The Last Silver Wolf

Seris’s POV

The silver-laced whip didn’t just strike; it sang a metallic dirge before it bit into the meat of my back, shredding through both flesh and the fragile peace of my memories. With every crack, a fresh geography of agony mapped itself across my spine, the jagged heat blossoming beneath my shirt until the air itself felt like poison. I braced for the next whisper of metal, knowing each lash carved deeper into my soul than the one before.

“Shall we settle on twenty-two?” Malrik’s voice wound around the hiss of the whip, thick with a cruelty that mirrored the jagged smile cutting across his face. “Or shall we see if you can survive double that?”

The next blow arrived with enough force to shatter my resolve. I couldn’t swallow the scream this time; it ripped from my lungs, raw and jagged, while tears I had fought to dam up finally broke, stinging like acid against the salt of older wounds. I squeezed my eyes shut against his laughter, my mind a frantic, silent prayer: We are fated. We are mates. Why is your touch only ever a blade?

The words remained trapped behind my teeth. My tongue felt like a lead weight. I wanted to scream that we shared a life—a daughter—but the bond felt so withered that I lacked the courage to even name her.

“I wonder what the Moon Goddess was dreaming of when she tied me to a creature like you,” Malrik snarled. I was reduced to a heap on the floor, palms braced against the freezing stone just to keep my chest from hitting the ground. He caught a handful of my hair, wrenching my head back until my green, tear-blurred gaze was pinned by his—eyes the color of a winter storm and just as heartless. “Weak mutt!” he spat.

A dying ember of defiance flared in my chest. “You should have let me accept your rejection,” I ground out through bloodied teeth.

The regret hit me as fast as his fist. The world tilted on its axis as shock bloomed along my jaw and the metallic taste of copper flooded my mouth.

“You dare speak back to your Alpha?” His fury was a physical weight. He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, predatory crawl. “I would never let you go. I need you here. I want you to feel the phantom echo of every touch when I take someone else to my bed.”

I blinked through the haze, my voice a broken, insect-like sound. “I’m sorry.” It was an instinctive plea. I remembered the morning’s “sin”—refusing to cook an omelet, a brief moment where I pretended I wasn’t his property. Now, the debt was being collected in skin.

“You’re a hideous, cursed bitch,” he sneered, yanking my hair with such violence I felt my scalp begin to tear. “Do you know why your father gambled you away like a common cur? Because you’re a void. A waste of breath. You deserve nothing but the pain that reminds you of your worthlessness.”

I whimpered, but he wasn’t done. His lips twisted into a mask of pure filth. “And that brat… she’s as useless as you. How do I even know she’s mine? You’ve been beneath every unmated male in this pack. Whore!”

“She is yours!” I shrieked, the lie of his accusation igniting a fire in my gut. “I am no whore!”

The defiance snapped his last thread of restraint. He lunged, fingers clamping around my throat like an iron vice. Air became a luxury I couldn’t afford. Through the graying edges of my vision, I could smell the musky heat of his shifting wolf. “I’ll show you exactly what that mouth is for,” he growled.

He dropped me, and I collapsed, lungs burning as they clawed for oxygen. He didn’t give me a second to recover. Snatching me up, he threw me across the bed. My skull met the headboard with a sickening thud, stars erupting in the dark behind my eyelids. I lay there, a hollow shell, enduring his weight and the subsequent violation, drifting somewhere between the pain of the living and the silence of the dead.

***

A ghost of a touch pulled me back. A small, soft hand brushed my cheek, and I opened my eyes to see Nessa. My daughter, with my own green eyes wide and drowning in sorrow, stood by the bed clutching Moonbun, her mud-streaked teddy bear.

“Mommy…” she whispered, her lip trembling. “Blood.”

I touched my face, my fingers coming away red. My heart broke as she pointed to the fresh ribbons of meat on my arms. Looking at the damp, rotting stone walls around us, I realized I was in the alleyway—the dumping ground where the warriors left me whenever I lost consciousness.

“Sorry, Mommy,” Nessa sniffed, dropping her toy to bury herself in my arms. I pulled her in, the agony in my ribs secondary to the need to hold her. She was my only anchor in this drowning life.

