**Savannah’s POV**
The morning light cut through the high windows of Silver Creek’s training ground in sharp golden slants, laying bright strips across the polished wood floor.
I threw my seventy-second kick and felt the familiar burn climb up my ankle — muscles screaming at the edge of their limit.
That burn was my proof of life.
Every single morning, without fail.
My mother Margaret had trained on this same floor.
She was the strongest female warrior Silver Creek had ever produced, right up until six years ago, when she traded her life for the survival of Iron Ridge Pack’s heir.
People called it a tragedy.
On the seventy-third kick, my ankle gave out.
I grabbed the training dummy to steady myself, and the floor tilted slightly under my feet.
*Wrong.* My body wasn’t supposed to do this.
I’d inherited Mom’s warrior constitution, Dad’s Alpha strength — this kind of weakness didn’t belong to me.
*The water bottle Vivienne handed me at breakfast.*
The thought surfaced through the haze.
Her usual smile, that sticky-sweet voice: *”Hydration is so important for our champion warrior, big sis.”* I’d taken another sip and told myself the odd taste was just stress.
I tried to reach Diana–my wolf.
*”Diana?”*
Nothing.
Not even an echo.
The silence arrived without warning — and in that silence, I suddenly understood how much noise had always lived in the background.
How much of her presence I’d taken for granted, the way you take breathing for granted until you can’t.
The emptiness felt like a wound.
My phone buzzed.
Celeste.
*Save me Savannah!!
Pinewood Lodge 302!!
Something’s wrong, I’m scared, come NOW!!*
I didn’t think twice.
Six years of friendship.
My best friend’s voice in a panic.
I grabbed my keys and pushed myself through the corridor that seemed to stretch longer with every step, heading for the parking lot.
The drive was a nightmare I can only half remember.
My hands kept sliding off the steering wheel.
The road moved like water beneath me.
By the time I pulled up outside Pinewood Lodge, my whole body felt like it had been filled with wet concrete.
Room 302.
The door was already open — just barely, just enough.
*”Celeste?”*
My voice came out wrong.
Thick.
The room rotated slowly under my feet.
Diana’s place inside me wasn’t just quiet anymore — it was *gone*.
Not sleeping, not hiding.
Excavated.
Like someone had reached into my soul and scooped out a handful.
*”No—”*
The darkness came from behind and moved fast.
I tried to turn.
Tried to fight.
My body had already stopped taking orders.
The last thing I registered before I went under was the pattern on the carpet rushing up toward my face.
When I came back, cheap curtains were letting in light that felt like needles.
Pain greeted me from every direction at once — each breath pulled at muscles that had things to say about it.
I was naked.
In my palm, something cold and smooth.
A silver chain.
Delicate.
Unfamiliar.
Definitely not mine.
I made myself get up.
Made myself cross to the bathroom.
Made myself look in the mirror when the light came on.
My breathing stopped.
My neck.
My collarbone.
My waist.
Deep bruises.
Bite marks.
A map I had no memory of signing.
My knees nearly buckled.
*Celeste.*
I wrapped myself in the bedsheet and lunged for the door.
Yanked it open.
Celeste was leaning against the wall directly across the hall, arms crossed, a smile on her face I had never seen before — something cold living inside it, something that had clearly been waiting.
And beside her stood Vivienne, phone raised, camera pointed straight at me.
“Well, look at this,” Vivienne’s voice was honey poured over broken glass.
“Silver Creek’s warrior princess, caught in such a…
*interesting* situation.”
The sheet felt paper-thin.
I couldn’t move.
“Your text, Celeste…I come here because of your…”
Celeste laughed — a short, sharp sound.
“When did I text you?
*Savannah.* What are you even talking about?”
The marble floors of the pack house amplified every stumbling step I took, sending the sound down the two rows of assembled pack members like an announcement.
Father Theodore sat in the Alpha’s chair.
His eyes held nothing I recognized.
Renata stood beside him, her expression calibrated to perfect maternal concern.
“The evidence is clear, Theodore,” Renata’s voice was the kind of sad that gets rehearsed.
“What will the other packs think of Silver Creek?”
I opened my mouth.
Tried to find the words for what it felt like when Diana was severed — that specific, unspeakable pain.
Tried to explain that room 302’s door had been *open*, that the silver chain in my hand had never belonged to me, that I’d been drugged before I even walked through that door.
But without Diana, I couldn’t find solid ground under any of it.
Every word floated away before I could use it.
“Father, please—”
“Enough.”
His Alpha voice hit me in the chest.
My body flinched before my mind gave permission.
Vivienne stepped forward, heels sharp against the floor.
Her smile hadn’t changed since the hallway.
“No point in explaining yourself, *big sis.*” She let that last word sit there, let it do its damage.
“Silver Creek’s warrior princess.
Slept with some unknown wolf?
What a shame!!”
Father rose.
The room went silent in that way rooms only go silent when an Alpha is about to make something permanent.
“You have brought shame to this pack.” His voice didn’t shake.
It never did.
“You have disgraced this family.
You have disgraced your mother’s memory.”
“I, Theodore Cole, Alpha of Silver Creek Pack, hereby revoke your pack status and banish you from our territory.”
He paused.
The kind of pause that lets every word find its place in you.
“Leave before sundown.”