Chapter 17 — Pain From Another Body

Mira woke before dawn with a sharp sting in her palm.

She sat up quickly, breathing hard against the thin pillow. Her hand was uninjured. There was no cut, no blood, no bruise beneath the pale morning light filtering through the servants’ quarters window.

But the pain remained, hot and precise, as if a shard of glass had been pressed deep into her skin.

Nia stirred in the cot beside her, blinking sleepily. “Mira? What happened?”

Mira almost said it was a dream. She opened her mouth to dismiss it, but then she remembered Cassia’s silver eyes in the cracked mirror. The memory brought a fresh pulse of agony that made her fingers curl inward.

This was not a phantom ache from old bullying or accidental bruises. This was specific. Intentional.

She was used to being hurt by others. She was not used to being hurt by wounds that did not exist on her own body.

Mira stared at her unmarked palm, terror settling cold in her stomach. The pain was not hers, yet it lived inside her flesh.

She reviewed the incidents in her mind, forcing herself to trace the pattern through the haze of discomfort.

The cut on the warrior’s shoulder during training. Cassia’s sudden flinch. The matching pain across Mira’s own shoulder. The moonwater growl. The dream of silver eyes. Now this invisible wound in her palm.

It was no longer random. Every time Cassia’s wolf reacted, Mira felt something.

“It is not Cassia,” Mira whispered, the realization trembling in her voice.

Nia frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

Mira touched the old, faded mark on her back where her wolf should have emerged. Her fingers trembled against the scar tissue.

“The wolf.”

The words hung heavy in the quiet room. It was an impossible deduction for a wolfless girl, but the evidence was written in pain across her skin.

Nia’s eyes widened in fright. She grabbed Mira’s wrist, pulling her hand away from the scar.

“Don’t say that aloud,” Nia hissed, glancing fearfully at the door. “Not to the servants. Not to the elders. Not even to Alpha Darius.”

A wolfless girl claiming a connection to Cassia Ashford’s magnificent silver wolf would sound like madness. Or worse, treason. Cassia would use it to prove Mira was unstable. Elder Corvin would use it to declare her cursed.

Mira knew Nia was right. Silence was safety.

But silence also felt like being buried alive all over again. She finally had a question worth chasing, but asking it publicly could destroy everything she had left.

Deep beneath the packhouse, Galen entered the old record room under Darius’s quiet order.

The air smelled of dust and dry ink. Shelves lined the walls, holding birth rolls, shift records, bond certificates, and punishment logs spanning generations. He pulled Mira Vale’s file from the servant-class section.

It was thin. Too thin.

Birth registered. Parents deceased. First shift: failed. Wolf status: absent. Pack rank: servant class.

But one page was missing. The entire year before her first shift had been cleanly excised from the binding.

Galen ran his thumb over the jagged edge where the paper had been removed. A wolfless record should be boring, a simple documentation of biological failure.

This one had been cleaned. Someone had taken great care to ensure nothing remained of that lost year.

The door creaked open behind him. Galen turned to find Elder Corvin standing in the threshold, his expression carefully arranged into mild surprise.

“Beta Galen,” Corvin said smoothly. “I did not expect to find anyone here so early.”

He was not surprised. His gaze flicked to the file in Galen’s hand before meeting his eyes. “Has Alpha Darius ordered you to search old bond records?”

Galen answered carefully, revealing nothing. “Routine maintenance, Elder.”

Corvin stepped closer, his voice dropping to a warning murmur. “The Alpha’s attention toward that girl is already causing rumors. A weak girl can become a weapon if people believe the Alpha favors her.”

Galen did not defend Mira. Not yet. But he noticed Corvin avoided saying her name entirely, as if speaking it might give the suspicion weight.

After Corvin left, Galen continued searching with renewed urgency.

Behind Mira’s file, tucked deep into the deteriorating leather binding, his fingers found a torn strip of ritual parchment. Most of it was burned, the edges charred black.

Only three readable fragments remained.

Moon Rite Chamber.

Subject survived.

Wolf transferred.

Galen went still, the breath catching in his throat. These were not words that belonged in any legitimate pack record. They were evidence of something forbidden.

At that exact moment, miles above in the servants’ quarters, Mira gasped as another sharp pain lanced through her palm.

But this time, she heard a faint voice behind the agony.

It was not Cassia’s cruel whisper. It was not her own internal thought. It was something older, deeper, and desperately familiar.

Find me.

Mira pressed her unmarked palm to her chest, tears pricking her eyes as the echo faded into silence.

Somewhere in the packhouse, her missing wolf had stopped only crying.

Now it was asking to be found.