THE MOON'S FORGOTTEN CHILD

CHAPTER 5

The days blurred into a continuous nightmare of cold, pain, and exhaustion, but Kaelen was not satisfied with merely letting Evangeline rot. For a mind as ruthless and calculating as his, passive suffering was not enough. He wanted her to understand, with every breath she took, exactly what she had failed to be. He wanted her to witness the standard she could never reach, the perfection she had tried and failed to match.

And so, he issued a new decree.

From the southern clans and the coastal territories, messengers were sent. They carried invitations that were not requests, but commands. Within a fortnight, the Iron Blood fortress began to receive visitors unlike any Evangeline had seen before.

They were the Shadow Court—an elite cadre of female warriors, high-ranking she-wolves, and daughters of allied Alpha lines. They were chosen specifically for their beauty, their power, and their ruthless capability. These were women who embodied everything Evangeline was not: tall, strong, vibrant, their wolf spirits burning bright within them, radiating confidence, magic, and authority. They wore furs and leathers, their arms adorned with silver and iron, their laughter loud and unapologetic. They moved through the fortress like royalty, their scent heavy with musk, pine, and dominance, marking the territory as their own.

Kaelen had invited them to stay indefinitely, ostensibly to strengthen alliances and train the pack's female ranks, but the true purpose was clear to everyone—especially to Evangeline.

He was surrounding himself with the worthy. He was building a court of women who were his equal, or close enough to it, to demonstrate that the Moon Goddess's "mistake" meant nothing. He could have the best. He could have the strongest. He could have the most beautiful. And he assigned Evangeline to be their personal servant.

Every morning, Evangeline was dragged from the cellar before the first light touched the peaks. Her duties now included scrubbing the floors of the guest chambers, heating water for their baths, washing their bloodstained leathers, and attending to their every whim. She was required to be invisible, silent, and instantly available—a ghost meant only to serve, never to be seen.

But invisibility was impossible. Not when she looked the way she did: grey-skinned, skeletal, coughing up blood, her eyes hollow and sunken, while the women around her glowed with health and power. The contrast was deliberate. It was a visual lesson painted across the walls of the fortress: This is what power looks like… and this is what happens to weakness.

The psychological torture was far worse than the physical labor.

Evangeline knelt on the cold stone floor of the grand guest chambers, her hands raw and bleeding from the harsh lye soap, scrubbing the stains of mud and combat from a set of fine riding leathers. Around her, the women of the Shadow Court lounged on furs, drinking wine, braiding each other's hair, or sharpening their claws. They spoke loudly, their voices echoing off the high ceilings, discussing Kaelen, the pack, the wars, and the future.

"…and did you see him on the training grounds yesterday?" purred Elara, a tall she-wolf from the Silverpeak Clan, whose hair was like spun copper and whose eyes were sharp as daggers. "He moved like a storm. I've never seen a wolf shift that fast. They say he hasn't even reached his prime yet. Imagine the power he will hold in ten years."

A ripple of appreciative laughter went through the room. Another woman, Seraphina, daughter of the Alpha of the Western Valleys, stretched her powerful, muscular limbs, her gaze drifting down to Evangeline on the floor.

"It is a shame," Seraphina said, her voice dripping with feigned pity, though her eyes were cold and cruel. "That the Goddess played such a cruel trick on him. To be bound to… that…" She gestured lazily toward Evangeline with a silver-nailed finger. "It's almost tragic. He deserves a mate who can stand beside him on the battlefield. Someone who can rule, not something that needs to be carried to the grave."

Elara leaned forward, swirling the red wine in her goblet, watching Evangeline closely to see if she reacted. "I asked Vance about it once. He says the Alpha never even acknowledged the bond. He rejected her before the echo had even faded. Smart man. If I were him, I'd have thrown her corpse into the ravine. Keeping her around… well… it's like keeping a rotting rat in the pantry. It smells of decay."

Evangeline's hands trembled over the leather. Her chest tightened, that familiar, suffocating pain rising up. She bit her lip until she tasted blood, forcing herself to stay silent, to keep her head bowed low. They knew she could hear them. They spoke louder because she was there. They wanted her to hear. They wanted her to know her place, her worth, or rather, her lack of it.

"Look at her," Elara continued, standing up and walking over to stand directly in front of Evangeline. She nudged Evangeline's knee with the toe of her heavy boot, hard enough to force her to sway. "She's barely alive. The Rejection Sickness is eating her from the inside out. She coughs silver blood, you know. A sign of a broken spirit. Disgusting."

Elara crouched down, bringing her face level with Evangeline's, forcing her to look up. Evangeline's eyes were filled with tears she refused to let fall, her expression one of pure, quiet agony.

