Chapter 004

Sienna's POV

My pulse hammered a frantic rhythm against my throat, a drumbeat for a war I was not prepared for. I pressed a hand to my chest to anchor myself, feeling an unfamiliar heat radiating from my skin as fire tried to escape through my throat. This wasn't just adrenaline. It was the pressure of extracted magic trying to backflow into the void they had carved out of me.

The medical room felt suffocating, too small, a restless energy coiling hot and heavy in my gut. It wasn't the trembling of a victim anymore. It was pure pressure. I could feel the stone walls pulsing, or perhaps it was just my heart echoing back through the floorboards. The extraction hadn't just taken my blood. It had stripped the insulation from my nerves.

Peace, little wolf.

The voice wasn't new. It had paced behind my ribs since I was a child, nameless and wordless, but now it formed full sentences, low and protective in my bones. They took the surface. They drained the well, but they did not find the spring. We are together. But stay sharp. We are bleeding power we cannot yet replace.

Juvien. The name surfaced with her, not given but remembered. She was holding me together, breath by ragged breath.

Heavy footsteps echoed in the hall with the clinical gait of Dr. Noah. I threw on the silk clothes he had left, my hands shaking so violently I could barely fasten the ties. The fabric felt like sandpaper against my sensitized skin, the earlier fire flickering, replaced by the raw exposed nerve of a girl who had been carved open and left to bleed.

The door creaked open. Noah stepped in holding a small vial, his face a mask of professional neutrality, his eyes wide and tracking the way the air seemed to shimmer around me.

"Your eyes. Take these. The veil lasts eight hours, tops. Thereafter, the glamour fails and the world sees the truth."

I took the vial, my fingers brushing his, and saw the fear in his gaze. He wasn't just helping me. He was terrified of what I was becoming, looking at me as if I were a ticking bomb. I swallowed the dose and let the cold slide down my throat until the silver dimmed behind my irises.

Seven hours, fifty-nine minutes, Juvien counted. Move.

I didn't wait for a lecture. I slipped into the hall with dark glasses shielding what was left of the glow. My boots clicked against the cold tile as the corridor stretched too long, every shadow a possible guard, every door a possible Lucas.

I flattened against the wall when voices passed. Maids, then warriors. The bond thread tugged, sharp and wrong, pulling toward the grand staircase, but I went the other way and found a linen alcove behind the east wing. I pressed my back to the wall, breathed, and counted to twenty. The pressure in my chest didn't ease. It organized.

Six hours left, Juvien said. We can't hide. We exit or we're caged.

I forced my legs forward. The Great Hall was two corridors down and I wouldn't cower in a closet if someone were to see me.

Lucas stepped from the shadows near the staircase before I reached it, looking haggard. His hand reached out as if to touch my shoulder, his fingers trembling before he jerked them back into a tight fist. He looked like a man who had sold his soul and was only just realizing the price.

"You're awake," he said, his words scraping.

"Yes," I replied tonelessly.

I walked past him. The bond pulsed, a jagged spike of his regret making my knees buckle. I caught the railing, my breath hitching, because every step away from him felt like pulling a hook through my heart. He didn't follow. Not yet.

Private first, Juvien growled. He can't be weak where they see.

The Great Hall — two hours later

The air inside was thick with lilies and high-ranking auras, a suffocating mix of floral perfume and predatory power. Hundreds of eyes landed on me as whispers rose like insects in the rafters.

"Everyone is looking at her," Ivy hissed, stepping forward to physically block my path. Her crimson gown was the color of fresh blood. Unlike her mother, Ivy was obsessed with the social mirror. She didn't want the pack. She wanted the throne and the worship that came with it.

Lucas ignored us, marching toward his father on the raised dais. I watched them exchange a grim look, a passing of a dark torch, before the Alpha raised a hand to call the chaos to order.

"I, Lu—" Lucas started, but his voice shattered. He stepped toward the edge of the dais, his hand reaching for empty air, his mouth forming the shape of my name. "Sienna—"

The hall went deathly silent. For three seconds he wasn't an Alpha. He was just a man looking at his mate, drowning in his own choices. Then he saw his father's eyes, cold and disappointed. Lucas's aura flared in a violent tremor that shook the crystal chandeliers, sending dust onto the guests below, and he forced his head down and stiffened his posture into stone.

