Three Hours Earlier

CHAPTER 4

"Three times you have stood beneath the moon. Three times you have called for your wolf. Three times you have failed."

The words echo across the Nightshade ceremonial grounds like a death sentence.

Alpha Thorne—my alpha, though after tonight that will no longer be true—stands at the center of the ancient stone circle.

His voice carries the weight of judgment, amplified by the alpha command that makes every wolf present stand at attention whether they want to or not.

I kneel in the middle of the circle, dirt biting into my bare knees. The ceremonial robe they dressed me in this morning is white—the color of potential, of wolves about to be born.

By rights, I should have shed it hours ago, replaced it with the midnight blue of a fully shifted pack member. Instead, the white feels like a shroud.

Around me, the Nightshade Pack watches in a silence more damning than any accusation.

Two hundred wolves, arranged in concentric rings around the ceremony space. I can feel their eyes on me. Their disappointment. Their disgust. Their relief that they're not me.

The full moon hangs directly overhead, fat and silver and perfect. The Moon Goddess's eye, they call it.

"Sera Nightshade." Alpha Thorne's voice softens slightly, but not with kindness; it's pity, which is somehow worse.

"You have been given every opportunity. The traditional three ceremonies with additional time to mature. Private sessions with our most skilled shifters. Even consultation with the pack elders about... anomalies."

“Anomalies,” I scoff. What a polite word for What the fuck is wrong with you?.

"Despite all this," he continues, "you remain unchanged, unshifted, and unwolfed."

Someone in the crowd coughs. It sounds suspiciously like a laugh quickly muffled.

Alpha Thorne raises his hand for silence, though the crowd is already quiet. "Pack law is clear. A wolf who cannot shift by their twenty-second year, who has failed three Lunar Awakenings, cannot remain with the pack. The risk is too great—to our bloodlines, to our strength, to our very identity as wolves."

My father stands to the Alpha's right, his face hardened. He hasn't looked at me once tonight. Hasn't looked at me in weeks, actually not since the second failed ceremony, when it became clear that this wasn't a temporary problem.

That his daughter—his only child, the one who was supposed to carry on his legacy—was fundamentally broken.

"However," Alpha Thorne says, and something in his tone makes my stomach tighten, "before we proceed with the traditional exile, there is a matter to address."

He gestures to my father. Elias Nightshade—Beta of the Nightshade Pack, respected warrior, descendant of alpha bloodlines—steps forward.

Even now, even knowing what's coming, part of me still hopes and thinks maybe he'll defend me. Maybe he'll argue for more time, more chances.

He doesn't even look at me as he speaks. "Alpha Thorne. Pack." His voice is formal, stripped of emotion. "I come before you tonight to sever ties with the one who was my daughter. Sera Nightshade has brought shame to my bloodline and dishonor to my name. She carries the blood of alphas but cannot answer their call. She is a stain on our legacy."

Each word lands like a physical blow. I knew this was coming—had known since last week when he stopped speaking to me entirely, when he moved my belongings out of our family quarters into a spare room in the omega wing.

But hearing it spoken aloud, in front of the entire pack…

"Therefore," he continues, still not looking at me, "I formally disown her. She is no daughter of mine. No blood of my blood. When she leaves this pack tonight, she leaves alone, with no family claim and no family name."

"Your request is noted, Elias," Alpha Thorne says gravely. "Does anyone speak against this severance?"

The silence that followed was deafening. Of course there's silence. Who would speak up for me? Who would risk their own standing for the wolfless girl?

I scan the crowd anyway, some desperate part of me still hoping. My eyes find the few wolves who were kind to me over the years. Elena, the pack healer, always had patient words and gentle explanations for why my wolf hadn't emerged yet.

She's looking at her feet. Torn, maybe, but not enough to speak. Marcus—no, a different Marcus, a young warrior I used to train with before my first failed ceremony. We were friends once. He won't meet my eyes.

Even Luna Thorne, the Alpha's mate, who used to smile at me when I was young and tell me I had my mother's eyes. She stares straight ahead, her face carefully neutral.

"Then it is done." Alpha Thorne makes a gesture, and two omega wolves approach with a ceremonial blade.

"Sera Nightshade—you will carry that name no longer—you are hereby exiled from the Nightshade Pack. You will be given until dawn to leave our territory. You may take only what you can carry." The omega closest to me holds out the blade.

I know what I'm supposed to do—take it and cut my palm, letting my blood fall on Nightshade soil one last time as a symbolic severing. Then walk away, disappearing into the forest, where I would die quietly, somewhere the pack won't have to deal with my body.

I stare at the blade, its edge catching moonlight. Part of me wants to refuse and to spit at their feet and curse them all.

Tell them exactly what I think of their traditions and their precious pack bonds, but I'm so tired. Tired of fighting for acceptance that will never come. Tired of apologizing for existing. Tired of the weight of everyone's disappointment pressing down on me like a physical thing. I reach for the blade.

"Wait."