Chapter 3

Lyric

Outside the tower, the pack begins to howl as the moon crests the treetops. Their voices rise in long, resonant waves that vibrate through the stone walls. It is a powerful sound, alive and unified, but it has nothing to do with me or with Bryce, who is still wrapped in Leila’s embrace.

They are howling to herald the arrival of the high priestess—the woman they revere more than almost anyone in the North.

She usually plans her visits months in advance. She almost never arrives unannounced.

The sound cuts through me with sharp precision. My wolf—weak, fading, curled in on herself after everything that has happened—flinches at the echo of divine power threaded through the chorus. Even in this state, she recognizes the presence of the Temple.

I must have dozed off from the healer’s potions, because the world had slipped out of existence, and the next thing I’m aware of is a soft knock at my door.

The little bundle I cradled in my hands is gone. Someone took her while I slept and covered me with a fleece.

It’s over, and part of me is more relieved than I can bear admitting, but my arms feel so terribly empty that I want to scream at the universe to bring her back.

All that remains is the small cloth she was wrapped in. A kind Omega must have left it behind, thinking I might need something to remember her by.

Another knock.

It’s soft—polite, even—but insistent enough that ignoring it isn’t an option. I wipe my cheeks with the heel of my hand, though it does nothing to hide the redness or the exhaustion. I should do something other than sit here on the floor, numb and shaking.

But before I can move, the door opens.

The high priestess steps into the room.

Her presence changes the air instantly. The silver threads of her robes shimmer in the lantern glow. She smells of incense and moonlight, old stone and cold nights, and her aura is so powerful it brushes against every part of me.

Even in her weakened state, my wolf lowers her head, recognizing someone far higher in the order of things than any alpha.

The priestess’s eyes drift slowly across the room, taking in the blood-spattered floor, the scattered rags, the towel in my lap, my shaking hands clutching the tiny blanket. Her expression softens in a way I have never seen on her face.

“I- I- I apologise, holy mother,” I stammer. “If I knew… I would have asked the Omegas to… I would have cleaned. I would-”

“Oh, child,” she murmurs, and the quiet ache in her voice nearly breaks me in half. “I felt your grief before I even reached the gates. You needn’t do a thing on my behalf.”

My throat tightens until speaking becomes impossible. All I can do is stare as she gathers her skirts and kneels beside me. The high priestess kneels for no one - not even my father. The gesture alone sends a tremor through my chest.

She lifts a hand and cups my cheek. Her thumb wipes away a tear I didn’t realize was still falling. She looks around again, slower this time, absorbing every detail of what happened here tonight. When she finally speaks, her voice has lost its usual detachment.

“I cannot stand by any longer and do nothing.”

It takes me a moment to find my voice. “What do you mean?”

“This is punishment,” she says, raising a hand to stop me when I try to protest. “Not yours. Bryce’s. Though it feels like yours, I know—and that is the tragedy.”

Bitterness rises like bile. “Bryce is not being punished. He has three healthy children with Leila. Nothing touches him. Not my suffering. Not the loss of our children. Tell me who exactly is being taught a lesson here, because it certainly isn’t him.”

A shadow passes across her expression. “Leila is not your true sister.”

The words hit harder than I expect. I blink at her. “What?”

“Your mother was unfaithful,” she says gently. “Leila is the daughter of a groundskeeper. An Omega. She carries no Greyheart blood.”

For a second I forget how to breathe. Then a laugh escapes me—raw, ugly, but real. “So those children… they won’t help him secure anything. They won’t guarantee he ever sits on the throne of Three Towers.”

She gives a small shake of her head. “No.”

“Does my father know?”

“He does. He always has.”

Of course he does. My father knows everything within these walls, whether he acknowledges it or not.

The priestess draws a slow breath. “There is something else, Lyric. Something this pack has forgotten. Something even your father does not remember.”

Unease coils low in my stomach. “What is it?”

“It is an ancient decree,” she says, shifting to sit beside me on the cold tiles. The blood on the floor does not seem to concern her. “Older than these towers. Older than the councils. Older even than the first alphas. It was written in the earliest days, when divine mate bonds were far rarer than they are now… and far more sacred.”

I swallow. “What decree?”

“The Law of Severance.”

The name alone sends a cold ripple down my spine.

“This will be Bryce’s punishment,” she says. “And your freedom.”

She explains the decree clearly - what it is, what must be spoken, and how it works. A law spoken by the Goddess herself in the first age. No alpha can override it. No Lycan king can challenge it. No council can refuse it. Once invoked, it becomes absolute.

When she finishes, she says, “In two days, when you are stronger, you will call the council and invoke the law.”

Fear slides, cold and deliberate, through my chest. “They’ll never accept it.”

“They must,” she answers, steady as stone. “This law predates their authority. It is divine. It is incontestable.”

I look down at the tiny blanket in my lap—the one that should be holding my daughter right now. My fingers tighten around the cloth. “But no one remembers this. Not even my father.”

“That does not matter,” she replies. “The Old Laws do not fade just because wolves forget them. The Goddess’s decrees cannot be erased.”

My voice comes out small, stripped raw. “This is my only way out?”

“It is,” she says softly. “And it requires strength. More than most wolves ever find.”

A laugh escapes me, thin and close to a sob. “I’ve survived five losses. Alone. While my mate lay with my sister. There isn’t much left in this world that frightens me.”

She studies me with a sad, knowing smile. “I would not have told you if I thought you incapable of this.”

“Why tell me now?” I whisper. “Why today?”

She glances at the blanket in my hands, her gaze softening as if she sees a newborn instead of empty cloth. “Because suffering has limits, Lyric. And you have reached yours.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know what I feel. Exhaustion. Grief so heavy it has its own gravity. Fear—for what will happen when I stand before men who have never carried loss in their bodies and speak a law they didn’t even know existed. The sense that something larger than my life is shifting beneath me, unstoppable.

“This is not mercy,” the priestess says as she rises. “Do not mistake it for that. What happens next will have consequences... for everyone involved.”

She turns to the door, pausing only once. “Rest tonight. The days ahead will test you more than anything you have endured. And when the council gathers… you will speak a truth this pack has not heard in centuries.”

The truth?

But she is gone before I can ask her what she means.

The door closes, and the silence that settles afterward is heavier than anything before it. It presses against my ribs, my ears, my bones.

Eventually, I force myself to stand. My legs shake beneath me. My body aches in familiar ways, and though I know I’ll heal quickly, blood still drifts warm and steady down my thighs as I cross the room.

The fire still crackles in the hearth.

I walk toward it slowly, holding the blanket with both hands. The closer I get, the tighter my throat becomes.

“Hope Greyheart,” I whisper. The name tastes like a wound. “When I think about you, I’ll think about the hope you gave me.”

All my children have names - secret ones. Mine to keep when the nights grow long and cold.

My skin prickles with heat as I lower the blanket onto the glowing embers. The fabric smolders, then catches. Flames curl around my fingers, but I don’t pull away until the pain forces me to let go.

The flames rise. The room blurs. My breath shudders out of me in pieces.

And for the first time tonight, the fear sinks in... not of Bryce, not of the council, not even of the law the priestess handed me like a blade.

But of standing before a room of old men who have never known a mother’s pain.

Of speaking a forgotten law that will change the course of my life.

Of stepping into a future I cannot yet see.

The fire consumes the last of the blanket.

I stand there, hands blistering, throat raw, knowing the worst part is still ahead of me.