The morning sky was the color of a fresh bruise, swollen and purple with unshed rain. The entire Silverclaw Pack had gathered on the main lawn, a sea of black umbrellas and hushed whispers. They were waiting for the funeral procession to the Hallowed Grounds, the sacred white stone garden where our ancestors slept under the Moon Goddess’s watch.

But we weren’t going to the garden.

I stood alone, separated from the crowd by two Delta guards. I wore no black veil, only my ragged Omega uniform. My arms felt impossibly light without the weight of my daughter in them. Thea was in the center of the clearing, inside a plain pine box that looked more like a crate for shipping vegetables than a coffin for an Alpha pup.

Rhys stood on the porch, looking down at us. He wore his ceremonial Alpha blacks, but his face was grey, his eyes glassy and vacant. Alessia stood right beside him, her hand resting possessively on his forearm. She was wearing white—a stark, insulting contrast to the mourning pack. She leaned up, whispering something into Rhys’s ear. Her lips brushed his lobe, and I saw his jaw tighten.

He stepped forward, clearing his throat. The pack fell silent.

"There will be no procession to the Hallowed Grounds today," Rhys announced. His voice was flat, devoid of the rich timber that used to make my wolf purr. It sounded mechanical.

A ripple of shock went through the crowd. Even the guards beside me shifted uncomfortably.

"Thea..." Rhys paused, his gaze flickering to the pine box and then quickly away, as if looking at it burned him. "The child failed the shift. She succumbed to her own biological inadequacy. Our laws are clear. Only those who live as wolves may sleep with the wolves."

"She was two!" I screamed, the sound tearing from my raw throat. "She was your daughter!"

"She was weak stock!" Rhys roared back, the Alpha command slamming into me like a physical blow, forcing me to my knees in the wet grass. "She proved she did not have the strength to carry the Silverclaw blood. To bury her with the heroes of this pack would be an insult to their memory. It would show our enemies that we honor failure."

Alessia nodded solemnly, wiping a fake tear from her dry cheek. "The Alpha is right," she projected her voice, smooth as poisoned honey. "We must be strong. We must purge the weakness to protect the pack."

Rhys gestured to Marcus, a burly Delta warrior who stood by the coffin. Marcus looked down at his boots, shame radiating off him. "Take it to the Wasteland," Rhys ordered. "Bury it with the others."

It. He called her *it*.

The world tilted on its axis. The Wasteland wasn't a cemetery. It was a dumping ground at the edge of the territory, a muddy ravine where we threw the bodies of executed Rogues, diseased livestock, and traitors who had been stripped of their rank. It was a place of rot.

"No," I whimpered, scrambling to my feet. "Rhys, please! Don't do this!"

But the procession was already moving. Marcus hoisted the small box onto his shoulder with ease—she was so small, so light—and began the trek toward the treeline. Rhys and Alessia followed, and the rest of the pack fell in line, heads bowed in submission.

I ran. I stumbled over roots and slipped in the mud, trailing behind them like a ghost.

The smell hit us before we saw the pit. The stench of decay, wet fur, and sulfur. The Wasteland was a scar on the earth, a deep gully filled with trash and bones. Flies buzzed in thick, black clouds, indifferent to the rain that had started to fall.

Marcus stopped at the edge of a shallow, freshly dug hole. It was barely two feet deep. Muddy water was already pooling at the bottom.

"Do it," Rhys commanded. He stood under a large black umbrella that Alessia held over him, keeping him dry while I was soaked to the bone.

Marcus lowered the box. He didn't do it gently. The mud was slippery, and his grip faltered. The box slid from his hands and landed with a wet thud in the muck.

It landed crookedly.

I pushed past the guards, falling to my knees at the edge of the ravine. My eyes locked on the grave. The box had landed right next to a bloated, gray mound of fur. A coyote. A feral, mangy scavenger that had been shot by patrol last week. Its rotting, open mouth was pressed against the wood of my daughter's coffin. Its dead, cloudy eyes seemed to stare right at me.

My baby. My sweet, innocent Thea, who smelled like milk and sunshine. She was lying in the mud next to vermin.

Something inside me shattered. It wasn't a break; it was an explosion. The last tether of my sanity, the last shred of my love for Rhys, the last instinct of self-preservation—it all snapped.

I didn't feel the rain anymore. I didn't feel the grief. I felt only fire.

My hand went to my boot. The handle of the silver fruit knife I had stolen from the kitchen tray three days ago was cold against my palm.

"You monster," I whispered.

I didn't lunge at Rhys. He was too strong, too guarded. My eyes locked on the white dress. The pristine, spotless white dress that mocked my daughter’s dirty grave.

I moved faster than I had ever moved in my human form. I wasn't running; I was hunting.

"Isabelle, stop!" Marcus shouted, but he was too late.

I crashed into Alessia. The impact knocked the umbrella from her hand, sending it spinning into the mud. We hit the ground, mud splashing up around us. Her eyes went wide with shock, her mouth opening in a silent scream.

"You put her there!" I shrieked, raising the knife. "You killed her!"

I brought the blade down.

I aimed for her heart, but she twisted. The silver blade sliced deep into her upper arm, tearing through the expensive white silk and sinking into flesh.

Blood—bright, hot crimson—sprayed across my face, mixing with the rain.

Alessia screamed, a high-pitched, terrified sound that echoed through the silent woods. "Rhys! She's crazy! Kill her!"

