“Do it again,” Lilith snapped, her boot tapping against the polished marble.

I winced, dragging the cloth back over the vanity. “It’s clean,” I tried to say—but my throat, ravaged and uncooperative, betrayed me. The rasp that escaped was pitiful.

Lilith rolled her eyes. “Gods, that sound again. Like a dying rodent.” She leaned in, brushing her pale blonde hair over her shoulder as she examined her reflection. “You missed a spot,” she added with a sneer, pointing to a nearly invisible speck beside her perfume tray.

I crouched lower, scrubbing the tiny mark with trembling fingers. The cold marble bit into my knees, but I barely noticed it anymore. My knuckles, raw and swollen from hours of cleaning, moved mechanically.

Lilith’s chambers were already spotless. They always were. But it never mattered. Clean wasn’t the point. Control was.

“Faster,” she barked.

I blinked sweat from my lashes and obeyed.

Outside the frosted windows, the first fingers of dawn broke across the treetops. I used to find comfort in mornings. That was before I’d been stripped of my voice, my wolf, and the life I should have had.

A knock at the door. Then it slammed open without waiting.

I flinched, the brush slipping from my hand with a loud clatter.

Lilith spun around just as a female attendant poked her head inside. “Your mother's on her way, Luna.”

Lilith’s eyes snapped to the vanity—then to the smudge still barely visible.

She turned on me.

“You worthless defect,” she hissed. “You knew she was coming!”

I shook my head, mouthing I didn’t know—but it was useless. My silence made her angrier.

Lilith crossed the room in two strides and shoved me hard. I landed on my side with a grunt, the breath knocked from my lungs.

“No wonder the Goddess cursed you. No voice, no shift, no use at all.”

She stormed to the wall. I heard the scrape before I saw what she grabbed—not the crop this time.

The whip.

My blood chilled.

I scrambled backward, palms slipping on wet stone. I tried to rise, tried to run, but my legs were too slow and she was already above me.

Crack.

Pain split my shoulder. I bit down on my tongue to stifle the scream, tasting blood.

Crack. Crack. CRACK!

I curled inward as the lash found my back again and again, each strike more vicious than the last. Lilith’s breathing turned ragged, almost gleeful.

“Can’t scream, huh?” she panted. “No fun if you can’t even cry.”

She paused only long enough to seize my hair and yank me upright. Tears streamed down my cheeks, but she ignored them. Dragging me to the washbasin, she dumped the filthy cleaning water over my head. It soaked my dress, burning into the fresh wounds like acid.

Lilith stood back, admiring her handiwork. “Now you match the filth you leave behind.”

The door creaked open again.

“Lilith?” a smooth voice called out. “Everything ready?”

I froze.

Alpha Elias.

…

His boots clicked slowly across the marble. I dared not look up.

“Well?” he asked.

Lilith’s voice changed instantly. She turned sweet, flustered. “Just handling a little... incompetence,” she said, slipping to his side. “You know how she is.”

He finally looked at me.

I could feel his eyes. Cold. Dismissive. The same man whose life I’d once saved, who’d held my hands and promised a “paying in return”.

Three years ago, I would have died for that look.

Now it only crushed me.

“She missed a spot,” Lilith whispered.

Elias sighed. “Still causing trouble, Seren?”

I didn’t move.

“She was tracking mud across my floors. I had to teach her,” Lilith said, voice soft as silk. She rested a hand on his chest.

Elias didn’t blink. “Throw her out until she dries.”

I looked up then, mouth parting in horror. No. Not outside. Not like this. I motioned frantically toward the window, where frost crept like veins across the glass.

“She’s questioning you,” Lilith said sharply.

Elias’s eyes narrowed. “Outside. Now.”

He didn't shout. He didn’t need to. The Alpha tone was enough to freeze the blood in my veins.

I stumbled to my feet, clothes clinging to me, wounds stinging. I walked toward the door, each step heavier than the last.

Warriors in the hall turned to watch.

“Move,” Lilith snapped, shoving me forward.

I stumbled past them, the whispers following me like hounds.

“She’s still alive?”

“She’s disgusting.”

“Should’ve been put down.”

One of them spat near my feet.

I reached the doors.

“Wait,” Lilith called behind me, loud enough for all to hear. “You’re dripping on my floor.”

A few chuckles.

Elias’s voice, low and lazy, was the final cut. “Let her go. Maybe the cold will knock some sense into her.”

I stepped outside.

The wind punched me in the gut. My soaked dress turned stiff with frost almost instantly. I crossed the steps, but my legs buckled. I collapsed onto the icy ground, too weak to move, too proud to cry.

