Chapter 3

POV: Ronan Thorn

“I rejected her, and yet I can’t stop dreaming of blood.”

The smell of smoke clung to my skin like a second coat. No matter how many times I bathed since the Blood Moon Ceremony, the air still tasted of ash and regret.

I told myself, “Bro. You did the right thing.”

It was obvious that Amira wasn’t fit to be my Luna. She wasn’t noble-born but rather a curse. She was a mystery—a stray adopted by a dead Beta with no pack legacy, no political value. Choosing her would’ve been suicide.

So why did I keep seeing her in my dreams, blood streaked across her face, a ghost of fire burning in her eyes?

Why did it feel like I had made the greatest mistake of my life?

Liesendra by my side sat by the fire, humming a song I didn't recognize. Her fingers danced lazily over a worn page of an old tome—one of the many ancient relics her father smuggled into Winter Hollow. The red crystal pendant around her throat pulsed softly like a heartbeat.

“Babe,” she cooed, glancing up from her book. “You’re brooding again.”

“I'm thinking,” I muttered.

“About that whore?” she asked with a puppy smile that didn’t touch her eyes.

I said nothing. The less she knew, the better.

She closed the book and stood, walking toward me. Her hands curled around my arm, nails lightly scraping my skin. “She means nothing now. You chose your destiny. You chose me.”

I didn’t respond, because I didn’t know if I had chosen anything—or if I’d simply been cornered.

The howling started just after midnight.

Not the rhythmic howls of a patrol or a wolf singing to the moon. This was guttural. Desperate. Like bones cracking under pressure.

“Babe get up,” I parted Lisendra, “Can you hear the howls.” 

“Yes, I do hear them.” She said, in something like panic. 

We stood up from where we laid.

Although I was an Alpha but I could still feel my fingers twitch, “Rogues,” I growled, already shifting into my wolf before the words fully left my mouth.

The summit grounds erupted into chaos.

Fangs. Fire. Screams.

Rogues poured in like waves, their eyes glowing red with madness. They weren’t feral. They were organized.

I saw Liesendra’s father barking orders to warriors. Elders retreating behind protective circles. And in the center of it all was Amira.

She was bloodied, one arm limp at her side, and yet she fought like a wild thing. She tore through three rogues in the span of a heartbeat, her movements fluid and deadly, like she was born for war.

My wolf surged forward. I told myself I was going to protect the summit. That Amira was just another warrior.

But when one rogue charged her blind spot, I moved before I could think. My fangs closed around its throat, ripping flesh from bone.

She looked at me—just for a second.

Not with gratitude but with disappointment.

We drove them back. Some escaped, vanishing into the forest, others fell with unholy sigils burned into their chests. I recognized the mark immediately.

The same one I saw in Selene’s vision, drawn in charcoal on her journal weeks ago when I caught her sleepwalking.

“You okay?” I asked her, approaching slowly.

She didn’t look at me.

“You should’ve let them kill me,” she whispered.

“You’re right anyways. I would have let them kill you.” I snapped, “I saved your life, Instead of you to be thankful, instead you choose to be foolish.”

“I also saved your life tonight,” she said, locking eyes with me, her eyes glassy but proud. “And I’ll regret it every day.”

The accusations came swiftly.

By morning, whispers swarmed the pack like locusts.

“She staged the attack.”

“She wanted sympathy.”

“She’s a cursed child, didn’t you hear? No real lineage.”

Liesendra was silent through most of it—but her silence was too precise, too strategic.

Then the 'evidence' came—one of the captured rogues had markings on his wrists matching a technique only taught in Beta training.

“Convenient,” Selene said coldly when she was summoned before the Elders. “You think a girl with no allies and no standing could orchestrate a rogue invasion?”

“You’ve always been… peculiar,” one of the Elders said. “And dangerous. The Moon’s mark may bind, but it does not absolve.”

“I bled for this pack!” she shouted.

“Exactly,” Amara said softly, stepping into the circle. “You shed too much blood. Whose side are you really on, Selene?”

She turned to me.

I should’ve spoken up.

I should’ve told them she saved me.

But I didn’t.

Not when she looked at me like I was the stranger now.

The vote was cast.

Exile.

At sunrise.

They chained her wrists with silver cuffs and dragged her through the clearing. The snow beneath her feet turned red from her open wounds, but she didn’t cry, rather did she beg.

She met my eyes as they passed.

Her lips moved slowly and silently, but I read the word with terrifying clarity. “You’re nothing but a Liar.”

I closed my eyes, but still I saw her face.

Still smelled the blood on the snow.

As the guards disappeared into the woods with Amira in tow, I walked past the scorched corpses of the fallen rogues. One of them lay face-up, lips curled into a dead grin, his chest burned with that same twisted sigil.

But this time, something else shimmered beneath it. A faint rune—older. Cracked. Dormant.

Not a rogue mark.

A curse.

And suddenly, I knew this was no random attack.

It was a message.

A warning.

A beginning.

That was when the r

ealization hit me. I’d just sent the only person who could stop it into