Semua Bab VEILFIRE: CURSED TO BURN, BORN TO REIGN: Bab 1 - Bab 10

POV:: Ilyra, The Mother, YOUNG PRIESTESS, THE BLESSING MOON The moon hung heavy over the Alpha’s Hall — swollen and silver with ancient promise. It was the Blessing Moon, the sacred rite when expectant she-wolves were presented to the priestesses for Selene’s grace. One by one, their pregnancies were catalogued, touched, and whispered over, hoping the Moon might mark the child early. Fertility was not merely a gift — power, politics, and divine currency paid in blood. Ilyra knelt at the altar, fingers slick with sacred oil, the scent of lavender and moonflower clinging to her sleeves. This was her third year beneath the Hall’s vaulted ceiling. She had memorised every chant, every rune. She could whisper calm into the most trembling wombs. She thought she had seen everything. She was wrong. The line moved slowly — bloated women with swollen ankles, downcast eyes, breath held tight in their chests. Some wore pride like a pelt. Others barely met Ilyra’s gaze, clinging to

POV: ARAYA Sometimes, when Araya looked at her reflection, she wondered if the mirror was lying.The girl who stared back didn’t look human — not quite.Too pale from the lack of sun.Cracked lips.Eyes that held no light.Just a blank emptiness — as if something inside her had curled up long ago and died.Maybe that’s why they hated her.Maybe they sensed what she was before even she did.Or maybe… cruelty was just easier than compassion.She rarely spoke. Only when she had to.The last time she screamed was when she was twelve — trying to shield a small pup the others were tormenting for being born weak.She’d thrown herself between them, shaking, hands bloodied.They’d broken three of her ribs.The pup joined another pack the next day.They left her behind.The Alpha’s words had been sharp and final:> “Not useful. Just a toy that breaks too easily.”She hadn’t been punished for fighting.She was punished for forgetting her place.Since then, she remembered it well:> Stay small.

POV: ARAYA After the ball, they didn't talk to her.Not directly.They talked in whispers.Like she was a disease that spread. It was like the rejection had taken away her place and value and left her with something worse than shame.Something demonic.Wolves walked by her in the hallways with their heads turned sharply away from her as if they were afraid of getting sick from looking at her. Mothers pulled their pups closer. Warriors flared their nostrils and stepped around her like she smelled bad.When she got back to the kennels, she found that her bedding was soaked with animal urine. She no longer had her wool blanket. The lavender sprig she had stolen and hidden under the stone by her cot burned to black ash.The carvings she had made during long, sleepless nights—a fox, a crescent moon, and a wolf's tooth—were all broken in half. Snapped off cleanly and left in a pile on the floor, like bones left behind after a hunt.Nobody said anything.They didn't have to.That's how the

POV: ARAYA They pulled her past statues of the Goddess with glassy eyes and into a round room lit by the moon and ritual fire. Priestesses sitting in a half circle, dressed in silver robes and with sacred ink on their throats. The High Priestess Irelia stood in the middle. Pale like the moon. Eyes that are blind and white. But she saw more than most people. A raised obsidian altar with runes on it and a silver dagger that glowed in the moonlight were behind her. " Irelia sighed and said, "You are here because something strange happened at last night's mating ball." Araya didn't say anything. Irelia tilted her head. "You were mated and then rejected." not because of what you did. Because of who you are. The priestesses whispered, making a low chant. Irelia moved forward. "You don't smell like wolves." You haven't. But still... She went around her. "...one of our own said they could feel a mating bond." One priestess said, "The mate bond was an illusion, an act, She must ha

POV: ADIRA , ARAYAOf course, she smiled the whole time.She was too refined to get angry. Too smart to cry. Too smart to face Kade head-on.Instead, she focused on something else.To the scent trail that wouldn't go away from the training grounds.He didn't remember making the claw marks on Kade's bedpost.To the name Araya, which was carved into a tree outside the borders. There was blood on the bark.And most importantly...To the wolf's no.Wolves never forgot what was theirs.Even when their human halves acted like they didn't care.Adira looked. She stayed put. And behind her calm demeanour, a plan started to form.If Kade's wolf didn't forget about Araya...Maybe it was time for someone to remind the pack how dangerous she really was.Or even betterAdira saw.She definitely saw it.She saw everything.Kade walked by her every time, as if he didn't feel the heat of her skin against his.He always came back from training covered in sweat and blood, but not happy.Every time he w