"I am your sister, Elowen," Elyra said, her voice shaking so badly the words almost caught in her throat. She pressed her back against the cool wood of the vanity, her hands trembling where they gripped the edge. "We share the exact same blood. How can you look at me like this?"
Elowen let out a short, hollow laugh that didn’t reach her eyes at all. There was nothing warm left in her expression, nothing that remembered the girl who used to braid Elyra’s hair by candlelight, whispering secrets long after the household had gone quiet.
She stepped closer, towering over Elyra, her pale blue eyes cold and sharp as chipped ice, eyes that had once looked at Elyra with something close to love.
"You are not my sister," Elowen said, every word dripping with toxic disgust. "You are a curse on this entire family. Look at us. We come from a sacred royal line, and not once in our pack’s history has anyone been born defective. Not once has a Veyrith been born without a wolf."
Elyra stared up at her, unable to process the pure malice pouring out of her sister’s face. Though she was four years younger, people used to say they shared the same delicate jawline and deep-set eyes.
She remembered a time when strangers could barely tell them apart in the dim light of the great hall, when Elowen used to laugh and call her "little shadow" instead of spitting curses at her. She remembered summer afternoons spent chasing each other through the orchard, Elowen’s laughter ringing out before either of them understood what separated them.
But the resemblance ended there now, buried somewhere beneath years of resentment neither of them had ever spoken aloud until this moment, a resentment that must have been festering quietly for years while Elyra had been too foolish, or too hopeful, to notice.
"Just take a good look at yourself," Elowen sneered, flicking her wrist toward the massive, gold-framed mirror behind them. "Look at you. Look at your hair."
Instinctively, Elyra lifted a shaking hand and touched the long, dark strands falling over her shoulders. Elowen wasn’t wrong about that. Ever since Elyra turned eighteen four years ago, her dark hair had slowly begun changing. Strands of silver and bone-white had started threading through it, starting from the roots, while her skin grew paler and paler with every passing year, no matter how much time she spent under the sun.
The elders called it sickness. The pack called it proof that her body was rotting from the inside out because no inner beast was there to keep her alive.
She had stopped looking in mirrors months ago, unable to bear the sight of what she was slowly becoming in everyone else’s eyes, even if she still felt like herself on the inside, still felt like the same girl who used to dream of dancing at her sister’s wedding rather than being sold into one of her own.
"My hair changing doesn’t make me any less our father’s daughter," Elyra whispered, squeezing her eyes shut for a second to fight back the hot tears stinging her lashes. "It doesn’t make me a thing."
"It makes you an abomination," Elowen corrected sharply. She reached out and snatched a fistful of Elyra’s hair, yanking her head back so hard Elyra gasped, pain flaring white-hot across her scalp. "You are going to marry that Lycan monster in my place. I don’t care if you live through the first night or if he rips your head off the second you cross the border. You have long overdue your lifetime in this house, Elyra. Do this family one actual favor and disappear forever."
Elyra pulled away, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Somewhere beneath the fear, a small, foolish part of her still hoped this was only cruelty born of nerves, that Elowen might come to her senses if given one more chance, that the sister she remembered might still exist somewhere beneath all that ice. "I won’t let you do this. I’ll tell him. The moment I see King Vaelric, I’ll..."
Elowen stopped listening. A strange, terrifying smile slowly spread across her face... a flat, psychotic smirk that made the hair on the back of Elyra’s neck stand up. It was a look Elyra had never seen before, not even in the worst of their childhood fights, and it turned her blood to ice, warning her of something far worse than words.
"What... what are you doing?" Elyra stammered, backing away until her hips hit the corner of the table. "What is wrong with you?"
Elowen didn’t answer. Without a single word of warning, she reeled back and slammed the side of her own head straight into the hard edge of the marble fireplace mantle.
THUD.
Elyra shrieked, slapping her hands over her mouth in absolute horror. "Elowen!"
Blood instantly welled up from a split near Elowen’s temple, red and thick, running down her porcelain cheek. But Elowen wasn’t done. She didn’t even flinch at the pain, as though she had rehearsed this violence against herself a hundred times in the privacy of her own mind.
Smiling through the blood, she grabbed a heavy crystal perfume bottle from the vanity and smashed it squarely across her own forehead.
CRASH!
Glass shattered in a spray of glittering shards and scented oil. Blood burst from a deep cut above her eyebrow, instantly drenching the front of her tailored silk dress. The sweet, cloying scent of spilled perfume mixed sickeningly with the metallic tang of blood, filling the room with an odor Elyra would never forget.
