Sera's POV
Three days.
That's how long it took Cole to burn my entire life to the ground.
I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. I spent three nights curled on a cot in the pack's storage room — the only place nobody thought to look for me — with my hand pressed flat against my stomach and my wolf doing something she had never done before.
She was angry.
Not whimpering. Not hiding. Angry, in that low, rolling way that feels like thunder before it reaches you. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt her pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, like she was preparing for something I didn't know about yet.
I should have listened to her sooner.
---
The tribunal room is full when they bring me in.
Every senior pack member. Every warrior. Every wolf who ever nodded at me in the hallway or accepted a plate of food from my hands at pack dinners. They all came. Not to support me — I understand that the second I walk through the door and the talking stops. They came to watch.
Cole stands at the front beside his father, the Beta. He's wearing his formal pack colors. His hair is neat. He looks like someone who slept very well last night.
Lysa isn't here. Smart.
Alpha Gregor sits in the high chair at the center. He's a big man — not just in body but in presence, the kind that presses down on the room like a thumb on a bruise. He doesn't look at me when I'm brought in. He's reading something on the table in front of him. Like I'm not even worth looking up for.
The pack Elder reads the charges out loud.
"Seraphina Voss. Blood treason. Theft of sensitive pack records. Conspiracy against the Beta line."
Blood treason.
They went with blood treason.
My throat closes. I know what blood treason means in this pack. It doesn't just mean exile. It means your name gets erased. It means if you ever come back, any wolf has the right to kill you on sight and call it justice. It means whatever child you're carrying—
I stop that thought before it finishes.
"How do you answer?" the Elder asks.
I look around the room. One face. That's all I need. One person who knows me — really knows me — to meet my eyes and show me they don't believe it.
My old training partner, Joss. We sparred together for two years. She's staring at the floor.
Pack healer Maren, who treated my sprained wrist last winter and called me brave. She's looking at the wall.
Old Remy from the kitchens, who used to save me the end pieces of bread because he knew I skipped breakfast most mornings. His eyes are closed.
Nobody.
Not one single person.
"I didn't do it," I say. My voice comes out steady. I'm proud of that. "I never touched the Alpha's records. I never shared pack information with anyone. Cole Vance is lying."
Silence.
Then Cole speaks. He sounds sad. That's the part that almost breaks me — how sad he manages to sound. "Sera." Like he hates this. Like this is hurting him. "We found your scent on the archive room door. We have two witnesses who saw you leaving the records hall after hours. I tried to give you a chance to handle this quietly. You chose this."
Two witnesses. He had two witnesses ready.
Of course he did.
Alpha Gregor finally looks up. His eyes land on me, and I feel it physically — the weight of his authority pressing against my wolf, trying to force her down. Packwolves call it the Alpha stare. It's meant to make lower-ranked wolves drop their gaze and go still.
My wolf doesn't drop.
She pushes back.
Just slightly — barely anything — but I feel it, and for one strange second I think Alpha Gregor feels it too, because something moves in his eyes. Fast. Gone before I can name it. He blinks and his expression goes flat again.
"The charge of blood treason is confirmed," he says. "Seraphina Voss is hereby stripped of pack rank, pack protection, and pack name."
Someone behind me makes a small sound. I don't turn around.
"She will be branded and removed from pack territory before midnight."
Branded.
The word hits me like cold water. I knew it was coming. I told myself I was ready. But knowing a thing and living it are two very different experiences, and when the pack enforcer steps forward with the iron rod — thin, orange-hot at the tip, already glowing — my whole body tries to run.
I don't let it.
You will not run, I tell myself. You will not give him that.
I tilt my head and expose the side of my neck.
The enforcer hesitates — just for a second, just long enough for me to see that even he isn't entirely comfortable with this — and then the iron touches my skin.
I have never felt pain like that in my life.
It goes white. Everything goes white. My knees buckle but I lock them. My hands curl into fists so tight that my nails split my palms and I feel blood run down my fingers. My wolf screams inside my chest.
I do not make a sound.
Not one.
When it's done and the iron lifts away, I am still standing. Shaking, yes. Eyes burning, yes. But standing.
Cole watches me from across the room. He looks almost impressed. Almost.
"Remove her," Alpha Gregor says.
They march me out through the side door. Not the front — the side, like I'm something to be disposed of quietly. The night air hits the brand on my neck and I nearly black out from the burn of it. Two enforcers hold my arms. We walk to the border tree line in silence.
At the boundary, they let go of me.
"Don't come back," one of them says. Not mean. Just tired.
They turn and walk away.
I stand at the edge of the forest alone. My neck is on fire. My hands are bleeding. My stomach — my baby — I press my palm there, hard, needing to feel that small steady heartbeat that nobody in that room knows about. Still there. Still fighting.
I take one step into the dark.
Then another.
And then, somewhere deep in the forest ahead of me — somewhere in the black between the trees where no light reaches — something moves.
Not an animal.
Something bigger.
And it's not running away from me.
It's standing still.
Watching.
My wolf goes absolutely silent inside my chest.
And in that silence — in that terrible, breathless quiet — I feel something I have no name for yet. Something that wraps around my ribs like a hand.
Like recognition.
Like whatever is standing in that dark already knows exactly who I am.