"Why did you call your mom that?" Kira whispered, her voice trembling as she stared at her best friend in absolute shock.
Elyra didn’t flinch. She kept her gaze fixed on the empty doorway where Luna Mirela had just vanished, and when she finally spoke, her voice came out flat, steady, and devoid of warmth.
"She’s Elowen’s mother," Elyra said softly. "Not mine."
Kira’s breath caught in her throat. She stared at Elyra, her jaw slightly slack, unable to process the words. For as long as she had known her, Elyra was the girl who would bend over backward for a single breadcrumb of affection from Mirela.
She was the daughter who stayed up late cleaning the pack house rooms, who took the blame for broken dishes, who studied twice as hard just hoping her mother might look at her with something resembling pride.
Kira had watched that hope get crushed a hundred times over the years, had bandaged the invisible wounds it left behind, had never once heard Elyra speak of it with anything but quiet, aching longing.
Hearing those words come out of Elyra’s mouth now... with no anger, no bitterness, just cold, settled fact, felt terrifying, like watching a door close somewhere deep inside her friend, one that might never open again.
How much had they broken her? How much damage had they done to her in those deep, freezing dungeons over two days?
Kira had barely slept since Elyra had been dragged away, imagining every horror that might have unfolded behind those stone walls, and now, standing here, she realized the truth might have been worse than anything she had pictured.
Kira watched her in intense sadness. Elyra’s face was a complete void. No tears, no trembling lips, no furrowed brow. Just a hollow, empty shell staring back at her through the mirror, as though whoever had once lived behind those eyes had already left the room, leaving only the shape of a girl standing in her place.
It was a sight that made Kira’s chest ache in a way she had no words for, a grief without a name.
Kira let out a ragged sigh, stepped forward, and wrapped her arms tightly around Elyra’s shoulders.
"Don’t be too hard on yourself, Lyra," Kira choked out, burying her face into Elyra’s hair, her own chest heaving. "You... you deserve love. You deserve happiness. You really do..."
Kira paused, her throat tightening so badly she couldn’t finish the thought. What was she even saying? What do you say to someone being handed over to a kingdom of bloodthirsty Lycans in less than ten minutes? How could she promise happiness when everything around them was burning to the ground?
The words felt hollow even as she said them, but she couldn’t stop herself from offering what little comfort she had left to give. Some part of her needed to say it anyway, if only to convince herself the world wasn’t as cruel as it seemed in this moment.
Elyra stood frozen for a beat. Then, slowly, her arms lifted and wrapped around Kira’s waist.
The dam broke.
A sharp, violent sob tore out of Elyra’s chest, so deep and raw it made her whole body shake. She buried her face in Kira’s neck, weeping silently as heavy tears soaked into Kira’s dress. Her spine shuddered against the tight silk of her wedding dress, every rasping breath dragging pain across her scabbed back, but she couldn’t stop it.
She cried for the little girl who had spent years waiting by the stairs for a mother who never came. She cried for the dreams she was leaving behind in the attic. She cried because she was terrified, completely alone, and out of options.
Years of carefully swallowed grief poured out of her all at once, as though some final wall inside her had simply given way under the weight of everything still to come. Every sob seemed to carry a piece of the girl she used to be, one that would never quite return once this night was over.
Kira held her tighter, resting her cheek against Elyra’s head, gently rubbing her arm. "I’ve got you. I’m right here. Let it out, Lyra. Just let it out."
They stayed like that for several minutes until the heavy footsteps of the omegas outside began to shift impatiently near the door.
Elyra pulled back slowly, wiping her wet face with the back of her hand. She took a long, shaky breath, trying to steady her breathing, forcing the wild storm inside her chest back down into something small enough to hide.
Kira forced a weak, wobbly smile onto her tear-stained face, her fingers gently tucking a stray lock of dark hair behind Elyra’s ear. "Smile..." she whispered softly, her voice breaking. "It’s... your big day."
Elyra looked at her, and a faint, sad smile touched her lips. "It sure is."
They walked out of the attic room together, stepping into the narrow hallway where the guards were waiting, their expressions bored and indifferent, as though escorting a girl to her doom were no different from any other task on their list.
As they moved down the stairs, Elyra’s face smoothed back out into a blank, unreadable wall. But inside her chest, her heart was hammering wildly against her ribs, doing the complete opposite of her calm exterior. This was really it.
There was no rescue coming. No miracle. She was being led down the grand staircase of her own home straight to her grave, and no one in this house would shed a single genuine tear over it. She wondered, briefly, if anyone would even remember her real name once she was gone.
They guided her down the long, gilded corridors of the main pack house. Every step made the freshly knitted wounds on her back burn like open flame beneath the heavy silk gown. She kept her chin up, staring straight ahead, her mind racing in circles.
How was she supposed to survive among a people who hated her kind more than anything in the world?
Ever since the Night of the Ash Treaty eight years ago... when the high wolf packs ambushed and slaughtered King Roderic Draeven’s unarmed vanguard during a sacred seasonal truce, the Northern Kingdom had cut off every line of mercy.
The Lycans didn’t just distrust werewolves anymore; they viewed them as traitorous, oath-breaking beasts devoid of honor. To the Lycan high court, wolf shifters were an infection of unstable, moon-driven mongrels who hid behind aristocratic titles while harboring feral, savage instincts.
Even at The Citadel of Aethelwulf, the ancient neutral stronghold where noble bloodlines were once forced to study together, Lycan lords kept their iron weapons drawn and refused to sit at the same tables.
