Chapter 4: The Wolf’s Last Cry

- RAVENA

I woke to the feeling of rough hands dragging me across the cold stone floor. All I could sense was gray light and voices yelling around me. They didn't even bother to open the cell door properly, just ripped the hinges from the frame.

"Time to face your punishment, kinslayer," one of the guards snarled, his foul-smelling breath inches from me.

They didn't give me a chance to stand. They just pulled me into the courtyard, where the whole pack had gathered. Their hatred weighed on me so heavily that I struggled to breathe.

As I stepped outside, the scorching sun felt almost mocking that day.

The world should have been weeping with me, bleeding, and roaring in rage. Instead, the courtyard was warm and sunny, and there were pack members there, like carnival-goers.

The children were standing on the steps, eagerly leaning forward. The warriors stood beside them with their arms crossed. The werewolves surrounded us, their eyes fixed on me as they whispered among themselves. They were all waiting for me to break down.

When two of the guards pushed me onto the central platform, I fell onto the stone, bruising my knees. I was cuffed; my hair was crusted with blood.

I remained silent, refusing to struggle.

Seven Elders were gathered behind the altar in a gray crescent. Their gray clothes only made their frozen expressions look colder.

In the middle was Alpha Cian. His eyes were cold as winter, his face completely emotionless.

He stared at me as if I were a demon or a murderer. He looked through me, his eyes telling me I was already dead to him.

“Ravena Valecrest," Elder Marrow began. "You are charged not only with butchering your own family: Beta Gerald Valecrest, Lady Seraphine Valecrest, and the heirs Ezren, Orrick, and Victoria Valecrest, but with profaning their name."

Gasps reverberated around the courtyard.

Murmurs of disbelief spread through the crowd, as if they did not know.

Of course, it was a lie.

Rumors had burned up the city when my family’s blood spilled. Few were surprised.

“You are accused of theft of the pack heirloom,” he went on in a louder voice. "An object attached to the alpha's blood. A talisman enshrined in pack law and family honor.”

My stomach tried to punch a hole through my rib cage. What the hell?

I shook my head as the chains clinked against each other. “I didn't, I don't even know where it is.”

My voice was swallowed by the wind before it hit the air.

Elder Marrow didn't stop. He simply didn't care. His eyes were ablaze. "You stole it on the night of the massacre. You kept it safe, in the hope you could exchange the memory of your family for a taste of forbidden magic."

The audience screamed, gasped, and yelled, rolling over me like a tsunami.

My stomach knotted, and I thought I'd throw up. I searched Alpha Cian's face for a glint of suspicion, but there was nothing.

"You're also charged," Elder Marrow went on, "with plotting to overthrow your Alpha and incite a rebellion within the pack."

My stomach dropped as cold fear spread through me.

The crowd immediately broke out in screaming, booing, and disgust.

“She murdered her family to climb in rank!”

“She wanted Beta power for herself!”

“Betas never have enough. This is why you shouldn't let them get too big!”

I almost laughed bitterly. It was hysterical and choked in my mouth before I could speak.

I had never wanted power. I only wanted diversion stories and bards’ songs, my sister’s singing, my mother’s warm fingers in my hair. So that was my revolt.

But I kept silent because I couldn't speak. It wouldn’t have mattered. They never would’ve believed me.

Elder Marrow extracted a silver brand from the ceremonial brazier, the mark of a traitor.

The crowd hushed.

“By the laws of the dominion, your wolf will be torn from your body and your soul branded. You will be banished from the borders of the pack; your name, lineage, and claim to the future will be taken from you. Your name is no longer Valecrest."

My breath hitched. I didn't pause because of the exile or the baseless accusations but because my wolf, my other half, Astraea, was freaking out. She was frightened and in despair, wailing that she didn't want to go."Ravena. please." Astraea pleaded with me as her voice cracked, quavering like a candle's last flicker.

“Ravena… please…” Astraea whispered, her voice trembling like a dying flame. “Don't let them bind me. I don't want to be locked away from you.”

