The Wedding's Still On. You're Still Not Invited.

I heard the sharp, unmistakable tap of designer heels echoing down the ship’s staircase, each step a deliberate rhythm of vanity wrapped in malice, followed by a soft knock against the thick mahogany of my cabin door—a knock too sweet to be sincere.

“Lyra?” Nina’s voice chimed, all sugary notes and faux concern, like a poisoned melody meant to charm prey before the kill.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t even move. But that never stopped her.

“Lyra, will you come upstairs?” she asked sweetly, her head tilted just so, eyes wide like a docile doe from an old fairy tale. “Everyone’s asking about you.”

But I had seen her true face too many times—her smile that never reached her eyes, the calculating glint that sparked when no one else was looking. She may have been born from the same pack as I, but she was raised to manipulate, to hunt affection like a weapon.

“No,” I said, my voice flat as stone. “I have work.”

For a heartbeat, something flickered in her eyes. Not sadness—Nina didn’t feel like that. No, it was something darker. Calculation. She adjusted her grip on the cake, feigning composure.

“You don’t like me,” she murmured, playing the broken doll act like she’d done with every male in our pack’s inner circle. “That’s why you always avoid me. You think I’m the enemy.”

I turned my head at last, not to show weakness but to give her the full weight of my stare. “Are we doing this again?”

Her lashes fluttered rapidly, her lower lip trembling as if on cue. She had rehearsed this performance in front of mirrors, I was sure. Had probably decided hours ago which tear to drop first, which lie to tell second. It was always the same pattern. With Damon. With Malric. With every male she ever wanted under her heel.

“I’m not in the mood, Nina,” I said sharply, standing to my full height. “Save the performance for your fan club.”

I moved past her toward the door—but before I could reach it, she staggered backward, as if shoved by a ghost, her gasp high and sharp as the cake slipped from her fingers and smashed across her chest in a messy splatter of chocolate and whipped cream. The red candle snapped in two, falling like a broken promise between her feet.

And right on cue, I heard them.

Alpha Damon and his brother—beta Malric, both alphasintraining, both stupidly loyal to the wrong girl—appeared at the top of the staircase like summoned hounds, eyes wide and muscles tense, ready to play their part in the lie she wove.

“Nina!” Alpha Damon’s voice cracked with forced panic. “What the hell happened?”

“She shoved me,” Nina whimpered, cradling the ruined cake like it was a mortal wound. “I was just trying to be kind. She… she pushed it into me. I was trying to make peace.”

I stared at her, disbelief curdling in my throat like bile. “What?”

“She what?” Malric snarled, his golden eyes blazing with offense as he stepped forward, muscles taut beneath his silk shirt. “Lyra, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t touch her!” I snapped, fury rising in my chest like a storm, my wolf pacing beneath my skin. “She dropped it herself! You all saw nothing, and yet you believe this garbage without a blink?”

But Alpha Damon wasn’t looking at me. He was too busy brushing cream off Nina’s collarbone with trembling hands, his eyes dark and unreadable.

“Nina, does it hurt?” he whispered like she had been struck by lightning instead of dessert.

She sniffled and leaned into his embrace, soaking in every second of his attention like it was sacred. “Just a little. I shouldn’t have come. She hates me now.”

“You were her best friend,” Beta Malric said, his glare slicing into me like a dagger. “You were like sisters. She always said you were the only real friend she had—and this is how you repay her? Because you're jealous?”

That word—jealous—cracked against my bones like lightning. I let out a breathless, bitter laugh, low and dangerous. “You two really belong in a soap opera. All that’s missing is a coma and a fake baby.”

Alpha Damon turned toward me, his jaw clenched so tight I could see the twitch in his cheek. “You’re going to apologize.”

My arms folded across my chest, my gaze locked on him. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he said, each word laced with venom and control. “Apologize to Nina. Now.”

The silence that followed was cold and sharp, like a blade dragged across ice.

“No,” I said simply, but my tone carried the full weight of my wolf.

He took a step closer, fury blazing in his aura. “Then forget the bond we promised. If you don’t apologize by tomorrow, I’m calling off the engagement. No Luna title. No future at my side. We’re done.”

Behind him, Malric scoffed. “You still want to marry her after this? Her true colors are showing. What a damn waste. If I were you, I’d never mate a wolf like her.”

I tilted my head slowly, my eyes gleaming with lethal calm. “That’s why no one ever would.”

His cheeks flushed with anger. Alpha Damon’s fists clenched. And Nina… oh, she smiled. Radiant in the ruin she had created.

I turned toward the railing to leave, my breath shaking from the effort of holding back my shift—my claws aching beneath skin, my fangs itching to pierce flesh—when Damon grabbed my wrist.

I didn’t even have time to shift.

His strength was brutal, wild, the raw strength of an alpha wolf unbound—and in the next breath, he shoved me over the railing.

The sea welcomed me like a coffin.

The cold hit like blades, cutting through muscle and memory, turning breath to shards of ice. I thrashed beneath the surface, my mouth open in a silent scream, my lungs desperate for air as saltwater poured in like punishment.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t shift. Couldn’t scream. My wolf howled in my soul, but I was drowning.

“Lyra?!” Nina’s voice rang from above, dramatic and clear. “Somebody help—she doesn’t know how to swim!”

She knew. They all did.

“Let her be,” Alpha Damon’s voice followed, cold and godless. “Maybe she’ll learn her place now.”

I sank.

Sank beneath betrayal. Sank beneath lies. Sank beneath the weight of everything I had once believed in.