"Stop! Are you insane?!" Elyra screamed in pure terror, reaching out to grab her sister’s wrists, but Elowen shoved her violently to the floor, the impact rattling through Elyra’s already bruised body.
Elowen reached up, grabbed the neckline of her own designer dress, and ripped it wide open, tearing the silk down to her waist. Then she threw herself onto the floor among the broken glass, threw her head back, and let out a blood-curdling, desperate shriek that echoed off the high ceilings and shattered the quiet of the entire west wing.
"FATHER! MOTHER! HELP ME! PLEASE!"
Elyra’s eyes went wide as saucers, her breath locking in her chest. Cold, paralyzing shock flooded her veins. No... no, no, no. She knew instantly what Elowen was doing. She knew how this looked, how this was going to end, and who everyone in this house would believe.
Years of being the lesser daughter, the broken one, the shameful secret kept from visiting dignitaries, had taught her exactly how this story would be written, and she would not hold the pen.
"Elowen, stop it!" Elyra begged, scrambling backward on her hands and knees through the spilled perfume and glass, shards biting into her palms. "Please, don’t do this!"
She had to get out. If she stayed in this room for another five seconds, the Goddess alone knew what they would do to her.
Elyra forced her bruised, battered body up and turned to bolt for the heavy suite doors. But just as her hand reached out to grab the brass handle, the doors were thrown open with a bang.
Lord Veyrith burst into the room, flanked immediately by Elyra’s mother, Lady Mirela.
The moment Mirela’s eyes landed on Elowen lying in a pool of blood and shattered glass, screaming and weeping on the floor, the world seemed to stop.
"Elowen!" Mirela gasped, her face draining of all color.
Before Elyra could even open her mouth to speak, her mother moved like a blur. Mirela shoved Elyra with the full, violent weight of a noble shifter.
"Get away from her, you filthy creature!" Mirela spat, her voice trembling with a hatred that seemed to have been waiting years for permission to surface.
Elyra flew sideways, her lower back slamming violently against the sharp edge of a stone wall pillar. A dull CRACK echoed through her ribs, and she collapsed onto the floor with an agonized groan, clutching her hip as white-hot pain blinded her vision.
Lord Veyrith dropped to his knees beside Elowen, gathering his bleeding, sobbing golden child into his arms. His hands trembled as he pressed his coat sleeve against the gash on her forehead.
"What happened?" her father demanded, his voice trembling with a mixture of raw panic and rising fury. "What happened to you, my princess? Who did this?!"
Elowen buried her face into her father’s chest, her frame shaking with well-rehearsed, pitiful sobs. "I... I know Elyra was scared, Father... she probably didn’t mean to do it..."
Lord Veyrith stiffened. He looked up slowly from Elowen, his jaw setting into a terrifying line as his eyes locked onto Elyra groaning on the floor.
"You mean Elyra did this to you?" he asked, his voice dropping into an icy, dangerous whisper.
Elyra shook her head desperately, pushing through the agonizing pain in her waist to pull herself up against the wall. "I didn’t! Father, I swear on my life, I didn’t touch her! She did it to herself! She grabbed the bottle and hit herself..."
"You expect me to believe my heir would smash a crystal bottle over her own head?" her father snapped, his eyes flashing a dangerous, glowing amber. "For what? Why would she harm herself?!"
"Father, please don’t be annoyed at her," Elowen whimpered, clutching her mother’s hand as Mirela knelt beside her, dabbing at the blood with a silk handkerchief while glaring at Elyra with pure hatred. "She was just angry..."
"Elowen already accepted her duty to honor the treaty and save this pack!" Lord Veyrith roared, standing up slowly, his heavy boots crushing the shards of glass on the rug. "She offered to sacrifice her entire future, and you tried to kill her in her own room?!"
"I didn’t!" Elyra cried, her voice breaking into sobs. "Look at me! How could I do this to her? I’m wolfless! She has a wolf! How could a wolfless girl overpower an Alpha’s heir in her own bedroom?!"
For a fraction of a second, Lord Veyrith’s gaze wavered. His eyes flicked to the raw cuts on Elyra’s face, then to Elowen’s broken dress. The logic was obvious... a wolfless human had no physical way to beat a trained shifter heir without taking severe damage herself.
For one breath, one fragile heartbeat, Elyra thought she saw the shadow of the father he used to be, back before her hair had started turning silver and her worth in his eyes had started draining away with it. She clung desperately to that flicker of doubt, praying it might grow into something larger, something that could save her.
Elowen saw the hesitation instantly. She gasped loudly, clutching her throat, and let out a fresh wave of panicked tears.
"She attacked me from behind, Father!" Elowen wept, her voice trembling with tragic innocence. "I was going through my closet... I was pulling out my best silk dresses to give to her, since I thought I wouldn’t be here to wear them anymore... I wanted her to have something nice to take to the north. And while my back was turned, she grabbed the heavy perfume bottle off the vanity and hit me from behind! I couldn’t defend myself, Dad... I was just trying to be a good sister!"
Mirela let out a horrified gasp, wrapping her arms tighter around Elowen. "Monster! You absolute vicious monster!"
Any trace of doubt vanished from Lord Veyrith’s face, replaced by a wall of absolute, unyielding rage.
"GUARDS!" he yelled, his voice echoing down the stone corridors like thunder.
The heavy oak doors were shoved wide instantly. Three broad-shouldered Gamma enforcers in heavy leather armor swept into the suite, their hands resting on their weapons, eyes scanning the room before settling on the Alpha.
"Take that wolfless thing down to the dungeons," Lord Veyrith commanded, pointing a heavy, trembling finger at Elyra.
Elyra’s heart stopped. "Father, no! Please, listen to me..."
"Bind her face-down on the bench," Lord Veyrith continued, his voice cold, flat, and devoid of a single shred of human mercy. "Fifty lashes with the silver-threaded whip. Lock her in the iron cell until tomorrow evening. No food. No water. No medical care."
"Fifty lashes?!" Elyra choked out, horror washing over her. Fifty lashes with silver thread would kill a full shifter, to a wolfless girl with no inner healing, it was a death sentence. "Father, please! It’ll kill me! I didn’t do it!"
"And as for the treaty," Lord Veyrith said, ignoring her completely as he turned his back on her to look down at Elowen, "Elowen will no longer be going anywhere. For committing this treasonous crime against the heir of Bloodridge, you will take her place in the carriage tomorrow night. You will marry the Lycan King, or you will rot in that northern fortress until you bleed out."
"No! Father!" Elyra screamed as the two Gammas stepped forward.
One of them kicked her injured hip, knocking her flat on her face, while the other seized her by the wrists and hauled her off the floor like a sack of trash. She kicked and thrashed, but without a wolf, her strength was nothing against them.
They dragged her out into the grand hallway, her bare feet scraping against the floorboards, leaving a smear of fresh blood behind her. The servants, guards, and high-ranking pack members lined the walls, standing in dead silence as the broken, disgraced daughter of the Alpha was hauled through the keep like a common murderer.
Some of them, she noticed through her tears, would not even meet her eyes, as though her suffering might be contagious if they looked too long. Others watched with open pity that helped her no more than the ones who looked away, pity being a currency no one in this house was willing to spend on her behalf.
Nobody stepped forward. Nobody said a word.
They dragged her down the winding spiral staircase into the deep subterranean level of the estate - where the air grew cold, damp, and smelled of stale copper and mold. They threw open the heavy iron door of the torture chamber and slammed her face-down onto a rough, blood-stained wooden bench, binding her wrists and ankles with thick iron shackles.
"Please," Elyra whispered into the cold wood, her face pressed against the rough grain, tears soaking the timber. "Please, don’t do this..."
The heavy footsteps of her father echoed on the stone stairs. Lord Veyrith walked into the dim cell, his face lit only by the flickering orange light of the wall torches. He didn’t look angry anymore. He looked calm. Emotionless. It was that calm, more than anything else, that told Elyra there would be no mercy waiting for her tonight, that the man standing before her had already buried whatever part of him once called her daughter.
He reached up to the stone wall and unhooked a long, heavy leather whip studded with fine silver barbs that glittered in the firelight.
"You will marry the King," Lord Veyrith said softly, testing the weight of the lash in his hand with a sharp CRACK against the stone floor. His tone was strangely gentle, almost conversational, as if he were discussing the morning weather.
"I will not marry him," Elyra wept into the bench, holding onto the last shred of defiance she had left in her bleeding body. "I will tell him... I’ll tell him what you did..."
"No, you won’t," her father murmured, stepping up behind the bench and raising his arm. "Because by the time I’m finished with you tonight, you’ll be begging him to take you away from me."