Chapter 71

Elara

The cold seeped through the stone walls and into my bones, settling there like frostbite. My wrists ached from the weight of the icy iron chains, and the rough edges of the metal dug into the skin just enough to keep me from forgetting that they were there. I could barely lift my head, but even through the haze, I knew one thing.

I wasn’t alone in this dungeon.

The soft shuffling of feet echoed faintly in the darkness, barely more than a whisper and yet it echoed in the cavernous space. I strained to see in the dark, blinking against the shadows, but nothing revealed itself. Only the flickering hum of a single lamp hanging far above me, swinging slightly as if someone had passed beneath it not long ago.

I tugged at the chains again, the faint rattle clanging through the silence. “Hello?” My voice was hoarse, my throat cracked and dry like I hadn’t had water in days. “Is someone—”

“They don’t answer.” The voice came from the cell next to mine. Soft and weary. A woman, although I couldn’t make out much else about her other than a huddled mass in the corner. “Trust me. I’ve tried.”

“We’ve all tried,” another voice croaked out from across the narrow pathway between the rows of cells. “No one ever comes.”

I swallowed hard, tilting my head toward the sound of the voices. “Where am I?”

“Underground somewhere.”

“No one knows where. We were brought here, unconscious, like you.”

“All we know is that the moon peeks through that crack up there,” another voice called out. I carefully lifted my head up toward the ceiling, and sure enough, far overhead, there it was: an almost miniscule crack, just wide enough to barely let in the faintest shaft of moonlight.

So we were underground, it seemed.

Far underground.

But why? I wracked my mind, straining to recall the events leading to me coming here, and then it hit me: Sarah. The pregnancy test. The masked man. The needle.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

A long pause stretched between us, the silence heavier than it should have been. Finally, someone exhaled, the sound fragile and brittle, followed by a strained cough.

“Years.”

I blinked. “Years?” I thought I misheard her.

“Yes.”

The word fell in the pit of my stomach like a bag of rocks. I tugged harder at the chains around my wrists, panic lancing through me.

Years.

I couldn’t be trapped here. Alaric had to find me, he had to know—

There were more voices now. Muted murmurs drifting from the cells beyond the veil of darkness, faint shapes shifting at the edges of the room. I hadn’t noticed them before, but now that my eyes began to adjust I could see them—others, many others. Some standing, some seated on the cold floor, all bent and worn like they’d had every last drop of dignity sapped out of them.

“Who are you?” I asked, my heart hammering as I scanned the shadows.

For a moment, no one answered. But then, someone shifted closer, stepping lightly into the faint glow of the single lamp overhead.

And everything inside me went still.

Her hair was tangled and hung in loose, silver waves around her shoulders, but the shape of her face—it was the same as mine. The same sharpness to her jawline. The same curve of her mouth. Even her eyes mirrored mine, a pale shade of gray that caught the light just enough to make them stand out in the dark.

And then there was the vitiligo. A small, almost heart-shaped patch of pale skin across her throat.

Just like mine.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even blink.

“Elara,” she whispered.

I barely heard her at first.

“What?”

“Elara.” She stepped forward, the light tracing the worn lines of her face, the years of captivity etched into her skin. Her wrists bore the same iron cuffs as mine, the chain stretching taut between her and the wall. But as she lifted her hand as far as it would go, reaching toward me with trembling fingers, it didn’t reach me. “It’s you.”

I could only stare.

“I… don’t understand,” I breathed, shaking my head slowly as if doing so would somehow dissolve the image in front of me. But she didn’t disappear. She didn’t even waver.

Tears lined her eyes. “My daughter.”

Daughter. The word echoed so sharply that it felt like it cracked something inside me.

“That’s not possible,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I don’t—I never knew my mother. I grew up in—”

“An orphanage.” Her voice was soft, but the firmness behind it was unshakable. “You were left on the steps of an orphanage when you were only days old.”

My breath hitched.

“I left you there,” she continued, her fingers curling slightly around empty air as she tried to reach me again. “I had no choice.”

The room tilted beneath me. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to wake up from whatever this was. A dream. A hallucination. But when I opened them again, she was still there.

“You left me?” The words barely came out, scraping in my sore throat as I said them.

“I had to,” she whispered. “Sarah’s family… They were coming for us. They wanted to imprison us—harvest our blood like we were nothing more than cattle.”

The air in the room grew thick.

“Why?”

She shifted, the chains rattling faintly against the stone floor as she did. “Because we’re moonwolves, Elara.”

Moonwolves. The word felt too large for my mouth.

“They were supposed to be extinct,” I murmured.

“They tried,” she said quietly, letting out a wry little laugh. “They hunted us for generations. But some of us survived—hidden away. Until they found us, herded us up like animals… and now we’ve been here for years, drained and used.”

My stomach twisted painfully. I turned my head, my neck aching with the movement. Of those nearby who were watching, the solemn looks on their pale faces, the glassy look to their eyes from years of being kept from the sun, told me all I needed to know. This wasn’t some kind of practical joke. It wasn’t a lie.

These were moonwolves. And I was one of them.

“And me?” I asked. “Why didn’t they—”

“I hid you.” Her eyes met mine. “I used everything I had left to keep you hidden from them. I thought they would never find you if you grew up away from me.”

The orphanage.

I remembered it all too well. The way people had talked behind my back. The rumors about an unloving Omega mother abandoning me, the countless nights I lay awake wondering what I had done to be left behind.

But that wasn’t it at all.

I swallowed the lump forming in my throat.

“I would have come back for you,” she continued softly. “But I was trapped down here all this time. I couldn’t get out.”

Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, but I forced them down, straightening as best I could beneath the weight of the chains.

“I can get us out,” I whispered. “My mate. He’ll come for me. He’ll come for all of us.”

Her gaze softened, but there was a sadness lingering beneath the surface that told me she didn’t believe me.

Before I could say anything else, footsteps echoed down the hall. And suddenly, my mother whimpered and scrambled over to the other side of the cell, cowering in the corner. Everyone else did, too.

And then Sarah’s voice cut through the air.

“Well, well, well… What a sweet little reunion that I orchestrated.”