And just as my vision began to fade, just as the water closed in like a tomb, I felt it—a hand, strong and unfamiliar, slicing through the sea like salvation.

Arms wrapped around my waist. A presence, wild and ancient, gripped me with power that didn’t belong to this world.

A voice, deep and commanding, echoed in my fading consciousness.

“I’ve got you.”

My lungs convulsed as I shattered through the surface, coughing and choking as if the sea itself had tried to claim my soul. Saltwater spewed from my mouth in violent bursts, each breath a war between death and defiance. My limbs thrashed, halfconscious and trembling, instinct taking over where reason had drowned.

The yacht docked at Blackwater Port just after dawn, its sleek hull cutting through the mist like a blade, and yet not a single soul aboard looked in my direction. Not the Alpha of the Blackwell Pack, Damon Blackwell. Not his brother, his beta Malric. Not even Nina, whose sobs had echoed so theatrically into the night that for a brief, treacherous second, I almost believed she meant them.

Almost.

I descended the deck in utter silence, the sound of my boots on wet wood the only proof I was still here—soaked to the marrow in salt and shame, with skin chilled not just by the frigid sea I had been thrown into, but by the memory of betrayal that seeped deeper than any ocean ever could. The night before had changed something inside me—fractured the mortal girl I used to be and awakened something buried far beneath. Something ancient. Something wild.

Damon had shoved me without remorse, without hesitation, straight into the black, freezing waves, his hand as cold as his eyes. And after I surfaced—after I had fought the darkness with every ounce of strength I had left in me—he had stared down at me like I was nothing but dirt beneath his heel.

“That’s what you get,” he had said coldly, his voice devoid of any shred of guilt, “for being jealous. For acting like the world owes you something.”

No apology. No outstretched hand. Not even the cowardice of regret. Just those words, bitter and dismissive, spoken like a sentence from an Alpha who had already forgotten what it meant to bleed for someone.

And the stranger who had pulled me from the water—whose arms were strong and otherworldly, whose presence had felt not quite human and yet achingly familiar—had disappeared before I could even see his face. No name. No explanation. Just a scent that lingered in my senses like the edge of a howl on the wind. Like moonfire.

I returned to the apartment in silence, shaking, teeth clenched against the sobs that clawed at my throat. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t howl. I packed.

Drawers flew open like wounds torn apart. Suitcases filled with the pieces of a life I was now abandoning. Clothes. Documents. A battered hard drive with secrets they’d kill for. My grandmother’s silver crescentmoon necklace, a relic forged in the old ways—wolfforged, bound by ancestral blood. Everything was untouched by them. Everything is not poisoned.

I was folding my last coat when the buzz of my phone broke the silence, its vibration sharp and smug against the wood floor.

A message from Nina.

No apologies. No remorse. Just cruelty dressed in glitter and filters.

“Hey Lyra~ Check out my Insta! New pics!”

I tapped the screen, already knowing what I’d see—but not expecting the raw, vicious spectacle of it.

There she was, in my robe—the pale pink silk from Milan that I’d left aboard the yacht, now clinging to her like a trophy. Alpha Damon beside her, barechested, halfasleep, his arm draped over her shoulder, his nose grazing the curve of her nearly exposed breast like he was already marking her in front of the entire pack. Malric sat on her other side, his arms around her waist, all of them wrapped in sheets and secrets, tangled in a pose that screamed possession.

“Best night ever with my fav boys. Thanks for making my birthday unforgettable. I loved every whip and bit of cream you gave me.”

Then the final blow:

“Oh, and guess what, Lyra? Alpha Damon gave me your brandnew car. Said it was his money anyway, and the color suits me better. But don’t worry—I’ll let you borrow it… If you say please.”

I stared at the screen, laughing under my breath—not because it was funny, but because it was done.

I tapped the little red heart beneath her post and tossed my phone onto the bed, its glass screen gleaming like a severed tether. Tomorrow, I will vanish. I wasn’t taking ghosts with me.

That afternoon, I walked into the firm—my human job, my perfectly constructed mortal life—and handed in my resignation with a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes. I shook hands with people who would never understand what I was burning down. Then I went home.

Alpha Damon’s silver necklace, engraved with a phrase in the old tongue of our kind—words that once meant mate and now meant nothing. Malric’s broken lighter, which he’d once lit beneath the full moon as we’d sworn to protect each other’s secrets. A cracked luxury watch, once Damon’s prized gift, is now as useless as the promises it symbolized. Letters, so many letters—words scrawled in devotion, tucked beneath my door during heatcycles and sleepless nights.

The jacket Damon had sworn was mine forever still smelled like his cologne, now sickeningly sweet—Malric’s dented motorcycle helmet. The music box that played our shared song… silenced now by dust.

I struck a match.

The flame danced like a spirit, curling into the past with hungry precision.

I fed it the jacket first—watched it curl and blacken, watched the scent of false memories burn away. One by one, I fed the fire. Letters. Jewelry. Photos. The old map we’d drawn for our future.

By the time Alpha Damon burst into the room, his face wild, the room was filled with smoke and fire.

“Lyra—what the fuck are you doing?!”

I didn’t look at him. “Getting rid of mold.”

“These aren’t just things!” he shouted, stepping forward, his voice cracked with disbelief. “They’re us.”

“No,” I said, my eyes locked on the flames. “They were lies.”

Luther stumbled in behind him, lunging toward the burning pile—but recoiled when the fire kissed his fingers. “You’re insane. You just destroyed everything.”

