Chapter 005

Sienna's POV

The marble felt like a sheet of ice, biting through the damp silk of my gown and sinking into my knees until the bone ached. My legs simply quit while white static flickered across my vision, hot, fat tears carving tracks through the powder on my cheeks.

Was this the grand opening of my life?

My father’s promises were ash now, and though I knew the life he described was gone, I refused to believe this was the final curtain.

I forced my head up as every pair of eyes in the Silver Fang hall pinned me to the floor. The overhead chandeliers were aggressive, casting a clinical light that turned the wine stain on my bodice into a jagged, crimson wound. I smoothed my palms over the silk, but my hands were frantic, trembling things I couldn't control.

Remember, Sienna. Four hours remain.

The voice was a heavy resonance in my skull, deeper than my own, signaling that Juvien, my wolf, stirred. A moon symbol flared against the back of my hand, branding my skin with a silver heat as I scrambled back, my breath hitching in a throat that felt lined with glass.

Flashes of memory strobed through my mind, bringing back the smell of pine needles, the blur of a forest floor, and Lucas laughing as he chased me through the tall grass when we were kids. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, desperate to dislodge the ghosts.

"What... what was that?" The words came out as a pathetic rasp.

Heavy, deliberate footsteps vibrated through the floorboards behind me, though I didn't need to look because the scent reached me first—expensive red wine mixed with the sharp, biting edge of black pepper.

Ivy.

She drifted into my periphery with a crystal glass dangling carelessly from her fingertips, the wine surging toward the rim with every swaying step she took. She took her time, letting her gaze crawl down my body with a slow, predatory satisfaction while I tucked my chin, refusing to give her the pleasure of a reaction tonight.

Cold, spindly fingers hooked under my jaw, forcing my face up to meet hers.

"Oops," she murmured, a tiny, cruel twitch pulling at the corner of her mouth. "My hand slipped."

The glass tilted, sending the wine hitting my chest in a heavy, freezing splash. It soaked through the thin silk instantly, clinging to my skin like a second, colder layer of failure as I gasped from the liquid trailing a path down to my waist.

The laughter started with a single noble in the front row, quickly rolling through the hall in a suffocating wave of noise.

I stared at her, a metallic, thick taste of disgust filling my mouth while a quiet, sharpened hatred began to settle behind it.

"Do you honestly think," Ivy said, leaning in until I could smell the cloying sweetness of her perfume, "that Alpha Lucas would choose you, a fated mate?" She let out a soft, airy giggle. "You’re a puppet mate, Sienna—actually, I take it back, you're just a puppet."

The words felt like needles of ice sliding down my spine.

I held her stare for three long seconds, refusing to blink, before looking past her toward the dais. Lucas stood there with his arms barred across his chest, watching the spectacle with the detachment of a man observing a stray dog. He did nothing.

The rightful Luna? I thought, looking at the winner he chose.

"I’m not playing this game with you, Ivy," I whispered, making sure every syllable was sharp and distinct. "Keep your mate, and I hope the night ceremony is everything you deserve."

Her smile didn't just fade, but died completely, her eyes thinning into slits while her nostrils flared into the exact expression she wore right before she destroyed something she couldn't control.

She moved with a blurred, unnatural speed.

Ivy hurled herself onto the marble, her body colliding with the floor with a dull, sickening thud that cut through the laughter like a blade.

The hall went vacuum-silent, leaving servants frozen with their trays tilted at dangerous angles.

Ivy pushed herself up on one trembling elbow, looking around the room with eyes wide and brimming with staged moisture. She waited for the perfect moment of silence, her lip quivering, before she screamed.

"She pushed me!" Her voice broke, loud and jagged. "She hates me, and she can't stand that I'm the Luna of Silver Fang!"

For a fraction of a second, a sharp, triumphant smirk flickered across her face, but she quickly buried her head in her hands.

Lucas moved, his boots striking the marble with the heavy cadence of authority. He stopped directly in front of me, his presence acting as a physical weight while the bond between us—the golden thread I had felt since childhood—stretched thin, vibrated, and then snapped like a frayed rope. I shivered as the emptiness hollowed out my chest.

"Why would you do this, Sienna?" His voice was a low growl that filled every corner of the hall, causing the lower-ranked wolves in the room to bow their heads on instinct. "Why are you so consistently cruel to your own sister?"

He reached down, his touch infinitely more tender as he helped Ivy to her feet.

I looked at him, the burn of betrayal hot in my throat. This was the boy who used to promise he would be my shield, but now he was the one holding the storm.

I didn't give him an answer, nor did I even look at her, grinding my teeth together until the pressure sent a copper tang of blood onto my tongue. My mind remained a chaotic theater of dark thoughts.

