Chapter 3

I woke to the brutal drag of my body across the ground.

Just as Enzo had ordered before I blacked out, two hulking Beta guards hauled me like a dead dog toward the Blackwood Pack’s execution ground—the Silverfire Abyss.

My ruined hands scraped limply through the dirt. The raw wound where my mark had been cut away still oozed black blood.

But my chest was worse: a gaping hole where the moonstone had been torn out, leaving a long trail of blood behind me.

Everlasting silver flames burned at the bottom of the Abyss—the Moon Goddess’s judgment fire, reserved for the pack’s most unforgivable traitors.

Any werewolf who fell into it would be reduced to ash, body and soul.

The entire pack stood along the chasm’s edge, looking down at me with disgust—and barely concealed satisfaction.

My family stood on the dais with Enzo. Lilith sagged against his chest, deathly pale and barely able to stand.

“Elara, you poisonous bitch!” Carl stormed forward and drove his boot into the raw wound in my chest.

Something cracked. My ribs gave way.

I flew backward like a rag doll, skidding until half my body hung over the cliff’s edge.

One inch farther, and I would have fallen straight into the silver flames below.

"What the hell did you do to Lilith?! Why is she dying?!" Carl screamed, his eyes bloodshot with rage.

I coughed up black blood flecked with torn tissue.

What was there to say? Lilith had never carried a drop of wolf blood.

She had survived this long by leeching off mine. Cut off from me in the dungeon, her mortal body could no longer withstand the power saturating the pack. It was only a matter of time before it tore her apart.

"Father... Mother..." Lilith reached out weakly, forcing a few tears into her eyes. "I might... not make it... I'm sorry I can't stay with you anymore..."

"No! You'll be fine!"

Martha broke down sobbing, then turned on me with a murderous glare. "You're no daughter of mine! You've profaned the Blackwood name, you poisonous wretch!"

Derek's expression darkened. He stepped toward me and looked down as though I were already dead.

"The priest says Lilith's soul is withering. There's only one way to save her—a pureblood wolf core. Give me yours. You owe her that much."

A wolf core was the source of a werewolf's power. Without it, a werewolf was reduced to a powerless shell.

"Hand over your wolf core," Enzo said coldly, his voice thick with condescension. "Then drag yourself to the bottom rung of the pack and rot there. That's the only future someone like you deserves."

I lay on the ground, listening to the people I had once loved pass judgment on me, and felt nothing.

My mother had severed my place in the family. My father had stripped away my power. Enzo had trampled the last of my dignity.

Four. Five. Six. All fulfilled.

I counted the commands in my head, cold and precise.

"Fine." The word rasped through my ruined throat.

In the dead silence, I raised my ruined hands, skin torn and bone exposed, and drove them into my own stomach.

Squelch.

Blood sprayed. I ignored the searing pain, my mangled fingers clawing blindly through torn flesh until they closed around the faint blue glow of my wolf core.

I gritted my teeth and ripped it out with everything I had.

"Gah—!"

A guttural cry escaped me as my very soul tore in two.

I dragged the wolf core free in a spray of blood and shredded flesh and flung it at Derek's feet like garbage.

The moment it left my body, my life force drained away. My hair grayed before their eyes. My skin shriveled like rotting wood.

"She actually ripped it out of herself..." The crowd drew in sharp breaths. There was not a trace of pity—only horror, as though they were watching a monster.

Derek didn't spare me a second thought. He snatched the blood-slick wolf core off the ground and forced it past Lilith's lips without hesitation.

But instead of getting better, Lilith convulsed violently the instant she swallowed it, spewing a torrent of black blood.

"Lilith! Lilith, what's wrong?!" Enzo grabbed her in panic.

"Poison... the wolf core... it's poisoned..." Lilith pointed a trembling finger at me, a flash of calculated malice crossing her eyes before her head lolled back and she "blacked out."

"Elara—!"

Enzo's roar shook the air, his eyes blazing crimson with fury.

The stone cracked beneath his boots with every step as he bore down on me. "You irredeemable snake! You poisoned your own wolf core?!"

He seized me by the throat and hoisted me into the air like a rag doll. The crushing weight of his Alpha pressure threatened to pulverize what little remained of my insides.

"A thing like you doesn't deserve to live! Jump into the Abyss and burn to ash!" Carl screamed hysterically.

"Yeah! Die! This family has no place for a monster like you!" Martha shrieked along.

Enzo's jaw tightened, and for a moment the crowd seemed to fade around us.

His gaze, burning with cold, gut-churning hatred, locked onto mine alone. "You'd be better off dead. You're less than garbage to me now, Elara."

Death.

The word detonated through my numb mind like a release I hadn't allowed myself to feel.

"Seventh Command: Atone with your death. Condition triggered."

The Moon Goddess's voice rang cold and clear in the depths of my mind.

Seven commands obeyed. The contract was complete.

I looked at the twisted, hateful faces of my so-called "family" and "lover"—and smiled.

Through the blood caked on my face, I smiled freer than I ever had in my life.

My eerie smile caught Enzo off guard. For a split second, his grip faltered.

I slipped out of his hold. Behind me lay the endless Abyss.

"Fine. I'll obey."

I met their eyes one by one, spread my arms wide, and without a shred of hesitation, threw myself backward into the blazing sea of silver fire.

"Elara—!"

As I plummeted, I saw Enzo's pupils shrink to pinpricks, his face twisting into something unrecognizable.

He lunged to the edge of the cliff, scrambling to catch me—and caught only cold air.

BOOM.

The silver fire swallowed me whole. The searing heat consumed my body in the blink of an eye.

No pain. Only a lightness I'd never known—a sense of release.

"The contract is fulfilled. Your body has been erased from this world."