Through the glass, I could still see them—Lilith pressed against Elias’s chest, smiling. He didn’t resist.

They had forgotten me already.

And maybe that hurt worst of all.

The warriors walked away. Not one helped. Not one paused.

And for the first time, I let myself think the unthinkable:

What if I left?

No pack. No shelter. No future.

But also... no pain.

Could I do it? Could I survive?

Another shiver wracked me so hard I couldn’t breathe. My limbs were going numb.

And yet... something in me stirred. Not strength. Not yet. But desire. Not to be powerful. Not even to be loved.

…Just to be free.

The wind shrieked around me like a beast denied its kill, clawing at my soaked dress and tearing straight through my broken skin.

My hands, numbed and pale, curled against the icy ground. I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore.

My lips had gone stiff, blue, bloodless. Breathing burned—each inhale slicing into my chest like shards of glass.

How long had I been out here?

The hours bled together like the wounds on my back. Time didn’t matter in the cold. Only the pain did.

The den doors creaked open behind me. Footsteps—light, hurried. I turned my head just enough to glimpse a young pack member, a girl I’d seen trailing behind the hunters. She passed within feet of me, her gaze carefully pointed ahead, like I was invisible. Her boots kicked a bit of slush onto me as she went.

I closed my eyes and waited for the warmth to fade again. But it didn’t.

I had to move.

My muscles screamed as I pushed myself upright, my palms slipping on the frost-slick stones. My dress, frozen in places to the ground, tore at the seams as I rose. A wet ripping sound echoed beneath the howl of wind.

A piece of me stayed behind.

I stumbled forward, vision dark at the edges. The whip wounds had split open again. Blood trickled down my back only to freeze in seconds, each drop a tiny needle of pain.

My steps were uneven, dragging, but I forced one foot in front of the other, eyes fixed on the entrance like it was a doorway to another life.

No one came to help me. No hand opened the door.

When I finally reached the handle and shoved it open, the heat inside hit me like fire. My skin screamed as it began to thaw, the sudden warmth more brutal than the cold. I bit down hard, refusing to make a sound.

Even now, even like this—I didn’t want them to hear me.

I walked. Slowly. Wet footprints and smears of blood trailed behind me on the polished floors. Conversations paused. Laughter died. Eyes glanced, sneered, then slid away. Not a soul stepped forward. I wasn’t a girl anymore. I was a stain.

But I knew where to go.

The medical wing was buried at the back of the den—hidden away, like shame. Elara worked there. She’d never defied Elias or Lilith. She couldn’t. But in the quiet of her treatment room, she’d offer a blanket. A look of pity. She’d speak to me like I was real.

It felt like hours before I made it to the door. I collapsed just inside, the cold seeping from my bones only to be replaced by the fire of returning blood flow.

“Goddess—Seren!” Elara’s voice cracked as she rushed over. “Can you hear me?”

I tried to nod, but the room spun. Her hands—warm, firm—lifted me, cradling me like something fragile. I didn’t protest. I couldn’t.

The light above me pulsed like a dying star as she set me on the table. My vision blurred, her face hovering above mine. She was speaking. I caught fragments.

“Again?”

“Whip wounds… deep…”

“Hypothermia, damn them—”

“Breathe, Seren. Just breathe.”

Elara’s hands worked fast, cutting the frozen dress away with shears. I heard her sharp inhale as she peeled fabric from torn flesh.

“This is monstrous,” she muttered. “They left you out there in this storm?” Her voice was tight. Controlled. But I could hear the fury beneath it.

I nodded weakly, jaw clenched.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” she said, dabbing at my wounds with antiseptic. The sting was immediate. I flinched, gasping. “You’re burning up with infection, and your core temperature is dangerously low. Any longer…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. I already knew how it ended.

She moved to my ribs next, her touch delicate but unrelenting. “Three broken,” she said, more to herself than to me. “I have to set them, Seren. This will hurt.”

I nodded. A mistake.

The pain that followed stole the breath from my lungs. It felt like fire spreading from the inside out, searing through every nerve.

Darkness pulled at me. I let it win.

When I woke again, bandages wrapped my torso like a second skin. The light overhead had dimmed. Elara was seated beside me, her hands still busy with herbs and salves.

“You’ll need to stay here a while,” she said softly. “I told them you were too injured to return to duties. It won’t buy you much time, but it’s all I could do.”

Peace. She said it like it was a favor. But peace wasn’t real. Not here. Not for me.

Still, I whispered a silent thank you in my mind.

That night, I dreamed of frozen forests and blood on marble floors. I saw Lilith’s smile stretched wide with glee, Elias standing behind her, arms crossed, eyes void of warmth. I woke up choking on air, tears sliding silently down my temples.

