The Moon chose my enemy

Wolfless

Marek

Two days before my eighteenth birthday, someone painted WOLFLESS across the door of the prisoners’ quarters.

The word was still wet when I found it, and black paint ran down the wood in narrow streams. A few servants slowed as they passed, but no one looked at me for long because they knew better than to be caught showing sympathy to a Vale.

Liora stood inside the doorway with a wet cloth.

“Leave it,” I told her, but she continued scrubbing. The paint had already settled into the grain, and removing it would take hours, while whoever had written it would probably return the next morning.

Liora’s hand moved harder. “They want you to see it.”

“I have.”

“They want all of us to see it.”

That was true. The ceremony had never been intended as an honour. Alpha Garrick wanted Blackridge gathered when the last Vale heir reached adulthood and failed to shift, and he wanted the pack to watch me remain human beneath the full moon. Then no one could claim the Vale bloodline still carried strength.

I took the cloth from Liora. “You will be late for the kitchens.”

She looked at me as though she wanted to argue, but the morning bell rang before she could. Missing work meant losing food, sometimes for all nine of us, so she left.

I scrubbed until the paint faded into a grey stain, but the word remained readable, and by midday, everyone had seen it.

Whispers followed me from the laundry house to the main courtyard. Some wolves believed captivity had weakened my blood, while others said the Vales had never been true wolves at all. According to them, our dealings with witches had hollowed us out long before Blackridge destroyed us.

I had heard every version, and they all ended the same way. On my birthday, I would stand before the pack and prove that our defeat had been deserved.

I carried a basket of clean training clothes toward the western hall, where Cassian was waiting near the entrance with two of his friends. He looked at the basket, then at me.

“Did you like our gift?”

I said nothing, but his smile confirmed that he had painted the door.

Cassian stepped closer and studied my face. “No claws. No eyes. Not even a growl.”

He took one of the folded shirts from the basket and dropped it into the mud, and his friends laughed. I bent to retrieve it, but Cassian placed his boot on the cloth.

“Most wolves show something before their first shift. Temper. Instinct. A change in their scent.”

His gaze moved over me as though searching for a defect. “You smell exactly as weak as you look.”

I pulled the shirt free, and mud streaked the clean fabric. The laundress would blame me, and the cost would be taken from the prisoners’ food allowance. Cassian knew that.

He dropped another shirt, but I caught it before it touched the ground, and his amusement disappeared.

The blow came quickly. The back of his hand struck my mouth, splitting my lower lip against my teeth, and the basket fell from my arms while clean clothing scattered across the stones.

“You are getting careless, little heir.”

I tasted blood, and Cassian waited for anger. He often tried to provoke it, hoping my body would reveal something before the ceremony. Not because he believed I had a wolf, but because he wanted one final joke before the entire pack confirmed that I did not.

I lowered my eyes, but his fingers closed around my chin and forced my face upward.

“Show me your wolf.”

The men behind him laughed again, and I had no answer.

I had never heard a voice inside my mind or felt another consciousness pressing against mine. The pains in my back could have come from labour, and the pressure in my chest could have been fear. There was no proof that anything lived inside me.

Cassian bared his teeth, and his canines lengthened. The shift was small and effortless, a reminder that even part of his wolf could answer when called.

“Do that.”

I stared at him.

“Go on.”

“I cannot.”

He released me with a laugh. “Of course you cannot.”

The courtyard quieted behind him as Lucan and Seraphine crossed from the main house toward the training grounds.

Cassian turned to greet them, and Lucan’s gaze moved from the clothes scattered around my feet to the blood on my mouth. He understood what had happened, but he simply did not care.

Cassian told him he had been searching for signs of a wolf. “There are none,” he said. “I think the Moon forgot him.”

Seraphine looked at me with open curiosity, but Lucan showed less interest and asked whether my work was finished.

“No.”

“Then why are you standing here?”