"You know, little omega," Elara whispered, her voice sweet like poison, "we are all competing, in our own way. We all want the Alpha's favor. We all want the right to stand at his side. And do you know what the first requirement is?"

She reached out, gripping Evangeline's chin with fingers like iron, squeezing until Evangeline's jaw ached.

"Strength," Elara hissed. "Beauty. Power. Worth. Things you were never born with. Things you will never understand. You were a mistake, little thing. A blank page where a queen should have been written. And Kaelen… our glorious, perfect Kaelen… he burned the page. He threw it in the fire. And now, he plays with us. He chooses us. He laughs with us. He desires us."

She let go of Evangeline's face with a look of revulsion, wiping her hand on her own tunic as if she had touched filth.

"Finish the leathers. And when you are done, scrub the hallway again. I think I saw a speck of dust near the tapestry. And if you faint? Or if you die? Well… we will just step over your body and keep drinking wine. That is all you are good for now… being a rug we walk on."

They laughed then, loud and bright, the sound piercing Evangeline's heart sharper than any blade. They spoke of Kaelen's hands, his smile, his power. They speculated on which one he would choose to replace the "mistake". They imagined what it would be like to be marked by him, to bear his pups, to rule the Iron Blood territories.

And through it all, Evangeline worked.

She washed their clothes. She emptied their chamber pots. She heated their water. She bowed lower and lower, until her spine felt like it would snap, until she ceased to feel like a person and became simply a machine for their comfort.

But the true torture came when Kaelen visited them.

He came every evening. He walked into the chambers of the Shadow Court as a king entering his sanctuary. He was relaxed here. He smiled here. He laughed here. Evangeline, hiding in the shadows near the doorway or crawling on the floor beneath the tables, watched the man she was supposed to belong to—the man whose rejection was killing her—hold other women in his arms. She watched him brush hair from Elara's face. She watched him listen intently to Seraphina's battle strategies. She watched them touch him, lean against him, offer him wine, and he accepted it all. He reveled in it.

He never looked for Evangeline. He never acknowledged her existence in the room. But she knew he knew she was there. She felt his aura shift, heavy and dominating, letting her know that he knew, and he didn't care.

One night, as Evangeline was refilling the wine goblets on the low table, her hands shaking so violently she nearly spilled the vintage, Kaelen spoke. He didn't look at her. He didn't even turn his head from where he sat with Seraphina draped across his lap.

"Be careful with that, Omega," he said, his voice casual, cold, and cutting through the air like a knife. "That wine costs more than your entire existence. If you spill a drop, you lick it off the floor. And then you get to scrub the stone until your fingers bleed."

Seraphina giggled, running her fingers through Kaelen's hair. "My poor love, why do you keep such trash around? It ruins the atmosphere. It smells of sickness and sorrow."

Kaelen took a sip of wine, his golden eyes glinting with cruel amusement as he finally, slowly turned his gaze toward Evangeline. He looked her up and down—the hollow cheeks, the grey skin, the tattered rags, the bloodstains on her tunic—and his lip curled in genuine disgust.

"It is a lesson, my dear," he replied smoothly, loud enough for Evangeline to hear every syllable. "Everything in this fortress serves a purpose. Even the garbage. She is here so that every woman who walks through these doors knows exactly what happens when you are weak. She is the definition of unworthy. And by looking at her, you all understand what is required to be near me."

He reached out, grabbing Seraphina's hand and bringing it to his lips, his eyes never leaving Evangeline's trembling form.

"To be mine… you must be gold. She is only ash. And ash gets swept away."

Evangeline fled the room as soon as she was permitted, stumbling out into the dark corridor, her lungs burning, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She collapsed against the stone wall, gasping for air, her body convulsing with dry, racking sobs she dared not let escape.

He uses me, she thought, the realization shattering what little remained of her heart. He doesn't just hate me. He uses my pain as a lesson for others. He parades my broken soul just to show how high his standards are.

But deep within the core of her being, buried under layers of hurt and sickness, the ancient seed stirred again. It felt the insult. It felt the misuse. And for the first time, it didn't just offer silence and endurance. It offered a cold, ancient anger.

You use ash to show off gold? the voice whispered in the dark of her mind. Little tyrant… you do not know what gold truly is. You do not know what burns brightest when the night is darkest.

Down in the Stone Cellar that night, Evangeline did not sleep. She sat in the corner, her knees pulled to her chest, and listened to the sounds of celebration drifting down from the Shadow Court. The music, the laughter, the clinking of glasses. And somewhere in that noise, was him.

She coughed, and silver blood dripped onto the floor, glowing faintly in the dark.

I am ash to you now, she vowed silently, her eyes glowing with a faint, hidden luminescence. But wait, Alpha. Wait until the fire consumes me completely. You think ash is the end? It is only the beginning of what rises from the heat.