The full moon hung above Ironfang Keep like a silver coin pressed against black velvet, its pale light spilling through the tall windows of the great hall in shafts that felt more like judgment than blessing. The entire pack had gathered for this spectacle—rows upon rows of warriors in battle-worn leather, she-wolves with eyes sharp as winter steel, even the youngest pups pressed close to their mothers' sides, all craning their necks to witness what promised to be either vindication or destruction.
I stood alone in the center of the stone dais where only two kinds of wolves ever found themselves: Alphas receiving their due honor, or traitors about to lose their heads.
The ancient stones beneath my feet had been stained with blood more than once over the centuries. Tonight, I wondered if they would drink mine as well.
Shackled by nothing but Jasper's will and the crushing weight of hundreds of hostile stares, I felt more exposed than if I'd been stripped naked before them all. The mate bond flickered in my chest like a dying candle, its silver thread twisted and snarled with poison, barely recognizable as the connection that had once promised partnership and protection.
My hand drifted to my stomach in a gesture that had become instinctive over the past weeks. Protective. Defiant. Beneath my palm, life stirred with a heartbeat that thrummed stronger than my own—the only proof I had left that this nightmare might eventually end in something other than my complete annihilation.
Jasper sat in his ceremonial chair at the head of the great hall, black armor polished to mirror brightness, his Alpha's cloak spilling down the marble steps like liquid shadow. Those storm-gray eyes that had once looked at me with such devastating coldness now held something far worse—the flat, emotionless stare of a predator deciding whether his prey was worth the effort of a clean kill.
The hall buzzed with whispers that sliced through the air like invisible blades.
"She claims to carry his heir." "Impossible. Everyone knows she's barren." "Maybe she spread her legs for someone bold enough to touch the wolf-less Luna." "Who would risk the Alpha's wrath for that pathetic creature?"
The laughter that followed their speculation cut deeper than any physical wound ever could. Through the mate bond, I felt Jasper's complete lack of reaction to their cruelty. No protective instinct. No flicker of anger at their disrespect toward his supposed mate. Just cold satisfaction that his pack was finally seeing me for what he'd always believed me to be.
Jasper rose from his throne with fluid grace, the movement sending ripples of silence through the assembled crowd. His voice, when it came, carried the kind of absolute authority that could bring armies to their knees.
"Tonight, beneath Selene's watchful eye, we will uncover the truth that has been hidden from this pack."
My throat constricted until each breath felt like swallowing glass shards, but I forced myself to meet his gaze across the space that separated us. It was like staring into the heart of a storm determined to tear me apart piece by piece.
"Araya Varrow," he said, my name a whip crack that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. "You stand accused of bringing shame to this pack's honor. You claim to carry my blood. Speak your truth before Selene and these witnesses."
Every eye in the hall burned against my skin like brands, but I lifted my chin and found my voice. It emerged steadier than I'd dared hope, strengthened by the fierce protectiveness already surging through my blood.
"I do not claim, Alpha. I know." The words rang clear and true in the sudden hush. "This child is yours, conceived beneath Selene's blessing, sealed by the bond she forged between us."
A ripple of whispers spread through the crowd, sharp with mockery and disbelief. Near the front, Serenya stood resplendent in emerald silk that clung to her curves like liquid jealousy, her lips curved in a smile that dared me to continue making a fool of myself for her entertainment.
Jasper's eyes narrowed to slits, storm clouds gathering with the promise of devastation. "And yet the pack whispers that you were never properly claimed. That your womb was barren before we ever spoke vows."
Heat scalded my cheeks, but I held his stare without flinching. "Then the pack whispers lies."
"Do they?" His words lashed across the space between us, cold and cutting as winter wind. He descended the marble steps with predatory grace, each footfall echoing through the silence like a countdown to execution. "Tell me, Araya, how can a wolf-less body bear the weight of an Alpha's heir? What power do you possess that makes such a miracle possible?"
The question hung in the air like a trap waiting to snap closed. I could feel the pack's anticipation, their hunger for my humiliation, their desperate need to see me brought low so they could feel elevated by comparison.
My nails dug crescents into my palms, but I found steel in my spine and fire in my voice. "Because Selene willed it. Because despite your cruelty, despite their whispers, life took root and grew strong within me. Your child, Alpha. Your blood."
Gasps erupted through the hall like breaking glass. My voice had rung too loud, too desperate, but every word was truth burned into my bones. I would not bend. Not when my child's future hung in the balance.
Jasper stopped directly before me, close enough that his scent filled my lungs and his power pressed against my skin like the weight of an approaching avalanche. Those storm-gray eyes bored into mine with surgical precision, and for one foolish, hopeful heartbeat, I prayed he might soften. That even now, faced with the truth burning in my gaze, he might find some scrap of the mate Selene had intended him to be.
Instead, his voice cracked through the hall like thunder splitting stone.
"You are tainted, Araya Varrow. Corrupted by lies and desperation. You are unfit to stand as Luna of this pack."
The great hall erupted into chaos. Warriors roared their approval while she-wolves shrieked their vindication. The sound crashed over me like a tide of hatred, each voice adding to the crushing weight that threatened to drive me to my knees.
But I remained standing, one hand pressed protectively over my stomach, the other clenched in a fist at my side. Through the mate bond, I felt Jasper's grim satisfaction at finally giving his pack what they'd been baying for all these weeks.
My destruction.
Yet as I stood there in the eye of that storm, something shifted inside my chest. Not the mate bond, which remained as cold and poisoned as ever. Something else entirely. Something that whispered this was not an ending, but a beginning.
The first stirring of the Alpha I was destined to become.
Let them howl. Let them celebrate. Let them think they'd won.
They had no idea what they'd just awakened.