Chapter4

That day, I had not yet swapped bodies with Wren. That night, I simmered an entire pot of moon-weed broth in the main packhouse kitchen, waiting for Julian to return. He coaxed me through the pack link, claiming that rogue wolves were causing trouble at the border, and urged me not to wait up and to just go to bed.

Yet the crystal logs displayed on the rune projection were damningly clear.

[Wren: Isn't she waiting for you tonight?]

[Julian: I told her something came up at the border.]

[Wren: What time?]

[Julian: Nine o'clock. The usual spot behind the Moon Dungeons.]

My fingers grew icy, bit by bit. So, while I still fully trusted him and eagerly anticipated our mating ceremony, they were already tangling together in the damp shadows of the dungeons.

Julian’s face drained of color. An explosive wave of Alpha aura erupted from him as he shattered the rune matrix with a single palm strike. "Fake! Wren and I have never had that kind of relationship!" He pointed a furious finger at me. "She did try to lure me with her heat scent before, but I explicitly rejected her! These memory crystals have obviously been tampered with using dark magic!"

Wren quickly stepped to his side, her eyes already red-rimmed. "Wren, I know you have feelings for Alpha Julian, but today is my mating ceremony." She paused, forcing back her feigned grievance. "I don't blame you for liking him. But you can't use forbidden magic to forge such malicious crystals just out of jealousy."

The low growls and curses around the great hall swelled. Stealing a pack relic, losing her elite warrior status, racking up a million-coin blood debt, forcing a one-sided heat, using dark magic to spread rumors, and sabotaging the heir's mating ceremony. The name "Wren" festered like a rotting corpse in the mouths of the pack. She was now nothing more than scum—lower than a stray dog.

I stared at the two of them on the dais, and suddenly, a quiet realization washed over me. Julian had personally declared he had zero involvement with Wren. Wren had publicly sworn that these projected memories were my dark-magic forgeries. Just to ensure their mating ceremony went off without a hitch today, they had personally welded shut every single escape route they might need thirty days from now.

But I couldn't bring myself to smile at all. My mother marched up to me, her eyes bloodshot, and slapped me hard across the face.

The moment the blow snapped my head to the side, the thick, metallic tang of blood flooded my mouth. I didn't dodge. The Luna had struck Wren, but I was the one trapped inside this skin, taking the hit.

Her voice trembled with rage. "Wren, what has the Blackwood Pack ever done to wrong you all these years? Aurora treated you like a sister, and I have never once been unfair to you. Why must you act like a cheap rogue and try to ruin her?"

I lifted my head and looked at her. When I was a child, burning with a fever that nearly pushed me into a feral state, that exact same hand had stroked my wolf ears over and over to soothe me. Now, it had just struck me down.

My father stood right behind her. As the current Alpha, his eyes held nothing but icy disgust. "As of today, your pack mark is stripped. Never show your face in front of Aurora again."

I swallowed the blood pooling in my mouth. "Fine."

I turned and walked toward the hall's exit. The second I reached the stone pillars by the long steps, Wren chased after me. She blocked my path, the smug jubilation on her face no longer concealed by the shadows.

"Your elite guard status is gone, and you still owe the Black Moon Bank a million-coin, high-interest blood debt. Now, even the Blackwood Pack refuses to keep you." She glanced back at Julian inside the grand hall. "See that? Even your fated mate finds you utterly repulsive." Finally, she leaned in close to my ear, so thrilled that her very breath trembled. "Aurora, your life has been thoroughly destroyed by me."

I tilted my head back, checking the lunar phase in the night sky. Midnight was approaching. The Blood Moon was about to fade. Ten minutes left. I didn't bother arguing with her; I simply stepped around her and vanished into the dark embrace of the forest.

Back at the hunting lodge, the floor-to-ceiling windows reflected Wren's painfully average face, the left cheek still red and swollen. On my wrist, the moon-phase stone brightened inch by inch, its light slowly filling up the final notch on its scale.

Wren’s words echoed in my ears once more: Your life has been thoroughly destroyed by me.

The light crept to the absolute peak of the final notch—and abruptly froze.

A heartbeat later, the entire stone went pitch black, only to ignite an instant later in a blinding, crimson flash. The Blood Moon had completely faded.

I stared at the face in the glass, and the corners of my lips finally curled upward into a slow smile.

Immediately after, a violent, familiarly soul-tearing vertigo slammed into me.