Chapter 171

The grey, bruised light of dawn bled over the horizon, doing little to illuminate the mist-shrouded valley of the Blackstone Pack. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Usually, this hour was filled with the sounds of the morning patrol’s return and the some wolf training but today, the air felt stagnant, caught in the throat of the valley like a scream that couldn’t quite find its way out.

The massive timber of the Blackstone pack house loomed over the clearing, its windows reflecting the dull, sunless sky.

In the wide, gravel expanse at the front of the manor, the atmosphere was thick enough to choke. A small, uneasy crowd of high-ranking pack members had gathered, their breath hitching in the cold air.

They stood in clusters, their voices hushed, their eyes constantly darting toward the southern trail that led into the deeper, darker reaches of the forest—the trail that led toward Alaric’s private cabin.

At the center of the tension stood Selena,

She was wrapped in a fur-lined cloak that hid the fine silk of her morning gown, but it couldn’t hide the rigid, vibrating tension in her spine.

Her face, usually the picture of porcelain perfection and effortless grace, was a mask of calculated coldness, though her eyes were rimmed with a faint, tell-tale redness.

Beside her, her mother paced like a caged predator, her fingers twisting a decorative lace handkerchief until the threads began to snap.

"They should have been back hours ago," Selena’s mom hissed, her voice a sharp contrast to the morning silence.

"Your father promised he would bring that boy back by his collar. This... this silence is unacceptable, Selena. The pack is talking. Can’t you hear it? The whispers are already starting to rot the edges of our reputation."

Selena didn’t look at her mother. She couldn’t. If she opened her mouth to speak, she feared she might let out another of those soul-shredding screams that had torn from her lungs the day before.

The memory of yesterday was a searing brand on her soul. She could still feel the chill of Alaric’s cabin—the way he had looked at her not with the adoration of a mate, but with a jarring clarity that felt like a slap.

He had left her there. He had walked out on her while she was at her most vulnerable, treating the future Luna of the pack like a common prostitute he was done with.

The humiliation had been a physical weight. When her father, Rohan, the Beta of the pack, had burst into the cabin moments later—drawn by her primal, agonized shrieks—he had found his "golden daughter" naked, weeping, and shivering in a state of absolute ruin.

In that moment of total collapse, the secrets she had guarded with her life had spilled out like a hemorrhaging wound.

She had confessed the truth that had been eating at her since her eighteenth birthday: there was no spark. No intoxicating, soul-binding scent.

The Moon Goddess had stayed silent on the night that was supposed to seal their destiny. They were a lie—a beautiful, carefully curated lie built to maintain the power of their bloodline.

Rohan’s reaction had been a chilling mixture of shock and cold, Beta-blooded pragmatism. He hadn’t comforted her. He had merely looked at her with eyes like flint, his voice a low, warning growl.

"Not a word of this to anyone, Selena. Not even your mother. Get dressed. Go home. I will handle the boy."

But Rohan hadn’t handled him. He had taken the scouts and disappeared into the brush to "retrieve" Alaric, only to never return. And then, the true terror had begun.

Alpha Silas—Alaric’s father and the iron-fisted ruler of Blackstone—had emerged from the pack house three hours ago.

He hadn’t spoken to the council. He hadn’t addressed the crowd. His eyes, usually sharp and commanding, had been wide, shadowed by a primal fear that none of them had ever seen before.

He had gathered the most elite warriors, his scent spiked with a desperate, metallic tang, and disappeared into the forest to find the search party.

"Look," one of the pack mates whispered, pointing toward the tree line. The sound of heavy paws thrumming against the damp earth vibrated through the gravel.

A moment later, the mist dissolves, shredded by the sheer, overwhelming presence of the returning party.

A low thrumming began to vibrate through the soles of the pack members. From the thick, milky curtains of the southern woods, the elite guard of Blackstone emerged like ghosts materializing into bone and fur.

In the center of the formation was Alpha Silas. He was no longer the man who had walked out of the pack house three hours prior.

He was a massive, black-coated wolf, his fur so dark it seemed to absorb the meager morning light. His muscles corded and bunched with every step, his chest heaving with a ragged breath that sent plumes of white vapor into the freezing air.

Even in his beast form, the terror in his eyes was palpable, rolling of white that betrayed a mind reeling from a horror it could not comprehend.

Flanking him were the elite warriors, ten massive wolves of varying shades of charcoal and brindle, their movements stiff and their tails tucked in a way that screamed of a primal defeat.

They moved in a tight, protective phalanx, their eyes darting toward the shadows of the trees as if they expected the very forest to rise up and swallow them whole.

But the eyes of the crowd weren’t on the Alpha’s lethal form. They were fixed on the grey-furred warrior to Silas’s immediate right.

Lying limply across the warrior’s broad back was the broken, human form of Rohan. A collective gasp, sharp as a blade, sliced through the morning air.

The beta’ wife let out a strangled cry, her hands flying to her mouth as she stumbled forward. Selena felt the world tilt, the gravel beneath her boots suddenly feeling like shifting sand.

Her father—the Beta who had always been an immovable mountain of cold authority—looked like a discarded rag doll.

The wolves didn’t slow down until they reached the center of the clearing, coming to a halt just a few feet from where Selena and her mother stood.

The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the wet, heavy panting of the beasts. With a low, mournful whine, the warrior carrying Rohan buckled his front legs.

The movement was jarringly ungraceful, and Rohan’s body slid off the wolf’s back, hitting the gravel with a sickening thud.

Selena’s mother collapsed beside her husband, her silk skirts dragging in the dirt as she reached for him. "Rohan! Oh, Goddess, Rohan!"

Selena moved as if through water, her legs heavy and numb. She dropped to her knees on the other side of her father, her fur cloak falling open to reveal the trembling of her hands.

The sight that met her was enough to make her stomach turn. Rohan’s face was a mask of dried blood and dirt, his eyes rolled back in his head, but it was his lower half that drew the most horror.

Both of his legs were twisted at angles that defied the natural alignment of bone and sinew. One knee was shattered, the bone threatening to puncture the skin, while the other leg lay flat in a way that suggested the hip had been obliterated.

There were no claw marks here—no evidence of a wolf’s tearing work. This was the result of a singular, crushing force. This was the work of someone who had used a Beta’s body as a message.

"He’s alive," one of the warriors rasped, the sound of his voice marking the shift as the wolves began to transform back into their human forms.

The clearing was suddenly filled with the sound of cracking bones and shifting skin—the violent, messy symphony of the change.

Alpha Silas was the last to shift, his human form emerging from the black fur with a trembling instability.

He was naked, his skin covered in a cold sweat, his breathing still coming in short gasps. A pack mate rushed forward, draped in a stack of blankets.

She moved with efficiency, tossing the fabric over the naked warriors as they slumped onto the gravel, exhausted.

One blanket was draped over Silas’s trembling shoulders, but the Alpha didn’t even pull it tight. He simply stood there, staring down at the mangled form of his Beta.

"What happened?" Selena’s mother wailed, her voice rising into a shrill, hysterical register as she tried to cradle Rohan’s head. "Who did this to him?"

Silas didn’t look at her. He looked at Selena. In his eyes, she saw the confirmation of her father’s secret—the knowledge that the world they had built was a house of cards, and the wind had finally started to blow.