I labored in the lethal silver mines for three years, letting the toxic dust rot my lungs just to afford medicine for my sister, Snow. But on the seventh day after her death, our biological parents—Alpha Silas and Luna Elara—finally showed up. They hadn’t come to mourn. They came to claim her cold corpse, intending to marry it off to a powerful Alpha in place of Vanya, the fake daughter they favored. To protect Vanya’s status and hide Snow’s ancient White Wolf bloodline, they had suppressed Snow’s shifting, allowed Vanya to whip her with silver, and ultimately poisoned her. When I refused to hand over her cheap pine coffin, they ordered their warriors to force my face into the mud. "Burn her." Silas threw a torch onto Snow’s pyre, desperate to destroy the evidence of her silver-scarred flesh and the fatal Wolfsbane in her veins. As the flames licked my sister’s burial shift, my chest spasmed, coughing up the dark blood of my own impending death. I couldn’t fathom how parents could be so monstrous to their own flesh and blood, sacrificing their true daughter just to maintain a political lie. But they didn’t know I had already sent a blood-stained letter to the Lycan Tribunal. Just as the fire caught, the Chief Arbiter stepped out of the shadows, and I knew I would live just long enough to watch their empire burn. Chapter 1 Lyra POV A ceaseless, weeping rain washed over the crumbling ramparts of the estate. It was the seventh day since my sister died. A heavy, black-lacquered carriage drew to a halt in the mire beyond the iron gates. The horses—great black beasts—blew steam from their nostrils, the vapor turning to ghost-white plumes in the sodden air. Torches sputtered in the grasp of the outriders, casting long, distorted shadows that danced upon the wet earth like specters. The carriage door creaked open. Alpha Silas and Luna Elara emerged. Silas’s polished boot trod through a puddle, splashing a fan of gray mud across my shins. He did not so much as glance down at the refuse by his feet. Luna Elara, cinched into a severe Victorian corset beneath a coat of heavy velvet, held a black silk umbrella aloft. Her face was a mask of disdain as her gaze swept over the churned ground. Alpha Silas stood a pace behind her, a tall, rigid figure, his eyes as empty and cold as the winter sky. They were my sister’s biological parents. They had not come to mourn. They had come to claim her corpse. "Where is she?" Alpha Silas’s voice was pitched low, yet it carried the immense, crushing weight of his station. The cellar’s coarse flagstones bit into my kneecaps. A dull ache crawled up the stiff sinews of my legs, but I lacked the strength to shift from the degrading posture. Beside me rested a coffin of cheap, unvarnished pine. I had spent the morning scratching the sigil of the Moon Goddess into its lid with a rusted knife. "She is at rest," I said, my voice a thin tremor—a product of the chill and the sickness curdling in my veins. "Bring her out," Luna Elara snapped, collapsing her umbrella as she descended the stone steps. "Vanya is inconsolable. She refuses her union with Alpha Jaxon. Snow will take her place. It is her duty." My gaze fell to the closed lid of the coffin. A dry, bitter sound—something that might have been a laugh—escaped my throat. A replacement for a mating contract. The thought was a shard of ice in my gut; they meant to offer a powerful Alpha a bride of cold, inanimate flesh. "Your summons comes too late," I said, lifting my head to meet their imperious stares. "There is no pulse left for an Alpha to claim, no breath to be sworn in oath." Silas advanced. The scent of his rising fury—a metallic, storm-laden odor—rolled off him. "Guard your tongue, Rogue."