I didn’t cry again after that.

Days passed. Then weeks. Elara visited less frequently as I healed. She was stretched thin, and my presence was a risk to her.

But the silence gave me time. To think. To remember. To listen.

And one morning, I heard them.

Their voices drifted through the cracked door like poison.

“She’s a waste of resources,” Lilith was saying, her tone dripping honeyed venom. “Three months of healing for what? So she can mop floors slower than before?”

“She’ll be back in service soon,” Elias replied, indulgent. “Let her rot a little longer. It’s no less than she deserves. Trying to claim she saved me from that rogue attack? As if she could protect anyone.”

“She’s delusional,” Lilith scoffed. “Probably damaged her brain when she lost her voice. You were right to put her in her place.”

“I always am,” Elias said. “She’s a defective Omega who never should’ve made it past adolescence. No voice. No shift. No use.”

Their footsteps faded. But their words didn’t.

They had no guilt. No remorse. Just smug, satisfied pride.

That moment did something to me.

It didn’t break me.

It sharpened me.

The cracks they carved into my soul weren’t wounds—they were windows. And through them, I finally saw what I’d been too afraid to look at all along.

They would never change. They would never see me as anything but a mistake that kept breathing.

I couldn’t stay.

A thought took root inside me—a spark so small it almost went unnoticed. But it was there. And it was mine.

I would leave.

I didn’t know how. Or where I’d go. I had no plan, no allies. But I had something more powerful than anything they’d tried to beat out of me.

I had resolve.

Elara returned that evening with fresh bandages and a worried look. I let her speak. Let her warn me to be careful. Let her press a warm hand to my forehead and whisper words of comfort I couldn’t repeat.

But I was already planning.

Elias and Lilith would be traveling soon—for a treaty signing with a neighboring pack. Security would be thin. Patrols distracted. Doors left unguarded.

I had one chance.

At sunrise, as light spilled across the stone floor of the medical wing, I sat up in bed and whispered a promise only I could hear.

This is the last dawn I greet as a prisoner.

One way or another.

I will be free.

Or I will die trying.

I watched from the shadows as Lilith swept through the main hall, barking orders at the pack members who scurried to load her excessive luggage into the waiting vehicles.

Her voice carried that familiar edge of entitlement that made my skin crawl, but today, it sounded like music to my ears.

She was leaving. For three whole days, she would be gone.

My hands trembled slightly as I polished the same spot on the wooden banister for the fifth time, keeping my head down while my mind raced with possibilities. Three days without her watchful eyes.

Three days without her whip or her cruel words.

Three days to disappear.

"You," Lilith's sharp voice cut through my thoughts like a knife. "Make sure my chambers are spotless when I return. And don't think this trip means you get to slack off."

I nodded meekly, not daring to look up. Even after months of healing in the medical wing, my ribs still ached when I breathed too deeply—a constant reminder of what happened the last time I'd displeased her.

"Elias will be checking on you," she continued, her perfectly manicured finger jabbing toward my chest. "He knows exactly what your duties are. One mistake, and you'll wish you were never born."

The irony of her threat wasn't lost on me. There were already so many days I wished exactly that.

I kept my eyes fixed on the floor as she strutted past, the scent of her expensive perfume lingering in the air like a toxic cloud.

Only when the main doors closed behind her entourage did I allow myself to exhale.

Now, the clock was ticking.

That night, as the pack settled into their evening routines, I began my usual cleaning duties with unusual diligence. I needed to appear normal, compliant—the broken, voiceless Omega they all expected me to be.

But inside, my mind was cataloging every exit, every guard rotation, every potential obstacle between me and freedom.

When the corridors finally emptied, I slipped into the small storage closet that served as my sleeping quarters.

The space was barely large enough for the thin mattress on the floor, but it offered the one thing I needed most: privacy.

Kneeling beside my mattress, I carefully pried up the loose floorboard beneath it. In the small hollow space, I had hidden my meager treasures: a tattered notebook where I'd sketched memories of my parents and written my thoughts since losing my voice, a stub of charcoal I'd salvaged from the kitchen fireplace, and most importantly, a small knife I'd stolen from the kitchen months ago.

The knife wasn't much—just a simple paring knife with a worn wooden handle—but it was sharp.

In a world where I couldn't shift to defend myself, it might mean the difference between life and death.

I ran my finger along the blade, testing its edge.

Not for the first time, I wondered if I was being foolish.

Where would I go? What would I do?

A mute, defective wolf with no pack protection was vulnerable to dangers I could scarcely imagine.

But then I remembered Elias's cold eyes as he ordered me into the freezing cold.

