The Alpha and His Reaper

(Lyra’s POV)The first thing I learned about being soulless was that silence cuts deeper than cruelty.Every Blood Moon Festival, the Silverborne wolves filled the skies with howls, their voices rising in wild devotion to the Moon. The sound rolled over the mountains like thunder, sharp, alive and sacred. All except mine, I was forbidden to join them because a hollow girl like me had no right to echo the Moon’s song.So while the others feasted and danced beneath the crimson glow, I scrubbed blood from the temple steps, kneeling in freezing water that numbed my hands and turned my skin raw. My reflection stared back from the crimson puddle—pale hair plastered to my face, bruised knuckles, and those strange silver eyes that never changed with the moon.The pack called me Hollow Pup, some days they forgot my name altogether.Laughter poured from the Great Hall, spilling warmth and music through the open windows. The scent of roasted venison and spiced silver wine drifted through the co

Lyra’s POVAt first, I thought I was dreaming. But dreams don’t bleed, and they don’t whisper your name from the shadows.The cell was colder than death. Stone walls pressed close on all sides, wet with dripping condensation. My breath came in shivers, the kind that rattled through bone. The mark on my palm pulsed faintly in the dark as silver veins threaded beneath my skin like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.Then I heard it again.“Lyra.”Not a whisper. A command. The air trembled with it.I pressed my hand to the mark, but the pulse only grew stronger, louder, until pain seared through me like molten glass. I gasped and stumbled to my knees. The mark flared, flooding the cell with pale light. Chains groaned, stone cracked, and from the corner of my vision, a shape took form.Kael.No longer the vision from the crypt, but real—terribly, vividly real. His hair was white fire, his eyes molten silver edged with black flame. Power rolled off him in waves that made the air hum. He looked a

LYRA’S POVThe Rift slept lightly. Every shadow seemed to breathe, waiting for something to happen, something I couldn’t name yet. The air smelled of iron and frost, and beneath it all, I could still taste the smoke from the last fire Kael built. He said the light kept the whispers away, but I wasn’t sure which whispers he meant — the ones that crawled from the deadlands, or the ones that came from inside my own skull.Sleep didn’t come easy anymore. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Eira — my sister — standing at the edge of Silverborne’s walls, her face pale and her hands red. I used to promise her we’d run away together, that I’d protect her from everyone who ever sneered at us. Now, she probably thought I was dead. Maybe part of me was.I clenched my fists, staring at the firelight licking across the stones. “If you could see me now, Eira,” I whispered, “you’d laugh. I can’t even scrub a floor without awakening a cursed king.”“You talk to yourself when you think I’m not listenin

LYRA’S POVThe Rift screamed.Not with sound—no. This was worse. The glass beneath us split open in jagged lines, silver veins flaring so bright they burned against my vision. The air thickened, pressing against my chest until every breath felt stolen, like I’d sunk too deep underwater and forgotten how to swim.Something inside the crack moved.Then it pulled itself free.It didn’t crawl. It didn’t climb.It unfolded.Reality bent around it, as if the Rift itself wasn’t sure how to let the thing exist. Limbs stretched where there shouldn’t have been space, folding and reforming in impossible ways. Its surface shimmered like broken mirrors dipped in moonlight, reflecting not the world, but fragments of me. My face twisted in fear. My hands glowed with silver light, dripping—blood?—spilled across reality itself.I froze.My mark ignited.Pain shot through my arm, white-hot, as if fire had been poured into my bones. I dropped to one knee—and Kael did too.He sucked in a harsh breath, sh

Lyra’s POVThe Rift made mornings feel like a cruel jest. Not that I had much choice. Between the whispers of the dead, Kael’s looming shadow, and the persistent hum of the mark on my palm, I had long forgotten what freedom felt like. I crouched on a shard of black glass, trying to decide whether my life had become a cosmic joke or a sentence I would never escape. The answer was probably both.“Lyra.” The voice came soft as mist but sharp as a knife. It made the hair on my arms rise. The kind of voice that knows your thoughts before you do and despises them.I spun, expecting Kael. The Rift stretched empty in every direction. Black glass cracked beneath pale light. Silver veins pulsed faintly beneath my feet. It was the sort of place where shadows could devour you while the air mocked your heartbeat.“I am not dying yet, am I?” I muttered. My voice sounded like a mouse squeaking in a lion’s lair.Then she appeared.The Seer of Duskwraith stepped from the haze as though the storm had t