جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

The moment it went out, Blake called.I hung up.He switched to voice messages and sent three in a row, each one more impatient than the last.[It's just a joke between friends. Do you have to make it a thing?][You just mate with Eric first and cancel it in a month. It's a forfeit, that's all.][Don't embarrass me over this.]Reading them, my chest still tightened.He handed me over like an object and then turned around and complained that I was being difficult.The three tasks of the mating ceremony went up in the group soon after.The first, a kiss.The second, complete the mating mark ceremony and form a bond.The third, announcing it on every social platform.The mockery came quickly."She cannot even call her wolf. How is she supposed to complete these tasks and form a bond?""Every werewolf knows a broken wolf can't form a bond. Looks like Eric isn't finishing that one.""Going public with something that useless isn't an announcement. It's public suicide."Every line mocked me a

By that afternoon, before I had even started getting ready, the messages were coming one after another.Some of them had reached the venue and started setting up.I frowned and opened the photographs they had posted.They were discussing the seating for the evening.Someone posted a picture of a booster seat.It was raised and fitted with straps.It was unmistakably an infant booster seat.[Save this one for Liora. A weak little broken wolf with no wolf at all. What if she gets emotional and faints and can't even stay in a chair?][This chair is exactly right for her kind. Weak little babies, weak little rabbits, weak little Liora.]A dozen laughing messages appeared beneath it almost at once.They made no attempt to hide their contempt for me.For once Blake was not joining in.What he said instead was this.[Leave it. She isn't coming.]Then Serena posted.[That's right, everyone. Stop setting it up.][What if Liora does come? It isn't her fault her wolf never woke. Imagine how upset

The force of the blast swept through the entire private room.Kael, who had been holding up his phone to capture my humiliation, crashed bodily into a leather sofa. His phone flew from his hand, struck the coffee table, and the screen shattered.He shook uncontrollably, his back pressed hard against the cushions, without the courage even to raise his head toward me.This was the inborn dominance of an Alpha bloodline.Faced with my fully unleashed power, ordinary wolves could not even straighten their backs.In that enormous room, Eric alone remained standing.He had shifted too. A massive black wolf stood steadily at my side, his dark coat gleaming coolly beneath the warm lights.His black-wolf aura wrapped around me layer by layer like a solid shield, absorbing some of the power spilling from me so the others would not be badly hurt.The mating marks newly formed on our necks burned hot, and the resonance between our souls rang clearly through both our minds.The blast slammed Blake

Freya used her family's system access to retrieve the archived security footage from the shifting trial.Freya projected the recording onto the wall and said, "Look at this timestamp. Ten minutes before you entered the moonstone circle, Serena went into the heart of it claiming she was leaving a charm to calm you."Fragments of memory locked into place inside my mind.Before the trial began, Serena had handed me a wolf-fang pendant with a kindly smile and said it had been blessed to ease my nerves.The faint bitterness I had smelled when I stepped into the circle had come from that pendant.It had never been a charm for peace or protection.It contained powder from a forbidden drug that suppressed a wolf and triggered excruciating pain.Even then, Serena had intended to label me as a wolf who could not awaken her own wolf and make me a public spectacle.I secured a copy of the footage and went to the pack training hall with Eric.Blake was training inside, distractedly swinging a battl

White-wolf power formed a vast screen of light above the plaza.The white-wolf bloodline carried the power to recover buried memories, and it began to replay the past in full.Images from three years of security-camera blind spots filled the screen.Everyone watched Serena slip into the center of the testing circle the night before my trial, open a packet of forbidden powder, and scatter it across the stones.The image shifted. Blake stood motionless in the shadows nearby, watched everything, and then walked away without expression.Next came the day of the trial, when Serena pretended kindness and placed the sachet containing the forbidden drug in my hand.Chat records from countless nights appeared before the crowd as well.Again and again, Serena manipulated Blake, urged him to discard me, and planned to destroy my reputation so I would lose my claim as heir."Once everyone accepts that she is a broken wolf, the Alpha will abandon her. With no heir left, we can support a new Alpha t