Aurelia's boots hit the muddy ground as she dropped from the tree branch, landing silently in the shadow of the Bloodmoon Pack's outer fence. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but she forced herself to stay calm. One wrong move and they were all dead.
"Guards?" Cazriel's voice whispered through the mind-link they shared as mates.
Aurelia peered around the corner of a wooden watchtower. Two wolves in human form patrolled the fence line, their eyes glowing red in the darkness. Just like Kane's intel had predicted.
"Two on the east side," she whispered back. "Right where we expected."
"Too easy," Kane's voice joined their mental conversation. He was hidden somewhere in the trees behind them with the rest of their small strike team. "This feels like a trap."
"Everything feels like a trap when you're scared," Cazriel replied, but Aurelia could hear the tension in his mental voice too.
She knew he was right to be worried. After Darius's betrayal yesterday, they all knew Valen was expecting them. But they didn't have a choice. With the midnight deadline looming and her father's life at stake, they had to try.
"I'm going in," Aurelia said, pulling a silver knife from her belt. The blade immediately began to glow with her bloodline magic, casting pale light across her face.
"Wait," Cazriel said. "Let me"
"No." Aurelia's voice was firm. "We agreed. I go first. If this is a trap, better they catch me than you."
She could feel Cazriel's frustration through their bond, but he didn't argue. They both knew she was right. If Valen wanted her alive for his ritual, she was the safest one to scout ahead.
Aurelia crept along the fence until she reached the spot Kane had marked on their map. A loose board that could be pried away just enough for a person to squeeze through. She worked it free with her knife and slipped into the enemy compound.
The Bloodmoon Pack's territory was nothing like Cazriel's well-organized compound. Rough wooden buildings were scattered everywhere with no pattern, and the smell of unwashed bodies and fear hung heavy in the air. This wasn't a pack ,it was a prison.
She made her way toward the largest building, where Kane's sources said the prisoners were kept. Every shadow could hide an enemy. Every sound could mean discovery. But somehow, she made it to the back wall without being seen.
That's when she heard it. A voice she'd been dreaming about for ten years.
"Please, I don't want to do this anymore."
Lyanna.
Aurelia pressed herself against the wall and peered through a crack between the wooden boards. What she saw made her blood turn to ice.
Her sister sat on a narrow cot in a cell barely bigger than a closet. But this wasn't the golden-haired little girl Aurelia remembered. Lyanna's hair was dull and matted, her face too thin, her eyes empty and haunted. Bruises covered her arms, and there were strange scars on her wrists that looked like ritual marks.
"You'll do as you're told," said a cold voice. Alpha Valen stepped into view, his massive frame filling the doorway of Lyanna's cell. "Tomorrow night, you'll mate with me. You'll bear my children. And you'll help me rule every pack in existence."
"I want to go home," Lyanna whispered, but there was no hope in her words. Just tired acceptance.
"This is your home now," Valen said. "You have no other family. No one is coming for you."
Aurelia's hands curled into fists. The silver knife in her grip blazed brighter with her rage. She wanted to burst through that wall and tear Valen's throat out with her bare hands.
But before she could move, Lyanna spoke again.
"What about my sister? The one you told me about?"
Valen's laugh was like ice breaking. "Aurelia? She abandoned you, remember? Left you to drown in that river because she was jealous of daddy's love."
"But sometimes I dream..." Lyanna's voice was so quiet Aurelia could barely hear it. "I dream about someone with grey eyes who used to sing to me."
"Dreams lie," Valen said sharply. "I saved you from that river. I raised you. I'm the only family you have."
Aurelia's heart broke. Her baby sister had been tortured and brainwashed for ten years, made to believe that the person who loved her most had tried to kill her.
"It's time," came Cazriel's voice through their bond. "The guards are changing shift. Move now."
Aurelia took a deep breath and stepped around to the front of the building. The door was guarded by a single wolf who looked half asleep. Her glowing knife took care of him before he could make a sound.
She found Lyanna's cell at the end of a long hallway lined with other prisoners. Most were young women, all with the same broken look in their eyes. Valen's breeding program.
"Lyanna," Aurelia whispered through the bars.
Her sister looked up, and for a moment their eyes met. Aurelia saw a flash of recognition, a spark of the little girl she used to know.
"Do I know you?" Lyanna asked softly.
"I'm your sister," Aurelia said, working her knife into the lock. "I'm here to take you home."
"I don't have a sister," Lyanna said automatically, but uncertainty colored her voice.
"Yes, you do." The lock clicked open. "My name is Aurelia. I used to sing you to sleep when you had nightmares. Your favorite song was about the moon goddess and her silver wolves."
Lyanna's eyes went wide. "How do you know that?"
"Because I sang it to you every night until you were seven years old," Aurelia said, stepping into the cell. "Because I love you more than anything in this world. Because I've been looking for you for ten years."
Tears started streaming down Lyanna's face. "Aurelia? Is it really you?"
"It's really me." Aurelia reached out to touch her sister's face, but Lyanna jerked away.
"No," Lyanna said, shaking her head violently. "This is a trick. Valen warned me you might come. He said you'd try to confuse me with lies."
"Lyanna, please"
"My name is Lysa!" Lyanna backed against the wall. "Valen gave me that name! He saved me!"
Before Aurelia could reply, alarm bells started ringing throughout the compound. Shouts echoed from outside, and she heard the howls of fighting wolves.
"The rescue's blown," Kane's voice screamed through the mind-link. "It's a trap! They were waiting for us!"
"Cazriel!" Aurelia called out through their bond, but got no answer. Just empty silence that made her stomach drop.
Heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway. Valen's voice boomed through the building.
"Welcome, Aurelia Mooncrest. I've been expecting you."
He appeared at the cell door with a dozen warriors behind him. But what made Aurelia's blood freeze wasn't the enemy wolves. It was Cazriel, unconscious and bleeding, being dragged between two of Valen's men.
"Your mate put up quite a fight," Valen said with a cruel smile. "But silver chains are difficult to break, even for an Alpha."
Aurelia could see the burns on Cazriel's wrists where the silver had touched his skin. He was barely breathing.
"Let him go," she said, her knife blazing with power. "Your fight is with me."
"My fight is with both of you," Valen said. "But I'm willing to make a deal."
"What kind of deal?"
Valen's amber eyes gleamed with victory. "Choose. Save your mate, or save your sister. But you can't have both."
He nodded to his men. Two of them dragged Cazriel toward one exit while two others grabbed Lyanna and headed for another door.
"Wait!" Aurelia lunged forward, but more warriors blocked her way.
"Choose quickly," Valen called over his shoulder. "In five minutes, I'm going to kill whichever one you don't pick. And then tomorrow night, I'll use the survivor to complete my ritual."
The doors slammed shut, leaving Aurelia alone in the empty hallway. She could hear Cazriel's labored breathing getting fainter in one direction, and Lyanna's terrified sobs fading in the other.
Her hands shook as she stared at the two exits. Left or right. Mate or sister. Save the man she was falling in love with, or the girl she'd spent ten years trying to find.
Five minutes to make a choice that would haunt her forever.
The clock on the wall ticked like a countdown to hell, and Aurelia realized that no matter what she chose, she was going to lose everything.
How did she get here, from being a rogue, to having to choose between her long lost sister and her mate.
"Could all these be a dream that she needs to wake up from?".