Seraphina POV:

The slap was fast. Wolf speed is a blur to the human eye, but I saw it coming. I could have dodged. My reflexes were honed by training with the Royal Guard since I was a pup. But I didn't move.

I had to play the part until the very end.

*Smack.*

The force of her hand snapped my head to the side. A sharp sting radiated across my cheek, and I tasted the metallic tang of copper as my lip split against my teeth.

Silence descended on the lobby. Striking a human was considered low class, even for wolves, but nobody moved to stop her.

I slowly turned my head back to face her. I didn't cry out. I didn't hold my cheek. I just stared at her.

"Is that the best you can do?" I asked softly.

Lola's eyes widened in surprise. She expected tears. She expected begging.

"You pathetic little thing," she sneered. She pulled out her phone. "You want to know where Dante is? You want to know what he thinks of you?"

She shoved the screen in my face. It was a text thread with Dante.

*Dante: Don't worry about Seraphina. She's just a tool. Useful, like a stapler. But she has no soul. She's empty.*

*Lola: But she's been with you for seven years...*

*Dante: Seven years of boredom. She can't shift, Lola. She can't run with me. And most importantly, she can't breed strong pups. I need a wolf. I need you.*

The words burned themselves into my retinas. *Like a stapler.* *Can't breed.*

For seven years, I had suppressed my Alpha aura. I had taken suppressants that made me sick. I had endured the pitying looks of the Pack members who thought I was a barren, broken defect. I did it all to prove that love was the strongest force in the universe.

I was wrong. Power is the strongest force. And I had given mine up for a boy who saw me as office supplies.

"He never loved you," Bella chimed in from the stairs, her voice dripping with malice. "You don't even have a scent. You smell like nothing. Like a rogue's leftovers."

"Actually," I said, my voice steady, "seven years ago, Dante followed me home like a puppy in heat. He couldn't stay away."

"He was young and confused," Lola scoffed. "He probably smelled your shampoo."

"No," I corrected her. "He smelled the power I keep locked away. His wolf knew what I was, even if his human brain was too stupid to understand. He was attracted to the royalty in my blood."

Lola laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "Royalty? You? Look at you. You're bleeding from a little slap. A real Luna would have ripped my arm off by now."

She took a step closer, letting her aura flare. It was weak, a damp, suffocating pressure like a wet wool blanket. It was the aura of a low-ranked wolf trying to punch above her weight.

"This is a world of predators, Seraphina," Lola whispered, leaning into my ear. "And you are prey. Dante is mine. This building is mine. And you are trespassing."

I wiped the blood from my lip with my thumb and looked at the smear of red on my skin.

"You have no idea what a predator looks like, Lola," I said. "But you're about to find out."

Lola's face twisted in rage. She wasn't used to humans talking back. She raised her hand again, this time with her claws fully extended. She aimed for my throat.

Seraphina POV:

"On your knees!" Bella shouted.

Before I could react to Lola's claws, Bella kicked the back of my knee. It was a cowardly move, typical of a Gamma who only felt strong when the odds were two against one.

My leg buckled. I hit the marble floor hard.

The humiliation was instant. I, the heir to the Vitiello throne, the daughter of the King, was kneeling before a barmaid and her lackey.

"That's better," Lola sneered, looming over me. "This is where you belong. Beneath us."

She grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head back, exposing my throat. Her claws dug into my scalp.

"I should tear your throat out right here," Lola hissed. "Save Dante the trouble of firing you."

"If you touch me again," I said, my voice dropping an octave, vibrating with a warning that no human should possess, "you will pray to the Moon Goddess for death before I am finished with you."

Lola paused. For a second, genuine fear flickered in her eyes. She felt it—the static electricity that was starting to crackle in the air around me.

Then her eyes dropped to my chest. To the silver locket that had swung loose when I fell.

"What is this trash?" She reached out and grabbed the pendant.

"Don't touch that!" I screamed.

It wasn't fear for myself. It was fear for them. Fear for the building. That locket contained the only thing keeping the monster inside me from leveling the city block.

"A goodbye present from mommy?" Lola mocked. "It looks cheap. Just like you."

She yanked.

The silver chain was old. It snapped with a sickening *ping*.

"No!" I lunged for it, but Bella stomped on my hand, grinding her heel into my fingers.

Lola held the locket up to the light. "Let's see what you're hiding."

She dropped it on the floor.

Time seemed to slow down. I watched the silver oval fall, end over end. I saw it hit the polished marble.

Lola lifted her stiletto heel.

"Give it back!" I begged. "You don't know what you're doing!"

