Eliza's pov
The ground tilted beneath me. My lungs rasped, each breath scraping like glass in my chest. My body trembled violently, blood dripping down my legs and pooling into the cracks of the stone floor. The air smelled of blood and sweat.
And failure.
I had lost.
The wolf inside me whimpered, restless, straining to rise again, but I knew the truth. My body couldn't take another clash. Lucas had thrown me against the wall hard enough that the stone cracked. His claws had torn furrows across my sides, blood still seeping from them. My first shift had barely lasted minutes, and I had already been beaten back into the dirt.
I forced myself to stand, though every muscle screamed in protest. My paws trembled. My vision wavered. I tried to keep my head high, my growl steady, but the truth gnawed at me I was weaker.
Lucas loomed across from me, his black wolf massive, powerful, golden eyes gleaming in the shadows. He dripped blood too, my blood staining his claws, but he stood solid, chest heaving with a predator's satisfaction. He had won, and he knew it.
Shame churned in me, bitter and burning. For a heartbeat, I wished I had never shifted. At least then I could have clung to the lie of being only human helpless, unwanted, nothing. Now, I knew what I could be and I had failed at it.
But beneath the shame was something else. Something wild.
I had shifted.
I was not supposed to. I had been told my whole life I was a barren, broken, fragile human My parents had looked at me like I was a curse ,a curse meant to be gotten rid of. Xavier had bought me not out of choice but need, only to discard me like a stain on his honor.
And yet here I was, standing on four legs, bloodied but alive.
The wolf inside me did not bow to shame. She lifted her head, her growl vibrating through my ribs. We are here. We are real. And this is only the beginning.
The sound of footsteps echoed outside the dungeon.
My ears twitched toward the noise before my mind caught up. Instinct made me tense, hackles rising, tail stiff. The dungeon door groaned open, and light poured in, stabbing at my eyes.
Voices followed.
"What the"
"She shifted?"
"Impossible."
Pack members. Their scents flooded the room wolves, many of them, their shock sharp as knives. They crowded at the threshold, eyes wide, whispers hissing like snakes. I froze under their gaze, heart hammering so loudly it drowned the wolf's steady growl.
The world had seen me now. There was no hiding it.
Then he came.
Xavier.
The sight of him stole the breath from my chest. His frame filled the doorway, tall and unyielding, power radiating off him like a storm rolling through the dungeon. His musky scent hit me harder than the pain in my wounds. His golden eyes swept across the chaos: the cracked stone, the blood, the silence heavy with disbelief.
They found Lucas first.
Brother against brother, Alpha against Alpha. Their eyes locked, and the air thickened until it pressed down on my skin like a weight. Lucas's wolf snarled, but there was hesitation in it something almost defensive. Xavier's gaze sharpened like a blade, his lips curling in disgust.
Then his eyes fell on me.
Heat shot through my chest. He stared at me not as the useless human wife he'd been he bought, not as the unloved thing everyone had pitied, but as something else. Something dangerous. Something undeniable. His wolf pressed at the edges of his control, brushing against mine so forcefully I nearly staggered.
"My wife," Xavier said, his voice a growl of steel. "She comes with me."
The words slammed through the silence like a hammer striking stone.
Gasps rippled through the gathered wolves. A dozen whispers hissed in disbelief.
"She was human"
"She shouldn't exist"
"This changes everything."
Lucas roared. His wolf lunged forward, snapping his jaws with thunderous fury. "She is mine by right of blood! She fought me. She raised claws against her Alpha. She is no wife of yours. She belongs to me now!"
The chamber shook with the force of his claim, his growl rattling the very stones. The pack members shifted uneasily, their eyes darting between the two brothers. Fear rippled through them, thick and contagious.
Xavier's lips pulled back in a snarl, his eyes glowing like fire. "You have no claim over her. Not now. Not ever."