Zal
My family took in sera when I was eight. Her father died a hero, so we owed her.
From that day on, I became a shadow in my own house. Mother decorated her room. Father looked at her more gently than he ever looked at me, his own daughter. Even my fated mate said she was "gentler. More worthy."
Then the physician found her cure. A rare blood disorder. Only one donor in the entire pack.
Me.
The first transfusion. The second. The third. My arms became a map of needle marks, and my wolf — my beautiful, silent wolf — began to drown somewhere inside me. When I collapsed, they called me selfish. When I begged them to look at me, my mother looked away.
Then they voted me out of our pack. A "sanatorium," they said.
They sent me north with two guards and a sealed letter to give the rogues.
They didn't know the needles had been feeding something else. It's a promise — older than their pack, older than their throne. A promise that makes dead earth bloom, and dying birds rise.
And blood taken by force doesn't vanish.
It ripens.
Now the full moon is three nights away. The curse is eating their territory, the fake sister is failing without me, and my family is on their knees at the gates of the valley that shelters me — begging for the blood they threw into the snow.
The Alpha kneels in front of me. My mother weeps. My mate reaches for my hand.
I look at the needle marks that have finally faded, and I smile.
"You can only save one daughter," I tell them. "Choose."
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