Mia POV

I was no longer tethered to the floor, but hung in the upper gloom of the room like a forgotten wisp of smoke.

Down below, the girl who had been me lay with her face turned to the side, the dark wound on her neck a stark, lipless mouth. The silver had left a blackened, cauterized rim around the gash, a final brand of her killer's contempt.

I was a shade, my soul snagged on the splintered frame of my own life.

*Death had not brought me peace, but it had brought me clarity. I could see the living world still, but more than that—I could sense the stains on their souls, the guilt they carried like tumors. The Rogue's was a blazing red inferno of grief and madness. And somewhere in the distance, Silas's was a cold, quiet knot—buried so deep he did not yet know it was there. *

There was no more pain. The searing kiss of the silver was a memory, as was the suffocating dampness of the Omega dorm.

But an ache persisted, a hollow echo in the place where my heart had been. It was the resonance of the sundered mate bond.

Why had he despised me so?

The answer was a simple, brutal thing. It was my mother.

I closed my spectral eyes, and the whispers of the old Omegas became a living history.

My mother had not merely been a witch; she had been an Elder of formidable power. Decades ago, when the Blood Moon Pack stood on the precipice of annihilation, its warriors decimated by rival clans, she had summoned her family's mercantile fortune and mercenary allegiances, single-handedly bankrolling the war that saved our lands.

But her aid came with a price.

The surviving Elders, desperate and cornered, leveraged her monumental contribution to force Silas's hand. They bound him with a magical mating contract, compelling him to accept my mother as his Luna.

The Luna was the heart of the pack, destined to rule beside the Alpha.

But Silas's heart was already given to another—a high-ranking Beta named Selene.

The contract forced him to banish Selene, an act that carved a canyon of resentment through his soul.

My mother tried to bridge that chasm. She prepared his meals. She submitted to his cold authority. She sought to awaken the wolf within him, to make him see her not as a jailer, but a mate.

But Silas felt only the weight of the chains, the suffocation of magic and duty. His heart did not simply grow cold; it calcified, turning to stone.

Then, she became pregnant with me—though the child was not his. My mother had been carrying me before the contract ever bound her to Silas, a secret she took to her grave. Some whispered my true father was a witch from her clan, killed in the war that she had helped win. I never knew his name.

During my birth, a hemorrhage stole her life before she could hold me, her final breath a whisper in a room that held no love for her.

*My mother's family—the great witch clan that had saved this pack—had been driven out within a year of her death. Silas had branded them traitors and banished them to the northern wastes. There was no one left to claim me. No one left to care. *

I remember the old Omega, Nana, recounting that day.

"I was polishing the wainscoting outside the Alpha's study," Nana had murmured to me years ago, her voice thin as cobwebs. "When the physician entered and announced that his Luna was gone."

I had looked up at Nana, my child's eyes wide. "Did he weep?"

Nana had averted her gaze, her own eyes clouded with a pity that stung more than any blow. "No, child. He drew a long, slow breath. He looked like a man newly unshackled from a great and terrible weight."

Silas did not mourn.

The very next day, he recalled Selene to the pack. He gave her the keys to the main house. He installed her as its mistress.

And me?

I was a newborn infant, wailing in the nursery, my blood carrying the taint of the witch who had ruined his life.

Silas entered the nursery but once.

He stood over my small crib, pinching the bridge of his nose as if I exuded some foul miasma.

He summoned Nana to the room.

"Take this creature to the Omega dorms," Silas commanded, his Alpha voice a physical force that made Nana's knees buckle. "I will grant you ten times your salary to ensure it remains from my sight. It is an ill omen."

He discarded me as one would discard refuse.

I opened my spectral eyes and looked down upon my blood-soaked body.

I was the product of a forced pact, lived as a walking error, and had now died as a bitter punchline.

The hours crept by, each one a slow, silent turn of a screw. The blood on the floor began to congeal, its edges darkening to the color of rust. The television eventually dissolved into static, its flickering life replaced by a dull, humming grey screen. The silence in the room was a heavy blanket, disturbed only by the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of my own blood from the warped edge of the bedframe.

Suddenly, the very air in the room seemed to thin and stretch.

The phantom mate bond in my chest gave a sharp, violent tug, a strange, invisible reeling-in.

I turned my head toward the wooden door.

It had been hours since my last breath, hours spent watching my own flesh grow cold. But now, I could feel him. He was finally back on pack lands.

