Seraphina's POV:

Dawn was breaking as I arrived, painting the eastern sky in bruised shades of purple and grey. The old, wrought-iron gates of the Blackwood Pack territory loomed before me, the same snarling dire wolf sigil carved into the metal, its silent roar a welcome I no longer deserved.

My truck rumbled to a stop. Two young warriors, no older than twenty, stepped out of the guardhouse. They didn't recognize me. Their stances were rigid, their eyes filled with the cold, impersonal suspicion reserved for intruders.

One of them rapped his knuckles sharply on my window. "This is private property. You need to leave. Now." His voice was hard, clipped.

I lowered the window, and the crisp morning air, smelling of damp earth and pine, whipped my hair across my face. I could smell the warriors, too—the scent of fresh grass and wary hostility. Ten years. Ten years ago, they would have been children, and I would have been their future Alpha's daughter. Now, I was just a trespasser.

"I'm Seraphina Blackwood," I said, my voice hoarse from the long night. "I received a summons from Elias. I'm here to see my father."

The name "Blackwood" made the young guard flinch. His eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then narrowed with a look of dawning recognition, quickly followed by contempt. He had heard the stories. Of course, he had.

The other, slightly older guard, approached, his gaze sweeping over me, my face, my old truck, judging every detail. He muttered into a walkie-talkie, his voice too low for me to hear.

The wait was agonizing. I felt unseen eyes on me from the dense woods that bordered the road. The entire territory felt like a living creature, a beast that had woken and recognized an old wound, a foreign body in its midst.

*They don't want us here,* Lyra growled, her unease a low thrum beneath my skin. *This place is full of teeth.*

Finally, with a deep, groaning screech of protesting metal, the massive gates began to swing inward. "Go on," the older guard said, his tone flat, disrespectful. "Packhouse. Medical wing."

I drove through, my hands tight on the wheel. The familiar path was lined with the same ancient oaks, but the faces that turned to watch me pass were cold. Pack members who would have once waved and smiled now stared with open hostility before turning away, herding their children inside as if I were a contagion.

I saw the clearing where my sister, Celeste, and I used to practice our shifts, the big rock we’d jump from into the river. Every landmark was a fresh twist of the knife in my heart.

The Packhouse rose up at the end of the drive, a sprawling fortress of dark stone and timber. It looked bigger than I remembered, colder, its windows like vacant eyes.

I parked the truck in a far corner of the visitor's lot. Not in the family spaces near the entrance. I knew my place.

Stepping out, the air itself felt heavy, thick with a collective miasma of scents. Grief, sharp and bitter. Anxiety, a sour, electric tang. And underneath it all, a scent I had never associated with my home pack: the cold, metallic odor of fear.

I hurried toward the separate entrance of the medical wing, keeping my head down, trying to make myself small. Just as I reached the door, I saw them through the reinforced glass—a flash of my mother, Luna Genevieve, her shoulders slumped, and my brother, Ethan, his face a mask of fury.

My feet felt like they were encased in lead. They were the ones I dreaded seeing most. Ethan, Celeste's staunchest defender, who hated me with a passion that had only grown over the years. And my mother, whose disappointment had been the final seal on my exile.

Taking a shaky breath, I pushed open the heavy oak door.

The sterile smell of antiseptic and the cloying, sweet scent of healing herbs hit me all at once, making my head swim.

The corridor was lined with a few of the pack elders. They saw me, and their faces hardened. A few gave me curt, almost imperceptible nods, their eyes a mixture of pity and judgment.

I kept my gaze fixed on the floor, walking toward the ICU at the end of the hall. Each step felt like I was walking on broken glass.

A door opened ahead of me, and Dr. Elias Vance stepped out. He was the one who had sent the message, a man who had been our family's doctor since I was a child. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, his face etched with exhaustion.

He saw me, and no surprise registered on his tired features. He had expected me.

Pulling down his surgical mask, his voice came out as a dry rasp. "Seraphina. You're here."

My heart leaped into my throat. I could barely force the words out. "My father... How is he?"

Elias's kind, hazel eyes dimmed, and he gave a slow, minute shake of his head.

The small movement sent me plummeting into an abyss of ice.

