Sylvaren
I was the werewolf princess, yet my mother, Diana Thorne, never saw me as her daughter.
To her, I was nothing but a living warning sign.
I was 18, and I still hadn't awakened my wolf. To my family, my only purpose was to make my older brother, Leo Thorne, shine brighter. He was the one destined to become the next Alpha.
When Leo lost 50 gold coins in the black-market fighting pits, my mother starved me and threw me into the arena cages. I was forced to clean up the blood just to repay his debt.
She said it was to teach him "the price of power."
When Leo was caught stealing the Elder Council's sacred silver staff, my mother broke my ribs in front of everyone and forced me to apologize to the Elders for his crime.
She said it was to teach him that an Alpha's honor must never be stained.
Leo had barely started at the academy when he began hiding banned potions. To straighten him out, my mother left a bottle of pure wolfsbane extract on the stone table in my room, right where no one could miss it.
I drank it by mistake.
I had no wolf to protect me. The second the poison took hold, I was convulsing on the floor like a dying stray.
My father, Alpha Gareth Thorne, drove the carriage at full speed, rushing me to the Healers' Temple deep inside our territory. But right at the edge of our lands, we were stopped by a checkpoint set up for the blood moon lockdown.
The checkpoint was under strict lockdown. The patrol unit stationed there took orders directly from the Elder Council.
They stopped us for a routine inspection. My father showed no signs of anything wrong. But my mother suddenly flung open the carriage curtain, laughed, and shouted at the patrol, "Your inspection is nothing but a joke! Your Alpha secretly swallowed an entire bottle of forbidden frenzy potion, the kind that drives a wolf completely feral! And now you're breaking your rules and letting him pass just because he's the Alpha?!"
The poison kept eating away at my insides, and blood spilled from my mouth. But