The Judgment Circle was not just a place of law, but it was a place where souls went to die. The floor was made of obsidian, cold enough to seep through my skin and settle in my marrow. My wrists were raw, the silver-lined shackles hissing every time I moved, sending thin curls of acrid smoke into the air.
But the physical pain was a dull thrum compared to the sight of the man on the throne.
Killian Nightshade. My Alpha. My husband. My mate.
He sat with his back straight, his large hands gripping the obsidian armrests so tightly the stone began to hairline fracture. His golden eyes, usually filled with a warmth that could melt the harshest winter, were flat and glassy. He looked like a man made of marble, beautiful and utterly lifeless.
"Elara Vance," Killian's voice didn't just speak; it boomed, vibrating through the stone floor and slamming into my chest. "The High Council has reached a verdict. The vial of Nightshade poison, the very toxin currently paralyzing my father, it was found hidden in your personal infirmary. Three witnesses saw you near the kitchens before the Alpha Emeritus fell. And then… there is Sienna."
My gaze flickered to the side. Sienna Thorne, the Beta's daughter, sat draped in white silk that made her look like a mourning angel. A thick, pristine bandage was wrapped around her neck. She looked fragile, her lower lip trembling as if she were about to burst into tears. But when our eyes met for a fleeting second, the mask slipped. In that dark, honeyed gaze was a flash of pure, unadulterated triumph.
"I didn't do it, Killian," I whispered. My voice was raspy, my throat feeling like it had been scraped with sandpaper. I forced myself to stand, ignoring the way the silver bit into my skin. "I have spent five years as your healer. I have saved lives in this pack. Why would I destroy the man who treated me like a daughter when my own parents died?"
"Because you were desperate!" a voice shrieked from the back of the hall. It was Sienna's mother, but soon, the entire room erupted into a cacophony of hatred.
"She knew she was being replaced!"
"A wolf-less freak can't lead a pack!"
"Traitor! Poisoner!"
The shadows in the hall seemed to lengthen as the pack's collective anger rose. The growls of a hundred shifted and semi-shifted wolves created a low-frequency vibration that made the windows rattle.
Killian stood up, and the room went instantly silent. He was six-foot-four of pure, predatory muscle, and as he stepped down from the dais, the crowd parted like the Red Sea. He stopped just inches from the edge of the Judgment Circle.
His scent—sandalwood and rain—hit me like a physical blow. It was the scent of home, of safety. But today, it felt like the scent of a storm that was about to drown me.
"I gave you everything," Killian said, his voice dropping to a low, pained frequency that only I was meant to hear. His jaw tightened, and I saw a flicker of hesitation in his eyes, a brief shadow of the boy who used to bring me wildflowers from the meadow. "I stood by you when the elders demanded a stronger Luna. I protected you. And this is how you repay the Nightshade bloodline?"
"Killian, look at me," I pleaded, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Truly look at me. You know me. You know my soul. We are fated."
His expression flickered. For a second, his hand moved, twitching as if he wanted to reach out and pull me from the circle. But then, a loud, agonizing groan echoed from the floor above just the room where his father lay dying. The sound snapped the tension. Killian's face hardened into a mask of iron. The elders stepped forward, their eyes cold hand demanding.
"The pack demands justice, Alpha," Elder Thomas said, his voice a dry rasp. "A Luna who poisons her own kind is no Luna at all. The bond must be broken for the safety of the Black Mountain Pack."
Killian took a deep breath. The air in the room seemed to thin out, sucked into the vacuum of his mounting Alpha aura. He looked at me one last time, and I saw the devastating conflict in his eyes—a war between his heart and his duty. Duty won.
"I, Alpha Killian Nightshade of the Black Mountain Pack," he began, and the ancient ritualistic power of the Alpha Command settled over the room like a physical shroud. "Do hereby find Elara Vance guilty of high treason."
"No," I breathed, my eyes widening. "Killian, don't. Please. There's something—"
"I reject you, Elara Vance, as my mate," he thundered, his voice drowning out my plea. "I reject you as my Luna. I sever the bond that the Moon Mother forged, and I cast you out into the darkness!"
SNAP.
The world didn't end with a bang; it ended with the sound of my soul tearing in half.
