POV: Elara Ashwyn
My hands are shaking.
I clench them into fists, pressing my nails hard enough to draw blood. Pain helps. Focus. Don't let anyone see you fall apart before it even starts.
"You're nervous." Darius's voice slides up behind me—smooth, confident, everything an Alpha should sound like. His hand finds the small of my back, and I feel the weight of his touch like an anchor. Three years together. Three years of planning our future as his Luna. Three years of believing I was born for this moment.
Tonight, everything changes.
"I'm fine," I lie, turning to face him. He looks perfect in the ceremonial black, silver thread catching moonlight along his shoulders. His golden eyes—true Alpha eyes—scan my face with a mixture of pride and something else. Something that looks a lot like ownership.
"Of course you are." He kisses my forehead, and I catch the faint scent of another woman on him. My stomach twists, but I push it down. Not tonight. Don't think about it tonight.
Behind us, the clearing fills with packmates. Two hundred wolves. All here to witness my Awakening. All here to watch me transform into my wolf form for the first time—a moment every werewolf experiences at twenty-one. A moment that defines us.
A moment I've been terrified of for months.
"Elara." Lyanna's voice is honey-sweet, laced with poison. My stepsister emerges from the crowd in a pale green dress, her hand resting protectively on her belly. Six months along, glowing, everything I was supposed to be. She wraps her arms around me in a hug that feels like a garrote. "You've got this, sister. Though I have to say, I'm a little nervous for you. What if something goes... wrong?"
Her dark eyes glitter with knowledge. With satisfaction.
My throat closes.
"What do you mean?" I whisper.
But she's already gone, moving back to the crowd, leaving only that smile and the scent of Darius on her skin.
The pack Elder approaches—ancient, scarred, his silver-white wolf blood visible beneath thin skin. His eyes have seen a thousand Awakenings. Tonight, they're locked on me, and there's something like pity in them.
"Are you ready, daughter of Silvercrest?" His voice is gravelly, formal. This is the ritual. The question that precedes transformation.
I open my mouth. Close it. Try again.
"Yes."
The lie tastes like copper.
The moon is full—impossibly full, hanging low and enormous above the clearing. For generations, this is what we've been taught: the moon chooses which wolves rise. The moon blesses those worthy enough to transform. The moon rejects the defective ones.
The ones like me, apparently.
The Elder's voice rings across the clearing, the ancient words of the Lunar Ceremony echoing off the forest walls. Around me, packmates begin to shift. Their bodies ripple and change, human skin splitting into fur, bones cracking and reforming. Screams turn into howls. The transformation is violent, beautiful, agonizing—I've witnessed it a hundred times.
Tonight, I'm supposed to join them.
The power hits first—this electric surge of energy that starts at the base of my spine and races through every nerve. My body goes rigid. My bones feel like they're melting. Yes. YES. This is it. This is finally—
And then nothing.
The power stutters. Stops. Drains away like water through cupped hands.
I open my eyes—still human eyes, still small and violet and wrong—and see the wolves around me frozen mid-celebration. The transformation halts mid-wave. Every ear swivels toward me. Every wolf-muzzle turns.
Silence.
Then whispers start—a thousand whispered conversations, urgent and panicked.
"Did she...?"
"Is she...?"
"The Elder, look at the Elder—"
The ancient wolf staggers backward, and when he shifts back to human form, the color has drained from his weathered face. He looks at me like I'm already a ghost.
"No," he breathes. "The moon... the moon rejected—"
"Wolfless." The word falls like a guillotine blade.
It's not loud. The Elder's voice is barely a whisper. But it echoes across the entire clearing like a death knell.
Wolfless.
The pack erupts. Not into cheers, but into chaos. Wolves shift back to human form, backing away from me like I'm contagious. Like wolflessness is a disease they can catch. My father appears in the crowd, his face going white. My mother reaches for me, then stops, caught between duty and love.
I've already lost.
But the worst part—the moment that will haunt me forever—is watching Darius. My mate. My Alpha. My future.
He looks at me, and I watch disgust bloom across his face like rot on fruit. He steps back. One step. Then another. His hand—that hand that's held mine a thousand times—drops away from my back.
He turns to someone in the crowd, and my blood freezes as I see her emerge.
Lyanna.
She's laughing—actually laughing—as she moves to Darius's side. And her hand, the one on her belly, slides into his.
"I'm sorry, Elara," she says, and her voice is dripping with false sympathy. "But Darius and I... we've been honest about what we are. He needed a real Luna. Someone who could give him real heirs. Someone the moon actually chose."
The clearing spins.
"That's not—" Darius starts, but he doesn't deny it. He doesn't pull away from her. He just stands there, surrounded by the crowd that minutes ago celebrated our bond.
My bond with a man who just abandoned me in front of everyone.
I'm falling, drowning in air, when the Elder speaks again—
"There's more." His ancient eyes are fixed on something beyond the clearing, beyond the tree line. His voice shakes with something worse than disgust. Fear. "The guards are calling. There's been... an incident. The night of the Awakening Ceremony, someone struck the northern warehouse. Resources stolen. And—" His gaze swings back to me, accusatory, certain. "They found evidence. Your mark was on the documents, Elara. Conspiracy with rogues. Treason against Silvercrest."
The crowd gasps.
My legs go numb.
"That's impossible," I whisper.
But it's not impossible. It's perfect. It's brilliant.
In this moment, standing wolfless before my pack, abandoned by my mate, I understand the trap. I've been set up. Framed. And now—
"Take her," the Elder commands, his voice hard as granite. "To the dungeons. Moon Court will decide her fate at dawn."
As rough hands grab my arms, I catch Lyanna's eye.
She winks.
And somewhere deep inside me—in a place I didn't know existed—something roars to life.