ISLA'S POV
My hands won't stop shaking.
I press my palms against the white dress—Damien's choice, not mine—and try to breathe. The silk whispers against my skin like a warning I'm too stubborn to hear. Around me, the great hall of the Silvercrest packhouse buzzes with voices, but every single one feels like ice sliding down my spine.
Three years. Three years I've waited for this night. Three years of proving myself to a pack that never believed I deserved Damien Silvercrest in the first place.
Wolfless. Weak. A mistake.
I've heard every word whispered behind my back. I've felt every cold stare. But tonight was supposed to change everything. Tonight, Damien would stand before the entire pack and claim me as his Luna. Tonight, they'd have to accept me.
Tonight, I'd finally be enough.
The heavy wooden doors to the great hall creak open, and my heart launches into my throat. This is it. I smooth down my dress one more time, ignoring the way other women are staring at me like I'm an imposter playing dress-up in clothes I have no right to wear.
My best friend Kaia isn't here. She isn't pack. She's the only person who ever believed in me without question, and of course she's the one person I needed tonight.
I take a step forward, and the whispers die. The crowd parts, and I walk toward the altar where Damien stands with his father, Alpha Marcus. My mate. My future. My entire world condensed into one beautiful, dark-haired man who promised to love me despite what I'm not.
Except something is wrong.
Damien's expression is closed off. Blank. The warmth I've come to depend on is gone, replaced by something that looks almost like... regret?
My steps falter.
That's when I see her.
Vivienne walks out from the shadows beside the altar, and my stomach drops like a stone into dark water. My stepsister. The one who's always been everything I'm not—powerful, beautiful, confident. The one whose silver wolf marks her as pack royalty while mine refused to ever appear.
She wears a dress identical to mine.
And her hand rests on her stomach in a gesture that doesn't need words.
"No," I whisper, but no one hears me. The crowd is completely silent now, waiting. Anticipating something. Something bad.
My eyes fly to Damien's face, searching for explanation, for mercy, for something. "Damien, what—"
"I, Damien Silvercrest, future Alpha of Silvercrest Pack," his voice rings through the hall with a formality that sounds like a death knell, "reject you, Isla Thorne, as my mate and Luna."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
For a moment, nothing happens. It's like the world pauses, holding its breath before it shatters.
Then the mate bond—the spiritual thread that's been connecting us for three years—tears away from my chest.
The pain is indescribable.
It's not physical pain, though agony explodes through my body. It's deeper than that. It's like someone ripped out a piece of my soul and burned it in front of me. It's the severing of every promise, every touch, every whispered "I love you" in the dark.
I scream.
The sound that tears from my throat doesn't even sound human. I collapse to my knees, my hands clawing at my chest as if I can somehow grab the bond back and hold it together. Hot tears stream down my face as the connection—the thing that made me feel real, that made me feel chosen—dies inside me.
The hall spins. Faces blur together, and I realize they're not shocked. They're not surprised. They're satisfied.
They knew.
Damien is still talking, his words washing over me like poison. Something about "difficult decisions" and "pack needs" and Vivienne being "worthy." Behind him, my stepsister smiles—that smile that's always had teeth underneath it.
I'm on the floor, my white dress spreading around me like a pool of surrender, and he's explaining to our pack why he chose her. Why he threw me away.
"Please," I beg, my voice shattered. I look up at Damien, at the man I loved with everything I had. "You know me. You know I didn't—"
"I thought I did," he says, and his eyes are cold. Completely cold. "Clearly, I was wrong."
Guards step forward. Beta Caine, the one who trained me in pack law. The one who was supposed to be my ally. His expression is sympathetic, which is somehow worse than cruelty.
I scramble backward, my hands flat against the polished stone floor. "Wait—"
But there's no waiting. There's no mercy. Vivienne's voice cuts through my panic, dripping false sympathy: "I'm sorry, sister. But the pack needs a real Luna. One with a wolf."
The words are a knife between my ribs, and she twists it with her smile.
Rough hands grab my arms. I'm being dragged backward, away from Damien, away from the life I thought I was finally going to have. My feet slip against the floor. I thrash, I struggle, but there are too many of them and I'm too shattered to fight.
As they pull me toward the exit, I scream Damien's name. I beg him to stop this. I ask him why. But he stands there with Vivienne beside him, hand on her pregnant belly, and says nothing.
That's when the guards change direction.
Instead of taking me to my room to pack, they drag me down the stone corridors toward the dungeons. Toward the back exit. Toward the border.
My heart begins to race again, faster now. Panicked. "What are you doing? Where are you taking me?"
Beta Caine doesn't answer. His silence is answer enough.
They beat me in the square—all of them watching, all of them silent. My white dress turns red. My body screams with each blow, each kick. I try to protect myself, but they're pack warriors and I'm... I'm just the wolfless girl who thought she was finally home.
Through the haze of pain and tears, I feel it.
A flutter. So small I almost miss it.
The baby.
Oh God, the baby.
My hands immediately cover my stomach, curling around the secret I was going to tell Damien tonight. The secret that was supposed to change everything, make him love me more, prove that even without a wolf, I could give him strong heirs.
The secret that would now die with me in the Rogue Lands.
"I'm pregnant," I gasp, looking up at the faces surrounding me. "I'm pregnant—please, you have to stop—"
But they don't hear me. Or maybe they do, and they don't care.
As darkness edges my vision, as my body fails me one final time, I hear Vivienne's laugh echoing across the pack square. I hear Damien's silence. I feel my baby fluttering desperately inside me, and I realize with absolute certainty:
No one is coming to save me.
No one even knows I'm dying.
Everything I am is about to be thrown into the Rogue Lands like garbage.