I turned to him, my voice like a blade. “You gave my car to Nina. She gets the gifts. She can keep the ghosts, too.”

“You’re really doing this?” Alpha Damon asked, trembling. “Because of one mistake?”

“You shoved me into the sea,” I said, quietly but firmly, “knowing I couldn’t swim. You let me drown.”

“She was crying. You were cruel—”

“I was dying!” I roared, my voice cracking at last, my wolf surging beneath my skin, claws itching, bones aching to shift. “And you watched.”

The room fell still.

“You ruined her birthday,” Malric, who also just came into the room, hissed. “All because you couldn’t stand sharing the spotlight.”

I smiled bitterly, the last tear drying before it ever had the chance to fall. “Yeah. I’m done. This is the last time… you’ll ever see me.”

The fire roared as I turned away, its smoke curling toward the ceiling like the final breath of the past. Behind me, Alpha Damon and Malric stared in stunned silence, watching everything they took for granted turn to ash.

It was funny, in a way. They had almost burned the city down for Nina’s staged tears. But when I was drowning, when I was breaking apart—not one of them even asked me if I was okay.

And now they cried over what they had lost in the fire.

Let them.

Because from now on, I would no longer be the girl they tried to bury.

I would become the wolf they never saw coming.

Alpha Damon and his brother, Malric, in all their arrogance, didn’t give up easily. Not after watching the photographs, the memories, and the false promises go up in smoke right before their eyes. They returned like wounded dogs who still believed they owned the leash wrapped around my neck—two broken boys clinging to the illusion of a future they’d already set on fire.

“Come on, Lyra,” Damon murmured, his voice rough with unspoken guilt as he rubbed the back of his neck, like a child caught after a cruel prank. “Let’s go out to dinner. Our treat.”

Malric, for once, didn’t have his usual bite. He nodded, his voice gentler than I had ever heard it, trying to sound like he still had a place in my world. “Yeah. Our favorite restaurant. Let us make it right. Just one dinner. Please.”

I didn’t speak. I didn’t forgive. But I nodded anyway—because I already knew the truth. This wouldn’t be a reunion. This wouldn’t be an apology. This was the last supper, and they were too blind to realize they were already seated at their own funeral feast.

We rode in Alpha Damon’s sleek black car, that predator of a machine that used to feel like power at my fingertips. But tonight, it felt like a hearse. The silence inside the vehicle was thick and unnatural, like the moment before a storm or a shift, like the breath the forest takes before the wolves begin to howl.

Malric’s phone buzzed. I watched him glance down at the glowing screen and saw his face change.

“It’s Nina,” he said, and I could already hear it—the panic in his breath, the leash tightening around his throat.

He answered quickly, his voice a tangled whisper. “Nina? What’s wrong?”

Her shrill voice cracked through the car’s quiet like a whip. “The power’s out! Someone broke into the house. I’m alone, I think it’s a thief—I’m scared. Please! Come quick!”

As expected, Alpha Damon’s jaw quickly tightened like stone, his eyes darting to me and then to his brother, his voice clipped and cold. “Lyra, get out.”

I blinked, stunned. “What?”

“We have to check on her,” he snapped. “You can’t come.”

Before I could demand an explanation, before I could shift and bare my teeth, the passenger door swung open, and they pushed me out into the night without ceremony or care. Rain crashed down in icy sheets, drenching my hair and clothes in seconds, my mascara running in thin black trails down my cheeks like ink bleeding from old wounds.

They didn’t wait. Didn’t look back. The car peeled off into the storm, red taillights smearing across the darkness like blood from a fresh kill.

I stood there on the slick pavement, trembling with cold, but not from the rain. I stood soaked to the soul, mascara bleeding like betrayal, lips curled in something that almost resembled a smile.

A funeral smile.

Because now I understood—this wasn’t reconciliation. This wasn’t forgiveness. This was the end, and they had just buried themselves in the grave they had dug for me.

I kicked off my satin heels three blocks in. They were too slippery, too delicate, not made for rain or rage. I walked barefoot, each step leaving behind a wet imprint on the pavement like a ghost was moving through the storm. My dress clung to my body like a second skin—one I was ready to shed.

No cabs stopped. Not one.

Drivers slowed. Their headlights illuminated the drenched, limping girl with bloodred eyes and tangled hair, and then they sped away, like I was some spirit of vengeance clawing her way out of the underworld.

I didn’t cry. Not yet.

I turned into an alleyway that I thought might lead to the main road—a shortcut I used to take in daylight, before I knew what shadows were really made of. But that shortcut had teeth.

He stepped out from behind a dumpster, face hidden beneath the dripping hood of a soaked sweatshirt, eyes dark, breath sharp with hunger. I saw the glint of metal too late.

A knife.

His words were garbled—something about a wallet, my bag, my phone—but I didn’t care. I fought. I fought like a wolf who hadn’t yet earned her fangs.

I punched. I clawed. I screamed until my throat felt like it was tearing itself apart. But I was still human, still weak, still slow. The blade sank into me with terrifying precision—once, then again, and a third time when I tried to crawl.

The pain was blinding. Then numbing. Then nothing at all.

I fell, my cheek pressing into the cold pavement like a final kiss goodbye. The sky spun above me, blurry with rain and streetlight. And just as the darkness began to pull me under, I saw it—

Headlights.

A car door slammed. Someone shouted my name.

Arms lifted me from the ground—strong, warm, impossible.

I tried to speak. Tried to say I was sorry, tried to say I couldn’t bring the cookies after all. But my lips wouldn’t obey.

