POV: Elara Ashwyn
The guards don't take me to a cell.
They drag me through the pack halls, past packmates who turn away, past the kitchen where I've spent countless mornings with my mother, past the training grounds where I learned to fight. My fingernails scrape against stone walls, leaving red marks I won't be alive to see heal.
"Where are you taking me?" My voice sounds small. Broken. I hate it.
"The Great Hall," one guard grunts. "Alpha's orders. Pack meeting. Immediate."
Pack meeting. After midnight. That's not protocol. That's not—
The truth hits me before we reach the doors.
He's not going to defend me. He's going to condemn me.
The Great Hall is packed. Two hundred packmates fill every corner, their whispers dying the moment I appear in chains. I search for a friendly face. Find only eyes that slide away from mine. My father stands near the dais, his jaw clenched so tight I think it might crack. My mother is absent—she wouldn't come. Already choosing sides.
Darius sits on the Alpha's throne, and he looks powerful.
That's what kills me. Not that he looks angry or confused or heartbroken. He looks right. Like he finally fits exactly where he was always meant to be.
"Release her," he commands.
The guards drop my arms. I stumble forward, catching myself on my hands. The cold stone bites into my palms.
"Elara Ashwyn." His voice is formal now. Official. The voice of an Alpha speaking law, not a mate speaking love. "You stand accused of conspiracy with rogues, theft of pack resources, and treason against Silvercrest. Do you deny these charges?"
I lift my head. Meet his golden eyes. Look for the boy I fell in love with three years ago—the one who whispered promises under moonlight, who held me when nightmares came, who told me he'd love me forever.
He's gone.
"I deny—"
"Before you speak," Darius interrupts, and his voice cuts like a blade, "there is another matter. A matter of the heart."
He stands, descending from the throne with deliberate grace. Every movement screams certainty. Strength. Everything an Alpha should embody.
Everything I apparently never could.
"By the ancient laws of our people," he says, and the pack goes silent, understanding what's coming, "I hereby reject you, Elara Ashwyn, as my mate. The bond between us is severed. You are no longer Luna of Silvercrest."
The words hit like physical force.
The mate bond—that invisible thread that connects two souls, that sings in your blood when he's near, that makes you feel complete—tears apart. It's not a clean break. It's a shattering, a violent ripping of something that was woven into the core of who I am.
I scream. I can't help it.
The sound that comes from my throat isn't human. It's primal, anguished, the death-cry of every dream I ever had. My knees give out. I collapse, gasping, feeling like my chest is caving in.
"Elara, I—" someone starts to say, but Darius's voice cuts them off.
"There's more."
Of course there is.
A figure moves through the crowd—gliding, really, like she owns the very air. Lyanna. My stepsister. My betrayer. She walks straight to Darius and takes his hand, and something in my dying heart fractures further.
"I'm three months pregnant," she announces, her voice trembling with false emotion. "With the future Alpha heir."
The pack roars its approval.
"This affair—" Lyanna's voice breaks, and she wipes away tears that don't exist, "—it started months ago. Before Elara's Awakening. But I kept silent. I tried to protect my sister. I thought maybe she'd be happy for us, for the future we're creating together. But when she was rejected by the moon—" She pauses, swallowing hard, performing perfectly. "I realized she was going to hurt us. Hurt the pack. I had to speak the truth, no matter how much it cost me."
She looks at the pack with those wet eyes, and every single one of them believes her.
I want to scream that she's lying. That she seduced him. That she planted the evidence. That I have no idea what she's talking about.
But I do know.
This wasn't random. Wasn't impulsive. This was orchestrated. Lyanna has been planning this since before my Awakening—maybe longer. She set it all up. Convinced Darius to start an affair just months in so the pack would believe she was innocent. Planted false evidence. Timed it perfectly with my wolflessness to make me look like a desperate villain lashing out.
And I fell into every trap.
"I forgive you, Elara," Lyanna says, and she actually reaches toward me with pity written across her face. "I know you're suffering. I know losing Darius hurts. But maybe this is the moon's way of showing you—"
"I carried his child," I whisper.
The words escape before I can stop them. Before I even know I was going to say them.
The hall goes absolutely silent.
Lyanna's face goes white. Darius's hand falls from hers. Every packmate freezes, processing what I just said.
"What?" Darius breathes.
I shouldn't have said it. This was supposed to be my secret. My protection. My survival. But rage and betrayal have torn away every filter, and the truth spills out like blood from a wound.
"I'm pregnant," I say, looking directly at Darius. "Three months along. I conceived before you decided to start your affair with my sister. And your child—our child—is growing inside me right now."
Darius's face goes pale.
Lyanna's hand instinctively moves to her own belly, and I see it—the flicker of panic in her eyes.
"That's not—" Darius starts.
But he doesn't get to finish.
Because the pack Elder staggers forward, his ancient face going gray, and he grabs my arm with fingers that feel like ice.
"The pregnancy," he gasps, looking into my eyes with absolute horror. "You're six months along, aren't you? Maybe more. And your Awakening—you were supposed to shift months ago. But you didn't because—"
He releases me like I'm burning him.
"Because she's not wolfless," he whispers, loud enough for everyone to hear. "She's something else entirely. Something the moon—something that the moon Court said was extinct."
My blood turns to ice.
"Guards," the Elder says, his voice shaking with terror and something darker. Something like ancient recognition. "Take her. Not to a cell. Take her to the High Oracle. She must see this with her own eyes. She must know that one of them survived."
"One of what?" Darius demands.
But the Elder is staring at me—through me—like I'm a prophecy he never wanted to come true.
"A Moon Priestess," he breathes. "The cursed bloodline the Moon Court promised to erase a century ago. She's a Moon Priestess, and she's carrying an heir."