Lucian's POV
"Take me to her," I told Lisa, my tone low but carrying through the hall like the a storm.
The girl scrambled to her feet, nodding frantically. The Luna made the mistake of stepping forward, her lips parting, perhaps to spin an excuse or offer some pitiful justification. But I turned my gaze on herone look, and she recoiled, paling as she scurried behind her husband. That was wise. One more word from her and I would've ripped her throat out.
The hall was silent as I strode forward, Lisa rushing to lead the way. Behind us, footsteps echoed, Alpha Baston, his trembling Luna, and the murmuring crowd of onlookers that always gathers when blood is about to be spilled
When we stepped outside, the air was sharp with the bite of early morning. And then I saw her.
Evelyn.
Tied to a pole in the center of the yard like some sacrificial offering, her body exposed for the pack to jeer at. Naked. Her frail form bruised, welted, broken by the whip. Her head hung forward, strands of hair curtaining her face, her chin resting against her chest as if she no longer had the strength to hold it up. She looked barely conscious, just the faint rise and fall of her chest proving she still clung to life.
And the people…. the vermin around her. They had been throwing things at her, rotten fruit, stones, filth. The ground was littered with it, smeared with the same cruelty that stained her skin.
My blood roared in my ears. A heat unlike any I'd known in centuries churned in my chest, darker than rage, sharper than just hunger for blood. This wasn't the usual fire that drove me to slaughter for sport or vengeance. No, this was something far worse
She was mine.
Who dared touch what belonged to me? Who dared leave her in this state, paraded like a spectacle, mocked and brutalized until her body was hanging by threads?
I stepped closer, my shadow stretching over her frail form. Her skin was marred, painted in lashes that crisscrossed like crude brands. Every bruise, every mark carved into her flesh was an insult, an open declaration against me.
A growl rumbled from deep in my chest, low and feral, making the closest wolves shrink back. My claws flexed at my sides, itching to tear, to rend, to paint the yard with the blood of everyone who had stood here and watched this happen.
Evelyn's head stirred weakly, her chin lifting by a fraction as if sensing my presence. I caught a glimpse of her eyes, dull, glassy, yet still flickering with an ember of defiance.
And that was it. That single look was enough to shatter the fragile thread holding back my wrath.
This wasn't just punishment. This wasn't discipline. This was humiliation, degradation.
They had dared to break her.
And for that, everyone would pay.
Evelyn's POV
My body ached in a way that swallowed my thoughts whole. Each lash had set my nerves singing, every welt was a private map of shame drawn across my skin. My limbs felt foreign and leaden, my throat was a desert, like sand grinding when I swallowed. Above it all, my head thudded with a slow, stupid drum, boom, boom, like a hammer striking iron inside my skull.
I was tied to a pole, stripped of everything that might give me dignity, naked and brittle under a sky that felt indifferent. Hands, so many hands, had touched me in cruelty, had shoved and spat and thrown things until my skin was a smear of bruises and filth. The ground around me was a gallery of other people's contempt: rotten fruit, mud, cigarette ash, waste. I tasted copper every time I blinked.
If my uncle had been here to see me, he would have laughed until his throat hurt. He would have taken a drink and boasted to his friends how easily he'd broken me. The thought made bile rise and fall hot in my belly. I didn't have the strength to imagine his grin without wanting to retch.
Maybe it would be better to die. That thought circled me like a hawk and landed, heavy, again and again. Maybe leaving this cursed life, this endless inventory of humiliations, would be mercy. Maybe the world would be kinder without me in it, and the men who tormented me would have one less thing to scorn.
But then another thing tightened inside me, stubbornness, or madness, or a small stubborn spark I'd spent years nurturing in the dark. I had endured my uncle's hands for so long, endured what no one should have to endure, and I hadn't let it finish me. If I died now, it would be under their laughter, not because I had chosen to stand. I wouldn't let them be the ones to write the last word of my story. If there was breath in me, there was a chance for something else, revenge, perhaps, or simply the right to stand and face what had hurt me. That thought coiled inside me, I want to live.
The sound of footsteps came first as a hollow in the air, then as a reality, deliberate, heavy, not the ragged trample of an onlooker but the measured approach of someone who meant to stop and watch. I assumed the worst, a fresh sneer, another insult hurled down like a coin. I braced for it, closed my eyes against the humiliation I could not keep from burning.
The shadow fell over me. I slightly opened my eyes only see boots, black boots, then I lifted my head because I had to know who chose to linger at my ruin.
There he was. Lucian Draegor.
My breath hitched violently I thought I might choke. He looked as if he had stepped from the darkest part of a storm, enormous, built like the carved figures of a great god. But his eyes were red, more than just the shallow glow I'd seen before, they were bright and furious now.
For a dizzy second, I felt absurdly guilty. Perhaps he was furious because I had failed him as his personal servant, I failed to be present to serve his whims this morning. Perhaps he considered my absence a slight and would correct it with the same brutal hand that had taught every other lesson in this place
He stepped closer to me and the crowd muttered, even the Luna and Alpha's faces thinned into concern and calculation. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my throat. He moved with a single terrible grace and for a moment I expected him to strike, to end me for my uselessness, to show everyone the cost of failing him.
But instead..... he untied me.
His hands were at my bindings, pulling rope from my wrists with a cool efficiency that made my head swim. I wanted to flinch when the ropes fell away, but my body was too tired even to recoil. The world narrowed to the press of his palms and the rasp of rope sloughing from my skin.
When he removed his robe and draped it around my shoulders, the gesture felt more shocking than any blow. The fabric was heavy and warm, and for an instant it was as if someone had thrown a cloak over a dying thing and called it protected. His touch was gentle, so gentle it made my chest hurt in a new way. I had never known gentleness from any man, I had only known ownership, abuse, rage, and hunger. This—this small, human mercy from a beast, was an oddness I couldn't name.
He turned then, facing the gathered crowd. Every head rose, every whisper cut off mid sentence. The creature I had feared, the monster whose name made mothers hush their children and people shiver in fear, lifted his voice until it rolled over us like thunder.
"You are all going to die today"