Someone was approaching down the hallway. The footfalls were heavy, measured, and charged with irritation.

I knew that sound.

Silas was coming.

*The mate bond pulled taut, thrumming with his nearness. He was only a few steps away from the truth now. Would he smell the blood? Or would he walk past, as he always had, refusing to see what was right in front of him? *

Mia POV

From this height, the light seeping under the door was a long, thin blade on the dusty floor. Silas's agitated breathing came through the wood, a muffled, percussive sound that echoed in the space above, and I could not even kick my useless, phantom legs to make a noise in reply.

The footsteps stopped just outside. I could feel his immense presence, a low hum of power against the other side of the cheap pine.

While I waited, my mind unspooled, drifting back to my childhood.

Growing up in the Omega territory was a lesson in attrition.

Omegas were the lowest rank. We were the scullions, the laundresses, the servants. We were invisible.

But Nana loved me. She tried to be a shield.

She would brush my hair and weave beautiful falsehoods.

"Alpha Silas cares for you, Mia," Nana would say, her voice a soft counterpoint to the harsh world. "He is merely occupied by matters of state. But in the quiet of his heart, he thinks of you."

I never told Nana that I had started calling him 'father' in my own head. A child's desperate lie to fill the void where a parent should have been.

I was so starved for affection, I feasted on her words.

I constructed a paragon in my mind, an image of Silas as a stern, silent guardian, waiting only for me to mature and prove myself worthy of his notice.

Then, I turned fifteen.

I was in Nana's room, eating a piece of dry bread. Nana had switched on the television to the pack's private broadcast.

It was a live feed from the main pack hall.

Thousands of werewolves were assembled. The chamber was festooned with white roses and banners of spun gold.

It was a coming-of-age ceremony.

It was not for me.

It was for Chloe, Selene's younger sister. A Beta.

On the screen, Chloe glided down a crimson carpet, a diamond tiara glittering in her hair. She was the very picture of a cherished princess.

The camera panned to the dais.

Silas was standing there, holding Selene's hand.

When Chloe reached the stage, Silas enveloped her in a fierce hug.

I saw the glint of unshed tears in his eyes. He looked proud. He was overflowing with a love I had only read about in books.

"Today, we celebrate Chloe," Silas announced into the microphone, his voice imbued with a warmth I had never heard. "She is the light of this family."

They were a perfect, luminous family.

I sat in the cold Omega room, the dry bread in my hand. The screen's warm glow seemed to mock me. I swallowed the mouthful of coarse crumbs, and they scraped a path down my throat, triggering a deep, involuntary spasm in my esophagus that brought a surge of bitter acid with it.

I understood then that Silas had a vast reservoir of love. He simply had no intention of wasting a single drop on me.

Later that night, I borrowed Nana's old datapad and logged into the pack's private social network.

I navigated to Silas's profile. Only high-ranking members could view his posts, but Nana had an archaic staff account.

His page was a shrine to Chloe.

There was a picture of Chloe standing over a slain deer, the caption reading: So proud of my girl's first hunt.

There were images of her birthdays, her vacations, her new vehicles.

I scrolled down, my hands trembling.

I thought of my own accomplishments.

I had trained until my hands were raw. I had entered the Warrior trials for young wolves, fighting opponents twice my size to win first place.

I had brought my gold-leaf certificate to the main house, clinging to the hope that it might finally earn me a smile.

But when I presented it to him, he had only stared at me with revulsion.

"You fight with cunning," Silas had sneered, his lip curled. "You manipulate your opponents. It is the witch's blood in you. Do not bring this refuse into my house again."

Remembering his cruel words, I dropped the datapad.

I walked to my small desk and pulled out my certificates of merit, my warrior medallions, my academic awards.

I tore them all into small, meaningless scraps, ripping and shredding until my fingers throbbed.

Then, I ran to the washroom. I clutched the cold, stained porcelain of the toilet and vomited, heaving until my stomach was a raw, empty cavern. I wept until my tear ducts were dry.

A loud knock on the door pulled my ghost back to the present.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Mia!" Silas's angry voice boomed from the hallway. "Open this door this instant!"

I drifted closer to the door. He was finally here. But he was too late.

*And somewhere in the back of my mind, the thought whispered: he doesn't know yet. He's still angry about whatever Selene told him. He has no idea that the girl he's demanding to open this door has been dead for hours. *