Chapter 2: The Taste of Dirt

- RAVENA

The stone under my feet was slippery. As I moved around, each step took me deeper into the damp, and it smelled of old urine and rotting waste.

I smuggled a lot of extra weight around my throat.

My inner wolf, Astraea, should have been pacing at me in my mind, snarling at the indignity, but she was silent, huddled, and terrified.

I leaned my head against the wall and gazed at the rusted iron bars. I couldn't stop thinking about my family.

No matter how my life got away from me, I had to remain alive because of one thing: Roderic D'Arden. The guy was a legend of the Northern Dominion, and a bad one at that.

The Grand Alpha of the Frostcrown Shadows Pack, or the highest-ranking hitman the other Alphas would resort to when they needed somebody erased. Just the name made people draw their children to the hearth.

I still recall hearing about him from my dad as he sat by the fire, whispering about the Grand Alpha like telling a ghost story. "He’s a great weapon, kid," he'd said, messing with my hair. "The sharpest blade in the northern dominion, but a knife doesn't have feelings; it just cuts whatever you point it at."

“Remember the name, Ravena.” I mumbled under my breath, “He has taken everything from you."

Heavy footsteps rang out from the distance, boots approaching as a heavy door groaned open.

Alpha Cian pulled up in front of the bars and was staring down at me as I had somehow stumbled in on his way here. Beside him, draped over his arm, was Lysithea, my cousin.

My parents used to take care of her as their own child, and she was once a poor girl who was treated with the same abundance of wealth and comfort.

It seemed she had escaped death after my family's tragedy. She looked perfect. Not a hair out of place, her eyes wide and shimmering with fake pity.

Three years of marriage, and this was what I'd got in return.

Betrayal. Lies. Broken promises.

I'd given him my love, my trust, and the best years of my life, only to discover that none of it had meant enough to him. I'd stood by his side, believing we were building a future together, while he was busy destroying everything we'd built. Three years of loyalty, wasted on a man who couldn't even give me the same in return.

But I had known this was coming. What an insolent, hypocritical bitch!

Even before my family's massacre, she had been close with Cian, always staying beside him, and looking at him like he meant the world to her. So when the bloodshed came, and my family was condemned, it didn't surprise me that she had simply stepped to Cian's side and stayed there. Should have hurt less since I'd expected it.

“Still cocky then?” It was like a bucket of ice water when Cian spoke.

I just looked at him from where I sat in the dark corner. “Did you come to see if the floor would be comfortable, Alpha?”

Cian’s jaw tightened. He used to gaze into my eyes like he was burning me with his gaze. Now, there was only a cold, flat depression. "I'm here to put an end to it, Ravena, to everything."

“End what? You already have everything I would give you.” My words came out flat as I snapped. “My family, my home, and my name. You're a little late to the party.”

Lysithea giggled in a high and thin voice. “Oh, darling, don't be so big-headed; he's come to give you a way out. A mercy.”

I looked at her then. Her smile was just a thin one. She had always dreamed of having what I had. My family's respect. My position. Cian's attention.

She now had everything.

“Mercy?” A bitter laugh escaped my lips as I asked, “From you? The only thing I want from either of you is to see you burn.”

Cian’s face darkened. “Fucking enough! You’ve been tried and found guilty by the pack council. After the punishment by the pack, the sentence is banishment to the borderland.”

My breath hitched. Banishment?

I had a shiver of fear run down my spine. Being cast out, without a pack, without the moon goddess's protection… it was a plight worse than death. It meant being a rogue the rest of my life.

“Well, I see,” I said, my voice now on the verge of breaking.

Cian looked down at me. "Look at you. You are a fucking nightmare, you know that? Seriously, I didn't think you had that much hatred in you. I certainly didn't think you'd killed your entire family to get your paws on that heirloom or some power. You're a monster, Ravena. You're greedier than I believed, and a lot more pathetic. You're sick!"

He glanced at Lysithea, who mockingly smiled at him, rubbing her fingers on his arm.

"Pathetic," her voice dripped with venom again.

My eyes met Cian's. “Well, I'm here to give you a choice, Ravena. There is a way to save yourself. We all know what happens to the wolves that have been cast out. They die slowly, alone, and in the wilderness.”

He stopped and seemed to let what he said sink in.

"I can't let that happen to you. I won't,” he said, and for a second, I almost believed him, but then I caught the cold look in his eyes.

"There are two choices you can make,” he said. “You will have to take exile or…” He looked at Lysithea, who nodded, smiling slyly.

"Or you can beg me for my forgiveness," Cian went on, “Get on your knees right now and tell me you're sorry. Swear you'll be a good, obedient little wolf for the rest of your life. You'll have a roof over your head, you'll be well-fed, you'll have nothing else.”

A servant. My family, the Betas of this pack, brought us down to this. To be dirt under Lysithea's feet.