I remembered Lilith's laughter as she brought the whip down on my back. I remembered the pack members who walked past me as I lay bleeding, not one of them offering help.

Staying meant certain death—if not of my body, then of my spirit. At least in running, there was a chance, however small.

I carefully wrapped the knife in a scrap of cloth and tucked it, along with my notebook and charcoal, into the inner pocket I'd sewn into my only spare dress.

Then I lay down on my mattress, fully clothed, and waited.

Sleep didn't come. How could it, when every nerve in my body was alive with fear and anticipation?

Instead, I stared at the ceiling, counting the hours by the changing patterns of moonlight that filtered through the tiny window near the ceiling.

The next day passed in a haze of nervous energy. I cleaned and scrubbed and organized, all while mentally preparing for what was to come.

Twice, Elias passed me in the corridors, his gaze sliding over me as if I were nothing more than a piece of furniture.

Good.

Let him think I was broken beyond repair, too beaten down to ever consider rebellion.

When night fell again, I continued my charade, finishing my evening duties with the same quiet efficiency I always showed. But tonight was different.

Tonight, as the pack members retreated to their quarters and the night guards took their positions, I was counting every second, waiting for my moment.

The side gate.

That was my target. It was the least guarded exit from the den grounds, used primarily by the kitchen staff to access the vegetable gardens.

At midnight, the guard rotation would leave it momentarily unattended—a five-minute window that Elara had once mentioned in passing, not knowing she was giving me the key to my escape.

As the pack den grew quiet, I slipped from my closet, my heart thundering so loudly in my chest that I was certain someone would hear it.

The knife pressed against my ribs, a cold reminder of what I was risking. What I was leaving behind.

Nothing. I was leaving behind nothing but pain and humiliation.

I moved through the shadows like a ghost, years of trying to be invisible finally serving a purpose.

Down the service corridor, past the kitchen, through the laundry room with its lingering scent of soap and steam.

Each step brought me closer to freedom, each silent footfall a small victory against those who thought me worthless.

When I reached the small door that led to the kitchen gardens, I paused, listening intently. The night was quiet save for the distant hooting of an owl and the soft rustling of leaves in the breeze. No footsteps. No voices. Just the sound of opportunity.

With trembling fingers, I pushed the door open, wincing at the slight creak of its hinges.

The cool night air rushed in, carrying with it the scent of pine and earth and possibility.

I stepped outside, half-expecting alarms to sound, guards to descend, Elias himself to materialize and drag me back to my prison.

But there was only silence and moonlight.

The side gate was just visible at the far end of the garden, a simple wooden structure that separated the cultivated grounds from the wild forest beyond. I moved toward it with purpose now, no longer creeping but walking with quiet determination.

Each step took me further from my past, closer to an uncertain but free future.

When I reached the gate, I found it exactly as I'd hoped—unguarded during the shift change, its latch secured by a simple rope loop. My fingers fumbled with the knot, clumsy with adrenaline and fear.

For one terrible moment, I thought it wouldn't come undone, that this final barrier would be the one to thwart my escape.

Then the rope gave way, and the gate swung open with a soft groan.

Freedom lay before me—dark, wild, and terrifying in its vastness.

The forest stretched out, a sea of shadows and silver moonlight, offering both shelter and danger in equal measure. For a heartbeat, I hesitated, the weight of my decision suddenly overwhelming.

What if I couldn't survive out there? What if the rogues found me? What if—

A door slammed somewhere behind me in the den, the sound carrying clearly through the night air. Voices followed—the night patrol returning earlier than expected.

There was no more time for doubt.

I stepped through the gate and into the forest, my heart pounding against my ribs like a caged animal finally tasting freedom. The soft earth cushioned my footsteps as I moved deeper into the trees, away from the only home I'd ever known, away from years of abuse and humiliation.

The moonlight filtered through the canopy above, casting dappled patterns on the forest floor that seemed to guide my way.

I didn't look back.

Never would I

To look back was to risk faltering, and I had come too far to falter now. So I walked on, each step taking me further from my past and into an unknown future.

The forest embraced me, its shadows offering more kindness than I had known in years. For the first time since that fateful night when I'd sacrificed everything to save Elias, I felt something stirring in my chest—something that felt dangerously like hope.

I was free.

Terrified, alone, and vulnerable—but free.

What I didn't know, as I made my way through the moonlit forest, was that freedom would come with a price I wasn't prepared to pay. That my path would soon cross with someone who would change everything—someone whose very name was whispered with fear in the pack I'd just left behind.

Darian Vale, the Alpha heir who was said to devour weak wolves like me for breakfast – when I thought I was ready to embrace a life as a lone wolf, I didn’t expect that he’d capture me.