I squeezed my hands so tightly that I felt the blood from my nails breaking the surface as her voice became weaker and weaker, cracking. But I couldn't save her. I couldn't even save myself.

“I’m here. I'm here," I thought to her frantically. "Astraea, I'm here. I won't leave you. No one is going to take you from me. Please stay with me. Stay with me."

This time, Astraea didn't respond. I only heard silence.

An overwhelming sense of grief hit me, suffocating me, forcing me to my knees. The world whirled around me, and the sun's light burned in my eyes.

I wanted to yell, to howl, to change and rip them to shreds with teeth and claws I could no longer feel. But I raised my head and cast my gaze forward, looking straight into the eyes of Alpha Cian, the man I had loved for so long.

He was the same man I watched from afar during our training, from behind the pillars of the great hall, from the outskirts of every ceremony in which he stood like a statue of a battle-scarred warrior.

I observed him during training, memorizing his movements, his face, and his well-built body.

And in that instant, I knew the truth about him, even as it scorched every memory, every lingering look, every dream, every love. All the love I had for him turned to frost and poison.

And now he wouldn't even look at me. He wouldn’t stand up for me and won't do a thing to save me while they take my life away.

I used to love him until it hurt. Now I hated him with all my heart.

But I still stared at him, hoping that my eyes were enough to make him see the girl who spent her entire life loving him in secret, hopelessly. and was about to lose the last remaining person she loved.

I didn't resist as the guards turned my head. The crowd's anger seemed to strike me like waves of hot wind.

I watched Elder Marrow's approach, the silver brand in his hand.

The warriors made me kneel and attacked my shirt.

Elder Marrow came closer, making it worse.

“Make your final statement,” he said.

And for the first time since the massacre, I raised my head in despair.

I said shakily, “I didn't kill my family.”

I did not cower as I looked straight into Alpha Cian's eyes and said passionately, "You will regret this. I promise you, I will make you regret this for the rest of your life."

Finally, Alpha Cian looked into my eyes. There was something there as his eyes flickered and then turned to ice.

His look said that my threat was the last, shrill words of a girl, as if being sentenced to die.

Several wolves giggled. A few wolves spat on the ground.

Elder Marrow’s eyes turned into slits, and he pushed the silver ring into my arm.

“No,” I whispered. “No, you can’t—”

But my voice was drowned out as the hot iron struck the flesh of my arm, right where I had a small crescent moon birthmark that showed me as a Beta’s child.

“Now you are no longer a Beta’s child,” he declared, in a voice audible to all, as if he were proclaiming a death sentence.

I had barely time to catch my breath when another Elder stepped forward with a second white-hot iron rod, but this time it wasn't my arm that was the target.

It hovered above my heart.

I tried to fight and screamed in fear, but the guards held me.

The iron was hot, and as it approached my skin, it burned.

I could smell the charred flesh. A cry of pain erupted from my lips and echoed around me. Black dots filled my eyes.

But it wasn't the pain that caused me to scream.

I was consumed by pain as talons broke and a door slammed in my soul. It tore out of me so savagely I couldn't breathe.

It was the brutal cutting away, the violent wrongness of something being torn out of my soul.

My bond to my wolf, the part of me that was strong, that was instinct, the part of me that was wild and untameable, was being severed.

My wolf didn't just go away. I could hear her one last time in my head, fighting the weight that she was carrying, but after that, she was gone. The bond broke off. I could no longer feel her pulse and her heat. I was empty, and she was in darkness.

My wrists burned from the chains, and I sank to the ground, gasping. It felt like the world was a long way away.

Elder Marrow was satisfied.

“Now your wolf is locked away,” he called out heartlessly. "You are practically a wolfless.”

Once they had achieved their goal, the Elders left.

Alpha Cian gave a nod.

“Exile her!” His voice rang out.

When the two guards roughly pulled me upwards, I swayed on my feet. I felt dizzy and couldn't see straight.

I didn't even feel my own body anymore; it was too light.

The crowd didn't look at me with hatred, but with pride, because nothing was prettier to them than a crippled wolf.

So this was the end of my life.