“Have you eaten, my love?” I rasped.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I was waiting for you.”

I forced my broken body to stand. Every nerve ending screamed in protest as I tried to shield her from the sight of my ruin. But a roar suddenly shattered the quiet of the alley.

“Never cross me again!”

Malrik’s voice thundered as his warriors dragged my father out of the shadows. He was a wreck of a man, his clothes in tatters and his face pale with the scent of his own end. They threw him onto the cobblestones just feet away.

“Dad!” I lunged, but the warriors caught me, pinning my arms. I thrashed against them, screaming at Malrik, “What are you doing? Let him go!”

Malrik’s smile was a slow-motion nightmare. “I know this will destroy you more than the whip ever could, mate. This is the guilt you will breathe until your last day.”

Before the scream could leave my throat, he shifted. Bones snapped and reformed; fur erupted from his skin until a massive brown wolf stood where the man had been. His yellow eyes burned with a predatory light. With a blur of motion, he lunged. The sound of my father’s neck snapping was a dry, final pop that echoed off the alley walls.

I fell to my knees as the blood reached my feet. My own howl tore from my throat—a jagged, ruined sound of grief. On my twenty-second birthday, I hadn’t asked for joy. I had only asked for a day without blood. Instead, I became the monument to my own destruction.

***

In the weeks that followed, the guilt became a physical weight in my lungs. It was an old companion; my father had spent my life blaming me for my mother’s death during childbirth, and now the pack used his own murder as a weapon against me. They teased me, calling me the harbinger of death, while I sank into a quicksand of mourning that threatened to swallow Nessa and Eirwen along with me.

This morning, the kitchen felt like a tomb. The pack had rejected the pancakes I’d made at dawn, demanding something “refined.” I stood at the counter, kneading dough for meat pies, the repetitive motion the only thing keeping me from shattering.

But my mind was elsewhere, and I didn’t smell the burning until smoke began to plume from the stove. I reached for the pot in a blind panic, my bare skin meeting the scalding metal. I cried out, the pot slipping from my fingers and crashing to the floor, sending a tidal wave of hot, savory filling across the tiles.

Before I could even gasp, a blow caught the side of my head. I hit the edge of the fallen pot, the hot grease searing my cheek.

“You useless bitch!” It was Elin, the Beta’s mate. Pregnancy hadn’t softened her; it had only made her more lethal. She wound her hand into my hair and yanked my head back. “What are you good for? You can’t even cook a simple meal without ruining it.”

She slapped my burned cheek, and the world went white with pain. “Wait until the Alpha hears you’re wasting resources,” she hissed, shoving me down into the mess on the floor.

“Let me handle her!” Eirwen’s voice cut through the room.

“Eirwen, stop!” I pleaded, but my sister had reached her breaking point. Her eyes flared with an amber light, her claws unsheathing as she lunged at Elin with the ferocity of a starving wolf. She had Elin pinned, her throat exposed—until a massive shadow eclipsed the light.

Bastian, the Beta, didn’t hesitate. He threw Eirwen against the wall with enough force to crack the plaster and then turned his sights on me. He grabbed my arm, his claws sinking into my bicep.

“How dare you touch my mate?” he roared. He silenced my plea with a backhand that sent me spinning.

“I’m hurt, Bastian… the baby,” Elin whimpered, playing the victim with practiced ease.

Bastian’s face turned into a mask of cold fury. He dragged me out of the kitchen and across the courtyard. I heard Nessa’s voice, small and terrified: “Mummy? Where are they taking you?”

I tried to turn, to call out to her, but Bastian kicked her aside like a nuisance. I watched my daughter tumble to the dirt, her cries fading as he dragged me toward the stone building at the edge of the woods—the torture chamber.

He threw me inside and slammed the heavy door, the sound final as a coffin lid. He moved toward the chair, then stopped, a dark, thoughtful look crossing his face. “The chair is too easy for a traitor like you.”

He led me to a metal frame where iron cuffs hung from heavy, rusted chains. They swayed in the drafty room with a rhythmic, chilling clink.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Bastian didn’t speak. He just looked at the chains and then at me. As he reached for the cuffs, I realized that the nightmare was only just beginning.