"The Alpha's condition is... critical," he said, his voice low and heavy. "The attack was precise. They used a rare cocktail of toxins, laced with silver nitrate and wolfsbane. It's completely shredded his healing abilities."

He met my terrified gaze, and his own was filled with a profound, weary sadness.

"We've done everything we can," he said, his voice breaking on the last word. "He doesn't have much time."

Seraphina's POV:

Dr. Vance’s words sent the sterile white corridor tilting around me. I reached out a hand, my palm slapping against the cool stone of the wall to keep myself upright. The world narrowed to a roaring in my ears.

"Is he... is he conscious?" I managed to choke out, my voice a stranger's rasp. "I need to see him."

A complicated expression, something like pity, flickered across the doctor's exhausted face. "His consciousness fades in and out. He has been calling a name..."

A fragile, impossible sliver of hope ignited in the wreckage of my chest. Was he calling for me? After ten years of silence, of being disowned, did some part of him still want his daughter?

"He's calling for Celeste."

The voice was like a whip crack in the tense silence. It came from behind me, laced with a venom so pure it was breathtaking. "Not you. Never you, you filthy little thief."

My body went rigid. I turned slowly, as if moving through water. My brother, Ethan Blackwood, stood there, blocking the hallway. He was taller than I remembered, broader, his presence radiating a raw, aggressive power that sucked the air from the space around us. The look in his eyes was the unforgiving cold of a winter storm.

Beside him, our mother, Luna Genevieve, stood like a statue carved from grief. Her face was a ruin of its former beauty, her eyes hollowed out by sorrow. She looked at me, and I saw a flicker of pain, of disappointment, but she said nothing to stop her son. Her silence was its own condemnation.

Ethan took a step toward me, then another. The sheer force of his Alpha-heir aura pressed down on me, making it hard to breathe.

A cruel, humorless smile twisted his lips. He glanced around at the watching elders, his voice ringing with theatrical contempt. "Well, look what the cat dragged in. The great shame of the Blackwood family. I'm surprised you have the nerve to show your face on this land again."

His words were lashes, striking me across the face in front of everyone. The heat of shame burned my cheeks.

"I came to see Father," I bit out, my teeth clenched.

"Father?" Ethan laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "You dare call him that? After what you did? You destroyed Celeste's life, you shattered her bond with her mate and forced her to go Rogue! Do you have any idea what she's endured out there alone for ten years because of you?"

The mention of Celeste was a fresh stab of guilt. I didn't remember what happened that night, not really, but I remembered her pain. That was real.

Ethan's rage seemed to feed on my silence. "He's in that bed because of you! The shame you brought on this family wore him down, year after year! It weakened him! And now, some enemy strikes, and you show up at his deathbed to torment him one last time!"

He was blaming me for this, too. For the attack. It was the most poisonous accusation he could have possibly made.

*We did nothing!* Lyra snarled in my head, a furious, desperate denial. *Tell him!*

But I couldn't. I had no proof, no memories to offer as a shield. My silence was my confession.

Ethan pointed a trembling finger at the closed door of the ICU. "He wants to see his daughter! His pure, honorable daughter, Celeste! The one whose life you ruined! Not some... some *thing* lower than an Omega whore!"

That broke me. I could withstand the insults, the blame for Celeste. But the thought that my father, in his last moments, wanted anyone but me… that was a pain too deep to bear.

My body swayed, and the faces around me blurred. The blood drained from my face, leaving my skin feeling cold and tight.

Dr. Vance stepped forward. "Ethan, this isn't the time—"

"Quiet!" Ethan snapped, his voice cracking with the authority of the next Alpha. "This is pack business. Family business. Stay out of it."

He turned his furious gaze back to me, and for a second, I saw murder in his eyes. "If you hadn't been carrying another Alpha's pup in your belly, the elders would have had you put down like a sick dog ten years ago. Don't think for a second we've forgotten that."

His words ripped open the old wound, the humiliating truth of my survival.

I lifted my head, hot tears finally blurring my vision, and met his hateful stare. "Let me see him, Ethan," I begged, my voice breaking. "Please."

My plea didn't soften him. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire.