Cassian smiled, and I crouched and began gathering the clothes.

Seraphine watched me place the muddy shirt back into the basket. “Do you think he will shift?” she asked.

She directed the question to Lucan as though I were not close enough to hear, and Lucan looked down at me.

“No.”

The answer came without hesitation, and something tightened beneath my ribs. Not a wolf. Only shame.

Cassian asked why Alpha Garrick was allowing me into the ceremony if everyone already knew I would fail, but Lucan’s expression remained calm.

“Knowing is not the same as witnessing.”

He spoke loudly enough for the nearby fighters to hear. “The Vale heir will stand beneath the Moon before the entire pack. When nothing answers him, no one will speak of that bloodline as though it still matters.”

Cassian’s smile widened. That was the reason for the ceremony. Not curiosity. Not tradition. An execution would have ended my life, but public failure would bury my family with me.

Lucan stepped around the fallen clothes. He did not order Cassian to stop or tell the others to return to their duties, and he left me on my knees while Seraphine followed him toward the training hall.

Cassian waited until they were gone. “Two days,” he said. “Then even your dead ancestors will be embarrassed.”

He kicked the basket over before leaving, and I gathered everything again, but no one helped me.

That afternoon, the laundress struck me for returning clean clothes covered in mud. She knew Cassian was responsible, but it made no difference. Punishment travelled downward in Blackridge until it found someone who could not pass it on.

By evening, my lip had swollen. Liora noticed while we served the lower dining hall, but she said nothing until we returned to the prisoners’ quarters.

Elian was already there, sitting near the cold stove and repairing the sole of one of his boots. Years in the mines had damaged his back and left him with a permanent limp, but his hands remained steady.

He looked at my face. “Cassian?”

I nodded, and Liora told him what Lucan had said.

When nothing answers him.

Elian lowered the boot, and for several moments, none of us spoke.

Six other Vales remained scattered across Blackridge territory. Some worked on the outer farms, while others lived near the stables and kitchens. The Alpha had ordered all nine of us to attend the ceremony because he wanted them to watch too.

Liora sat beside me. “You might still shift.”

Her voice held more hope than certainty.

“I have never felt one.”

“Some wolves stay quiet.”

“Until two days before adulthood?”

She looked away, and Elian did not offer false reassurance. That was one of the reasons I trusted him.

He asked whether I had experienced anything unusual, and I told him about the pain along my spine, the pressure beneath my ribs, and the nights when heat moved through my body and vanished before morning.

“That could be the beginning,” Liora said.

“It could be exhaustion.”

Neither of them disagreed, and I looked at Elian.

“What happens if there is no wolf?”

He returned his attention to the damaged boot. Blackridge used wolves according to their strength. Fighters guarded the borders, hunters fed the territory, and those too weak for either worked until their bodies failed.

A prisoner without a wolf had even fewer uses, and the mines accepted anyone who could hold a tool.

Liora reached for my hand, but I pulled away before she could take it. Not because I blamed her, but because I could not bear comfort when none of us knew whether I would still be here after the ceremony.

Elian finished threading the leather. “Whatever happens beneath that moon, you are still Marek Vale.”

“That name is the reason they are doing this.”

“It is also the reason they need the entire pack to watch you fail.”

I looked at him, and he set the boot aside.

“If the Vales meant nothing, Garrick would not need a ceremony to prove it.”

His words stayed with me after they went to sleep, and I lay on my narrow bed and stared at the ceiling.

The painted word remained on the outer door.

Wolfless.

Perhaps Blackridge was right, and perhaps the Moon had abandoned my family long before I was old enough to understand what we had lost.

I placed one hand against my chest, but only my heartbeat answered.

I waited, but nothing moved beneath it. No second presence. No hidden voice. No wolf asking to be released.

In two days, I would stand before the entire pack and call for something that might not exist, while Blackridge expected silence.

For once, I feared they understood me better than I understood myself.