"I would rather die," I snarled, and my wolf, which had only awakened now since I've been thrown in here, stirred. A rumbling noise lowed in my chest.

"Then so be it," Cian said, a flash of something in his eye before it was gone and replaced with that cold and hard hatred. “Consider this me taking my life back. I've had enough of wasting my life with a kinslayer. I’m marrying a real woman with a backbone who deserves the title. Lysithea’s going to be the Luna you were too greedy to become. You'll be in the dirt while we're celebrating our mating. Honestly? The wilderness is the place where a monster such as you belongs."

The words cut at me like knives in the stomach, each one stabbing the back of the other. Astraea was losing her mind, I recalled in the back of my mind. I had a feeling of her shaking with rage and desperation, as though her claws wanted to rip something apart. Mate… she whimpered in desolation. He was meant to be our mate. He rejected us.

But I wasn't the same girl who had dreamed of being his Luna. That girl was dead, slaughtered with her family in the great hall. I pushed the pain down, letting the cold turn to determination in my veins.

"I won't beg," I said, as steady and clear as a bell in the damp cell. "I will fight the wild beasts, rather than breathe the same air as a traitor and a liar."

Cian's face hardened. "You insolent..."

“She's made her choice, my love,” Lysithea purred, stepping forward and placing her perfectly manicured hand on his broad chest. "Let the wilderness have her; it's a proper end for one who's got blood on her hands."

She glared at me with triumph. "Enjoy your life as a rogue, Ravena. I hope the wolves find you. I hope they tear you apart, piece by piece. I want to hear you scream all the way from the alpha's chambers."

Cian drew near, and his fingers curled into rigid fists. "I, Cian Thornecrest, Alpha of the Crimsonridge Pack, reject you, Ravena Valecrest, as my mate and my future Luna. I break every vow, every promise, and every bond between us. You are nothing to me now and forever."

There was a sudden crack that pierced my chest, the crack of the bond. It was as if someone had taken someone's lung out of the body. I doubled over, my forehead bumping against the dirt on the floor, and gasped. My head was so achy I couldn't feel a thing. The agony was unbearable, leaving me too numb to cry out.

Astraea howled in agony, a silent and soundless scream of pure misery, rattling my skull.

The bond between Cian and me was severed, leaving a void in my life.

Lysithea purred, "Cian, honey, take it easy. She's already broken. Look at her.”

I lifted my gaze to him, to the boy I once loved. My eyes caught him, and he flinched. They weren't full of pity. They were all stuffed with something else. Some dark, cold, and deadly thing.

"It's the one thing you've ever been good at, Cian," I rasped, some blood trickling down my nose. "Breaking things."

My eyes darted to Lysithea, who was preening next to him. "Enjoy my scraps."

"The Council has decided," Cian snapped, ignoring me. “Tomorrow they will bind your wolf. We are throwing you away, your worthless and empty carcass, into the borderland. If the cold doesn't kill you, the rogues will. Don't come back to see my face again, or I will kill you myself.”

He turned to leave, but I called out to him.

“Alpha Cian,” I whispered.

He paused and turned around to face me.

I looked him in the eye and spoke out all my pain in rage and grief. "I swear on the blood of my family, you're gonna regret this. And when I’m done with you, you’ll wish you had killed me when you had the chance.”

He looked at me for a long time and laughed. A bitter, vicious noise that reverberated through the small cell.

“You are delusional,” he replied. "You're dead weight, Ravena. You've got no power, no pack, and no voice. You couldn't hurt a fly if you tried."

He spun around, and his cloak brushed the ground. Lysithea remained there a second, gazing at him as he came toward the stairs. As the door rang closed behind him, her mask came off.

Her eyes glared, and her expression turned cruel.

"You look like shit, Ravena,” she whispered, leaning against the bars.

“Go to hell, Lys.”

“Well, I am already in heaven,” She laughed out loud, as it bounced off the moist walls. “Do you have any idea how easy it was? Cian was so... pliable. All I had to do was cry a little, show him a few ‘missing’ pieces of jewelry in your bag, and tell him I saw you running from the hall with blood on your hands. He didn't even hesitate. He just believed it.”

My blood ran cold under my skin as I gazed at the evil woman. “Why? We’re family.”

“Family?” The word came out of her mouth. "Things have changed. I was the poor cousin, the shadow. You were the golden girl with the Alpha on your arm. Now look at you, a kinslayer and traitor. They’re going to bind your wolf tomorrow, and I’m going to be in the front row watching.”

She stretched out her hands through the bars, her perfectly manicured nails clawing into my wild hair, forcing me to look at her.

“Now I am the Luna,” she hissed. “And you? You're heading to the Borderlands, and no one makes it there without a wolf, so you'll only make it two nights, and then it's too much."

She released her hand and pushed my head into the stone.

“Goodbye, Ravena. Try not to scream too loudly tomorrow. It’ll ruin my mood.”

She looked back and started to saunter up the stairs, her humming fading away.