Nia’s Warning

Mira sat on the edge of her narrow bed, her fingers trembling against the rough blanket.

Her throat still burned with the ghost of wolfsbane residue, a chemical fire that water could not fully douse.

Nia moved quietly beside her, pressing a cool cup into her hands before checking her pulse and the dilation of her pupils.

Mira whispered that she was fine, but the words tasted like ash.

Beyond the thin wooden door, the servants’ quarters hummed with hushed speculation.

They were not whispering about Cassia’s cruelty this time.

They were dissecting Darius.

The Alpha came himself.

He tore the door open.

But then he called her wolfless in front of everyone.

Mira stared at the floorboards. She had survived the trap, but safety had come at the cost of visibility. The pack was no longer ignoring her; they were trying to calculate why a defective girl warranted an Alpha’s personal intervention.

Nia closed the door and leaned against it, her expression tight with fear.

She lowered her voice to a breathless warning.

An Alpha’s attention was never small, she explained. Even his pity could ruin a person.

If he favored Mira, Cassia would destroy her. If he rejected her, the pack would mock her harder. But if he kept saving her with such cold public distance, everyone would treat her like a dangerous weakness that needed managing.

Mira insisted he had only made a rule to maintain order.

Nia shook her head slowly.

“He made the rule after touching you.”

Mira had no answer for that.

The skin where Darius’s fingers had gripped her arm still felt impossibly warm, a phantom brand that contradicted his icy tone. She wanted to deny the sensation more desperately than she wanted to deny the rumors.

Silence stretched between them until Mira finally broke it.

She told Nia about the silver eyes behind bone-white bars.

She confessed to hearing a wolf in her dreams and feeling pain from wounds that did not exist on her own body.

Nia went pale, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the bedpost.

She asked if Mira was certain, her voice trembling.

Mira almost said no. Almost convinced herself it was trauma or madness.

But the memory of that gaze was too specific, too full of ancient grief.

“It knew my name,” Mira whispered.

Nia’s fear shifted. She was no longer afraid of what Mira might be becoming.

She was terrified for what had already been done to her.

“Some things in this pack are not missing by accident,” Nia breathed.

Nia glanced at the door again before sharing a story that belonged to the shadows.

Years ago, before Mira could remember clearly, there had been a sealed wing near the Moon Rite chamber.

Children were forbidden from entering. Servants were warned never to clean it after full moons.

One night, someone had heard a child screaming through the stone walls.

By morning, the elder priestesses had burned the bedding and scrubbed the floors, claiming a fever had swept through the nursery.

After that night, one child simply stopped crying.

Nia did not say Mira’s name.

She did not need to.

For the first time, Mira wondered if her emptiness had a date. Her defect was not a birth flaw; it was an event.

A sharp knock interrupted the revelation.

A servant stood in the doorway holding a folded note that smelled faintly of expensive lavender perfume.

It was unsigned, but the scent was unmistakably Cassia’s.

Mira Vale is reassigned to assist Lady Cassia’s dressing chamber before tonight’s council dinner.

Nia immediately protested, saying Mira could not go.

But Mira knew she had no choice.

Refusing a formal assignment now would look like she was hiding behind the Alpha’s protection. Cassia had adapted. Unable to use crude danger after Darius’s intervention, she was using the pack’s own hierarchy as a weapon.

Cassia did not need to touch Mira to move her. The structure did it for her.

Nia gripped Mira’s wrist before she could step into the corridor.

Her eyes were wide and desperate.

“Do not be alone with her wolf.”

Mira tried to offer a reassuring smile at the strange warning, but the old scar near her shoulder pulsed in response.

As she stepped into the hallway, the overhead lamps flickered once, casting long, jagged shadows.

Far away, behind a closed door, Cassia stood before a mirror.

Her silver eyes were already open, staring at a reflection that did not quite match her face.

Nia had warned Mira about Cassia.

But the thing waiting in Cassia’s dressing chamber was not only Cassia.