Sable hit the ground hard enough to taste blood.
The stone floor of the Hall was freezing beneath her palms, and the cold sank into her skin like it wanted to stay there. For a moment she couldn't move, because the air had been knocked out of her lungs and the entire Grimridge Pack was watching her struggle to breathe with dignity.
Laughter rippled through the crowd in a way that was almost polite. It wasn't loud enough to sound brutal, but it carried something worse than cruelty, the calm certainty of wolves who believed the world was working exactly as it should.
"Stand up," someone ordered, impatient, as if Sable's body was an inconvenience on sacred ground.
She pushed herself upright slowly, forcing her hands not to shake as she gathered her balance. Her hair had slipped loose, dark strands falling across her face, and she could feel the metallic warmth at the corner of her mouth where her lip had split. She didn't wipe it away. She didn't look around for kindness that would never appear. She only lifted her chin, because lowering it would mean agreeing that she belonged on her knees.
The Hall was packed so tightly that the heat of bodies hung in the air beneath the smoke from the torches. Warriors stood at the front in rigid rows, their scent thick and confident, their eyes sharp with attention. Hunters filled the space behind them, restless and eager, murmuring like wolves waiting for a hunt to begin. The elders sat higher along the sides, wrapped in ceremonial furs, watching as if judgment was a privilege they had earned.
At the center of the Hall, a circle had been painted into the stone.
It was dark and old, layered again and again over years of rituals, the boundary where fate was measured and the pack decided who mattered.
Sable stood just outside the line, where the stone had been left bare on purpose.
Because even the floor had rules, and she was not meant to share space with the wolves who were whole.
A woman stepped forward from the elders' side, tall and polished, with the Grimridge crest pinned at her throat. Her expression was calm, her gaze cold, and her voice carried cleanly through the Hall without strain.
"Sable of Grimridge," she announced. "Step into the circle."
Sable felt her stomach tighten.
The circle meant proof. It meant scent. It meant the bond that made a wolf valuable, the moment where the pack could look at you and decide you were worth protecting instead of worth using. Sable could feel their attention lock onto her, hungry for whatever would happen next, because Grimridge did not waste ceremony on wolves like her unless the point was humiliation.
She took one step forward, then another, crossing the painted line as if she had the right.
The moment her boots touched the center, the room grew quieter. The torches along the columns flickered, and the shadows moved across the stone like restless hands.
The woman held out a shallow bowl etched with symbols older than the pack's current laws. Inside it lay a dark liquid, thick as ink.
The Binding Draft.
Sable's mouth went dry.
She had seen others drink it and change. She had watched their shoulders loosen as if some invisible weight fell away, and she had seen the way the pack's gaze softened when the ritual recognized them. She had also seen what happened when it didn't, when the silence after the drink became laughter, and the laughter became punishment.
"Drink," the woman said, her smile polite enough to pass as mercy. "Let the pack witness what you are."
Sable took the bowl with both hands.
It was warm, as if it had been held near fire, and that warmth seeped into her skin like a warning. She lifted it to her lips and hesitated, not because she believed there was a choice, but because she knew what they wanted from her.
They wanted her failure.
They wanted the comfort of certainty, the reassurance that the defect remained defective.
Then she drank.
The liquid burned down her throat, sharp and invasive, and heat flashed through her body as if something was searching for a place to sink its teeth. Her pulse jumped. Her vision blurred for a heartbeat. The Hall went so silent she could hear the faint crackle of the torches.
For one thin moment, Sable almost believed it might work.
She waited for the rush of recognition.
She waited for the tug of fate.
She waited for anything at all that would make the pack breathe differently.
Nothing came.
The heat inside her died the way fire died when it hit empty air, and the room remained unchanged. No mark formed beneath her skin. No bond reached out to find its match. The ritual left her exactly as she had always been, standing in the center of their sacred circle with nothing to offer.
A beat of silence held the Hall.
Then someone laughed.
It started with one sharp voice, then another, until the sound spread through the crowd like a sickness they enjoyed sharing.
"There it is," an elder said, satisfaction thick in his tone. "Nothing."
The woman's eyes narrowed faintly, not with surprise, but with disdain, as if Sable had insulted the ritual simply by existing. She turned slightly so her words would carry, so no one could miss the point.
"No reaction," she announced. "No bond. No imprint. No proof."
The words landed like stones in Sable's chest.
She forced her face to remain blank, even as the taste of blood lingered on her tongue. She refused to give them tears. Tears were too valuable to waste on people who would only use them as entertainment.
The woman stepped closer, lowering her voice just enough that it became personal.
"You will kneel," she said. "So the pack remembers."
Sable's knees locked.
For a second she didn't move, and in that second she felt the weight of every gaze, every expectation, every hand that had ever shoved her aside and called it order. She felt the shape of her life narrowing around her, tightening like a collar.
Then she bent.
The stone was so cold it stung through the fabric of her skirt, but she kept her back straight anyway. If she had to kneel, she would do it without giving them the satisfaction of seeing her crumble.
The elders spoke in turn, reciting laws that sounded sacred when spoken in ceremony, even though they were nothing but cruelty dressed in tradition.
"A scentless wolf holds no rank."
"A scentless wolf holds no claim."
"A scentless wolf holds no future."
Sable stared at the floor, steadying her breathing, refusing to let her composure crack. Around her, the pack's murmurs rose and fell, satisfied, relieved, entertained.
And yet beneath it all, another presence sat heavy in the Hall.
Not loud or dramatic.
Just there, like a storm waiting beyond the mountains.
Sable didn't look up, because she had learned what happened to wolves who reached too high with their eyes, but she could feel it anyway. She could feel the attention that didn't match the laughter, the silence that didn't belong to the elders, the weight of authority that made even confident wolves instinctively still.
Somewhere near the front, the Alpha watched.
Cassian never spoke. He didn't need to.
His presence alone changed the air, and Sable hated that her skin prickled under it, hated that something in her body reacted as if it recognized danger and safety in the same breath.
The ceremony ended the way it always did for her, with the pack turning away the moment they were finished using her. Wolves began to shift, voices rising again, the crowd already eager to move on to the parts of their lives that mattered.
Sable stayed kneeling until she was dismissed.
When she finally stood, her legs ached and her pride felt scraped raw, but she kept her head level and her expression empty.
She walked out of the circle unclaimed, unmarked, and officially worthless.
But as she stepped toward the edge of the Hall, she felt it again.
That invisible pressure.
That quiet, relentless focus.
And Sable realized, with a cold twist in her stomach, that being ignored had always been her protection.
Now she wasn't sure she was invisible anymore.