The silver-plated hairpins felt like small, blunt daggers driven straight into Elena’s scalp.
She sat perfectly still before the vanity mirror in the Alpha’s private chambers, her hands clenched so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had turned the color of bone.
Behind her stood Martha, an elderly beta woman who had served the Crescent Stone lineage for four generations. Martha’s hands were remarkably efficient, but there was an unmistakable, clinical coldness to the way she pulled the thick, dark waves of Elena’s hair into an intricate, braided crown. She didn't pinch or tug with explicit malice, but she worked with the aggressive indifference of a mason dressing a block of common limestone.
“The high-born families prefer the hair lifted completely off the neck for the winter solsti