And then I saw him.

Him.

The stranger from the sea. The one who had pulled me from the ocean when Damon tried to drown me beneath the moonlight. The one I thought I had imagined—woven from seafoam and delirium.

But he was real.

He was soaked through, rain sliding down his jaw, blood staining his white shirt. His arms cradled me like I was something precious. Like, I was still alive.

“Stay with me, Lyra,” he said, his voice low, rich, and filled with command. “You’re not dying tonight. Not like this.”

I think I whispered, “Who… are you?”

He gave me the ghost of a smile, more wolf than man.

“Ronan.”

And then he vanished again—not in smoke or light, but in the way creatures like him always do. When the nurse called his name, he slipped from the hospital without looking back. No thanks. No trace. Just silence.

I stayed there for a week. Tubes in my veins. Stitches in my stomach. Silence in my soul. I told the nurses not to inform my family, not to call my mother. There was no point. I wasn’t ready to face the world above when I still hadn’t emerged from the one beneath.

I needed to lie there and feel it.

The death of the girl they tried to destroy.

And then, on the day of my discharge, when my wounds were closed but not healed, when my name had faded from memory… they arrived.

Nina Frost was wheeled in on a stretcher, wrists wrapped in gauze, blood seeping through white bandages like flowers blooming in the wrong season. Her makeup was smeared, her face contorted into a perfect scream.

Alpha Damon held her hand, whispering sweet, pathetic nothings.

Malric followed like a guard dog, carrying her designer bag like she was royalty.

They passed me in the corridor.

And they froze.

Alpha Damon stared like he’d seen a ghost. Malric’s jaw dropped, his breath catching.

“Lyra?” Damon croaked.

I looked at him. Then at Malric. Then down at the hospital, the bracelet was still tight around my wrist.

“You were here?” Malric asked, hollow.

“You were in the hospital?” Alpha Damon stepped forward, a hand halfraised, but I stepped back.

I laughed. Soft. Shattered. “I was here for a week,” I said, my voice flat, dead. “Bleeding. Stitched. Alone. And none of you even noticed I was gone.”

Their mouths moved, lips parting as if to form apologies or explanations or maybe just hollow echoes of disbelief—but no sound emerged, no syllables were brave enough to fill the widening silence that stretched between us like a chasm carved by every betrayal they had ever handed me.

And then—behind them—she screamed again.

Nina’s voice sliced through the sterile white corridor like a siren meant to summon all attention, all sympathy, all power back to her bleeding wrists and mascarastreaked lies. The sound rose to a pitch so shrill, so practiced, that even the walls seemed to tremble, as though the building itself recognized her manipulation and still cowered before it.

And of course… of course, they turned.

Like they always did.

Drawn to her pain—manufactured or not—like moths to a flame, like hounds to the call of a false Alpha. They turned without hesitation, without a second glance in my direction, as if I were nothing more than a phantom lingering in their peripheral vision, a shadow they had long since chosen to forget.

And once again, I walked away.

But this time, my steps were slower, heavier, not with sorrow, but with resolve, my bare feet padding softly against the cold tiled floor like the quiet approach of something wild—something no longer willing to beg for scraps of love at a table where loyalty had never been served.

This time, there were no tears trailing down my cheeks, only the burn of salt from wounds that had begun to seal themselves shut with something stronger than stitches—vengeance, perhaps, or the first stirrings of the beast I had kept chained too long inside me.

This time, though I bled on the inside, it wasn’t the kind of bleeding that begged for help—it was the kind that promised war.

This time, I wasn’t just walking away.

This time, I was reclaiming everything they tried to strip from me.

And I was doing it barefoot.

This time bleeding inside. This time, free.

The apartment was still steeped in shadow when I arrived, its silence stretched so thin it felt brittle, like it might crack under the weight of one more memory. No lights had been left on. No warmth lingered in the walls. Only the staleness of undisturbed air and the faint, sour scent of something decaying in the kitchen sink—like even the home had started to rot from within in my absence.

I didn’t bother flipping the switch.

I dropped my bag just inside the doorway, the echo of it hitting the floor louder than it should’ve been, and kicked the door shut behind me with more force than necessary, as if slamming it might keep the past from crawling in behind me. The only sound was the quiet thud of my soaked hoodie dripping onto the tile.

I didn’t change out of the hospital gown—not because I forgot, but because I didn’t care. The thin, papery fabric scratched beneath my hoodie, clung to my bandages, and chilled my skin. Still, I collapsed onto the couch, facefirst, arms dangling like dead weight, my body folding like something boneless and broken. The fabric burned where it pressed against fresh stitches, but exhaustion was stronger than pain.

Sleep came, but it was not merciful.

Not when your dreams know the truth before your mouth ever dares to speak it aloud.

It was hours before I stirred again, groggy and sore and disoriented, blinking into the thick dark that clung to the corners of the apartment like a predator watching from just out of reach. I shifted, every muscle in my body aching from something deeper than the wounds. That was when I heard it.

Clattering.

A sharp, rhythmic noise from the kitchen—metal against metal, the soft hum of the stove, the scrape of movement where no one should’ve been.

I moved slowly, my breath shallow, my feet bare against the cold floor, each step slow and deliberate as if I were stalking something or being stalked myself. I thought maybe it was a thief. Maybe a ghost. Maybe the echo of some halfformed nightmare still bleeding into the waking world.

But when I turned the corner, I saw them.

Alpha Damon. Beta Malric.

Standing side by side, just like they always did when pretending to be something they weren’t.

