Chapter 2

As I was wiping the box, the door was suddenly kicked open, and mocking laughter spilled into the room.

Selene strode in, flanked by several burly female servants. Behind her, two maids carried a pure white wedding dress, holding it up with long poles.

Except, the hem of the skirt was splattered with dried mud, the lace edges were torn to shreds, and a massive, foul-smelling stain of animal blood and guts had been splashed right across the chest.

"Aria, look at the bridal gown I prepared for you," Selene said, swaying her hips as she stopped in front of me. "The old Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack prefers things a bit wilder. I figured this dress, tainted with boar's blood, is the perfect fit for an unwanted, out-of-favor mutt like you."

I didn't even bat an eyelash, quietly continuing to polish the box in my hands.

Seeing me completely ignore her, Selene's face instantly darkened. She snatched the pole from the maid's hands and viciously smashed the reeking gown right into my face.

"Drop the high-and-mighty act!" Selene hissed, dropping her mask to reveal her true, vicious colors. "Do you honestly think your dead-beat mother, hiding in that courtyard, can still save you? Kaelen got sick of her a long time ago! Once you're shipped off, I'm going to have that place leveled to the ground. She won't even have a rat hole left to hide in!"

I reached up, yanked the wedding dress off my head, and tossed it to the floor.

Looking up, I met her gaze with dead calm.

"You're scared."

"What would I be scared of?!" Selene shrieked like a cat whose tail had just been stomped on.

"You're terrified she might actually come out." I stood up and took a slow step toward her. "Faking your pregnancy, forcing me to take Elara's place as the sacrifice—you're just testing to see if she still cares about Kaelen, aren't you? You're terrified that the moment she steps out of that courtyard, Kaelen will realize you're nothing but a fraud."

"Shut up, you little bastard!" Selene flared up in humiliating rage, raising her hand to slap me.

Right at that exact moment, the sound of heavy, overwhelmingly oppressive footsteps echoed from outside the door.

Kaelen was here.

Selene's hand halted mid-air, sharply changing direction. She slapped her own hand over her face and collapsed to the floor, letting out a bloodcurdling scream. "Aria, why would you push me?! My baby..."

Kaelen's imposing figure appeared in the doorway. When he saw Selene sprawled on the ground and the wedding dress trapped under my boots, the air in the room instantly dropped to freezing.

"What do you think you're doing?!" Kaelen strode over, scooping Selene into his arms before whipping his head around to glare at me.

"Kaelen... I was just trying to be kind and bring her a wedding dress. But she complained it wasn't grand enough and shoved me... Our baby..." Selene leaned against his chest, weeping delicately, putting on the ultimate performance of a wronged victim.

Kaelen didn't give me a chance to explain. Or rather, he never cared about the truth to begin with.

"Kneel," he spat coldly.

The suffocating aura of a supreme Alpha crashed down on me like a collapsing mountain.

My knees slammed into the floor with a sickening crack of bone. Agony instantly swept through my body, and cold sweat drenched my back in seconds.

"Is this the discipline your mother taught you?" Kaelen looked down at me, his eyes brimming with absolute disgust. "She hides in there like a coward for seven years, just to raise such a vicious daughter?!"

I gritted my teeth. "Father, since you hate her so much, why don't you go and ask her yourself?"

That sentence struck his absolute final nerve.

His face instantly turned livid.

Over the past seven years, it wasn't that he hadn't tried to break down that door.

But right before she died, my mother had used her draining life force as a Luna to cast a soul ward over it. Unless it was destroyed by absolute brute force, no one could enter.

And Kaelen, a man arrogant to the extreme, stubbornly believed that if he forced his way in, it would mean he had bowed his head to Lyra.

He wanted to wait for Lyra to walk out on her own and beg for mercy at his feet.

"You think I wouldn't dare?!" Kaelen roared, delivering a brutal kick to my chest.

My body tumbled across the floor, crashing hard into the wall before I coughed up a heavy mouthful of blood.

"Father," I wheezed, my voice weak but every word crystal clear. "Mother... is never coming out."

Because you killed her with your own hands long ago.

To survive, and to get my revenge, I had used a secret Lycan art she taught me before she died. I sealed her remains away in an ice coffin, extracted the last trace of her lingering aura, and tethered it to this very box.

For seven full years, I placed this wooden box behind the door of the Cold Courtyard every single day, fabricating the perfect illusion that she was still alive. I fooled everyone. I fooled Kaelen.

Kaelen froze for a half-second before kicking me again in blinding fury. "You just won't learn! Throw her in the woodshed!"

I was tossed into the pitch-black woodshed like a slab of rotting meat.

With trembling hands, I held the box—now stained with my own blood—tightly against my chest.

Kaelen, didn't you want to see her? Didn't you want her to bow down to you in front of the entire pack?

I will give you exactly what you want. I will make sure you see the exact scene you've been anticipating the most.