Chapter 5
The silver blade caught the gray light of the storm, poised for the second strike. I wasn't Isabelle anymore. I wasn't a Luna, or a mother, or a human. I was pure, distilled vengeance. I watched the terror widen Alessia’s eyes, and for a split second, I felt a grim, dark satisfaction.
Then, the air exploded.
"KNEEL!"
It wasn't just a shout. It was an Alpha Command, fueled by pure, unadulterated power. It hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Because my wolf had been stolen, because my body was just fragile human bone and sinew now, I had no buffer against the force of it.
My body obeyed before my mind could process the pain. I dropped like a stone.
*SNAP.*
The sound was louder than the thunder. My right knee hit a jagged rock buried in the mud, and the bone shattered. The agony was blinding, a white-hot spike that shot up my thigh and stole the breath from my lungs. I screamed, but the sound was choked off as Rhys unleashed his aura.
It was a crushing weight, heavy and suffocating, pressing me face-first into the filth of the Wasteland. The pressure built inside my skull. My ears popped. Warm, metallic fluid gushed from my nose, mixing with the mud I was forced to inhale.
"Don't you dare touch her," Rhys snarled. His voice was unrecognizable—distorted by the Alpha tone. He wasn't looking at me as his mate. He was looking at me like I was the rogue vermin rotting in the pit beside us.
Through the haze of pain, I watched him drop to his knees beside Alessia. He ripped a strip of fabric from his ceremonial shirt and bound her arm, his hands trembling with a tenderness he hadn't shown me in years.
"She's insane, Rhys!" Alessia sobbed, pressing her face into his neck. "She tried to kill me! She's feral! Just like her daughter was!"
"I know," Rhys soothed her, stroking her wet hair. Then he turned that cold, dead gaze back to me. I was pinned, unable to lift even a finger against the weight of his dominance.
"You are no longer Luna," he spat, the words landing like stones on my broken body. "You are nothing. You are a disgrace to the air you breathe."
Alessia pulled back slightly, her eyes gleaming with malice despite the blood soaking her sleeve. "The neighbors... the other packs... they need to know," she whimpered, her voice pitched perfectly to trigger his protective instincts. "If she escapes... if she tries to hurt someone else's pup... we have a duty to warn them, Rhys. Release the medical files. Show them she’s mentally unfit."
Rhys didn't hesitate. He didn't even look at the fresh grave of his child. He pulled his waterproof phone from his pocket. I couldn't move, couldn't speak, but I could see the screen glowing in the gloom.
"Done," he said darkly. "I've sent the blast to the regional Alpha network. The medical records of the 'Wolfless Luna.' The diagnosis of Feral Degeneration and psychotic episodes. No pack will harbor you. No one will touch you."
My reputation, my sanity, my future—deleted with a thumb swipe.
"Let's go," Rhys muttered, helping Alessia to her feet. "This place is filthy."
Marcus, the Delta, looked back at me once, his expression twisted with guilt, but he turned away when Rhys barked his name. They walked away. The black umbrellas bobbed in the rain, moving further and further into the grey mist, leaving me alone in the graveyard of traitors.
The crushing aura lifted as they left the perimeter, but the pain in my knee remained, sharp and absolute. I lay there for a long time, letting the rain wash the blood from my face. I should have died. The cold was seeping into my marrow. It would be so easy to just close my eyes and let the hypothermia take me to Thea.
*No.*
The thought was a spark in a dark room. If I died, Alessia won. If I died, Thea was just 'weak stock' forever.
I gritted my teeth and dug my elbows into the sludge. I dragged myself forward. My broken leg dragged behind me, a dead weight of agony, but I didn't stop. Inch by inch, panting, crying out with every movement, I crawled toward the small, crooked mound of earth.
I reached the pine box. The mud was already settling over it.
I didn't pray. I didn't look up at the sky to beg the Moon Goddess for peace. She hadn't saved my daughter. She hadn't saved my wolf. She was either deaf or cruel, and I had no use for her anymore.
I dug my fingers into the wet soil of my daughter's grave. I squeezed my hand into a fist, feeling the dirt grit under my nails, mixing with the blood still dripping from my nose.
"I swear to you, baby," I rasped, my voice sounding like grinding glass. "I won't rest. I won't sleep. I will burn their world down. I will make them feel every second of this fear. I will take everything from them."
It was a blood oath. Ancient. Dark. Binding.
Through the sound of the rain, a low hum cut through the silence. It wasn't the rumble of a pack truck. It was the smooth, expensive purr of a high-performance engine.
I lifted my head, wiping mud from my eyes. A sleek black limousine, long and ominous, was winding its way down the narrow dirt track of the Wasteland. Flags snapped on the hood—silver and blue. The colors of the Lycan Council.
The car stopped ten feet from where I lay. The back door opened.
A polished black dress shoe stepped directly into the mud, indifferent to the filth. Then another. A man stepped out, unfurling a large black umbrella. He was tall, radiating a power that felt different from Rhys’s. It wasn't crushing; it was solid. Like a mountain.
He walked toward me, his face grim and pale in the storm light. He stopped at the foot of Thea’s grave and looked down at me—broken, bloody, and covered in the filth of the dead.
"Finnley," I whispered, the name tasting like a ghost from a past life.
He didn't say a word. He just extended a hand, his gray eyes burning with a silent, terrifying promise of war.
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