The silver doesn't burn anymore.
That's how I know I'm close.
Three days ago, every touch of these chains sent lightning through my veins. Two days ago, it was a dull fire. Yesterday, a cold ache. Now the metal feels like nothing against my wrists—just cold weight, heavy and dead.
My body is giving up.
Good.
I press my back against the stone wall. The dungeon smells like old blood and older despair. Somewhere above me, wolves are laughing. Celebrating. They think justice was served today.
They think I killed my own sister.
I didn't.
But that doesn't matter anymore. The truth died three days ago, the same moment Alpha Kael Blackwood looked at me—his mate, his Luna, the woman he claimed to love—and said the words that shattered the bond between us.
"I reject you."
Not because he had proof. Not because he asked a single question. Because Sera cried prettier than I ever could. Because his Beta whispered poison in his ear and Kael was too proud to spit it back out.
I close my eyes. The darkness behind my lids looks the same as the darkness in front of them.
You should have fought harder.
The thought comes unbidden, sharp and familiar. I've been thinking it for three days. For three years, really. Ever since I walked into that mating ceremony with stars in my eyes and hope in my chest, thinking the Moon Goddess had finally given me something good.
She hadn't.
She'd given me a test. And I failed every single question.
The cell door scrapes open.
I don't flinch anymore. I don't have the energy.
Sera steps inside. My sister. My blood. The woman who smiled at my wedding and slept with my husband before the cake was cut.
She's beautiful in the torchlight—blonde hair spilling over her shoulders, blue eyes wet with what looks like grief. But I've learned to read the corners of her mouth. That's not sadness pulling at her lips.
That's satisfaction.
"Elena." She kneels in front of me, close enough that I smell her perfume. Lavender. The same scent I used to wear, before she started borrowing it. "I'm so sorry it came to this."
I don't answer. Words are coins I stopped spending.
She reaches for my face. I turn away. Her hand hovers in the air, then drops.
"You have to understand," she whispers. "Kael and I… we didn't plan this. It just happened. The bond between us—"
"There is no bond." My voice comes out cracked, barely a whisper. "You're not mates. You're just the woman he cheated with."
Something flickers in her eyes. Gone before I can name it.
"He loves me," she says.
"He loved me too. Once." I tilt my head, studying her. "Give it time. He'll get bored of you as well."
She stands so fast her knee nearly hits my chin. "I came here to say goodbye. To offer you peace." Her voice is tight now, the mask slipping. "But you're still the same bitter, ungrateful—"
"Get out."
She stares at me. I stare back.
For a moment, I see something real beneath her performance. Fear. Not of me—of what she's done. Of what she's become.
Then she smooths her dress and walks out, and the mask slides back into place.
The door closes. The lock turns.
I'm alone again.
The execution is tomorrow.
I know because I heard the guards talking. Dawn. The pack square. Silver blade, because I'm not worth the honor of a wolf's claw.
They'll watch me die. The same wolves who bowed to me. The same pack I bled for.
Kael will stand at the front. Sera will be on his arm, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. His Beta will announce the charges: murder of a pack member, conspiracy against the Alpha, crimes against the Moon Goddess herself.
None of it is true.
But truth is a luxury for people with power. I have nothing. Not even a name anymore—just a cell number and a death sentence.
I press my forehead to my knees.
I should have hated him.
The thought comes again, but it's wrong. I know it's wrong. Because even now—even after the rejection, the chains, the years of being overlooked and dismissed—I don't hate Kael Blackwood.
I loved him.
I still love him.
And that's the cruelest part. The bond is broken. I felt it snap when he rejected me, felt something vital tear loose from my chest and dissolve into nothing. But the love didn't die with it. Love isn't a bond. Love is a choice I kept making, over and over, even when he stopped choosing me back.
I chose him every day for three years.
He chose Sera in a single night.
The hours crawl.
I don't sleep. I don't pray. I don't plan an escape—there's nowhere to go. My parents disowned me when the accusations came. My friends vanished. The pack turned its back so fast I got whiplash.
I have no one.
The Moon Goddess gave me a mate, a family, a home. And one by one, I lost them all.
Was it something I did? Something I failed to do?
I used to ask those questions. I used to lie awake at night, tracing the scars on my heart, trying to figure out where I went wrong.
But I'm done asking now.
Some questions don't have answers. Some endings are just endings.
Dawn comes like a wound.
The guards drag me up the stairs. My legs barely work. My wrists are raw where the silver ate through skin. They don't bother with a blindfold—there's no point. Everyone already knows my face.
The pack square is full.
Hundreds of wolves. All the faces I used to know. The baker who smiled at me every morning. The elder who blessed my mating ceremony. The children who called me Luna.
They're not smiling now.
They're watching me like I'm a monster.
I don't blame them. They don't know the truth. They believe what they were told, and why wouldn't they? The Alpha said it. The Beta confirmed it. The evidence—whatever evidence was fabricated—supported it.
I'm not angry at them.
I'm just tired.
Kael stands on the platform. He's wearing his ceremonial armor—black leather, silver clasps, the Alpha's crest on his chest. He looks every inch the ruler. Strong. Certain. Merciless.
Sera is beside him, dressed in white. She's crying. Real tears, maybe. Or maybe she's just that good at pretending.
Kael doesn't look at me.
He looks through me, like I'm already dead.
"Elena Vance," his Beta announces, voice booming across the square. "You have been found guilty of the murder of Sera Vance—"
"I'm not dead."
Sera's voice cuts through the air. She steps forward, wiping her eyes. "I survived. Barely. But she tried to kill me. My own sister."
The crowd murmurs. Angry. Disbelieving.
I open my mouth. I could tell them the truth. That Sera staged the attack herself. That the wound on her arm is shallow, self-inflicted. That the poison in her system came from her own hand.
But no one would believe me.
They've already decided who I am.
Kael raises his hand. The crowd falls silent.
"Elena Vance." His voice is cold. Empty. Like he's reading a grocery list, not sentencing his mate to death. "For your crimes against this pack and against the Moon Goddess, I sentence you to death. The sentence will be carried out immediately."
He still doesn't look at me.
I feel something crack inside my chest. Not the bond—that's already gone. Something deeper. Something I didn't know could break.
Hope.
I was hoping, until this moment, that he would hesitate. That some part of him would remember the woman who held him through his nightmares, who nursed him through his fevers, who loved him when he was unlovable.
But there's nothing in his eyes.
I was never anything to him.
The guards push me to my knees. The silver blade glints in the morning light.
I close my eyes.
I should have hated him.
But I don't.
I only loved him.
And that was my real crime.
The blade falls.
Darkness.
Then—
Light.