Seris POV
The rope burns my wrists, but not as much as the eyes staring at me.
Three hundred wolves. Three hundred people I've known my whole life. And every single one of them wants me dead.
"Burn the cursed omega!" someone shouts from the crowd.
"She killed our children!"
"Monster!"
I kneel on the wooden platform in the center of town square, hands tied behind my back. My knees press into the rough wood. Splinters dig into my skin. Around me, they've piled logs and kindling—enough wood to burn a body to ash in minutes.
My body.
Alpha Corwin stands in front of me holding a torch. The flames dance in the wind, casting shadows across his handsome face. Six hours ago, those same lips told me he loved me. Three hours ago, he stood before this same crowd and said the words that broke something inside me: "I, Alpha Corwin of Thornvale Pack, reject you, Seris Holloway, as my fated mate."
The mate bond between us had snapped like a rope pulled too tight. The pain dropped me to my knees. Everyone watched. Everyone heard.
Now he's going to kill me.
"Seris Holloway," Corwin's voice rings out across the square, formal and cold. Nothing like the warm whispers he used when we were alone. "You are accused of bringing the plague that killed forty-three members of this pack. Women. Children. Elders. All died after you touched them."
"I was trying to help them!" My voice cracks. "I'm a healer! I was trying to save—"
"Silence!" Corwin's eyes flash gold—his wolf rising. "You cursed us. Witnesses say your hands glowed silver before each death. You are an abomination, Seris. A mistake of the Moon Goddess."
My heart hammers against my ribs. I search the crowd for someone—anyone—who might defend me. My grandmother, Elder Casta, stands in the front row. Our eyes meet for just a second before she looks away, her face carved from stone. She'd raised me after my parents died. Taught me to be kind. Told me I was special.
Now she won't even look at me.
My best friend Lyria stands beside her, sobbing into her hands. But I've known Lyria since we were five years old. I know the difference between her real tears and fake ones. These are fake. She peeks through her fingers, watching me with something that looks almost like... satisfaction?
Something cold settles in my stomach.
"I loved you once," Corwin says, and his voice softens just a little. Enough to give me hope. Enough to make me think maybe he'll spare me. "I truly did, Seris. But I can't let that love destroy everything I'm sworn to protect. My pack needs to see justice. They need to feel safe again."
"Then find the real killer!" I lunge forward, but the ropes hold me back. "Corwin, please! I didn't do this! Someone is setting me up—"
"Enough." He lifts the torch higher. "May the Moon Goddess have mercy on your cursed soul."
Time slows down. I see his arm pull back. See the torch arc through the air. See it tumble end over end, flames trailing behind it like a comet.
The torch lands in the kindling at my feet.
Fire catches instantly, racing up the dry wood with a hungry hiss. Heat blasts my face. Smoke fills my lungs. I cough, eyes watering, and the crowd cheers. They actually cheer.
"Burn the omega!"
"Cleanse our pack!"
The flames climb higher, licking at my legs. My dress catches fire. This is it. This is how I die—burned alive by the man who promised to love me forever, watched by the pack I've served my whole life.
Pain explodes across my skin. Not just the fire burning me from outside, but something else. Something burning inside my chest, like a locked door breaking open. My scars—the ones I've had since I was a baby, silver marks on my arms I was told came from a childhood accident—suddenly burn hotter than the flames around me.
Power. Raw and ancient and furious. It floods through my veins like liquid fire.
The crowd's cheering fades. My heartbeat pounds in my ears. The world narrows to just the fire and me and the rage—oh goddess, the rage. All the years of being treated like dirt. Of being called weak, worthless, cursed. Of being used and discarded like trash.
The rage doesn't burn away in the flames.
It burns brighter.
My vision goes white. Then silver. Energy pours out of me in a wave that makes the fire explode upward in a pillar of light. Corwin stumbles backward, shielding his eyes. The crowd screams, but this time it's not cheering—it's fear.
Through the flames, I see Lyria's face. Her fake tears are gone. She looks terrified.
No. Not terrified.
Guilty.
In that split second before the pain takes me under, I understand. Lyria did this. She killed those people and blamed me. She wanted me dead. She wanted Corwin for herself.
The realization hits harder than the fire ever could.
I open my mouth to scream—to tell everyone the truth—but what comes out isn't words.
It's flame.
Silver fire pours from my lips, from my eyes, from every part of me. The ropes around my wrists burn away to nothing. The wooden platform cracks beneath me. Power I've never felt before surges through my body, and it hurts, it hurts so much, but it also feels like coming home.
The last thing I see before darkness takes me is my body lifting off the ground, suspended in a cocoon of silver fire.
The last thing I hear is Lyria's voice, shrill with panic: "She's not dying! Why isn't she dying?!"
Then the world explodes in light, and I know nothing else.
Somewhere in the volcanic borderlands, miles away, a man with gray eyes stops mid-step. Power thrums through the air—ancient, forbidden power that hasn't been felt in three hundred years.
Lord Vaelor Rune, the Alpha King of the Ashen Reach, smiles.
"Finally," he whispers. "A Flamebinder awakens."
He shifts into his massive black wolf and runs toward the source of power, toward Thornvale.
Toward her.