Damon was at the stove, flipping a slab of meat in a cast iron pan, the scent of searing flesh filling the room—a scent that made something in my chest twist, something ancient and hungry that didn’t understand betrayal, only instinct. Malric stood at the counter with a knife in hand, slicing vegetables with too much precision, like each cut was a ritual, a preparation for something neither of them dared name.

The table was already set.

Plates. Cutlery. Water glasses. Cloth napkins folded like offerings. A strange echo of a family that never truly existed.

They both looked up when I entered, their gazes cautious, calculating.

Alpha Damon spoke first, his voice carefully casual. “We thought you were at your aunt’s. Didn’t want to disturb you.”

Malric, always quieter, always following his lead, glanced at the knife in his hand and then down to the floor before meeting my eyes. “We didn’t know you were in the hospital,” he murmured, the words hollow in the air between us.

I said nothing.

Instead, I walked forward and sat at the table, the chair legs creaking beneath me. I didn’t touch the food. I just sat there, letting the heat from the cooked meat curl around me like a lie I refused to swallow.

Alpha Damon frowned, reaching to turn off the burner. “You have to eat,” he said, as if that made everything better. “You just got discharged.”

I looked at him, long and cold and clear. “You didn’t check on me for a week.”

The silence that followed was so dense it felt like the air itself had frozen. The room seemed to shrink inward, thick with the scent of cooked meat, scorched trust, and unspoken apologies that would never come. No one moved. No one breathed.

Then the doorbell rang.

A sharp, deliberate chime.

Damon and Malric both turned, as if pulled by the same invisible string, and without speaking, Malric moved to open it.

And of course—there she was.

Nina Frost.

Fragile. Pale. Porcelain in pastel silk.

Her wrists were wrapped in fresh white bandages, barely visible beneath the lacy sleeves of her blouse. Her lips were tinted pink, but her eyes were ringed with the kind of sorrow that performed well in candlelight. She looked like a doll that had been shattered once, glued back together, and now pretended not to remember the fall.

The moment they saw her, they moved.

Alpha Damon rushed to her like she was made of glass and flame, scooping her into his arms without hesitation. He laid her gently onto the couch like she might vanish if she hit the cushions too hard.

“You shouldn’t be out,” he murmured, brushing her hair back, his voice full of concern that had never once been directed at me. “What if something happened to you?”

“I was alone,” she whispered, looking up at him with eyes wide as moons. “I kept thinking… what if I never woke up again? What if no one was there when I did? I didn’t want to be alone tonight.”

He melted instantly.

Malric stood behind him like a sentinel, like the Beta trailing after his Alpha’s chosen Luna. “We’ll take you back to the hospital later,” he said gently. “After we check on Lyra.”

I didn’t speak.

I picked up my fork.

The steak was dry—burned at the edges, still pink in the middle, and tasted like dust and memory. I chewed it anyway, like it was penance, like it was a lie I needed to swallow just to stay upright.

He made steak.

My least favorite.

He didn’t even remember.

I let out a laugh—sharp and bitter, quiet enough to pass for a cough—and washed it down with water that tasted like steel. Across the table, Damon and Malric were already helping her into a chair, already encouraging her to eat, already tending to her every movement like she was royalty wrapped in gauze.

She ate daintily. Delicately. Every now and then, her eyes flicked to mine, and when they did, she smiled faintly.

A smile that said you lost.

That was when my phone buzzed.

I glanced down and saw the name: Mom.

She had sent over a dozen images of wedding dresses—lace and satin and beadwork that looked like frost spun into cloth. Each gown was more extravagant than the last. I paused on the third one: offshoulder, structured bodice, silk cascading like a river of ivory.

I tapped the call button before I could stop myself.

She answered on the third ring, her voice warm with the kind of excitement that didn’t know pain. “Lyra! Did you get the dresses? I think the third one’s best. Classic, timeless. But if your fiancé prefers white—”

“I love the third,” I interrupted quickly, my voice light, almost too light. “It’s perfect. I can already see it. I’m really… excited.”

There was a pause, brief, but enough to suggest she heard something strange in my tone. “Oh, sweetheart, I knew you’d love it. You’ve always had an eye for the classics.”

I nodded even though she couldn’t see it. “Yeah. I think it’s going to be beautiful. I’m really looking forward to the wedding.”

Across the room, something shifted.

Something subtle. Instinctual.

I didn’t look up—but I felt it.

“How much longer do you need over there?” she asked. “Just a week. I’ll finish up and be home.” “Good. Everything here’s almost ready.”

I hung up and set the phone down on the table, and that’s when I felt it—that silence that isn’t empty, but heavy. Like breath being held.

The energy twisted.

Alpha Damon stepped forward first, slow, cautious, voice low and clipped. “Wedding?”

Beta Malric followed, his jaw tense, brows furrowed like storm clouds gathering behind his eyes. “What wedding?”

And even Nina—Nina, with her trembling fork and her angel’s mouth, froze with it suspended midair.

The room smelled different now. Not just of steak and rain.

But of jealousy. Of a challenge. Of blood waiting to be spilled.

The pack was shifting.

They just didn’t know it yet.

I rose slowly from the armchair, the frayed hem of my hoodie catching on the curve of my wrist as I smoothed it down, not because it was wrinkled, but because I needed the ritual—needed to feel in control of something, anything. My eyes found Alpha Damon’s across the room. The corners of my mouth lifted in a smile—not friendly, not forgiving. It was precise. Polished. Razorsharp beneath the silk.

