THE OATHBREAKER

CHAPTER TWO

Celeste’s Past

People think betrayal happens in a moment, with a single choice, a broken oath, a blade in the dark. But that’s not how it was for me, cause my betrayal began in the quiet.

I was born to Nightmoor blood as the daughter of the Beta, pack royalty, in our savage way. My mother was the steel beneath my father’s rage, and my father, well, he was the kind of man wolves didn’t just follow, they obeyed.

From the time I could walk, I was taught three things which were to protect the alpha, preserve the bloodline and punish the weak but even then, it felt wrong.

I remember once, as a pup, when I found a rabbit caught in one of the training traps. It was whimpering, and bleeding from its leg so I tried to free it, my fingers fumbling with the wire, tears in my eyes. My father found me there, kneeling in the snow, and he yanked me to my feet by the back of my shirt.

“We show no mercy,” he said, voice like thunder. “Mercy is weakness and weakness is death.” Then he made me kill it and that was the first time I disobeyed him, not when I hesitated, and not when I cried either.

But later that night, when I buried the rabbit, I whispered sorry into the dirt and marked the grave with a stone and he found it, of course, he did.

The next morning, I was punished in front of the pack. Just a few lashes, to teach me “remorse.” They all watched, even Calder, even Rhea, no one stopped him, no one could try to.

Afterward, Calder sat with me in silence while my back bled through my shirt. He handed me a strip of cloth and said, “Next time, don’t get caught.”

That was our friendship, two wolves raised on brutality, hiding soft hearts under sharper teeth. We trained together every day while sparring, tracking, and planning how we’d rise through the ranks and change everything from the inside. We thought if we earned enough power, we could reshape the laws to protect the weak instead of culling them.

We were too naïve, and too full of hope and innocence to realize how life worked and that it would never be in our favor.

The Alpha, Lazren, ran Nightmoor like a kingdom of knives, his word was law and he kept rogues at bay, ruled with terror and charisma in equal measure, and tolerated no defiance. He liked me, respected my strength and I was next in line to be Beta after my father stepped down, everyone knew it.

Everyone, including Rhea. She was my cousin, my rival, and the only wolf in the pack who hated me more than she feared me.

Rhea followed every law like it was sacred scripture, as she did dream of change, but tried to be of obedient. Her only ambition was to be Alpha’s mate, and anyone in her way was a threat and that became clear the night of the rogue boy.

I was on patrol near the border when I heard the howling, not the wild kind but the pleading kind. I found him half-shifted, no older than thirteen, skin bruised, bones jutting through torn clothes. He was barely holding onto his wolf form, claws out, eyes wild, starved, and alone.

I should’ve killed him, that’s what we were taught. But he looked at me with terror instead of rage, and I saw myself, years ago, in that snowy grove, trying to save a rabbit.

So I brought him back to the pack but Calder was furious and Rhea wanted to execute him immediately. “Rogues don’t get second chances,” she said, eyes glittering. “This is a trap, a test.”

But I fought them, saying that he was a pup, not a threat. I said we could train him, and bring him into the fold which Alpha Lazren agreed to or at least pretended to.

Three days later, they tied the boy to a post and told me I had to do it, I had to kill him myself to prove my loyalty, to show that I understood what it meant to be a Beta. And I refused but it wasn’t dramatic, since I didn’t shout or make speeches.

I just looked my father in the eye and said, “No.” to which he struck me and told me I was throwing everything away. That I’d doomed myself but I didn’t move, I didn’t flinch as the boy was crying, and begging even as Calder wouldn’t meet my eyes.

And Rhea smiled and then did it herself right in front of me. The boy’s blood soaked into the snow, steam rising around his body as he died.

That’s when they branded me as an oathbreaker. Not officially, not yet but the whispers started that night. Celeste, the traitor, Celeste, who wouldn’t protect the pack, and Celeste, who let a rogue live.

I fled two nights later, taking nothing but my knife and a cloak. Calder found me at the edge of the southern ridge and begged me to stay. He told me we could fix it, that I could come back if I just apologized, that I’d only made things harder.

But he didn’t understand that I wasn’t running from punishment, I was running from what I would become if I stayed so I turned my back on the only home I’d ever known.

And now, years later, I dream of that boy’s face, not the blood or the fear. But the look of hope he had in his eyes right before it died with him, is something I will never forget.

And if this new Alpha, Torian Vex, thinks he can use my past as leverage, he’s going to learn something very important which is that the oathbreaker may be hunted, hated, and haunted but she never forgets and won’t forgive him or his pack if he attempts anything else.