Chapter 2

The palace was nothing like I expected.

I'd imagined dungeons. Chains. Blood on the walls.

Instead, Kael carried me through halls of black marble and crimson silk, past servants who bowed so low their foreheads touched the floor, into a chamber larger than my father's entire house.

"Get me Lyra." His voice echoed. "NOW."

Servants scattered.

He laid me on a bed softer than clouds—actual softness against my broken body, and I almost sobbed from the relief of it. For three days I'd been lying on iron bars. Before that, the cold stone floor of my father's dungeon.

"Don't cry." Kael's thumb brushed my tears. "I know it hurts. Lyra will help. She's the best healer on the continent."

I wasn't crying from pain.

I was crying because no one had ever been gentle with me. Not once. Not in eighteen years of life.

The door burst open. A small woman with silver hair and sharp eyes rushed in, took one look at me, and her face went pale.

"Moon Goddess."

"Fix her." Kael's voice cracked. "Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs. Fix her."

Lyra approached the bed slowly, her hands already glowing with healing magic. She examined my legs first—I saw her wince—then my mouth.

"Her tongue was cut with a cursed blade." Her voice was grim. "The wound is designed not to heal. Whoever did this wanted her silent forever."

A growl rumbled through the room.

I looked at Kael.

His eyes were fully red now. His claws had extended, gouging marks into his own palms. Blood dripped onto the white sheets.

"Can you fix it?"

"I can try." Lyra hesitated. "Alpha, there's something else. Her wolf—"

"She doesn't have one. I know."

"No." Lyra's hands moved over my chest, my head, glowing brighter. "She DOES have one. It's there—I can feel it. But it's been sealed. Locked away by extremely powerful dark magic." Her eyes widened. "Magic this strong... someone wanted to make absolutely sure her wolf never woke."

"Why would anyone seal an omega's wolf?"

"That's just it, Alpha." Lyra looked up at him with something like fear. "I don't think she IS an omega. The bloodline I'm sensing... it's ancient. It's powerful." She swallowed. "It's older than yours."

Silence.

Kael stared at me.

I stared back, confused. I was an omega. The weakest rank. I'd never shifted, never felt my wolf, never been anything but a disappointment.

That's what my father always said.

Worthless. Wolfless. A waste of blood.

"What are you saying?" Kael asked quietly.

"I'm saying someone went to enormous trouble to make this girl appear to be nothing." Lyra's voice dropped. "And the only reason to do that... is if she's actually something very, very significant."

Kael sat on the edge of the bed.

Took my hand.

"What's your name, little wolf?"

I opened my mouth. Tried to force sound through the ruin of my throat.

A horrible rasp. Nothing more.

"Can you write?"

I nodded.

He grabbed a pad and pen from the nightstand, pressed them into my hands.

I wrote, shaky and slow:

Elara. Elara Vance. Daughter of Alpha Marcus Vance of the Silver Moon Pack.

Kael's jaw tightened.

"Marcus Vance sold his own daughter to me as a 'defective omega toy'?"

I'm not his real daughter. Stepdaughter. He only kept me because my mother was his true mate. After she died... I was nothing.

"Your mother?"

Luna Catherine. She died when I was three. They said she was sick. But—

I stopped writing.

I'd never told anyone this.

But something about Kael's eyes—the rage, the protectiveness, the way he looked at me like I was the most important thing in the world—made me want to tell him everything.

But I always thought my stepmother killed her.

Kael's hand tightened on mine.

"Lyra. How long to break the seal on her wolf?"

"Weeks. Maybe months. Dark magic this deep—"

"Start now." He looked at me. "We're going to find out exactly who you are, little wolf. And then—"

His smile was terrifying.

Beautiful.

"—we're going to make everyone who hurt you wish they'd never been born."

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