Lyra POV His anger was a distant thing, of no consequence. I was dying. For three years, I had labored in the silver mines for a handful of copper coins. Silver is a poison to our kind—a slow acid that burns the skin and putrefies the organs from within. The dust had settled deep in my lungs. My life was measured in days. I had done it only to afford a Healer’s Potion for Snow. I remembered the day they came for her. Three years ago. The Pack guards had stormed our hovel in the muddy outskirts of the village. A Beta, a man built like a bull, had kicked me, and I had felt my ribs give way with the sound of snapping tinder. They forced the severing of our Mind-Link. The connection did not fade; it was severed. It was a clean, brutal amputation of the mind, leaving behind a silence that was not empty, but a ringing void. Snow had thrown herself before me as the guard raised a silver-bladed dirk to pierce my heart. "No!" she had screamed, dropping to her knees, her forehead pressed to the dirt before them. "I will go. I will go to the castle. Only let my sister live." She left me her cache of copper coins, trading her freedom for my life. Snow was a White Wolf. It was a bloodline of ancient, almost forgotten power, but the old prophecies were whispered in fearful tones—that a White Wolf born beyond the Pack’s sanction would herald the ruin of the reigning Alpha. Silas and Elara, terrified, had concealed her existence, passing off Vanya—a foundling they had mistakenly raised—as their true and potent heir to preserve their political alliances. When our kind turns eighteen, the first Shift is an unavoidable, violent transformation. To perpetuate their lie and safeguard Vanya’s standing, they forced a draught of suppressants down Snow’s throat with every full moon. Only her White Wolf blood, burning brighter than the poison they fed her, kept her alive through those years of monthly doses. The very heritage they sought to crush was the only thing that preserved her long enough to suffer. I remembered finding her in this very cellar seven days past. A sound like a broken bellows sawed from her throat, and the fluid that escaped her lips was thick with the stench of rust and decay, clinging to her chin. Suppressing the Shift had shredded her lungs. When the sickness took her, the guards had simply thrown her into the castle’s freezing moat. She died in my arms, shivering, her last words a plea for the adoptive parents we had buried in the forest. I had spent every coin from the mines on clean linen and holy water. I washed her body. When I removed the rags she wore, I saw the marks. Long, keloid scars marred the pale skin of her back. An old servant, her voice a fearful whisper, had told me the truth. Luna Elara had gifted Vanya a leather whip, its tails studded with silver dust. Vanya had used it on Snow in her fits of pique. Silver prevents a wolf’s flesh from mending. The scars were indelible. And Silas and Elara had known. Through the Mind-Link, they had been privy to every lash, every cry of pain, and had merely pronounced that the girl must learn obedience. "Lyra," Elara’s sharp voice dragged me from the memory. "Cease this mummery. If you do not produce Snow at once, I will have you banished. You will die alone in the wastelands." She believed Snow was hiding. A fit of pique. I remembered another night, three years ago—the very night they first came for her. I had tried to smuggle Snow out through the castle’s drainage culvert. A guard had found us, the edge of his silver sword cold against the nape of my neck. Snow had smashed her own head against the rough-hewn stone of the tunnel wall, blood matting her hair, and begged him to let me go. She had surrendered her last hope of freedom to spare my life. I rose slowly to my feet, my joints protesting with a series of dry clicks. The silver in my blood made my limbs feel as though they were cast in lead. I laid a hand on the pine coffin. "She is not hiding," I said, my voice dropping to a raw whisper. "She is waiting. For the Moon Goddess to sit in judgment of you." Silas’s eyes flickered—just for an instant—to the coffin. Something cold and calculating passed across his face. “We shall see,” he said quietly. He turned his back on the coffin, but as he walked toward the carriage, he paused. Without looking at me, he spoke to the guard at his side. “Bring oil. And torches.” The guard nodded and disappeared into the rain. Dawn was four hours away. I looked at my hands—blue-veined, trembling, already half-dead. Then I looked at the pine coffin. I had until sunrise to get Snow out of this place.

