Obedience had been driven into me over decades—the way one breaks a wolf until it forgets the taste of its own blood.
Later, alone in my room, shaking, my thoughts drifted backward.
To eighteen.
To Thorne, when his touch had been a vow instead of a weapon. When his eyes had not yet hardened into cold steel. He had promised to protect me always. To build a future untouched by pack politics or prophecy. His words had burned brighter than a blood moon, and like a fool caught in its glow, I believed him.
I believed him even when it meant defying my father—the Alpha of the Mira—whose fury was ancient, whose wolf carried the weight of centuries.
“You are no daughter of mine,” my father had roared, his voice shaking stone, his beast raging beneath his skin. The earth itself seemed to bow beneath his dominance. “Take that boy if you choose. But know this—our bond is severed. If you return to my gates, I will tear out your throat before I ever call you kin again.”
I had stood before him, trembling but unbroken, and whispered through his storm, “I love him.”
“You love a shadow,” he spat, eyes blazing silver. “And shadows always consume their own.”
Thirty winters later, his curse had come true.