TASTE OF THE CURSED LUNA

"Get up, you hollowed piece of trash!"

The roar of Tyler Brooks’ voice bounced off the obsidian walls of the Lycan Academy’s lower training vaults. He didn’t wait for Emily Carter to find her feet. His heavy, fur-lined boot slammed into her ribs, the crack of bone sharp against the whistling mountain wind.

Emily skidded across the frost-slicked floor, her breath hitching in a throat raw from screaming. The Silver-Run air was thin, tasting of iron and old pine, but she couldn’t get enough of it into her lungs.

"Please," she rasped, her fingers clawing at the jagged ice on the floor. "Tyler, stop. I didn't do anything."

"You existed," Tyler spat. He was an Alpha-born, his Essence-Aura a suffocating weight of heat and aggression. He smelled of fermented honey-mead and the sharp, chemical tang of 'Moon-Dust.' He was wasted, his eyes glowing a fractured, jagged yellow. "A Carter who can’t even shift? You’re a stain on the Five Great Packs. Your own parents call you a mistake, Emily. Why shouldn't I?"

Behind him, the Locker Room Circle—Adam, Coal, Matt, and Jacko—leered. They were Betas, followers by blood, their scents a muddy mix of wet fur and cruelty.

"Check the scent on her," Coal laughed, stepping forward. "Still nothing. Nineteen winters and she smells like a human. Disgusting."

Emily backed away, her palms bleeding where the ice sliced her skin. She hit the back wall—a dead end of cold stone and discarded training dummies. "I'll leave. I'll go to the Frozen Frontier, I'll never come back—"

"You aren't going anywhere until we see what's under those rags," Tyler growled. He lunged, his hand wrapping around her throat. He lifted her off the ground, his strength effortless, the mark of his caste. "Ryan won't care. Your twin doesn't even claim you in the Great Hall. He's too busy being the Academy's star pup to worry about a Latent bitch."

The truth stung worse than the bruises. Her brother, Ryan, was currently probably toastng to his latest combat victory while his sister was being hunted in the dark.

Tyler slammed her against the wall and mashed his mouth against hers. He tasted like rot and bitterness. Emily gagged, her hands thumping uselessly against his armored chest. He was a wall of muscle. He bit her lip until she tasted copper, his tongue forcing its way past her teeth like an invading animal.

"Dirty... little... Omega," he mumbled against her skin.

Emily’s vision tunneled. Move. Do something. She felt the heat of his body, the arrogance of his power. As he moved his hand down to her waist, she found the one spark of defiance left in her gut. She clamped her teeth down. Hard.

Tyler let out a gutteral howl, ripping away. He clutched his face, blood dripping between his fingers. "You bit me? You soulless freak!"

He backhanded her so hard the world went white. Emily slumped, her head ringing.

"Tie her to the rune-post," Tyler snarled, his voice vibrating with a predatory shift. "Strip her. If she won't shift her wolf, maybe she'll shift for us when we're deep inside her."

Adam and Matt grabbed her arms, dragging her toward the heavy iron pillar in the center of the vault. They used thick, silver-threaded ropes—the kind used to restrain feral shifts. The cold metal bit into her wrists as they bound her high.

"No, please! No!" Emily’s voice broke into a sob.

Tyler walked up, his eyes dark with a sick, focused lust. He grabbed the front of her thick wool tunic. With a violent jerk, the fabric hissed and tore, exposing the thin linen shift beneath. He didn't stop. He ripped that too, leaving her exposed to the biting mountain air, her chest heaving in the dim light of the bioluminescent moss.

"Look at those," Jacko whistled from the shadows. "The 'Hollowed' actually has some meat on her."

Tyler’s hands were everywhere—rough, calloused, smelling of the kill. He cupped her breasts, his thumbs bruising the soft skin. "Why do you hide these, Emily? Ryan told us you were just a scrawny nerd. He didn't say you were built for a pack-run."

He moved lower, his fingers fumbling with the leather fastenings of her breeches. Emily kicked out, but the ropes held her fast.

"I'll kill you," she hissed through gritted teeth. "I'll find a way and I'll kill you all."

"You'll be too busy screaming my name," Tyler laughed. He yanked her breeches down to her knees. He reached for his own belt, his breath coming in heavy, jagged hitches. "Who wants second? Adam? Coal?"

"Back off, Brooks."

The voice didn't shout. It didn't have to. It was a low, vibrating hum that seemed to rattle the very foundations of the Lycan Academy.