Lyra POV They hadn’t moved. "Open the box," Alpha Silas commanded. His voice was laced with the Alpha’s Compulsion. An unseen pressure bore down upon my shoulders, but the poison in my veins had already deadened my nerves. A high, thin ringing began deep in my ears, drowning the command. I felt a curious numbness in my limbs; only the splinters from the coffin’s rough edge, digging into my fingertips, assured me that I was still anchored to this world. I clung to the coffin and remained standing. "She is dead," I spat. "Your true daughter is dead." Luna Elara sighed—a theatrical sound of exasperation—and adjusted the dark lace at her throat. "Desist with this melodrama, Rogue. Snow has always been an exhibitionist." My hands trembled with a rage that was cold and sharp. I remembered a winter’s night when Snow had ventured deep into the forest, her fingers raw from the frost, to gather rare herbs for a poultice. It was for Silas’s migraines, for the cold-poison that afflicted Elara. Vanya had stolen the basket and presented it as her own work. When Snow had tried to speak the truth, Silas had struck her across the face, calling her a jealous liar. The light had gone out of Snow’s eyes that day. "I am taking her home," I said. "To the forest." Silas let out a low growl but turned his back. "Let the guards retrieve her. We are leaving." They retreated to their carriage without a backward glance at the coffin. Later that night, a storm broke. Thunder rattled the old stones of the estate, and the rain came down in solid, blinding sheets. The fractured axle of the cart screamed in protest against the mire. With every heave, the sucking mud fought the wheels, as if the land itself meant to keep its dead. My lungs were on fire. A spasm wracked my chest, and a fine spray of dark crimson mist settled on the pale pine lid. "We are going home, Snow," I whispered to the box. "I promise." I labored with the cart through the night, the dark sentinels of the forest watching my passage in silence. By dawn, the rain had ceased, though the sky remained a uniform, leaden gray. I was near the edge of the Pack lands. Suddenly, the drumming of hooves shattered the morning’s quiet. A party of Pack Warriors emerged from the trees, a carriage following in their wake. Vanya stepped out. She was dressed in a gown of brilliant crimson—the color of freshly spilled blood. Silas and Elara followed. "There!" Vanya pointed, her face contorted in a triumphant sneer. "The creature is making off with Pack property!" Elara approached the cart, her expression one of utter revulsion for the cheap wood. "Snow! Emerge from that thing at once and offer an apology to your sister. You have a marriage to Alpha Jaxon to prepare for." I planted myself before the cart. "Leave her be!" Elara gestured to the Warriors. "Put this Omega’s face in the dirt." Two hulking men seized my arms. They threw me down. A slurry of horse dung and decaying earth flooded my nostrils, choking off the air, its coarse grit scraping the skin from my cheekbones. I choked and thrashed, but their grip was iron. "Tip it over," Vanya commanded. The Warriors seized the cart and heaved. The pine coffin slid from the platform and struck the earth with a dull crack. The lid splintered and fell away. Snow’s body rolled out into the mud. She wore a simple white burial shift. Her skin had taken on a gray, waxy pallor. Her eyes were closed, her lips the color of a bruise. One of the Warriors, taking a clumsy step back, kicked her arm. It made a dense, solid sound, like a log being struck. A profound silence fell over the clearing. The Warriors were frozen. Elara’s breath hitched in her throat. Even Silas recoiled. The stench of true death—thick and cloying—was undeniable. A scream tore itself from my throat, a feral, broken sound. I threw off the men with a final, desperate surge of strength and crawled to Snow, wiping the filth from her still face with my trembling hands. "She is feigning!" Vanya shrieked, her voice unnaturally high. "It is a Death-Sleep Potion! I have heard Rogues procure such things on the black market to evade their duties!" Silas seized upon the lie. He had to. For Snow to be dead was to admit his own monstrosity. "Burn her," he ordered, his voice shaking. "The fire will negate the potion’s artifice." A traveling merchant, who had halted his wagon on the road, cried out, "Alpha! The Lycan Tribunal forbids the burning of a body without a Healer’s inquest!" "I am the law here!" Silas roared, and his Warriors drew their blades, chasing the man away. They seized Snow’s body and lashed it to a roadside marker post. They piled the damp kindling from a nearby woodpile about her feet, dousing it with oil from a carriage lantern. "Stop!" I cried, dragging myself toward them. Vanya smirked and unhooked the long leather whip from her belt, offering it to a guard. It glittered faintly with embedded silver dust. "Remind this Rogue of her station," she commanded. The whip whistled through the air before it struck my back. The silver seared through my tunic, its bite a line of liquid fire. I screamed and collapsed into the mud. Vanya’s laughter rang out as the guard struck me again. Silas tossed a torch onto the pyre. The oil caught with a hungry whoosh. The flames began to lick at the hem of Snow’s white shift. The fabric blackened and curled, the heat beginning to consume the cloth.