Stripped and Cast Out

Bronislava "Slava" Ignatova

My breath hitched as every pair of eyes in the hall turned toward me. The weight of their gazes felt like a physical force, pressing down on my chest until I could barely breathe.

I couldn't move. My boots felt frozen to the stone floor, my fingers digging into my apron until my knuckles turned white.

"Step forward, Bronislava," Kirill repeated. His voice didn't waver. It was the polished, commanding tone of an Alpha whose word was law.

Beside him, Eva leaned against his shoulder, her green eyes locked onto mine with a slow, triumphant smile. Beneath her ivory sleeve, the strange silver bracelet glinted under the lights, its carved runic charm pulsing with an unnatural heat that made my skin crawl.

Matrena’s hand slipped off my shoulder, retreating into her shawl. She didn't speak. She simply stood like a silent statue, her milky eyes staring into the void.

Move, I told myself. Don't let them see you shake

Swallowing the bitter taste of bile, I forced my feet forward. Whispers slithered through the crowd.

"Why is the Alpha calling an Omega?" "Look at her clothes... covered in soot." "Did she actually think she had a chance tonight?"

I kept my chin up, stopping five feet from the base of the steps to look into the face of the boy whose scent, cedarwood and crushed pine, had haunted my dreams.

Up close, the invisible tether between us pulled so violently it felt like a wire tearing through my heart. My dormant inner wolf clawed at my chest, growling desperately to claim what was ours.

Kirill, please, I searched his hazel eyes. Really look at me.

For a terrifying second, his mask slipped. His pupils dilated, his jaw tightening so hard a muscle twitched. His gaze dropped to my mouth. The mate bond surged between us, raw and undeniable.

He felt it. He was drowning in it just as much as I was

Then, Eva brushed her hand against his forearm, touching the silver charm bound to her wrist.

A sharp flash of dark light rippled from the rune. Kirill gasped softly, his shoulders flinching. Instantly, the intensity in his eyes vanished, replaced by a glazed, unyielding coldness.

He looked down at me not as a mate, but as a stain on his floor.

"You have been behaving inappropriately, Bronislava," Kirill declared, his voice echoing through the silent hall. "For months, you have harbored delusional fantasies. You have allowed your low-born insolence to convince you that an Omega could ever be linked to the Rostov lineage."

The words hit me like physical blows. "I... I haven't"

"Silence," he cut me off, his Alpha command dropping like an iron collar around my neck, choking back my defense. "Tonight, I stand with my true mate, Yevgeniya. Your refusal to accept your place ends tonight. I will not have a delusional servant casting shadows over my mate's coronation."

Eva took a step forward, smiling with condescending pity. "We have all been patient with you, Slava. But a pack cannot thrive when its lowest members do not know their place."

Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. My wolf roared in agony, sickened by the lie.

Kirill pulled out a heavy, crimson-sealed parchment.

"Bronislava Ignatova," Kirill spoke without a flinch. "By authority of the Alpha and the Elders, your presence is declared a detriment to the North Ridge. You are hereby stripped of your pack membership. You are outcast."

A collective gasp rippled through the hall.

Outcast. In a Siberian winter, an outcast was forced into the treacherous Blood Forest.

"Kirill, no!" The words tore out of my throat, breaking through his command as terror shattered my pride. "You can't do this! The blizzard outside will kill me! I have nowhere to go!"

"You should have thought of that before you lusted after what was never yours," Eva purred softly.

Kirill signed the scroll with a heavy black quill and rolled it shut.

"The guards will escort you to the northern boundary immediately," Kirill said, devoid of warmth. "You will leave with nothing. If you cross back over our borders, you will be hunted as a rogue."

Two massive Alpha guards clamped down on my shoulders, dragging me backward. My boots scraped helplessly against the polished floor I had spent four hours scrubbing.

I searched the crowd for anyone to stop this nightmare. I looked at Matrena. The old woman stood quietly, her head bowed. She let them drag me away.

"Kirill!" I screamed as the heavy iron doors were shoved open, revealing the roaring, pitch-black blizzard. "Look at me and tell me you don't feel it!

Kirill turned his back, wrapping his arm around Eva’s waist as the music resumed.

The guards shoved me hard into the deep snow. I fell to my knees, the sub-zero wind slashing through my thin clothes like razor blades. Behind me, the massive oak doors slammed shut with a deafening thud.

I lay in the snow, gasping for air as the cold numbed my fingers. But deep within the darkest corner of my soul, something strange began to happen.

My inner wolf stopped whimpering

In the pitch-black cold, my blood weak and quiet for eighteen years, suddenly began to boil. A strange, searing heat flared beneath my skin, pulsing outward from my spine with a sound like crackling lightning.

Out of the black shadows of the frozen treeline, a low, menacing growl echoed through the blizzard.

Red eyes flared open in the dark, surrounding me.