CHAPTER 3

The iron gates of the Blackridge Vance estate swung open with a rusty screech, slicing through the heavy midnight air.

Sierra walked down the cobblestone driveway, her worn black duffel bag slung over her uninjured shoulder. The rain had started twenty minutes after she left the stadium, a cold, steady drizzle that soaked through her dark hoodie and washed the lingering track dust from her skin.

The grand manor stood before her, illuminated by amber outdoor sconces. Normally, the grounds were bustling with Blackridge pack guards and junior athletes undergoing late-night conditioning. Tonight, the courtyard was eerily silent.

As Sierra stepped onto the marble porch, two senior pack guards stepped out from the shadows, blocking the double mahogany doors. Both men bore the Blackridge crest pinned to their leather jackets. Neither of them offered a hand or checked her bleeding shoulder.

"You're late, Sierra," the lead guard, Howard, said, his voice completely devoid of respect. "Beta Vance issued a lock-out order an hour ago. You were supposed to surrender your pack access key card at the stadium."

Sierra didn't falter. She held Howard’s gaze, her dark brown eyes steady amidst the rain. "I'm retrieving my belongings, Howard. Move aside."

Howard sneered, glancing at his partner. "There's nothing in there for you anymore, wolfless. The entire pack watched you slide across Lane Four on your face. The Beta's study is already overflowing with calls from board sponsors pulling off their funding."

"I said," Sierra repeated, her tone dropping into a quiet, dangerous register that made the second guard shift uncomfortably, "move aside."

Before Howard could speak, the heavy mahogany doors swung inward.

Beta Thomas Vance stood in the brightly lit foyer. Sierra's father looked immaculate in his tailored suit, though the sharp lines around his jaw were tight with suppressed rage. His dark wolf eyes, identical in shape to Sierra's, looked past her, refusing to lock onto her face.

"Let her in, Howard," Thomas commanded coldly. "She has ten minutes."

The guards stepped back. Sierra brushed past them into the warmth of the foyer, her wet boots leaving dark tracks on the white polished marble.

"Ten minutes, Father?" Sierra asked, standing in the center of the grand entryway. "You didn't even wait for the official medical report?"

"There is no need for a report!" Thomas snapped, his voice booming off the high ceilings as he turned to face her. The sheer authority of a Beta resonated in his voice, but Sierra didn't flinch. "I spent twenty years covering for your physical incompetence, Sierra! I convinced the Blackridge sports council to fund your training, to give you a lane, to pretend that a wolfless girl could represent our bloodline!"

He stepped closer, his face flushing with crimson fury. "And how do you repay this family? You fell on your face in front of eighty thousand live spectators! You forced Alpha Jaxson to execute a public rejection on global television! The Silverfang alliance is ruined! Blackridge's stock fell fourteen percent in two hours!"

Sierra looked at her father, at the man who had never once attended her practice sessions, who had never once asked about her lap times, who saw her only as an equation of political leverage.

"I was poisoned, Father," Sierra said clearly. "Someone put wolfbane oil on my gear."

Thomas let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "Poisoned? Is that the pathetic excuse you're clinging to? Shifter track gear is swept three times before every heat! You failed because you are human, Sierra. You failed because you don't possess a wolf, and you never will."

He turned his back on her, walking towards his study door. "The pack council has voted. Your athlete status is revoked. Your housing privileges are terminated. Pack security will escort you off the property like a dog in ten minutes. Take your clothes and leave Blackridge."

The words were meant to crush her, to leave her begging on her knees for a second chance.

Instead, Sierra felt an odd, liberating weight lift from her chest. The suffocating pressure to earn the approval of a family that loathed her existence evaporated into nothingness.

"Keep the housing, father," Sierra said softly. "Keep the name. I won't be needing either of them."

She turned and climbed the grand staircase, her steps light and deliberate.

In her second-floor bedroom, Sierra didn't waste time. She pulled her duffel bag open and began throwing in only her essentials: three sets of black training clothes, her personal running journal, and a small silver locket her mother had left behind years ago.

She walked over to her trophy case, a glass cabinet filled with regional track medals she had won through sheer human grit. Without hesitation, Sierra swept her arm across the shelf, sending the glass awards crashing to the floor in a shower of shattered crystal and metal.

She didn't need their trophies to validate her speed.

Zipping her duffel bag shut, Sierra slung it over her shoulder and walked down the stairs. She didn't look back at her father's closed study door. She didn't look at the family portraits lining the hallway.

When she pushed open the grand front doors and stepped out into the rain-slicked courtyard, a sleek, pitch-black luxury sedan was idling near the iron gates. The vehicle bore the official, silver-embossed wolf emblem of the Silverfang Pack.

The rear passenger door opened.

Alpha Jaxson stepped out into the pouring rain.