"I... Lucas... reject Sienna Alexander as my Luna!" The sentence started as a stuttered whisper and ended in a roar.

The hammer fell. The rejection sliced through the bond and the agony wasn't just spiritual. It was a physical assassination. My hearing turned to static, replaced by a roar like a crashing ocean, my vision blurring to gray. Warmth trickled from my nose and hit my lip, flooding my mouth with copper. Juvien went silent, retreating into the coldest corner of my mind, leaving me a hollow shell standing in the center of a storm.

Five hours left, Juvien said through the ringing. Barely.

"You will feel it, Sienna," Lucas snarled, stepping down with bloodshot eyes. "Why didn't it break you? You're weak. What are you?"

He surged forward, his aura expanding like a wall, the air going heavy. It pressed on my shoulders, ordering my knees to the floor with a weight designed to shatter my spine. I gritted my teeth as my bones felt too big for my skin, refusing to bow even as I swayed. The pressure reached its limit and then, with a sound like silk ripping, it broke.

Lucas went pale, staggering back. As his skin accidentally brushed mine a wave of pure invisible violent energy exploded outward. Not an emotional outburst but a physical vacuum. The rejection had left a hole where the bond used to be and the room's energy rushed violently in to fill it, using my body as the conductor. He flew backward, hitting the edge of the dais with a thud, and the room went silent.

"Sienna is cursed!" Ivy screamed, jumping into the silence, pointing a shaking finger at me. Her eyes were wide with a manic need to secure her status. "Look at her! She's attacking the Alpha! She is a stain on our past!"

My legs buckled. I hit one knee on the marble as black spots ate the edges of my sight. Up, Juvien snarled. They see blood and call it weakness. Show them teeth.

The heat in my chest didn't return. It changed. Cold spread from my ribs to my fingertips, sharp and focused. Not me standing. Her. I pushed up with one hand and rose, my voice coming from my chest instead of my throat, low and level. Not power. Defense.

"Permission? Who gave you permission to speak?"

Ivy flinched, retreating behind her mother as Morrigan stepped forward. She didn't raise her voice, simply looking at the Alpha with eyes that held the weight of a judge.

"Alpha, the records from the healer's guild are clear on the nature of her mother's passing," Morrigan said softly. "The Black Tosil does not manifest by accident. It is a mark of a soul that has begun to rot. To keep her is to invite that decay into the pack's heart."

The hall went still. My mother. A fracture opened in my chest that no ancient power could mend, images of her face flashing before me, tainted by Morrigan's words. I stared at Morrigan, my mouth opening without sound. Not belief. Shock at how clean the lie was, how practiced.

"Show the proof," Alpha Adrian demanded.

Morrigan reached into her robes and held up the Black Tosil, a dark twisted object that smelled of rot.

"The healers who found it. Bring them forward," Alpha Adrian said.

Morrigan didn't blink. "The discovery was taxing for them. They have retired to the southern border. Convenient, yes. But the seal on these documents is authentic. Check it. The seal verifies the report, not the relic. The relic is demonstration, not evidence."

Murmurs moved through the hall. The logic was thin and everyone knew it. It was theater, and it was working.

I looked at Lucas. He saw the blood drying on my lip, saw me swaying, and took a single step toward me before stopping. He looked at the crowd, then back at me, and I saw the moment his ambition finally strangled his empathy.

"She is a danger," he spat, his voice shaking. "From this moment, she is a slave. Property of the pack. And I hereby claim Ivy as my true Luna!"

He leaned down and bit into Ivy's neck, the mark flaring a sickening gold as the pack erupted in a conflicted cheer.

I stood in the center of the hall with the copper taste still coating my tongue. The pressure in my chest had settled into something cold, organized, and lethal. My heart was fractured. Juvien was silent. But the heat didn't fade. It transformed. They had broken the girl but left the weapon behind. They believed they had secured their future. They had only lit the fuse.

Four hours left, Juvien said. When the veil drops, they see what they made.