Chapter 3

I walked out of the grove with my head high, but inside I was crumbling. The pack parted to let me through, their whispers following like ghosts.

Kael caught up with me at the edge of the clearing. "Neve, wait—"

"She ruined it." My voice shook. "She actually ruined it."

"We can try again. Next month, next full moon—"

"It's not about the timing." I wrapped my arms around myself. "It's about what she said. What she made everyone think."

"No one believes that garbage."

"Don't they?" I looked back at the grove, where wolves were dispersing in uncomfortable clusters. "Did you see their faces? Some of them were wondering. Actually wondering if there was truth to it."

Kael cupped my face, forcing me to meet his eyes. "I know the truth. Your father knows the truth. That's what matters."

But as we walked home in the moonlight, my wolf still unawakened and restless beneath my skin, I felt something shift in my memory. The way Seren had looked at me. The certainty in her voice.

This wasn't new paranoia. This was old fear, finally breaking through the surface.

And suddenly, I was remembering things I'd spent years trying to forget. The silver collar. The locked rooms. The way my mother used to watch me like I was a threat instead of a daughter.

It all made a horrible, twisted kind of sense.

I just didn't know yet how far back the damage went.

The memories came flooding back that night, sharp and unwanted.

I was ten years old again, standing in the elder's tent after the summer solstice trials. The competition had been meant for teenagers, but I'd begged to participate. Just for fun, I'd said. Just to try.

I'd beaten wolves twice my age.

Elder Theron—younger then, newly appointed as Alpha—had studied me with something like awe. "This child has the strongest wolf signature I've seen in a century. She'll be extraordinary when she awakens."

Elder Margit had circled me, her weathered hand hovering over my head. "The wolf is already trying to emerge. I can feel it pushing at the boundaries. She might awaken early. Sixteen, maybe even fifteen."

"An Alpha's potential," Theron had agreed. "Rare for someone so young to show this much promise."

I'd been so proud. I ran home to tell my parents, bursting through the door with my ribbon still pinned to my shirt.

My father had swept me up, laughing. "That's my girl! I knew you were special."

My mother had smiled. But her eyes were cold.

That night, she came to my room after I'd gone to bed. I woke to her weight on the mattress, something cold and heavy in her hands.

"Mom?" I'd mumbled, still half-asleep.

"This is for your own good." Her voice was flat, mechanical. "You're too young to understand, but one day you'll thank me."

The silver collar snapped around my neck before I could scream.

Pain exploded through my body like liquid fire. Silver was poison to wolves, burning through skin and bone to reach the wolf within. I felt my wolf—my beautiful, strong wolf—recoil in agony.

"Stop!" I tried to claw at the collar, but Seren caught my wrists.

"If you become too strong, you'll attract the wrong kind of attention." She leaned close, her breath hot against my ear. "Powerful wolves attract powerful mates. And I won't let anyone take what's mine."

"I don't understand—"

"You don't need to understand. You just need to obey." She locked the collar with a small silver key. "You'll wear this until I say otherwise. And if you tell anyone, I'll make sure you regret it."

The collar stayed on for three years.

Three years of constant, burning pain. Three years of feeling my wolf grow weaker, smaller, until it was barely a whisper in my mind. Three years of lying to everyone about the scar tissue forming around my neck.

By the time my father finally noticed—finally questioned why I wore high collars in summer, why I flinched when anyone touched my throat—the damage was done.

The healer had been horrified. "Her wolf has been suppressed for so long it might never fully recover. Who did this?"

My mother had cried. Acted shocked and devastated. Blamed it on a rogue wolf attack she claimed I'd been too traumatized to remember correctly.

No one questioned it. Why would they? Mothers didn't hurt their own children.

Except mine did.

The healers worked for years trying to reverse the damage, but my wolf remained stunted, trapped. I missed my awakening window entirely. Eighteen came and went. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.

I became the girl who couldn't awaken. The broken wolf. The object of pity and whispered speculation.

It took until I was twenty-four—until now—for my wolf to finally recover enough to try again.

And my mother wanted to take even that away from me.

I sat on the edge of my bed, fingers unconsciously tracing the scars hidden beneath my nightshirt. Kael was downstairs with Lyra, reading her a bedtime story. Their voices drifted up, warm and normal and safe.

But I didn't feel safe.

Because now I understood the look in Seren's eyes at the ceremony. It wasn't new madness.

It was the same madness that had put a silver collar on a ten-year-old child.