“Oh… The wedding…” I said, my voice calm, rich with purpose. “It’s the one you’re not invited to.”

At first, Alpha Damon let out a short, startled laugh, like he thought he’d misheard me, like the very idea of my banishing him from anything that used to be ours was some kind of elaborate joke.

Beta Malric followed with that low, patronizing chuckle he always used when he thought I was being dramatic, when he assumed I was biting off more than I could chew. “Nice one,” he muttered, shaking his head with a smirk. “You almost had us.”

I said nothing. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. I simply stood there, watching as their amusement echoed through the room like something infected.

Nina, still draped over my couch like a porcelain martyr from a tragic poem, tilted her head with delicate cruelty. Her smile, sly and sugary, twisted like the scent of spoiled fruit. “Oh, please. No one’s actually trying to steal Lyra,” she purred. “Have you seen how she dresses? Baggy hoodies, shapeless jeans—like she’s afraid of her own body. Like she’s hiding something under all that fabric.”

Alpha Damon snorted, amused by her pettiness, and nudged Malric with a smug grin. “She really does dress like she’s in hiding,” he said, without a hint of shame. “You should take notes from Nina, Lyra.”

They laughed again, faithless, soulless sounds that rang like insults carved into bone.

But I didn’t crumble. I didn’t lower my eyes like the way I used to before.

This time, I didn’t pity myself.

Instead, I smiled again. Just barely. Cold and unreadable.

“You’re right,” I murmured. “It’s a joke. It’s my cousin’s wedding.”

The laughter stopped.

“I meant it,” I continued, eyes unwavering. “You’re all invited… to that.”

Damon scratched his neck and avoided my gaze for the first time, suddenly aware of how close the air had gotten—how thin it felt.

“We’ll be busy,” he said, feigning regret. “Nina’s birthday trip. Switzerland. Doctors said she’s finally well enough to travel.”

Malric jumped to echo him. “It’s supposed to be good for her recovery. Clean mountain air. Wolffriendly altitudes.”

Alpha Damon turned to look at Nina with something almost reverent in his expression. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and she leaned into him like the Luna she believed she already was.

She looked at me again, her gaze glinting with victory.

I smiled.

But I didn’t say another word.

I walked away. Slowly. Deliberately. My footsteps carried the weight of every betrayal that had built this moment. I ascended the stairs without urgency, as though I were already beyond the reach of their small, stupid lies.

When I reached the top floor, I stepped into the room. It still smelled faintly of sage and something metallic—faint echoes of everything that happened here.

I closed the door without locking it, because I knew none of them would dare follow me now.

I laid down on the bed and pulled the old blanket over my legs, staring up at the ceiling, listening to their laughter drifting up from below, curling through the air like smoke from a fire I no longer feared.

Damon’s voice. Nina’s cough. Malric’s fussing. Their false harmony settled into the walls like mildew.

And still, I didn’t cry.

Instead, I closed my eyes and let the weight of exhaustion press into me like teeth sinking into flesh. I was almost asleep when the door creaked open.

I turned my face toward the wall, not bothering to look.

The scent hit first, warm milk laced with lavender. And underneath it, her.

“I brought you something,” Nina Frost said, her voice soft and syrupy. Too sweet. Sweet like poison.

I didn’t move.

She crossed the room, her footsteps silent on the rug, and hovered beside the bed like a shadow pretending to be human. “Why did you come back?” she asked after a moment, her tone more curious than cruel. “Was it some misguided attempt to reclaim what’s already mine?”

I rolled over slowly, pushing myself upright, letting the blanket fall from my shoulder. “Why are you still in my house?” I countered, my voice flat as iron.

Her smile didn’t falter, but her eyes sharpened. “Don’t worry. I’m leaving. Alpha Damon and Beta Malric are taking me to the healer later. I just thought I’d say goodbye before I go.”

I didn’t thank her.

She approached the nightstand and set the glass down, her fingers lingering on it just a little too long.

“Is it painful?” she asked suddenly. “Watching your mate care for me like I’m the one he was meant to protect all along?”

Still, I gave her nothing.

“I mean, why were you in the hospital anyway? Trying to get attention? Did it hurt when no one came?”

The rage beneath my ribs flared. My wolf shifted under my skin, clawing to the surface. I gritted my teeth and lay back down.

“I don’t care,” I whispered, and this time, it wasn’t a lie.

Silence followed, thick and tense. I thought she might leave.

But then came the sound—shattering glass.

I bolted upright.

Milk and blood stained the rug, and Nina was on the floor, sobbing, curled into herself like a broken doll. Her wrist bled freely, and the air filled with the metallic scent of fresh blood, enough to trigger the wolf in anyone nearby.

They came running.

Alpha Damon burst through the door like a soldier on instinct, eyes already wide with panic. He didn’t even glance at me. He dropped to his knees and swept her into his arms like she was his moon and stars and every forgotten promise in between.

“Nina!” he breathed, over and over, like the word alone could stop the bleeding.

Malric hovered behind them, his jaw tight, face pale.

I sat still on the edge of the bed, watching it all unfold.

Watching them choose her. Again.

She sobbed harder, milking the moment, her body cradled against his chest. Her eyes flicked up to mine, glassy, victorious.

And I smiled.

But not kindly.

The wolf inside me was no longer sleeping.

She was waiting.

Damon didn’t even glance at me. His entire focus locked on Nina, who was still curled on the floor like a fallen porcelain idol.

“Nina…”

He whispered her name again, over and over, like repetition might mend broken bones or twisted truths. His voice was low, reverent, and it made something raw coil in my chest.

