Chapter 3

“Together?”

I stared at her hopeful face. Her audacity was breathtaking.

She’d done the same thing in our past life, pretending to beg me to stay.

But I’d overheard her asking a witch for a way to kill me and sever my bond with Arthur.

Only then could she become the pack’s rightful Luna, the perfect, innocent mate in Arthur’s eyes.

So, before she could make her move, I’d forced Arthur to banish her.

“How… generous of you, Calista,” I said, my voice dripping with acid as I tore my arm from her grasp.

“But I have no interest in sharing a man. Especially not another woman's leavings.”

Her beautiful face froze.

Gasps rippled through the crowd.

But this was Calista’s stage. In a heartbeat, her mask of the pitiful victim snapped perfectly into place.

Her eyes welled with tears, as if she were the one who had been deeply wronged.

“Sister… how could you say that?” She turned to Arthur, her voice trembling. “I know you’ve suffered so much out there, and you’re angry. But we were a family once.”

I shook off Calista’s hand again, her cloying, heartbroken act turning my stomach.

Arthur’s rage. The pack’s judgment. Leo’s burning hatred.

It was a cage of their making, closing in around me.

“Enough,” I said, cutting Calista off.

My voice wasn’t loud, but her next excuse died on her lips, and the entire square went quiet.

My gaze swept over Arthur, over my former packmates, and finally landed on the archway that led to my past: the Hall of Glory.

“Arthur,” I said, my voice cutting through the noise. “Before you decide how to handle your ‘problem,’” I turned and stalked toward the Hall of Glory, not giving him a chance to reply. “I require a moment alone.”

I needed to calm down.

More importantly, I needed to get what I hid there.

The war codex I had written with my own blood and sweat.

Arthur didn’t stop me.

He probably thought a tour of my past glories would make me sentimental.

Make me change my mind and accept his ridiculous “sharing” proposal.

A flicker of triumph flashed in Calista’s eyes.

I stepped into the Hall of Glory.

It was just as I remembered. The stone walls were lined with the trophies of my kills—beasts I had hunted to protect the pack: the skull of a giant bear, the talons of a wyvern, the stinger from a chimera's tail…

Each one represented a battle I had barely survived.

Moonlight spilled through the high windows, painting the grim trophies in shades of silver and black.

It was quiet. Eerily quiet.

I walked to the end of the hall, to where my proudest trophy had once hung: the pelt of an adult shadowcat.

I’d nearly died taking it down, its claws tearing straight through my left shoulder.

But when I reached the end, the wall was bare.

The massive, shimmering silver pelt was gone.

Ice flooded my veins. A cold, hard knot of dread tightened in my gut.

I turned, about to search for it, when I heard children’s laughter from the other end of the hall.

“Leo, hurry up! Get the mat ready!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming! This thing is disgusting. It stinks. I don't even want to touch it!”

I quickly ducked into the shadow of a large stone statue.

I saw my son, Leo, and a few other pups struggling to drag a pelt into the hall.

It was my missing shadowcat pelt.

They threw it carelessly onto the cold stone floor with a dull thud.

One of the boys pinched his nose. “Leo, are you sure? Luna Calista said this thing stinks of the wilderness. That it’s savage.”

“What’s there to be scared of!” Leo said proudly, pulling a dagger from his belt and tossing it in his hand. “This pelt is the past!” he declared. “And my dagger is the future! We’re going to carve the future right on top of it!”

He raised the dagger high, his eyes glinting with a cruel excitement.

“This pelt is a symbol of the old ways. Now, we’re going to use my dagger, a symbol of the new order, to carve our own marks on it!”

With that, he plunged the dagger viciously into the shadowcat’s head.

*Shhhnk!* The sound of steel piercing leather echoed in the silence. The dagger I gave him for protection was now a tool for desecration.

“Hahaha, I got it in the eye!” Leo yelled.

The other children followed his lead.

They pulled out their own small knives, rocks, or just started stomping on it.

They descended on it like vultures, kicking and stabbing the prize I’d nearly died for, their faces alight with the pure, cruel malice only children can possess.

“This butcher should have been kicked out long ago!”

“My mom says she’ll only bring war and misfortune!”

“Leo, you’ll be our Alpha one day! We’ll all listen to you!”

I stood in the shadows, my body cold as if I’d been plunged into an icy cavern.

The peace I’d bought with my blood was their playground.

The honor I’d bled for was a ghost story they used to scare each other.

And leading them all was the son I had carried for ten months. He was using the first gift I ever gave him to destroy everything I was.

“Why were you gone for so long?!” Leo screamed, as if that wasn’t enough. He stomped on the shadowcat’s head.

He was screaming at a ghost—at me. “You left me! You made everyone laugh at me because I didn’t have a mother! Now you’re back to ruin everything? Mama Calista is the perfect Luna! You’re just a filthy, stinking rogue! You were never my mother!”

In that moment, the final thread of ‘motherly love’ inside me snapped.

I stepped slowly out of the shadows.

The laughter died.

The children saw me and scrambled back in fear.

Only Leo, after a flicker of panic, stuck out his chin and glared at me.

“What… what do you want?”

I didn’t speak.

I just walked up to him and, as he stared in shock, I slapped him across the face.

*SLAP!*

The sound echoed through the hall.

The force of it sent Leo stumbling to the ground, knocking over a nearby candelabra.

He clutched his face in disbelief, his eyes filled with venom.

“You… you dare hit me?!”

“This,” I said, my voice pure ice, “is for desecrating what you do not understand. The ground you stand on, the peace you take for granted—I bought it with my blood. And you are not worthy of it.”

I slowly raised my right hand, palm facing him.

A single drop of blood beaded at my fingertip, hovering in the air, glowing with a faint red light.

“By blood it was forged, and by blood, it is broken! I, Samara Snow-Fang, cast you out! The debt of your birth is paid. The bond of mother and son is severed. You are *her* son now. Your life and your death are no longer mine to mourn!”

The drop of blood became a streak of red light and shot into Leo’s forehead, leaving a mark that vanished in an instant.

He let out a piercing scream and collapsed.

The cries of the children and Leo’s scream finally alerted the people outside.

Arthur and Calista were the first to rush in.

Their faces changed when they saw the scene.

“Samara! Are you insane?! What did you do to him?!” Calista shrieked, rushing to cradle Leo in her arms, acting as if I were the monster.

Arthur saw his fallen son and the murderous look on my face, and rage blinded him.

“Samara!” he roared, shielding both of them behind him. “He’s just a child! What right do you have to place such a vicious blood curse on him?!”

“My right?” I gestured to the shredded pelt on the floor—to my shredded honor. A wild, broken laugh escaped my lips, so raw it brought tears to my eyes.

“My rights were trampled into dust by you, your son, and this woman long ago!”

I stopped laughing, my eyes turning dead cold again.

Ignoring their fury, I turned and walked to the end of the hall.

From under a loose stone tile, I retrieved my heavy war codex.

“Arthur,” I said without turning, my voice suddenly quiet and dead. “Do you remember what happened to Marcus of the Stoneclaw Pack?”