Nyra POV
Fifteen years ago.
The smell of burning flesh always came first.
"Hold her down, Kael!"
The roar belonged to Darius Varyn, his ice-blue eyes gleaming with a psychopath’s glee.
I was nine years old, pinned against the freezing stone floor of the throne room. The weight crushing my spine belonged to Kael, the crown prince.
He was only sixteen, but he already had the brutal, unyielding strength of a true Alpha.
"Please," I sobbed, my tiny fingers clawing uselessly at his wrists. "Your Highness, please, don't let him do this!"
He didn't even look at me. His golden eyes were fixed straight ahead, his jaw locked in a hard, terrified line as he maintained his suffocating grip.
He was a fucking coward and a monster in training.
Across the room, my mother lay in a pool of her own dark red blood with her throat torn open. She wasn't moving.
She was already gone, punished for a crime she didn't commit, leaving me alone in this godforsaken world.
"A daughter of the Vale line," Darius sneered, stepping into my field of vision.
In his hand, he held a massive syringe, the liquid inside glowing a sickly, luminescent green.
It was the famous Silver-laced wolfsbane used to kill and remove wolves from traitors.
"The prophecy ends tonight."
"No! No!" I screamed, kicked, thrashed, and fought with everything my small body possessed.
But Kael didn't flinch. He tightened his grip, pressing his knee deeper into my lower back, immobilizing me entirely.
Darius drove the needle straight into my neck.
The pain was instant. It wasn't just physical pain… it was a cosmic tearing. It felt like someone had poured liquid fire directly into my soul, burning away the sacred, wild connection to my inner wolf.
I could hear my wolf screaming inside my mind, with a desperate, fading howl as she was dragged down into a dark, bottomless abyss.
I gasped for air, my vision fracturing into shards of black and silver.
I snapped awake, my chest heaving as I sucked in a ragged breath.
"Fuck," I muttered, slamming my fist against the rough wooden floorboards of my house.
My palm was slick with sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I reached up, my fingers automatically tracing the faint, jagged scar on the side of my neck.
It had been fifteen years. Fifteen fucking years, and the nightmare still tasted just as bitter, just as suffocatingly real.
I rolled out of the thin bed as the cold air of the Human Frontier instantly bit at my bare skin. I didn't care. The cold kept me sharp and alive.
The cold reminded me that I was still alive, even if the world thought I was nothing but a broken, wolfless girl.
I turned to the cracked mirror hanging on the wall as I stared at my reflection. My pale silver eyes, which were the unmistakable mark of the Vale bloodline, stared back at me, surrounded by a mane of tangled black hair.
My body was lean, packed with hard, athletic muscle, and mapped with scars from a decade of surviving the different brutal fights.
Darius and Kael thought they had ruined
I and that by burying my wolf, they had rendered me defenseless and useless.
They were dead fucking wrong.
Without a wolf, I had to become something else. Something worse. I trained until my bones ached and my knuckles bled.
I learned how to track a rogue through a blizzard by the scent of a single drop of blood.
I learned how to kill a seven-foot werewolf with nothing but a silver blade and pure hate. To the humans, I was an elite tracker who got the job done. To the wolves, I was the fucking boogeyman.
But I didn't do it for the reputation. I did it for tonight.
I walked over to the wooden table where my weapons were meticulously laid out. At the center sat a small, black glass vial.
I picked it up, swirling the viscous, dark green liquid inside.
It was silver-laced wolfsbane and not the soft stuff. This was concentrated and lethal.
It had taken me five years on the black market to source a vial this pure and one drop won't just kill your wolf but also the person.
For fifteen years, I had dreamed of killing Kael Varyn. I had fantasized about tearing his throat out with my bare teeth, watching the light leave his arrogant golden eyes just like it had left my mother's.
But Kael was the Alpha King now.
He is surrounded by elite guards, ancient dark magic, and a fortress carved directly into the mountainside.
A head-on fight was a suicide mission.
So, I was going to be a coward, just like he was.
Tonight was the convergence of the five Alpha territories at Thorne Palace, a massive political summit.
The security would be tighter than a fucking asshole, but the chaos would be good. It was the perfect window for what I wanted to do.
My plan was simple, elegant, and poetic. I would slip into the palace, infiltrate the royal quarters, and dump this entire vial into Kael’s private water supply.
I wanted him to feel the fire and choke on the very poison he had helped pump into my veins when I was a helpless child.
"Enjoy your last day on the throne, you royal piece of shit," I whispered, slipping the vial into a secure pocket in my leather vest.
I strapped my twin silver daggers to my thighs, checked the hidden blades in my boots, and pulled my dark hair back into a tight braid.
Every movement of this day was practiced and fueled by a simmering rage that had been boiling inside me for over a decade.
The Kingdom of Varynth was teetering on the edge of a bloody civil war, the old noble bloodlines looking for any excuse to slit Kael's throat.
I was more than happy to give them a helping hand.
Stepping out into the crisp moonlight, I looked toward the jagged peaks of the mountains where Thorne Palace loomed like a dark shadow over the world.
My blood ran ice-cold with anticipation.
I was coming for him and he would never see me coming.