Beta Malric’s eyes found mine with fire and accusation behind them. His aura surged, the air rippling with Beta dominance. “What the fuck did you do to her, you unstable freak?”

I said nothing. Not yet. My silence stretched like tension before a full moon shift.

Nina trembled dramatically in Damon’s arms, clutching his shirt as though the world might rip her away, her voice quivering, small and soaked in faux innocence. “I only wanted to offer her some warm milk,” she said, her wolf peeking just beneath her tone, playing the fragile card too well. “Just like she gave me cake at my birthday…” Her eyes shimmered wet and manipulative, a tactic I’d seen her perfect for years.

Alpha Damon’s arms tightened protectively around her as he lifted his gaze to me, blazing now with quiet, dangerous fury. “You pushed her?” His voice was a low growl, threaded with Alpha command and disbelief.

I didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t justify myself.

I just watched them.

I kept my heartbeat steady and my face unreadable. I was too tired to plead and too smart to think it would matter.

Malric took a step toward me, the pack’s Beta now in full enforcer mode, fists clenched so tight his knuckles cracked. “Lay another hand on her,” he snarled, “and I swear to the Ancients, I’ll have the Council drag you out in chains. Luna bond or not.”

I tilted my head, unbothered. “She dropped the glass herself,” I said quietly, my voice low and even, like I was discussing the weather. “I never touched her.”

But the truth didn’t matter.

Not to Damon, the blinded Alpha of the Blackwell Pack.

He was too busy ordering the first aid kit, checking her wrist with trembling fingers, brushing her hair from her face with the kind of tenderness that used to be mine. The kind of touch that came with memories… and now betrayal.

Nina sobbed again, burying her face against his chest, her voice muffled but dripping venom. “It’s okay, Alpha,” she whispered sweetly. “Maybe she didn’t mean to… I just wanted to be kind.”

Malric looked at me like I was some feral creature in a cornered den. “You’re jealous. And clearly unfit,” he bit out. “You shouldn’t be living under this roof. Not until you get your damn emotions under control.”

This is my house!

I wanted to scream, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t beg.

There was no point in doing all that.

Instead, I stared at the rug, milk spilled across it like a ritual gone wrong—before I turned and walked out of my own room.

Every step down the stairs felt like descending deeper into the belly of a house that no longer belonged to me. The walls seemed to shrink around me, thick with judgment and silence. Behind me, I could still hear Alpha Damon murmuring softly to Nina, promising her everything would be alright, assuring her he’d fly her to the Swiss mountain packs the moment she was stable. Then the front door opened… and closed.

They rushed her back to the healer’s.

I didn’t chase.

I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water with hands that trembled more than I cared to admit. The cup nearly tipped, but I caught it, my palms pressed against the cool glass as I sat at the table in a house that no longer felt like home. The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was cavernous. Haunted.

It was well past midnight when the silence turned strange, too perfect, too staged. Like the entire house was holding its breath to avoid me.

I sat on my bed, my knees drawn up, back against the headboard, the pain in my ribs flaring like a memory carved in flesh. I was scrolling through old photos, even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t, letting my thumb hover over familiar faces I barely recognized anymore. Damon’s arm was around my shoulders. Malric’s crooked smile. Nina’s harmless smile was tucked neatly in the background, her wolf always lurking.

I smirked bitterly and felt the burn rise in my side again. I didn’t wince. I simply started deleting. One memory. Then another. Then another.

My wolf stirred restlessly inside me.

I remembered the way Alpha Damon used to look at me, like I was the tether keeping him from unraveling completely. “Lyra,” he had whispered once, his forehead resting against mine, breath warm from a long run beneath the stars. “You’re my compass. If I ever lose you… I’ll lose myself.”

Back then, I had laughed, young and foolish. “You’re overdramatic.”

“No,” he had said, his voice too honest. “You’re the reason I stay sane.”

Even Malric had once cared. He’d show up uninvited at my quarters with food I didn’t ask for and a protective scowl. “You skipped your meal again,” he’d mutter, setting it down like he hadn’t tracked me through the woods to deliver it.

“I had patrols,” I’d argue.

“I don’t care. Eat. Or I’ll chew it for you like a mother wolf.”

We weren’t perfect. But we were something. A chaos stitched into routine. Quiet evenings of burnt venison, old war documentaries, and bickering over whether to adopt a direhound or a shadowcat first.

Then came Nina.

She returned like a ghost, wideeyed, with her pride shattered and her future in pieces. I was the idiot who opened the door.

“I didn’t know who else to turn to,” she had whispered as I held her, her tears soaking into my shirt.

“You’ll figure it out,” I told her.

And I meant it.

I covered her rent. Paid for her therapist. Left her meals when I got home late from training. Checked in. Gave her space. Let her stay.

Because that’s what family does.

And she repaid me by inching closer to Damon every night. Laughing at his jokes, grazing his arm like it was hers to touch.

“You’re so funny, Alpha Damon,” she giggled during a pack feast, leaning in like she’d been born to fit at his side.

I asked her for the salt. She blinked, all innocence. “Sorry,” she said with a sugary smile. “I was just laughing.”

But I knew.

I knew what she was doing.

So I asked him.

“Are you sleeping with her?” I asked, my voice soft but sharp.

He blinked at me like I’d insulted the moon goddess herself. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“A fair one,” I replied, arms crossed. “She’s not a pack member. She’s a parasite.”

He scoffed. “She’s your friend. Your responsibility. Why are you jealous of your own damn friend?”

