POV: Elara Ashwyn
They lock me in a stone room with no windows.
No bed. No water. Just cold walls and the sound of my own breathing echoing back at me like a ghost. I don't sleep. I can't. Every time I close my eyes, I see the Elder's face when he spoke those words: Moon Priestess. Cursed bloodline.
What does that even mean?
My hands are shaking as I press them against my belly. The baby is still there—I can feel the slight flutter of movement, the reassurance that at least something loves me unconditionally.
"Hold on," I whisper. "Whatever happens, I'll protect you. I promise."
The door crashes open.
Guards flood in, grabbing my arms before I can even stand. They don't speak. They never do anymore—not to me. Not to the girl who's become a curse overnight.
They drag me through corridors I've walked my entire life. Past the training grounds where Darius taught me to fight. Past the library where my mother read to me as a child. Every familiar place feels like a knife twisting in my chest because I'm leaving it all behind.
The Council Chamber is packed.
Elders sit in a semicircle, their ancient faces carved with judgment. My father stands to one side—his jaw clenched, his eyes refusing to meet mine. My mother sits in the back, her hands folded so tightly her knuckles are white.
She won't look at me either.
At the center sits a woman I've never seen before. She's beautiful in an unsettling way—her skin is pale, her eyes are silver like the moon itself, and she wears robes that seem to shimmer between white and black. A symbol of the Moon Court is stitched across her chest in silver thread.
The High Oracle's representative.
"Elara Ashwyn," the lead Elder begins, his voice heavy with rehearsed formality, "you stand accused of stealing pack resources, conspiracy with rogue wolves, and high treason against Silvercrest Pack. How do you answer these charges?"
"I'm innocent," I say immediately. "I don't know what—"
"We have evidence," the Elder interrupts, gesturing to a guard who steps forward with a stack of documents.
They spread them across a table. My heart stops.
My handwriting. My signature. Documents authorizing the transfer of food and weapons to rogues in the Shadowlands. Pages and pages of conspiracy written in what looks exactly like my hand.
"That's not—" I lunge forward, but guards hold me back. "Those are forged! I never—"
"We also have witnesses." The Elder nods, and three packmates step forward. I recognize them immediately. They work in the warehouses. They've known me since childhood.
Each one swears under oath that they saw me stealing supplies. That they saw me meeting with rogues at the border. That I confessed to hating Silvercrest.
Every word is a lie.
But they tell them so convincingly that I watch my father's shoulders collapse.
"Father, please—" I reach toward him desperately. "You know me. You know I would never—"
"I know nothing," he says, his voice breaking. He stands, and when he looks at me, his eyes are full of something worse than anger. Disappointment. Betrayal. "My daughter died the moment she was rejected by the moon. This... thing wearing her face is someone I don't recognize."
He turns his back to me.
My mother gasps, but she doesn't stand. Doesn't defend me. Just sits there with tears streaming down her face while her daughter is destroyed in front of her.
The Moon Court representative stands.
Her movement is graceful, hypnotic. When she speaks, her voice carries strange harmonics—like multiple voices speaking at once, layered and impossible.
"The child you carry," she says, looking directly at my belly, "is tainted. Born of a defective womb, fathered by an Alpha who rejected the moon's wisdom. And you—" Her silver eyes lock with mine. "You are something far worse than wolfless. You are a descendant of the Priestess bloodline. A cursed lineage that the Moon Goddess herself marked for extinction."
The council gasps.
"The Priestesses were abominations," she continues, her voice rising. "They claimed to channel moon magic without transformation. They threatened the natural order. The Moon Court spent a century hunting them to extinction, and we believed we succeeded." Her smile is cruel. "Yet here you stand. A living reminder of what happens when darkness breeds with our sacred gifts."
She raises her hand, and silver light erupts from her palm—pure, cold, burning.
I scream as the light washes over me, searing against my skin. It's not fire. It's something worse. It's rejection. It's the moon itself turning its face away from me.
The baby inside me screams with me.
"You are declared cursed by divine judgment," the Elder announces. "Your child is declared cursed by association. Both of you are sentenced to immediate exile in the Shadowlands. You have one hour to leave Silvercrest territory, or you will be hunted."
The Shadowlands.
The territories beyond pack protection. Where rogues hunt. Where humans are hunted. Where nothing civilized survives. It's a death sentence wrapped in a law.
"No," I whisper. "Please. My child—my innocent child—"
"One hour," the Elder repeats coldly.
The guards drag me from the chamber. I don't fight anymore. I'm too broken. Too numb. They throw me into a room long enough for me to grab a cloak and a water pouch, then they're dragging me again—through the main gates, past packmates who spit at my feet, toward the forest line where civilization ends.
The border.
The guards stop at a wooden post carved with warnings: Beyond lies madness. Beyond lies death. Turn back.
"Walk," one guard commands, shoving me forward.
I stumble into the trees, the undergrowth immediately catching at my clothes. I turn back once, hoping—praying—that my mother will emerge. That my father will call me back. That someone will say this was a mistake.
Nobody comes.
"Wait!" I shout, desperation clawing at my voice. "Please! Just tell me why Lyanna—"
"Lyanna Ashwyn has formally recanted her accusations," a guard calls back. "She admits she was confused by grief and betrayal. The evidence against you came from Moon Court records. You were always their target."
The guard closes the gate.
I'm beyond the border now. Beyond protection. Beyond hope.
I walk deeper into the forest, my belly aching, my heart shattered, when I hear it—a sound that makes every instinct scream.
Howling.
Not one wolf. Many. A pack of rogues, drawn by the scent of a lone female carrying a child. They're coming.
And then—something worse.
A voice whispers inside my head. Not my own thoughts. Something other. Something ancient and furious and absolutely starving.
Not yet, little priestess, it growls through my mind. You have so much further to fall before you can rise.
The voice is coming from inside me.