Tyler froze, his hand on his fly. He turned, his Alpha-bravado flickering like a dying candle. "Who’s there?"

Out of the shadows of the weapon racks stepped Ethan Cole.

He was the ghost of the Academy. A high-tier Alpha who spoke to no one, belonged to no clique, and carried a scent of ozone and ancient snow that made even the instructors wary.

"I said," Ethan repeated, his eyes shifting to a terrifying, piercing silver, "Back. Off."

"This is pack business, Cole," Tyler tried to bluster, though his knees were visibly shaking. "She's a Latent. She's nobody. Her own family gave us the green light to 'educate' her."

Ethan didn't argue. He moved.

It was a blur of violence. One second Ethan was ten feet away; the next, he was standing over Adam, who was crumpled on the floor with a shattered jaw. Ethan hadn't even shifted.

"The girl," Ethan said, his voice dropping an octave, "is mine for the night. Run. Before I decide I need to taste marrow."

The Locker Room Circle didn't wait for a second invitation. They scrambled over each other, dragging their wounded, the scent of their fear filling the room like woodsmoke. Tyler was the last to go, casting one terrified, hateful glance back before sprinting into the darkness.

Silence fell over the vault, save for Emily’s ragged breathing. She tried to cover herself with her bound arms, her face burning with a shame deeper than the cold.

Ethan approached. He didn't look at her body with the hunger the others had. He looked at her eyes.

He reached out, his hand steady. He didn't untie her first. Instead, he reached for her breeches, pulling them back up with a slow, deliberate gentleness. He buttoned the leather with steady fingers, his knuckles brushing against her skin. Emily flinched, but the touch wasn't a violation—it was a shield.

He pulled her torn linen shift back together, then reached up and snapped the silver ropes with a single, sharp tug.

Emily collapsed. Ethan caught her.

He didn't say a word. He stripped off his heavy, fur-lined combat cloak and wrapped it around her. It was heavy, smelling of him—clean, cold, and strangely safe.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

"I... I think so," Emily whispered. Her voice was a ghost of itself. "Why did you stay? Everyone else just watches."

Ethan leaned in, his face inches from hers. For the first time, Emily saw the jagged scar running behind his ear—a mark of a survivor. "Because I know what it's like to be the wolf the pack wants to forget."

He put a massive arm around her waist, pulling her flush against his side. The heat radiating from him was like a hearth fire in a blizzard.

"Let’s go," he said. "The Carter name might be dead to you after tonight, Emily. But you’re not done yet."

As they walked out into the biting wind of the Silver-Run Territories, Emily didn't look back at the Academy. She looked at the man holding her up. She was Emily Carter—the girl with no scent, the twin who didn't exist, the daughter who was an investment gone wrong.

In the world of the Frozen Frontier, she was a ghost. But as Ethan’s grip tightened, anchoring her to the earth, she realized that ghosts were the only things that could haunt a pack to death.

The Silver-Run Territories weren't just a home; they were a cage of ice.

Emily sat in the small, cramped corner of the library—the only place the scent of the Alphas didn't reach. To the world, she was Sarah—no, Emily Carter. A mistake born alongside a king.

Her brother Ryan was the sun. He stood six-foot-four, a physical god with a golden aura that could sway a crowd in seconds. He was the star of the Rune-Warfare pits, the favorite of their parents, the Alpha-to-be.

And then there was Emily.

She was the shadow. The girl who spent her winters buried in ancient scrolls and digital coding, hiding behind baggy furs to mask the fact that her body didn't hum with the Moonlight Law. In a society where your worth was measured by the strength of your shift, she was a zero.

Her parents, the Elders of the Carter Lineage, stopped looking at her years ago. To them, she was a broken tool. They poured every gold coin, every ounce of lunar nectar, into Ryan. They didn't care that she had the highest marks in Rune-Logic in the history of the Academy.

"Logic doesn't win wars, Emily," her mother had said, eyes cold as the permafrost. "Blood does. And yours is thin."

Ryan was worse. He didn't hate her; he ignored her. In the halls of the Lycan Academy, he walked past her as if she were a servant. He never claimed her. He never defended her. To the elite, Ryan Carter was an only child.

She was a scholarship student in her own home, surviving on the scraps of a life she was supposed to lead. She could memorize a thousand-page grimoire in a night, but she couldn't growl loud enough to scare a pup.

But as she clutched Ethan’s cloak tighter around her shivering frame, the "Watcher" in the shadows of the hallway—the one they called Daniel Wright—watched her pass. His eyes were dark, calculating.