They didn’t view this marriage as a union of two houses. They viewed it as taking a hostage from a pack of dishonorable wild animals, an iron collar snapped around Bloodridge’s neck to remind them of the blood they owed.
And now Elyra was being delivered straight into their grand court as that sacrificial pawn... a piece of bargaining chip wrapped in cheap silk and heavy lies.
When the heavy oak double doors of the main reception hall were finally pushed open by two Gamma guards, the scene inside felt like a stage play.
Standing near the head of the room, Lady Mirela was dabbing a lace handkerchief at her eyes, letting out loud, dramatic, tragic sobs for the benefit of the witnesses.
Beside her, Lord Veyrith stood with a grave, solemn expression, looking like a devoted patriarch making a painful sacrifice for the pack.
Elowen leaned against her mother, her head wrapped in a delicate white bandage, looking frail and fragile, every inch the picture of an innocent victim rather than the architect of Elyra’s suffering. The sheer theater of it all made Elyra’s stomach twist with a disgust she had no room left to express.
Elyra wanted to walk over, grab her mother by her perfect, styled hair, and scream liar directly into her face. She wanted to tear down the tapestry of their fake nobility in front of everyone, to expose every lie they had built their standing upon.
But she kept her limbs still and her jaw set. Too much was at stake. If she made a scene now, Veyrith would throw Kira into the cell before the night was over. That fear alone was enough to keep her spine locked and her expression carved from stone.
"Presenting Lady Elowen of Bloodridge," the herald announced, his voice echoing off the high stone arches.
Elyra stepped past the threshold. Her eyes swept across the grand hall, passing the pack elders, the guards, and the foreign nobility lining the carpeted walkway, all of them watching her with varying degrees of curiosity and pity.
Then her gaze hit the center of the room, where the Lycan delegation stood.
Standing in the middle of four massive, heavily armored Lycan guards was a single man who commanded every inch of space around him without saying a word.
He was built like a fortress... broad-shouldered, towering, wrapped in a long, dark coat trimmed with thick grey fur and silver fastenings.
His dark hair was cut short at the sides, framing a sharp, ruthless jawline and eyes so piercingly silver they seemed to glow against his tan skin.
The raw, oppressive aura rolling off him was so suffocating that the werewolf guards standing nearby wouldn’t even look him in the eye, their gazes sliding away as though drawn by some instinct older than fear itself.
Elyra froze mid-step. Her breath hitched violently in her chest, her hands clenching tightly into the skirt of her gown.
It was him.
Her blood ran completely cold, the room tilting sideways for a terrifying second.
No... no, am I seeing things? Someone, please, wake me up.
It was the exact same man she had encountered three weeks ago near the forbidden northern riverbank. The man she had assumed was a rogue shifter... the towering stranger who had stood on the sharp rocks across the rushing water, watching her silently in the moonlight without uttering a word.
The man whose dark, piercing glare had haunted her nightmares for weeks, resurfacing in dreams she never told anyone about, not even Kira.
That rogue? That stranger by the river?
He was King Vaelric Draeven?!
Vaelric’s silver eyes locked onto hers the second she entered the room. He didn’t move. He didn’t bow. He just stood there, tracking her every movement with a cold, terrifying intensity that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, as though he were peeling back every layer of composure she had fought so hard to hold in place.
"Ah, Your Grace," Lord Veyrith said, stepping forward with an awkward, rehearsed smile, gesturing toward Elyra. "My daughter, Elowen. She has willingly accepted the honor of this union to secure the peace between our lands."
Vaelric didn’t look at Veyrith. He didn’t give the Alpha of Bloodridge even a glance. His silver eyes remained pinned entirely on Elyra’s pale, frozen face, as though the rest of the room had ceased to exist the moment she walked through the door.
"Is that so?" Vaelric’s voice cut through the hall... a low, deep baritone like heavy iron dragging over stone. He took a slow step forward, his heavy boots echoing loudly against the polished marble floor. "She looks less like a willing bride and more like a prisoner led to an execution block."
Lord Veyrith’s smile faltered instantly, his jaw tightening as he cleared his throat. "She is simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of the occasion, Your Grace. She is quiet by nature."
"Is she?" Vaelric stopped three feet in front of Elyra. Up close, his towering frame completely blocked out the light from the chandeliers above her.
He leaned down slightly, his sharp gaze cutting straight through her empty mask, scanning the faint bruise along her jawline and the stiff, guarded way she held her shoulders, cataloging every small betrayal her body offered up despite her best efforts to hide it.
"Tell me yourself, little wolf," Vaelric murmured, his voice low enough that only she could hear the underlying edge of dark mockery in it. "Did you choose this? Or did your noble father drag you out of a cage just in time to sign my treaty?"
Elyra felt her throat lock up. She stared into those glowing silver eyes, the sheer weight of his presence pressing against her chest like a physical wall.
She remembered the riverbank... remembered how he had watched her without moving a muscle, like a predator deciding whether to strike, and how even then, some small, foolish part of her had wondered what it might feel like to be seen by him instead of hunted.
That memory now felt like a cruel joke the universe had played on her, one she was only now beginning to understand.
She swallowed down the lump of terror in her throat, keeping her chin raised despite the trembling in her knees.
"I am here to fulfill my duty to Bloodridge, Your Grace," Elyra said, her voice small, raspy, but clear enough to carry through the tense silence of the room.