Chapter 2

The metallic taste of my own blood coated the back of my throat as Alpha Dracon dragged me down the winding subterranean stairwell beneath the packhouse. My heels banged uselessly against the stone steps with every stride, leaving faint streaks of dirt behind.

Beside us, Alaric carried a flaming torch, the ambient orange light casting monstrous shadows against the damp granite walls. Lysandra walked behind, her silver rod clicking rhythmically against the floor, while Cressida strutted at the front, humming a soft, playful tune as if she were walking down a garden path rather than heading to an execution.

"Hold her head up," Lysandra instructed, her voice devoid of a single drop of warmth. "If she faints before the blade touches her flesh, the blood thickens. It must flow freely to bind to Cressida's core."

"She isn't fainting," Dracon growled, adjusting his iron grip on my windpipe just enough to let a tiny sliver of air pass into my burning lungs. "The useless creature is just staring."

He was right. I didn't waste my breath on pathetic whimpers.

Every drop of energy I had left went toward keeping my eyes wide open, mapping every turn of the forgotten catacombs, calculating the exact weight of Dracon's hands, and watching the way Alaric nervously adjusted his grip on the silver-tipped dagger at his hip.

He was afraid.

He wouldn't admit it to his future father-in-law, but the coward’s eyes darted toward the dark corners of the tunnel every time the wind roared through the Chasm vents below.

We reached the iron double doors at the bottom of the cavern. Ancient runes of binding were carved into the rusted metal, glowing faint red under the touch of Dracon's bloodline magic.

With a heavy groan, the doors swung inward, revealing the Chamber of the Trial.

In the center of the vast, circular room stood the sacrifice altar, carved from a single slab of obsidian.

Beyond the altar lay the reason this room existed: the edge of the Forbidden Chasm. An endless, bottomless abyss cut directly into the earth, where the wind screamed like dying wolves, and from which no member of the Ironfang Pack had ever returned alive.

"Place her on the stone," Dracon commanded.

Dracon slammed me onto the cold obsidian slab. The air rushed out of my chest in a sharp gasp.

Before I could move, iron shackles snapped around my wrists and ankles, pinning me flat on my back.

Cressida stepped up to the edge of the altar, her face illuminated by the eerie red glow of the altar's runes. She looked down at me with a pout that made my stomach turn.

"Don't look at me like that, Vesper," she whispered, leaning over until her sweet, floral perfume filled my nose, masking the metallic scent of rust and rot.

"You should be thanking me. You’ve spent twenty years being nothing. A Null. A embarrassment to the Vance name. Tonight, your blood finally serves a real purpose. When Alaric marks me tomorrow, your core will make me the strongest Luna the North has ever seen."

"You are a parasite," I rasped, my vocal cords bruised and raw. "You take what you didn't earn because you know that without dark magic, you are as empty as I am."

Cressida’s smile vanished instantly.

Her hand flew out, landing a sharp, stinging slap across my cheek. My head snapped to the side, skin burning, but I turned my face back toward her and let out a cold, breathless laugh.

"Enough talking," Lysandra snapped, stepping up with a silver bowl inlaid with dark runes. "The moon reaches its zenith. Alaric, cut her."

Alaric stepped forward, his hands trembling slightly as he unsheathed the ceremonial blade. He avoided my eyes, keeping his focus locked firmly on my collarbone.

"Nothing personal, Vesper," he muttered under his breath, his voice barely audible above the howling wind of the Chasm. "It's just pack politics. A Null can't stand beside an Alpha."

"You coward," I hissed, leaning my neck back to stare directly into his pale eyes. "Look at me when you do it."

He didn't.

He pressed the tip of the blade against the hollow of my throat and dragged it downward.

A sharp, blinding agony flared across my chest. I bit down on my lower lip so hard my own teeth cut through the flesh, refusing to give them the satisfaction of a scream.

Hot blood welled from the cut, pouring instantly down the carved grooves of the obsidian altar.

The ancient runes flared to life, shifting from a dull crimson to a blinding, sickening purple.

Cressida gasped as a surge of warm energy began to pull from my body, swirling through the air and settling into her chest. Her eyes rolled back in pleasure as her wolf spirit howled inside her, hungrily devouring the life force being bled out of me.

My vision began to blur into dark, jagged spots.

My fingers grew numb against the iron shackles. My heart beat slower, staggering like a dying runner.

So this is it, I thought, the coldness creeping up my arms and legs. I die on a slab so a fake can wear a stolen crown.

"It's working!" Cressida squealed, her voice echoing as if underwater. "I can feel it! My wolf is evolving!"

"Drain her completely," Dracon ordered coldly. "Leave nothing behind to rot."

As my consciousness flickered on the edge of the abyss, something strange happened deep within my blood.

The ritual was meant to pull my core outward, but as the blood drained away, it stripped away a heavy, suffocating seal that had rested on my soul since the day I was born.

An ancient, dormant power flared up in the hollow void of my chest.

It wasn't a standard wolf spirit.

It was cold.

It was dark.

It felt like pure, concentrated shadow.

The altar shattered.

A violent shockwave of raw purple lightning erupted from my body, blasting the ceremonial bowl out of Lysandra's hands and sending Alaric tumbling backward onto the hard stone floor.

Cressida screamed as the flow of stolen energy snapped violently, lashing back across her chest like a barbed whip and throwing her off her feet.

"What is this?!" Dracon roared, shielding his face from the black mist bursting from my wound. "She has no core! She is a Null!"

"Kill her! Kill her now!" Lysandra shrieked, scrambling back from the stone slab.

Alaric scrambled up from the floor, his face pale as death. He didn't use the dagger.

Driven by pure, primal panic, he slammed his boot against the heavy iron lever at the base of the altar.

The floor beneath the stone slab split open.

The iron shackles unlatched automatically as the stone tilted sideways. Bound by gravity and slick with my own blood, my body slid off the obsidian slab, tipping backward into the open air.

As I fell into the pitch-black void of the Forbidden Chasm, I saw four figures leaning over the ledge, watching me plunge toward the jagged rocks below.

Cressida was clutching her bleeding chest, Alaric stood frozen with fear, and Dracon was already turning his back on me.

The freezing wind screamed in my ears, tearing at my hair and clothes as the darkness swallowed me whole.

Gravity dragged me down, down into the abyss where thousands had perished.

I closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me.

But as the freezing wind whipped past my face, a deep, resonant vibration shook the very foundation of the mountain.

It wasn't a voice in my mind.

It was a rumble that echoed from the bottom of the earth, cracking through the stone walls of the chasm.

At last... the blood of the true lineage...

My body slammed into the ancient ward stone at the bottom of the abyss, and the world shattered into crimson light.