

My mother, standing behind me, noticed my voice was gone.

“Kaleen! You cannot do this! my mother cried, her voice ringing through the hall. “You cannot destroy her; your rejection has already taken her voice.”

“I don't care; I choose my own fate,” Kaleen said. He turned his back on me, leaving a silence so thick it felt like death.

Then Lysander stepped forward, the middle brother of the triplets. When I saw him, my hope ignited a little bit; he was not like his brothers; he was charming and ever-loving.

He leaned forward. He would not look at me at first. When he did, his eyes shone with regret, but regret did not stop him. “Seraphine…I won’t doom myself or my brothers.” He inhaled sharply. “Seraphine Vale, I reject you.”

I was totally surprised; I didn't expect that. Pain lanced through me again, sharper, more intimate than before. My wolf howled in agony inside me and died, leaving me hollow and trembling. My mother’s hands gripped my shoulders tighter. “No! This is forbidden!” she shouted, stepping toward the dais, trying to intercept the ritual that would seal the final rejection.

Lysander stepped back, his face pale. That was the second betrayal.

The third was the one that killed everything else.

Lysander Thorne had always smiled the most. He was laughing when the ritual began, laughing until my mother staggered between us.

“No!” mother shouted, standing before him with her arms spread wide. “You will not finish this. You have taken enough from her!”

Elder Corpin Nightweald, the elder everyone respected in Night fang shouted for order. While the crowd pressed closer, hungry for blood and prophecy.

Riven frowned. “Move,” he commanded.

“She is my daughter,” my mother snarled. “Chosen by the Moon. You will not strip the last blessing from her!”

“If I don’t reject her,” he murmured, “her curse’ll decide everything.”

My mother tried to stop him and lunged towards Riven.

I didn’t remember her scream ending; the only thing I remembered was how steel flashed past my eyes . The pack warriors surged forward and pushed my mother aside. They struck her once, twice, and then she hit the ground hard. Blood spilled into the ritual circle, staining the sacred runes.

“Stop!” I tried to shout.

But nothing came out, only silence.

Riven’s voice rang out over the chaos. “Seraphine Vale, I reject…”

“No!” My mother crawled toward him again, and held him on his boots with her bloody hand. The blade one of the warriors was pointing toward mother plunged her down. The sound her body made when it stilled will haunt me forever.

The world shattered. The bond snapped violently, a final chain ripped from my soul. Heat turned to ice in my body. Something dark sealed around my heart, thick, suffocating, and permanent.

The last rejection of Riven killed my love. I felt nothing afterward. No grief, no tears, just a cold, endless silence.

Riven stepped back, horror dawning on his face. Blood stained the ritual ground. My mother lay still on the floor, eyes open, staring at nothing.

Slowly and steadily, blood soaked the hem of my dress from my mother’s blood.

Kaleen stared at me as if he were seeing a ghost. Riven took a step forward, then stopped. Lysander’s hands shook. I felt no bond, only clarity.

I bent down to my mother's body, pressed my fingers to her cooling skin, and closed her eyes.

I walked through the crowd as they parted, fear following in my wake. I heard whispers as I walked out slowly. Cursed! Silent! Wolfless! Broken! They changed the words like songs.

I ran as fast as I could through the boundary stones of Night Fang and did not look back. I pressed my palms into the cold forest floor, trying to anchor myself in the dark silence. My face was completely covered in tears as I tried to make sense of the chaos that had ended my life before it truly began.

The wind whispered through the trees like ghosts of memories, carrying voices I had long tried to forget. Night Fang… my home… a place that had once felt alive, now nothing more than ruins in my mind. Night Fang had taken from me before: my beloved brother and father. They had gone to war against a rival pack but ended up being killed. And now it has taken my mother.

I tried to remember the days before the ritual, how my mother had always feared the prophecy that hovered over me like a shadow. My mother had held me as a child, arms tight around my small frame, and spoken words I hadn’t understood at the time.

“Seraphine,” she had whispered, eyes glimmering with both pride and worry, “the bond is not always kind. The Thone triplets will pull at your soul, and if you are not careful, you will lose yourself.”

I hadn’t listened. How could I? I had wanted to believe in love, destiny, and the Moon Goddess’s protection. I had thought the bond would be a blessing and a connection that would make my life whole.

I had ignored my mother’s warnings, thinking she feared the future too much and that she underestimated my strength. Now, the folly of my youth stared back at me with the cold, harsh truth. The triplets had rejected me one by one, stripping away my voice, my wolf, and my ability to love. In the end, they had killed my mother before my eyes.

And now, I was alone, cursed, and marked by rejection. But I was alive. And that, in itself, was enough to begin a reckoning.

I whispered my name to the wind, though no sound came, and made a promise: silently, I will make them remember me. All of them.

The forest was quiet. I had never known silence like this. It pressed against my chest, heavy and unyielding, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath, waiting to see what I would do.

My wolf instincts stirred faintly, a ghost of the bond I once had, but they were weak, fractured, and far from enough to guide me. My voice was gone. My wolf was gone. My ability to love had been stripped away by the cruel rejection of Kaleen, Riven, and Lysander. And yet, I had to survive.