Chapter7

Layla's POV

They locked me in an abandoned storage room near the edge of the tribe, to wait until dawn for transport.

Moonlight filtered through cracks in the high window, casting frigid gridlines on the floor.

The pain from my wounds kept me from sleeping, but more than that, I felt numb.

The door lock rattled. Selina walked in alone, carrying a wooden cup.

Her face wore a feigned expression of sorrowful pity.

"Layla," her voice was soft, "tomorrow you'll be going to such a distant, cold place. I begged Keller to at least let you drink a warming farewell drink. After all... we were like sisters."

She held out the wooden cup. The strong scent of alcohol hit my face, but it couldn't mask that sharp, skin-prickling metallic smell—

Silver powder. Deadly poison to werewolves.

I looked at the false moisture in her blue eyes, then at the cup.

The last pretense of peace was torn away.

I didn't take the cup. "You drink it yourself, Selina. Or save it for your guard."

Her expression changed. She was about to speak when I moved.

With the last reserves of my strength and the speed I'd developed from ten years of teaching young wolves to dodge, I seized the cup before she could cry out and splashed the liquid at the guard behind her who was trying to draw his blade.

The guard screamed, white smoke rising from his corroding face.

Selina shrieked: "What are you doing! Help! Layla's trying to kill me!"

She tore at her own hair and clothing, slammed herself against the wall to create large bruises, then curled up on the floor, crying pitifully.

Chaotic footsteps and angry shouts rapidly approached. Torchlight flooded the small room.

Keller burst in first. What he saw: the guard clutching his face and screaming, spilled alcohol everywhere, Selina huddled and trembling in the corner, and me standing with the empty cup in my hand.

"Layla!" Keller's roar nearly lifted the roof. His eyes instantly shifted to wolf slits. "How dare you!"

"She put silver powder in the drink," I stated, my voice dry.

"She kindly brought you a drink!"

Keller didn't listen at all. He carefully helped Selina up, saw the "injury" on her forehead and the "terror" on her face, and his fury consumed him completely.

"You vicious woman! Betraying the tribe, and now attempting to murder the future Luna!"

He whirled toward the elders and warriors who'd followed him in, his chest heaving violently.

"You all saw it! Proof positive! Layla Moonshadow, not only negligent in her duties, inviting darkness—now she's openly violated the blood covenant and attempted to poison her own kind!"

He snatched the duplicate copy of the blood covenant parchment from an attendant behind him—apparently he'd come prepared.

Before everyone, he gripped both ends of the parchment and tore with all his might!

The tough ancient leather made a harsh ripping sound, splitting in two in the firelight.

"I, Keller Blackrock, Alpha of the Blackrock Tribe, hereby declare!" His voice like frozen iron rang through the night sky. "Layla Moonshadow has betrayed the blood covenant, harbors malice, and acts with depravity! Now expelled from Blackrock, never to return! Her name erased from tribal memory! Any wolf of my tribe may kill her on sight!"

"Kill on sight"—those words were the final nails, pinning me to this land I'd protected for ten years.

The metallic taste of blood lingered at the corner of my mouth.

I straightened, no longer feeling the wound on my back or the emptiness in my heart.

I looked at Keller one last time, deeply, at that face twisted completely by anger and prejudice—the face I had once loved.

No defense. No curse. Not a single word.

I turned and pushed through the people blocking the doorway, their expressions complex, and walked toward the open door, toward the forest edge illuminated by moonlight. No one stopped me.

Exiles weren't worth escorting. Walking toward the frost plain was itself a death sentence.

Barefoot, I stepped over cold earth and broken stones, one step at a time, toward the ancient stone marker that marked the Blackrock territory boundary.

When I lifted my foot to cross that invisible line completely—

Behind me, from the direction of the tribe, came a faint, confused commotion.

As if every werewolf, in the same instant, felt an inexplicable emptiness in their hearts, as though some long-present, warm background... had suddenly vanished. They were confused, murmuring, looking around uneasily.

But they would never understand what it was.

I stepped into the forest shadows and never looked back.

And for the Blackrock Tribe, their "good fortune" ended there.