The agony was instantaneous and total. It wasn't just pain; it was the sensation of my internal organs being turned inside out and dipped in liquid nitrogen. The golden thread that had tied my heart to his for years—the thread that told me when he was happy, when he was tired, when he was safe—shattered into a billion frozen shards.
I let out a ragged, broken scream, collapsing onto the floor. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. The warmth that had been a constant hum in the back of my mind was replaced by a screaming, freezing void.
Across from me, Killian winced, his hand clutching his chest as he stumbled back a step. His face turned a ghostly, ashen grey. He felt the blow, too, but he had the strength of the pack to anchor him. I had nothing. I was a hollow shell, bleeding light, and hope onto the cold obsidian.
"Take her," Killian choked out, refusing to look at me again. He turned his back, his posture rigid, but his hands were trembling so violently he had to hide them in his pockets.
The doors of the Great Hall swung open. Outside, a violent storm had broken. Thunder shook the very foundations of the building.
"Wait!" I cried out, my voice raw and bleeding. As the guards grabbed my arms, dragging me backwards, a sudden, sharp kick from within my womb made me gasp. The realization hit me with the force of a tidal wave. I couldn't go like this. He had to know. "Killian! Stop! I'm pregnant! I'm carrying—"
BOOM.
A massive crack of thunder rolled over the pack house at that exact moment, the sound so loud it vibrated the teeth in my head. At the same time, the pack members erupted into a cacophony of celebratory howls, drowning out my confession.
"Get her out of here!" Sienna's mother yelled, pointing a finger at me.
"Killian, listen to me!" I screamed again, but the guards were already hauling me through the mud of the courtyard.
I caught one last glimpse of Killian through the rain. He was standing by the throne, his head bowed. He looked like a man who had just lost everything, but he didn't move. He didn't turn around. He let the doors slam shut between us.
The guards threw me into the back of a rusted, iron-barred transport van. The metal was freezing against my skin.
"The Alpha said to strip her of her mark," one of the guards, Marcus, sneered. He was one of Sienna's favourites, a man who had always enjoyed the sight of blood. He held a branding iron that glowed a dull, angry red in the shadows of the van.
"No," I whispered, backing into the corner of the cage. "Please, don't."
"Sienna wanted to make sure you remember this night," Marcus laughed. He lunged forward, the hot iron moving toward the pack tattoo on my shoulder—the mark that had once meant I belonged.
I braced myself for the pain, my eyes squeezed shut. I thought of the two tiny heartbeats I had felt earlier that day. I thought of the betrayal, the lies, and the man who had turned his back on his own blood.
I will not die here, I thought. I will not let them win.
As the red-hot metal touched my skin, something happened. It wasn't the heat I felt. Instead, a sudden, blinding flash of white-cold energy erupted from the centre of my chest. It wasn't the heat of a wolf; it was something ancient, something that felt like moonlight given physical form.
The branding iron didn't just stop; it shattered into a dozen glowing fragments. Marcus screamed as a shockwave of pure force slammed him against the side of the van, the metal buckling outward.
The world around me began to spin. My vision shifted, and the dark interior of the van suddenly illuminated in a sharp, silver clarity. I felt a presence in my mind—not the small, quiet wolf I had always known, but something massive, something that had been sleeping under layers of ice for centuries.
"Protect them," a voice whispered in the back of my mind, deep and resonant like the chime of a silver bell.
The driver of the van screamed in terror as the silver light leaked through the floorboards. He lost control, the tires screeching on the muddy mountain road. I felt the vehicle tilt.
We were at the Devil's Pass—the jagged ravine that marked the edge of the pack territory and the start of the Forbidden Forest.
The van skidded, the back wheels losing purchase on the rain-slicked gravel. I clutched my stomach, curling into a ball as the world went topsy-turvy.
"Killian..." I whispered one last time, not as a plea, but as a curse.
The van broke through the rusted guardrail. For a heartbeat, there was a sickening weightlessness and silence that felt like the end of the world. Then, the screaming of metal against rock began as we plunged into the black abyss of the ravine.
My head slammed against the iron bars. Darkness began to creep in at the edges of my vision. Through the shattered window, I saw the tops of the ancient, twisted trees of the Forbidden Forest rushing up to meet me.
The last thing I felt was a bone-crushing impact, the roar of the river below, and the sudden, fierce heat of my own blood.