"She’s nothing but a worthless omega," a voice hissed from the crowd.

"Always a thorn in the side of the future Luna," another added.

"Lucas," I said, my voice sounding like raw sandpaper. "I get it, you hate me. I’m accepting the rejection and going, but—"

The sentence was cut short.

Morrigan stepped out from the line of elders, the rhythmic thump of her cane sounding like a gavel.

"But what?" Morrigan asked, her eyes as cold as river stones. "Were you planning to finish the job, weakening our Alpha's wolf for your own petty gain?"

The urge to lunge at her, feeling my fingers close around that withered throat, was an almost physical pull. But I knew the cost, knowing they would strip my wolf for that and leave me a shell.

A hand blurred in my vision.

The slap landed with a crack that echoed off the high ceiling, heat exploding across my cheek and sending my head snapping to the side. I felt the warm splash of blood hit the floor—one drop, then two.

I didn't cry, clamping my jaw shut until my muscles ached.

"Lucas," I whispered, my hands shaking so violently I had to ball them into fists. "You actually slapped me."

"Does she require another to find her manners?" Morrigan asked, her tone light as if she were discussing the weather.

"Sienna is a servant of this pack now," Lucas announced, speaking to the floor, to the gallery, to anyone but the girl he had once loved. "She will perform every duty assigned to her, and for any insolence, any curse... you are to teach her the lesson she clearly lacks."

He turned his back on me, walking toward his father at the dais while Ivy clung to his arm, matching his stride.

"And you will not accept the rejection, Sienna," he called back over his shoulder. "I haven't dismissed you yet."

Ivy leaned into him, her whisper intentionally loud enough to carry.

"You shouldn't have been so harsh," she told him, her eyes fixed on me. "She’s my sister—I know she resents me, but I really wanted her to see us tonight."

She flashed one last, jagged smirk.

I tried to call out, to scream at his retreating back, but my throat felt like it had been sewn shut. The breaking bond flared inside my ribs in a paradox of fire and ice, while inside the cage of my mind, Juvien let out a long, mourning howl.

So this is the fate the Moon Goddess had in mind?

Two female servants stepped forward, their fingers digging into the meat of my arms like talons. I forced my legs to hold because I wouldn't be dragged.

Morrigan watched from the steps, her expression one of deep, smug satisfaction, but I kept my head high until the heavy oak doors of the hall groaned shut behind me.

Silence held for three heartbeats before Adrian’s voice shattered it.

"A toast! To the Alpha!"

The corridor was a narrow, suffocating throat of stone, the air damp and smelling of stagnant water. The draft slipped under my wet gown, turning my skin to gooseflesh as I couldn't stop the image of Lucas’s hands from looping in my mind—how they used to hold me, and how they felt tonight. I let out a sharp, ugly laugh.

"This is your reality now, omega," the first servant said, her voice flat with boredom. "You’re down in the dirt with the rest of us."

"Our dear Luna," the second one mocked, giggling.

"She’s the Alpha’s pet servant," the first corrected, shoving me toward a door. The wood was dark, swollen with rot, and smelled of mildew.

My forehead nearly struck the frame, but I caught myself at the last second and spun around, laughing again, louder this time as the sound bounced off the cold stone walls.

They blinked, looking at each other with a flash of genuine confusion that quickly soured into anger.

They turned and left, their footsteps echoing until they were swallowed by the shadows.

I stood alone in the dark, the betrayal sitting in my chest and beating with the steady rhythm of a second heart. My eyes burned, but the tears stayed back.

I stepped inside. The room was less of a home and more of a cellar, cobwebs brushing against my face like ghostly fingers. I wiped them away and slid the rusted bolt home, leaving it to screech in protest.

A cracked, silvered mirror hung crookedly on the wall, and I walked toward it, my reflection fractured.

The girl in the glass was a stranger, her cheek an angry, swelling red while her gown was a ruined rag.

Then, her eyes shifted, the brown bleeding away to be replaced by a pouring, molten silver. My hair lifted as if caught in an invisible updraft while the moon mark on my hand began to glow, filling the cramped room with a light so blinding I had to shield my eyes.

Your mate is coming, Sienna.

Juvien’s voice was a solid thing in my mind—warm and utterly certain.

I shook, but not from the cold, shaking instead from the terrifying hope of it. I looked at the mirror and laughed at the girl inside.

"It’s a fantasy, Juvien," I whispered to the empty room. "Rejection kills the soul, so who would ever want what’s left of me?"

No answer came.

The room tilted as the floor rose up to meet me, blackness flooding in before I fell, the thin, lumpy mattress the only thing there to catch me.