Chapter 3

The unsealing ceremony was agony.

They brought me to a sacred chamber beneath the fortress — a cavern where moonlight poured through cracks in the mountain, pooling on ancient stone like liquid silver.

"When the seal breaks, your wolf will surface violently," Isolde warned. "Most sealed wolves emerge confused. Yours has been caged for twenty-three years. She will be furious."

"Good. So am I."

The healers formed a circle. My grandfather watched from a chair, too weak to stand but refusing to miss this.

They began chanting.

At first, I felt nothing. Then — a crack. Deep inside my chest, like ice breaking on a frozen river.

Then another.

Then fire.

I screamed. Not in pain — in release. Three years of swallowed grief, of silent humiliation, of loving a man who treated me like nothing — it all erupted at once.

My bones shifted. My skin burned. And from somewhere deep within me, a wolf howled.

Not a weak wolf. Not a common wolf.

A wolf that shook the mountain.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing on four legs, silver-white fur gleaming in the moonlight. I was massive — larger than any Alpha wolf I had ever seen.

The healers stumbled back. Isolde drew her sword instinctively, then lowered it.

My grandfather was weeping. "Astraea," he breathed. "She has Astraea's wolf."

I could feel it — power coursing through every cell, ancient and overwhelming. My wolf was not just strong.

She was apex.

And she was enraged.

Three years, she snarled inside my mind. Three years I was locked away while that pathetic Alpha broke us. Let me out. Let me hunt.

Soon, I promised her. Soon.

I shifted back, naked and trembling, and Isolde wrapped me in a cloak.

"Every Alpha within five hundred miles felt that awakening," she said. "They'll come looking."

"Let them."

"Kael Nightcrest will come."

"Especially him."

My grandfather beckoned me closer. "There's something else you must know. The Silvercrest bloodline carries a gift — the ability to sense mate bonds that have been... manipulated."

I frowned. "Manipulated?"

"Forced. Faked. Artificially created." He coughed, and the healers rushed forward. He waved them away. "Your bond with Kael — did it ever feel wrong? Incomplete?"

I thought back. The bond had always been muted, distant, like hearing music through a wall.

"I assumed it was because he didn't want me."

"Or because someone tampered with it." My grandfather's eyes burned. "Vivienne's family — the Thornwoods — they are witchblood. They have the ability to suppress true mate bonds and create false ones."

The room tilted.

"You're saying Kael rejected me because someone made him think Vivienne was his mate?"

"I'm saying it's possible. And I'm saying you now have the power to find out."

I stood motionless, my mind racing.

If the bond had been tampered with — if Kael's rejection wasn't entirely his choice —

No.

It didn't matter.

Tampered bond or not, he had chosen cruelty. He had watched me suffer and felt nothing. He had let his mother humiliate me and said nothing.

Magic might have clouded his wolf.

But his choices were his own.

"I don't care why he rejected me," I said. "I care about what happens next."

My grandfather smiled. "And what happens next?"

"I take my throne. I raise my children. And if Kael Nightcrest comes looking for me—"

I let my wolf's eyes flash silver.

"He'll find someone he never expected."

That night, my grandfather died in his sleep, peacefully, with my hand in his.

His last words: "Burn bright, little wolf."

And the entire Silvercrest pack howled for their new Alpha Queen.

Including the twins in my belly.