Elena opened her coat slowly, the zipper’s scrape piercing the still air.
“The only reason I, as a girl, survived,” Elena voice carried across the hall. “Is to warn the girls who dream of being reborn into this cursed place.”
Gasps tore from the crowd.
For a moment, no one moved. Those who once feasted on her humiliation, their whispers prowling through the pack lands, snarling the same words again and again. They could not breathe now. Their eyes darted to the floor. Their throats tightened with shame.
The giant screen flickered again. A new picture filled the hall. A little girl appeared, her face was smeared with dirt.
Her small body carried bruises and wounds no cub should ever bear. Her eyes gleamed with the stubborn fire of survival, bright even through the pain.
The pack sti
