Elyse POV

My bags were packed. Freedom was just a car ride away.

Then, my encrypted burner phone rang.

I stared at the unknown number flashing on the screen, a cold dread pooling in my stomach. I answered it, pressing the speaker to my ear.

"Luna Elyse," a voice rasped. It was Silas, Hilda Blackwood's Beta. His tone was devoid of any warmth. "The Matriarch noted your failure to RSVP to tonight's Winter Solstice Conclave. She assumes it was a clerical error."

"Silas, I—"

"Let me be clear," he cut me off, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "The Matriarch is assessing her alliances tonight. If you and Alpha Jace do not walk through the doors of the Blackwood Keep by seven o'clock, she will consider the Silvermoon Pack an enemy. And she will summon you back to the dungeons for *The Correction*."

My blood turned to ice. The room spun. *The Correction.* Just hearing the words made phantom silver burn against my skin, a visceral memory of agonizing torture that could shatter a werewolf's soul.

"We will be there," I choked out, my voice trembling. The line went dead.

My escape was over. If I ran now, Hilda's trackers would hunt me down before I crossed the state line. I had to survive tonight first.

I closed my eyes and forced my consciousness into the Pack's network, reaching out to Jace.

*Jace,* I pleaded through the mind-link. *I need you to come with me to the Blackwood Conclave tonight.*

A wave of static and irritation hit me before his voice echoed in my head. *Are you insane, Elyse? Elder Marcus froze my accounts! I am dealing with a financial crisis, I don't have time for your grandmother's pretentious parties!*

*Hilda will see your absence as an act of war!* I projected my raw, unfiltered terror through the bond. *She will drag me back to the Blackwood dungeons, Jace! This isn't a request. It's for my survival!*

Silence stretched across the link. Even through his arrogance, Jace's Alpha instincts recognized the genuine, primal fear radiating from me. He feared the Blackwood Pack's military might, even if he wouldn't admit it.

*Fine,* he snapped finally. *But we arrive at seven, and we leave at nine. Not a minute longer.*

The connection severed. I exhaled a shaky breath, praying we could just make an appearance and leave unscathed.

By 6:50 PM, I was standing in the freezing, cavernous foyer of the Pack House. I wore a thin, formal black gown, shivering as the draft from the heavy front door seeped into my bones. Outside, a brutal blizzard was tearing through the territory, the wind howling like a dying beast.

I checked my watch. Ten minutes until we had to be there.

Suddenly, Ciera's voice drifted down from the second-floor landing. She wasn't using the mind-link; she was speaking loudly, making sure her voice carried.

"Oh, a date tonight? With Dr. Evans?" Ciera giggled, the sound dripping with fake innocence. "I'd love to. It's been so lonely here..."

A deafening roar shook the floorboards. Jace's bedroom door slammed open upstairs.

"You are not going anywhere with that damn Pack Doctor!" Jace bellowed, his Alpha aura exploding through the house, heavy and suffocating.

"You can't tell me what to do, Jace!" Ciera cried out, her voice trembling with perfectly calculated tears. "You have a Luna! I can't just wait around forever! I need a Mate who will mark me, someone who puts me first!"

"I said no!" Jace used his *Alpha's Command*, the sheer force of it making my own knees buckle slightly downstairs. "You are staying right here with me."

The Pack House fell dead silent. The only sound was the violent rattling of the windows against the storm.

My mind-link crackled.

*Elyse,* Jace's voice was flat, devoid of any guilt. *The Elders just called an emergency meeting. I can't make it tonight.*

A bitter, hollow laugh escaped my lips. The Elders never held meetings on the night of the Winter Solstice. It was a pathetic, transparent lie. He had chosen her tears over my life.

I looked at the mahogany console table beside me. Jace's black leather briefcase sat exactly where I had left it, the blood-stained Rejection envelope resting silently inside.

I didn't argue. I didn't beg. The last shred of whatever bond tied me to Jace Silvermoon withered and died in my chest, leaving nothing but cold, hard clarity.

I pulled my thin shawl tighter around my shoulders and pushed open the heavy front door. The freezing wind instantly bit into my skin, but I didn't stop. I walked out into the blinding white snow, got into my Audi, and drove toward the Blackwood Keep alone.

Elyse POV

The drive through the blizzard was a blur of whiteout conditions and suffocating dread. When I finally pushed open the heavy oak doors of the Blackwood Keep, a dead, icy silence fell over the Great Hall.

The massive stone fireplace roared, but it did nothing to thaw the hostility in the room. Hilda Blackwood sat upon her carved oak throne, her cloudy eyes narrowing as she registered my solitary arrival.

"Where is your Alpha, Elyse?" Hilda’s voice was a venomous hiss that echoed off the vaulted ceilings.

"Matriarch, the storm—" I started, my voice trembling as I clutched my thin shawl.

A cruel chuckle suddenly echoed through the pack's mind-link. It was my cousin, Dixon Blackwood, leaning against a stone pillar with a smirk. *Maybe he's busy comforting his pathetic Omega mistress, Grandmother.*

The words were a lit match in a powder keg. Hilda’s face twisted in absolute fury. She slammed her obsidian snake-head cane against the stone floor. The sharp crack silenced the entire room.

"A Luna who cannot even leash her own Alpha brings shame to this bloodline," Hilda snarled, her gaze devoid of any familial warmth. "If Alpha Jace will not bleed for this alliance, you will bleed for his disrespect. Take her to the Terrace for *The Correction*."

"No! Please!" I begged, but two massive Pack Warriors were already hauling me backward. They dragged me out the heavy glass doors and threw me onto the Terrace of Correction.

The blizzard hit me like a physical blow, the sub-zero wind instantly soaking my thin black gown with snow. But the cold was nothing compared to the agony waiting beneath me.

"Kneel," a warrior barked, forcing me down onto the stone slabs.

A blood-curdling scream ripped from my throat. Embedded in the cracks of the stone were threads of pure, lethal silver. The moment my bare knees hit the metal, my flesh began to sizzle. The visceral, soul-shattering burn of the silver shot up my spine, paralyzing my inner wolf.

I collapsed forward, my hands hitting the silver-laced stone, earning another agonizing hiss of burning skin. Through the massive glass doors, I could see them. My family. The visiting Alphas and Lunas. They stood in the warmth of the firelight, swirling their champagne, watching me burn and freeze simultaneously.

Time lost its meaning. Forty minutes bled into an eternity of white snow and red agony. My body temperature plummeted. The smell of my own scorched flesh made me gag. As the edges of my vision darkened, my mind cruelly replayed Jace’s voice—choosing Ciera’s fake tears over my life. He knew what Hilda would do. He sent me here to die.

I closed my eyes, ready to let the darkness take me.

Then, the ground trembled.

Twin beams of blinding white light pierced the howling blizzard. A deafening, metallic screech shattered the night as a massive black Maybach rammed into the Keep’s impenetrable iron wolf-head gates. The heavy wrought iron tore off its hinges like wet paper, the vehicle roaring up the driveway like a mechanical beast.

It drifted violently on the ice, tires tearing up the snow, and slammed to a halt mere feet from where I lay bleeding.

The Keep’s defenses were obliterated in seconds. Inside the hall, the champagne glasses shattered. The onlookers rushed to the glass, their faces pale with sudden terror.

The driver’s side door of the Maybach swung open. A man stepped out into the raging blizzard. He was massive, built like a dark god, and the sheer, suffocating aura of pure, unadulterated power rolling off him made the very snowflakes seem to freeze in mid-air.