chapter one
1465 Words
ELIRA’S POV
The Bloodfang cells stank of iron, piss, and dying wolves.
I counted my breaths through the blood in my mouth. One. Two. Three. The chain around my throat bit deeper every time I swallowed. Hybrid chains. Cold enough to burn.
“Still breathing, abomination?”
The guard kicked my ribs. Pain flared white-hot. I didn’t give him the scream he wanted. Alphas feed on screams.
I was dragged from the border raid three nights ago. Mira was gone. Joren was gone. The last thing I saw was my mother’s healer hut burning because I existed.
Now I was in the belly of Bloodfang Dominion. Waiting for execution.
The heavy doors groaned open. The temperature dropped. Even the guards went silent.
Boots. Slow. