Lyra
The guards grabbed me with cruel efficiency before I could gather what little strength remained in my battered body.
Their hands were iron clasps, rough and unforgiving as they yanked my arms behind my back.
Cold steel scraped against my wrists, followed by the harsh, metallic clink of heavy chains biting into my skin like angry teeth.
I tried to pull away, but my muscles felt detached from my mind—heavy, numb, and trembling violently.
They dragged me toward the narrow bed like a piece of livestock, shoving me down onto the thin mattress.
I bounced slightly, but no pain registered through the deeper haze in my mind.
I stared blankly as they looped the end of the chain around the wooden bedpost, securing the lock to ensure I couldn’t raise my hands, let alone attempt another escape.
My wrists throbbed with every heavy beat of my heart, but inside, I felt entirely hollow.
No rage came.
No fresh tears fell.
Just a suffocating, disorienting fog.
Selene loved the Alpha triplets.
The whole territory knew it.
She would have crossed fire just to have one of them look her way.
So why?
Why would she refuse to let me run?
Why wouldn’t she accept the freedom I was handing her on a silver platter?
That single question beat inside my head like a war drum: Why?
She could have taken them—all three of them—along with the Luna crown I was being forced to wear.
Wasn’t that her dream since childhood?
Shouldn’t she be celebrating?
Flaunting her victory over me?
The cruelest part of it all was that she blocked my path out of this hell…
only to play the weeping, broken victim the second our father stepped into the room.
I curled my fingers instinctively, forgetting the restraints, and the iron pulled sharply against my raw flesh.
My throat constricted tight.
No sound came out.
My body was so dehydrated, my mouth so dry, that even weeping felt like a luxury I couldn’t afford.
My chest hitched in shallow, agonizing breaths.
Dark spots flickered across my vision, blurring the rough stone walls.
“Please…” I forced the word past my cracked lips, barely louder than a whisper.
The sound scraped my throat raw.
“May I…
please have some water?”
The plea hovered in the quiet room—small, pathetic, and desperate.
The two guards exchanged a quick glance, a flicker of something unreadable passing between them—perhaps pity, perhaps disgust.
But as quickly as it appeared, their faces hardened into stone masks.
“Beta’s orders,” the taller guard barked coldly.
“You don’t get a drop.”
It didn’t matter that my tongue felt like dust.
It didn’t matter that my vision was fading or that my back was torn open.
Orders were orders.
With a final, dismissive snort, they stepped out into the corridor, and the heavy iron lock clicked sharply into place.
I thought silence had finally settled over my grave, until a raised voice pierced through the door.
“Get out of my way!
You cannot stop me from seeing my friend!”
Bella.
My head snapped toward the entrance, the chains rattling loudly against the bedpost.
I strained to drag myself closer, to call her name, but all that came out of my throat was a dry, gasping breath.
“Ms.
Bella, turn back now,” a guard’s voice echoed stiffly through the thick wood.
“No one enters this room.”
“Not a chance!” Bella fired back, fiercely unyielding, just as she had always been.
“I am going inside.
Aren’t you terrified of what she’ll do to you once she takes the Luna title tomorrow?!”
A harsh, humorless laugh echoed through the hallway.
I couldn’t tell which guard it belonged to, but the sheer cruelty in the sound made my skin crawl.
“Even if they put a ring on her finger,” the guard sneered, “this pack will never answer to her.
No wolf will ever accept a reject as their Luna.”
The word struck me deeper than any physical whip.
Reject.
The label I had spent my entire life trying to strip away.
The single title I feared more than death.
It shattered whatever fragile wall I had left keeping me together.
Hot, silent tears spilled over my lashes, tracking through the dirt and blood on my cheeks.
I didn’t try to wipe them.
I simply lay there, choking silently on the crushing ache in my chest, my body shuddering with silent, agonizing sobs.
“You will burn in hell for this!” Bella screamed, her voice cracking with pure emotion.
I could picture her fists clenched, her eyes blazing with protective fury, even through the heavy oak door.
“All of you will pay!”
Her heavy footsteps stomped away, fading down the stone corridor until an absolute, suffocating quiet reclaimed the hallway.
And in that hollow silence, the reality finally crushed me.
I was locked away, chained to a frame, discarded…
and tomorrow, fate would seal my tomb.
I would be trapped in this nightmare for the rest of my life.
That single realization wrapped around my neck like an iron noose.
The room felt as though it were shrinking, the air thinning until every gasp burned my lungs.
Panic clawed wildly at my chest.
Moon Goddess, I beg you…
I prayed in silent desperation.
Please…
open a door for me.
Any door.
Just do not leave me to suffer here.
I bit my lower lip hard, breaking the skin until I tasted the metallic tang of blood.
The sharp pain grounded me just enough to stop the hyperventilating.
I dragged in a ragged breath, swallowing down the sob rising in my chest.
Crying had never saved me before, and it wouldn’t save me now, even if my heart felt like it was tearing down the middle.
I curled into a ball as far as the chains would allow, sinking deeper into the dark emptiness consuming my mind.
My head felt light, detached, and painfully heavy all at once.
Then…
a sound.
Faint at first, almost lost to the wind, coming from the high arched window.
My eyes flew open.
The noise grew sharper—a steady, rhythmic scraping, metal gritting against stone, iron latch rattling.
Someone was forcing the exterior window shutter from the outside.
Hard.
A cold shudder ran down my spine.
Was it an enforcer sent to finish me off quietly before dawn?
Was it Fredrick coming back to complete his torture?
Or…
was it someone coming to pull me out of the dark?
My pulse hammered against my ribs.
A hundred terrifying possibilities collided in my head, but I forced myself to remain absolutely still, holding my breath.
I squeezed my eyes shut, steeling my nerve for whatever stepped through that frame.
No matter who was coming through that window, I had to survive.