I didn’t answer.

Because somewhere deep down, I already knew the truth.

And so did he.

“I’m not jealous,” I whispered, the words barely slipping past my lips. “I’m just trying to understand what’s really happening.”

Alpha Damon turned sharply, his voice cutting like a whip through the tension thickening the room. “Maybe if you weren’t always buried in your duties to the council and your relentless training schedule, you’d see that nothing is happening. Damn, Lyra, this is madness.”

And that was the end of it. He didn’t raise his voice again, didn’t offer a second glance.

And I, like the fool they all took me for, chose to trust him over the gnawing instincts curled deep in my gut.

That was before the weekend runs started.

Alpha Damon. Beta Malric. And Nina Frost.

“We just needed a break,” Beta Malric said one evening, pulling on his boots, not even glancing at me. “You’re always busy anyway, buried in the paperwork, patrolling the outer ridge, cleaning up every pack mess like it's your life.”

“You could’ve invited me,” I replied, the words tasting like rust.

He shrugged, the motion lazy and cold. “You would’ve said no.”

And then Nina, bold enough to speak while wearing one of my old leather jackets, chimed in without shame. “Yeah, you’re always exhausted. We didn’t want to bother you. We thought it’d be better this way.”

I remember staring at her for ten long seconds, trying to pinpoint the exact moment she’d stopped pretending to be grateful and started plotting her ascension.

“I don’t remember asking what you thought,” I said, my voice flat as moonlight on snow.

She smiled, soft, sweet, venom in silk. “Just trying to help.”

I laughed under my breath now, alone in the halfdark room of the Alpha’s house. A house I built from the inside out.

I had defended her so many times, to myself, to Damon, to Beta Malric.

“She’s grieving,” I had told them. “Her bond family’s gone. She’s lost. She needs to be grounded.”

But she didn’t need grounding. She needed a kingdom. And she was building it with every crumb of power I fed her.

I pulled out the last photo I hadn’t deleted, one taken on the cliffside during our last full moon retreat.

Alpha Damon’s arm wrapped around my waist. Nina was in the background, her eyes locked on him like a predator waiting for the wounded mate to fall behind.

Smiling too widely. Too confident.

“You needed shelter,” I whispered to the photo. “I offered you my house. You needed a life, and I gave you mine.”

The silence didn’t answer.

As if even that was tired of watching me lose.

The dawn came slowly, the forest outside the windows still wrapped in mist and cold hush. I woke up before the sun had a chance to get smug about it.

The ache on my side was still there, the wound from the attack that night that never fully healed, sharp and rhythmic, like it had learned the beat of betrayal.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time. Just breathing. Just… listening.

And something in me was quiet.

Still.

They made a mess in a house I built. Let them clean up the bones.

I stood. Walked to the closet. Pulled out the envelope hidden beneath ancient maps, rejected bond petitions, and dried wolfsbane.

Inside was the deed to the Alpha’s estate. My name. Not his. Not the Beta. Not the little saboteur whose fake sobs still clung to the walls.

I stared at it for a long time, not blinking.

The ink had faded a little, but not the truth.

“Of course it’s mine,” I murmured. “I claimed it. I bled for it.”

I called the pack’s landkeeper. She answered in the third ring.

“Lyra! You’re up early—everything okay?”

I looked out the window. The oncevibrant herb garden below was dead now, frostbitten and gray. I hadn’t tended it in weeks.

Maybe because I knew there was no one left in the house worth healing.

“List the estate,” I said. “Today. No delays. No howls of concern.”

She hesitated, like she thought I was bluffing. “Are you sure? We could stage it, clean up the wards, reinscribe the—”

“No. Just get it done before sunset. No calls. No updates. No questions.”

“Understood.”

I hung up.

By the time the first silver beams of light touched the treetops, I was already kneedeep in packing.

But I didn’t pack like someone who was leaving home. I packed like a commander retreating from a battlefield littered with betrayal.

Documents. Records. The blade my mother gifted me the day I was named future Luna.

And one photograph of Zeke, my wolf companion. His fur wild, tongue out, eyes full of trust.

Nina said she hadn’t seen him in the garage that night.

“I swear, Lyra, I didn’t know he was under the truck. I—I didn’t see him—”

“Of course not,” I’d said. “You never see anything unless it benefits you.”

She cried harder, like grief was something she could steal, too.

Now, I slipped the photo onto the side of my pack, careful not to bend it.

The rest, her perfumes, her robes, her velvet collars, everything goes into trash bags.

I didn’t even tie the bags shut. Just dragged them to the driveway like the memories they were, unwanted and stinking.

They didn’t even live here anymore.

Alpha Damon and Beta Malric had pulled their resources and bought her a new home, a white cottage with blue shutters, barely three blocks from the pack house.

“It’s an investment,” they’d said. “Temporary. You’re reading too much into it, Lyra.”

I picked up my phone and called the Elder’s counsel scribe.

“Lyra,” she greeted, voice warm, as if we still believed in kindness.

“Send notice to the Alpha and Beta,” I said. “Three days to vacate the premises. Anyone not listed on the deed forfeits their claim. No appeals. No dramatics. Just get it written and served.”

“Understood. I’ll have it delivered by dusk.”

Beta Malric tried to call first. And then sent me a message that simply reads, 'can we talk?' I blocked the number.

Then Damon’s name lit up my screen. I let it ring once. Then I answered.

“Lyra?”

“Eviction,” I said flatly.

“What?”

“Three days. After that