His hand shot out, his fingers closing around my upper arm in a brutal grip. The strength in his hand was immense, threatening to crush the bone.

"You think you're in a position to ask for *anything*?" he snarled, his face inches from mine.

I looked past him, at the elders, at my mother, at the doctor. They just watched. No one moved. No one spoke up for me.

In that moment, a cold so profound it felt like death itself settled deep in my bones. I was utterly, completely alone, abandoned by my entire world.

Seraphina's POV:

Ethan’s fingers were like a vise on my arm, the scent of his rage—like burning wood and ozone—assaulting my senses, making me feel dizzy. He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a low, venomous hiss right next to my ear.

"Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten how disgusting you were that night?"

His words were a key, twisting in a lock I hadn't known was there, forcing open a rusted door in my mind. His voice dragged me backward, pulling me into the swirling, chaotic memories of the Blood Moon Rite ten years ago. The night our pack celebrated the coming of age for all its eighteen-year-olds, the night the Moon Goddess revealed destined mates.

"Celeste," Ethan whispered, his voice a blade of poisoned honey. "Our perfect Celeste. She'd waited her whole life for that night. And the Goddess blessed her. She found her fated mate—Alpha Kieran Valerius. Powerful, noble, a future leader of a great pack. It was the happiest I had ever seen her."

Flickering images danced behind my eyes. Celeste's radiant face, lit by the bonfire. The way Kieran had looked at her, the visible sparks that crackled in the air between them, the undeniable pull of a true mate bond. I remembered the pure, unadulterated joy I had felt for my sister, mixed with a small, secret pang of loneliness for a mate I had not yet found.

"And you?" Ethan's voice dripped with contempt. "You were jealous. You saw a powerful Alpha, and you wanted him for yourself. But you weren't brave enough to challenge her, were you? No. You chose the coward's way. The slut's way."

His grip tightened, each word a hammer blow. "You slipped an herb into his drink. A potion to heighten his lust, to cloud his mind."

That was the official story. The truth everyone in the pack had accepted without question.

*No! It wasn't us!* Lyra howled, a desperate, frantic denial in the cage of my skull.

"I didn't," I gasped, trying to pull away from him, from the poison of his words. "I don't remember..."

"Don't remember?" He laughed, a cold, sharp sound. "How convenient. But Celeste remembers. She remembers everything. She remembers searching for Kieran, her heart full of joy, only to find him missing. She remembers hearing... noises... coming from your room."

He was painting a picture with his words, each stroke a fresh cut on my soul.

"She pushed open the door, Seraphina. And what did she see? She saw you. Naked. In her mate's arms. The scent of your coupling was so thick in the air it was nauseating."

The vile image he described made my stomach churn. Even without the memory, I could feel the second-hand humiliation, the imagined horror of that moment. I could feel Celeste's world shattering.

"You stole him," Ethan said, and I could hear a tremor in his voice now, a raw pain for his twin sister. "You stole her fated mate, Seraphina. You desecrated a sacred bond, a gift from the Goddess herself!"

In our world, there was no greater sin.

Tears streamed down my face as I shook my head, a useless, pathetic gesture. "No... I would never... I loved my sister..."

"Don't you dare say her name!" he roared, shaking me so hard my teeth rattled.

I cried out, a small, sharp gasp of pain. But the agony in my arm was nothing. Nothing compared to the weight of the accusation that was crushing my spirit.

I wanted to scream that I had been drinking, too. That I had woken up confused and horrified. But what was the use? They wouldn't have believed me then, and they wouldn't believe me now.

She was Celeste, the golden child, the future of the pack. I was just the quiet, lesser sister. The jealousy motive, it was just too perfect for them to ignore.

For a decade, I had worn the label: Mate Stealer. Whore. Traitor.

And now, here was my brother, pronouncing my sentence all over again, right outside our dying father's door.

A wave of blackness washed over my vision. It wasn't Ethan's strength that was felling me, but the sheer, suffocating weight of an injustice I could not fight.

My knees buckled.

Ethan looked down at me, his face a mask of pure disgust, as if I were something vile he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.

He let go of my arm. I crumpled to the cold stone floor.

He delivered the final blow, his voice flat and dead. "A creature like you doesn't deserve the name Blackwood."