đŚALTHEA
I moved to the door, listening.
Nothing.
I slipped into the hallway, barefoot, silent as a ghost.
The floorboards didn't creak. I'd memorized which ones would betray me years ago.
Down the stairs. Past the sitting room. Through the kitchen.
I reached for the back doorâ
And froze. I could see movement outside.
A figure emerging from the tree line, pale and slight in the moonlight, her markings gleaming.
Yana.
My heart lurched. What was she doing out there?
She glanced aroundâquick, furtiveâthen slipped through the back door and into the house.
I ducked behind the pantry door, holding my breath as she passed.
Her face was drawn. Tired. Smudged with dirt.
She didn't see me.
She disappeared down the hall toward the servants' quarters, her steps hurried but soft.
I waited.
One breath. Two. Three.
Then I moved.
Out the back door. Into the night.
The forest swallowed me whole.
â
By the time I snuck back in, my muscles ached. I felt weighed down as I slammed myself back onto my bed. The position of the moon had told me I had been out for just two hours. That was a record. I allowed myself half a smile as I drifted to sleep.
I didn't take off my cloak nor did I clean it as darkness took me.
A crash had me startling back to alertness, I jolted off the bed as my door was slammed open by uniformed gammas.
I blinked away my exhaustion, shrugging off the heaviness from my bones. "What is going on?" I asked, my head in my throat as I took in their cold expression.
Their jaws tightened, hands clenched to fists as if they were just a breath away from shifting and ripping me apart. None of them ever particularly liked me but this was different. This was neither disgust nor dismissal. This was loathing.
I took one step back as they all shifted to make way for another.
My breath caught, my pulse pounding in my ears as my mother stepped in front of them. But though her presence had always been enough to fill me with the fear of the moon in me, that was not the only reason the sky felt like it was crashing down.
The perpetual noose around my neck tightened as the smell of fresh blood permeated the air, choking me.
My mothers arms were not just stained in blood, they were completely covered with enough that it was dripping. Her clothes were the same, red blotching her mid section.
I held on to something to steady me, raising my head to look at her. My heart stuttered, my body giving away to shudder as I took in her face. Pale and streaked with tears. Her eyes were red rimmed.
Never in my entire existence, had I seen my mother shed a tear much less cry.
But her face was the same as her gammas as she stepped forward, toward me. Cold, dark eyes bore into me and with every stride she ate up the distance between us.
"What happened?" I echoed my earlier question again.
The question turned into my damnation as he hand shifted into her wolf's paw with its claws out.
Her claws gleamed in the moonlight filtering in from the window but she didn't strike.
Not yet.
Instead, she spoke.
"I have always known," she began, her voice low and venomous, "that you would be my undoing."
I opened my mouth, but no words came.
"A disgrace," she continued, stepping closer. "My biggest mistake. The moment I held you in my arms, I knew. Wolfless. Weak. Wrong."
Her lip curled.
"I prayed to the Goddess that she would take you back. That you would simply... disappear. But you clung to life like a parasite."
Each word was a knife.
"I watched you stumble through your childhood, pathetic and useless, and I told myselfâat least she is harmless. At least she cannot do any real damage."
She laughed, bitter and broken.
"But I was wrong."
Her eyes blazed with something beyond rage. Beyond grief.
Hatred.
Pure, distilled hatred.
"You couldn't stand it, could you?" Her voice rose. "That Circe had everything you wanted. The Alpha. The title. The respect. Love."
"Mother, I didn'tâ"
"DO NOT SPEAK!" she roared, and I flinched.
The gammas behind her shifted, growls rumbling in their chests.
She took another step forward, close enough now that I could see the tears streaking through the blood on her face.
"You were always jealous of her. Always bitter. Always watching from the shadows with that pitiful, hungry look in your eyes."
"That's not trueâ"
"She was carrying the HEIR!" The words ripped out of her like a scream. "The future of this pack. Draven's firstborn. And youâ"
Her voice broke.
"You killed that child."
"No," I whispered, shaking my head. "No, I didn'tâ"
"You murdered an innocent life," she breathed, her voice dropping to something deadly. "You stabbed your sister in the belly and killed the heir."
The room spun.
"I would neverâ"
"LIAR!" She lunged.
I barely dodged, stumbling backward as her claws raked the air where my throat had been.
"Mother, pleaseâ"
"Don't call me that!" She whirled on me, eyes wild. "You are not my daughter. You stopped being my daughter the moment you drove that blade into her womb."
"I wasn't there!" My voice cracked. "I didn'tâ"
"Then where WERE you?" she demanded.
Silence.
I couldn't answer.
Not without revealing the truth.
Not without condemning myself in a different way.
"You have no answer," she said, her smile sharp and cruel. "Because you were there. In her chambers. Alone with her."
I shook my head frantically.
"Your scent is all over the room," she continued. "On her body. On the blade."
My stomach dropped.
"That's not possibleâ"
"The servants saw you," one of the gammas interjected, his voice cold. "Leaving her chambers hours before dawn."
No.
That was when I'd been in the woodsâ
Unlessâ
"You thought you were clever," my mother said, circling me like a predator. "But you were sloppy. You left evidence everywhere."
She stopped in front of me, tilting her head.
"Just like everything else you've ever done."
I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't think.
"Your cloak is filthy," she observed, reaching out to finger the dark fabric still wrapped around my shoulders. She slid her finger over the surface and came up withâ "Fresh blood," My mother sneered. "The luna's blood, her baby's blood."