I yanked the knife back for a second strike, my teeth bared in a snarl that required no wolf to understand. I wanted to carve the life out of her. I wanted her to rot in that pit instead of my baby.

The silver blade caught the gray light of the storm, poised for the second strike. I wasn't Isabelle anymore. I wasn't a Luna, or a mother, or a human. I was pure, distilled vengeance. I watched the terror widen Alessia’s eyes, and for a split second, I felt a grim, dark satisfaction.

Then, the air exploded.

"KNEEL!"

It wasn't just a shout. It was an Alpha Command, fueled by pure, unadulterated power. It hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Because my wolf had been stolen, because my body was just fragile human bone and sinew now, I had no buffer against the force of it.

My body obeyed before my mind could process the pain. I dropped like a stone.

*SNAP.*

The sound was louder than the thunder. My right knee hit a jagged rock buried in the mud, and the bone shattered. The agony was blinding, a white-hot spike that shot up my thigh and stole the breath from my lungs. I screamed, but the sound was choked off as Rhys unleashed his aura.

It was a crushing weight, heavy and suffocating, pressing me face-first into the filth of the Wasteland. The pressure built inside my skull. My ears popped. Warm, metallic fluid gushed from my nose, mixing with the mud I was forced to inhale.

"Don't you dare touch her," Rhys snarled. His voice was unrecognizable—distorted by the Alpha tone. He wasn't looking at me as his mate. He was looking at me like I was the rogue vermin rotting in the pit beside us.

Through the haze of pain, I watched him drop to his knees beside Alessia. He ripped a strip of fabric from his ceremonial shirt and bound her arm, his hands trembling with a tenderness he hadn't shown me in years.

"She's insane, Rhys!" Alessia sobbed, pressing her face into his neck. "She tried to kill me! She's feral! Just like her daughter was!"

"I know," Rhys soothed her, stroking her wet hair. Then he turned that cold, dead gaze back to me. I was pinned, unable to lift even a finger against the weight of his dominance.

"You are no longer Luna," he spat, the words landing like stones on my broken body. "You are nothing. You are a disgrace to the air you breathe."

Alessia pulled back slightly, her eyes gleaming with malice despite the blood soaking her sleeve. "The neighbors... the other packs... they need to know," she whimpered, her voice pitched perfectly to trigger his protective instincts. "If she escapes... if she tries to hurt someone else's pup... we have a duty to warn them, Rhys. Release the medical files. Show them she’s mentally unfit."

Rhys didn't hesitate. He didn't even look at the fresh grave of his child. He pulled his waterproof phone from his pocket. I couldn't move, couldn't speak, but I could see the screen glowing in the gloom.

"Done," he said darkly. "I've sent the blast to the regional Alpha network. The medical records of the 'Wolfless Luna.' The diagnosis of Feral Degeneration and psychotic episodes. No pack will harbor you. No one will touch you."

My reputation, my sanity, my future—deleted with a thumb swipe.

"Let's go," Rhys muttered, helping Alessia to her feet. "This place is filthy."

Marcus, the Delta, looked back at me once, his expression twisted with guilt, but he turned away when Rhys barked his name. They walked away. The black umbrellas bobbed in the rain, moving further and further into the grey mist, leaving me alone in the graveyard of traitors.

The crushing aura lifted as they left the perimeter, but the pain in my knee remained, sharp and absolute. I lay there for a long time, letting the rain wash the blood from my face. I should have died. The cold was seeping into my marrow. It would be so easy to just close my eyes and let the hypothermia take me to Thea.

*No.*

The thought was a spark in a dark room. If I died, Alessia won. If I died, Thea was just 'weak stock' forever.

I gritted my teeth and dug my elbows into the sludge. I dragged myself forward. My broken leg dragged behind me, a dead weight of agony, but I didn't stop. Inch by inch, panting, crying out with every movement, I crawled toward the small, crooked mound of earth.

I reached the pine box. The mud was already settling over it.

I didn't pray. I didn't look up at the sky to beg the Moon Goddess for peace. She hadn't saved my daughter. She hadn't saved my wolf. She was either deaf or cruel, and I had no use for her anymore.

I dug my fingers into the wet soil of my daughter's grave. I squeezed my hand into a fist, feeling the dirt grit under my nails, mixing with the blood still dripping from my nose.

"I swear to you, baby," I rasped, my voice sounding like grinding glass. "I won't rest. I won't sleep. I will burn their world down. I will make them feel every second of this fear. I will take everything from them."

It was a blood oath. Ancient. Dark. Binding.

Through the sound of the rain, a low hum cut through the silence. It wasn't the rumble of a pack truck. It was the smooth, expensive purr of a high-performance engine.

I lifted my head, wiping mud from my eyes. A sleek black limousine, long and ominous, was winding its way down the narrow dirt track of the Wasteland. Flags snapped on the hood—silver and blue. The colors of the Lycan Council.

The car stopped ten feet from where I lay. The back door opened.

A polished black dress shoe stepped directly into the mud, indifferent to the filth. Then another. A man stepped out, unfurling a large black umbrella. He was tall, radiating a power that felt different from Rhys’s. It wasn't crushing; it was solid. Like a mountain.

He walked toward me, his face grim and pale in the storm light. He stopped at the foot of Thea’s grave and looked down at me—broken, bloody, and covered in the filth of the dead.

"Finnley," I whispered, the name tasting like a ghost from a past life.

He didn't say a word. He just extended a hand, his gray eyes burning with a silent, terrifying promise of war.