"Oops," Lola said, deadpan.

She brought her heel down.

*Crunch.*

The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet lobby. The ancient silver shattered. The dried Moonshade Herb inside—a priceless botanical treasure from the old world—turned to dust.

For a second, I felt an agonizing hollowness, as if my heart had been ripped out with the silver. That locket was the last piece of the soft, human girl I had tried so hard to be. I grieved her death for exactly one heartbeat.

Then, the shockwave hit.

It started in my chest. A heat so intense it felt like I had swallowed a star. The barrier that had held back my White Wolf lineage for seven years evaporated.

The air in the lobby changed instantly. The temperature dropped twenty degrees. The smell of cheap perfume was obliterated by a new scent.

My scent.

It rolled off me in waves. Winter frost. Fresh blood. Ancient pine. And the overwhelming, crushing weight of pure, undiluted power.

I stopped struggling. The pain in my hand vanished. The pain in my heart vanished.

There was only the Wolf.

My eyes snapped open. The brown contact lenses I wore couldn't hide the change. My irises flooded with liquid silver, glowing like twin moons.

I stood up. Bella stumbled back, her instinct screaming at her to run. Lola froze, her foot still on the broken pieces of my mother's necklace.

*The masquerade is over,* my wolf purred in my mind. *Hunt them.*

"You broke the seal," I said. My voice wasn't my own anymore. It carried the Alpha Tone—a resonance that vibrated in the bones of everyone in the room.

Lola trembled. "What... what are you?"

I smiled, and my teeth felt sharper. "I am your reckoning."

Seraphina POV:

My burner phone began to ring. It was a jarring, cheerful tune that cut through the thick tension in the room.

It was in my pocket, vibrating against my hip.

"Answer it," Lola stammered, trying to regain control. She gestured to Bella. "Get that phone away from her."

Bella reached out with shaking hands and pulled the phone from my pocket. She looked at the caller ID.

"It says... Papa," Bella scoffed, though her voice wavered. "Calling for daddy to save you?"

I didn't move. I just watched them. The air around me was shimmering with power. The guards by the door had already dropped to one knee, their heads bowed, their wolves forcing them into submission before they even understood why.

Lola snatched the phone from Bella and hit answer. She put it on speaker, holding it up like a weapon.

"Listen here, old man," Lola shouted into the receiver. "Your daughter is a psycho stalker. Come pick up her trash before I have security throw her out on the street."

Silence on the other end.

Then, a sound. *Crack.*

It sounded like solid oak being pulverized by a bare hand.

"Who is this?" The voice that came through the speaker was deep, rough, and cold as the grave. It was a voice that made Alphas across the continent wake up in a cold sweat.

"I am the future Luna of the Moretti Pack!" Lola shrieked, her bravado crumbling. "She attacked me! I had to destroy her stupid little necklace just to get her to stop!"

The temperature in the room seemed to drop another ten degrees.

"You destroyed the seal?" Don Salvatore Vitiello asked. His voice was dangerously quiet. "You broke the containment?"

"It was just a piece of junk!" Lola yelled.

"Good," Salvatore said. "Put her on."

Lola hesitated. The authority in the man's voice was undeniable. Her hand shook as she held the phone out to me.

I took it. My fingers brushed hers, and she flinched as if I were made of fire.

"Papa," I said.

"Seraphina," his voice softened, but the rage underneath was palpable. "The contract?"

"Void," I said. My voice was steady, heavy with the Alpha timber. "He betrayed the blood. He chose a whore over the crown."

"And the Omertà?" he asked. The code of silence.

"Finished," I replied. I looked at Lola, who was now backing away, pale as a sheet. "Burn them. Burn them all to ash."

"With pleasure, *figlia mia*," he growled. "Look outside."

A low thrumming sound began to vibrate the glass walls of the lobby. It grew louder, a rhythmic *thwup-thwup-thwup* that shook the chandeliers.

Shadows fell over the building.

I looked through the glass doors. The sky above 5th Avenue was swarming. Five black military-grade helicopters hovered in formation. On the side of each one was painted a crest in gold: A Griffin and a Wolf.

The Royal Crest of House Vitiello.

"You said you wanted a ceremony, Lola?" I asked, dropping the phone and letting it shatter on the floor next to my mother's locket. "My father brought the fireworks."

Lola looked at the helicopters, then back at me. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish.

"You... you're human," she whispered, tears of terror welling in her eyes. "You're just a secretary."

I stepped closer, my silver eyes boring into her soul.

"I am the White Wolf," I said. "And you are standing on my territory."