All Chapters of Deprived: Queen of the Outcasts: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The rain didn't feel cold; it felt like a baptism. Behind me, the Silver Crest manor stood like a dying coal in the dark. I could already feel the tether snapping. Every step I took away from the territory, the lush grass beneath my boots began to wither, turning to grey ash. "They will come for you, My Queen," Thane whispered, his voice like grinding stones. He walked a step behind me, his massive frame a shield against the wind. "Fenris is arrogant, but he is not stupid. He will feel the power draining from the borders soon." "Let him come," I said, watching the silver moon vanish behind thick, unnatural clouds. "He wanted a mate with no power. Now he has exactly what he asked for." We reached the Blackwood Ravine, a place forbidden to the Pack. This was where the "Broken" were sent—Betas whose wolves were too violent, too strange, or too silent for the Alpha’s liking. Two figures emerged from the

The air in the Blackwood Ravine grew sharper with each passing day, not with the bite of natural winter, but with the focused, almost sentient cold of my power. Weeks had passed since my departure, and the changes within Silver Crest territory were now undeniably catastrophic. Jace's reports, whispered into my mind like rustling leaves, painted a grim picture: livestock had perished, crops had withered to dust, and even the Alpha’s personal hunting grounds were barren, the prey having fled the encroaching desolation. Fenris, in his arrogant blindness, had initially dismissed it as an unusual cold snap. But the Pack’s elders, their fur thinning and their eyes haunted, knew better. Whispers of a curse grew louder, fueled by Bella’s increasingly desperate attempts to soothe the angry blisters that now marred her neck where my mother’s locket had rested. "They are starving, My Queen," Jace reported one morning, his voice tinged with a grim satisfaction. H

The border of the Silver Crest territory was no longer a line of lush pines and vibrant wildflowers. It was a scar across the earth. On one side, my side, the Blackwood Ravine’s influence had bled into the soil, turning the mud into a rich, dark loam and the trees into towering sentinels of silver-barked oak. On the other side lay the wasteland Fenris had created through his own hubris—a landscape of gray dust and skeletal branches that rattled like teeth in the wind. I stood at the center of the bridge that spanned the Dividing River. The water below was black and sluggish on the Silver Crest side, but as it flowed beneath my feet, it sparkled with the iridescent clarity of Kaelen’s alchemy. Behind me stood my legion. They were no longer the gaunt, trembling refugees who had crawled into my ravine. They were the Vanguard of the Outcasts. Dressed in boiled leather and shadow-fur, their eyes held a terrifyingly calm light. They didn't growl or snap; they stood wit

The peace was a beautiful lie, or perhaps just a temporary lull in the storm. While the unified territory flourished, a new shadow was stretching across the borders—one that didn't belong to the wolves.I was standing in the Great Hall, inspecting a map of the surrounding territories, when a sudden, jarring cold pierced through my chest. It wasn't the frost of my own power; it was a void, a hungry, hollow sensation that made the jackfruit on the table turn to gray mush within seconds."Elora?" Thane was at my side instantly, his hand steadying my arm. His wolf was growling low in his throat, a sound of pure instinctual warning. "What is it?""Something... is eating the light," I whispered, my eyes fixed on the southern border of the map.The doors to the hall burst open. Jace didn't drop from the rafters this time; he ran in, his face pale and his breathing ragged. He was covered in a strange, shimmering black dust that looked like soot but moved like insects."The southern watchtower

The violet veins in my arm didn't just glow; they hummed, acting as a compass that pulled us deeper into the heart of the desolation. As we crossed the ridge of the Silent Mountains, the world changed again. We weren't in a forest anymore. We were standing on the edge of a vast, sunken crater that housed a city made of a substance that wasn't quite stone and wasn't quite light. "Is that... home?" Jace whispered, his eyes wide. Before us lay a sprawling metropolis of translucent spires and floating arches. It was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a tomb. There were no lights in the windows, no smoke from chimneys. It was a city of frozen glass, preserved in a pocket of time where the wind didn't blow and the sun never set. "This is the Aethelgard," Kaelen breathed, his voice full of academic awe. "The lost capital of the First Shifters. Legend said it was swallowed by the earth during the Great Cleansing, but it wasn't swallowed. It was exiled."