They threw me out under a blood moon.
No ceremony. No tears. Nothing but the silence, and the judgment of a dozen golden eyes that used to be home. My breath fogged the air, thin and useless. The snow under my bare feet was a raw burn, but I stood frozen. If I moved, I'd come apart. If I blinked, the hurt would finally spill over and ruin the perfect white with what was left of me.
I should have screamed. Should have begged. But I'd learned the hard way that wolves don't get to cry. We just bleed.
I stood there, empty, as Elder Maelen's voice cut through the pines. "You are stripped of your status. Your protection. Your name. You leave as the moon wanes. You do not return."
Not a sound from the pack.
Kael was right there with them. My mate. His jaw was a hard line, his face a mask. He wouldn't even look at me. A month ago, he swore we were fated. Said he saw my soul in my eyes. That my size didn't matter, that strength wasn't just about the shift.
Lies. All of it, lies. The whispers started right after I failed.
The rejection was a quiet, violent thing.
Unshifted. Useless.
Fat. Weak.
Their words became the only truth I had left.
They pried the faint silver band from my wrist. The pack bond. A hiss of magic, a cold sting shooting up my arm and lodging itself deep in my chest. Gone.
It was done.
I was nothing.
"Keep your head down," my mother said two days later. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, the snow outside coming down in thick, relentless waves. "They don't know. You're just my daughter. That's all."
I didn't answer. Just watched the trees bleed into a gray smear, their branches sagging under the weight of the storm. Even the pines looked sorry for me.
I knew she was trying. She was all I had left. But gratitude was a stone in my throat. She'd found a new man. A new town. A new life. As if we could just scrub the old one away, like I wasn't dragging the wreckage of it behind me, clanking like chains.
"He has a son," she added, voice too careful. "Your age. I didn't think to ask if you'd ever…"
The house cut her off.
It wasn't a den. No stone, no deep earth. This was a structure—tall, stern, built of dark wood and glass, caged by pines. A single porch light glowed, throwing long, skeletal shadows across the drive.
"Elias is a good man, Liora," she whispered. "We'll be safe here."
Safe. The word meant nothing.
The door swung open before we could even knock.
He was there. Elias Blackthorne. Broad, with a salt-and-pepper beard and eyes that landed on me and softened. He looked like he'd grown from this land—weathered and unshakable.
"You must be Liora," he said, his voice low.
I managed a tight nod. A ghost of a smile that didn't reach my eyes.
Then I smelled it.
Cedar. Smoke. Pure, wild cold.
The broken thing inside me, my wolf, twitched. A single, painful spasm that locked my spine.
Someone was watching.
Heavy footsteps from inside the house. Then he filled the doorway.
Tall. Solid muscle in a black shirt. Tattoos—old, brutal symbols—coiled down his arms like scars. His hair was a mess of dark waves, his face all hard lines and a cruel kind of beauty.
But his eyes.
Ice blue. Cutting right through me.
Alpha.
No.
Hell, no.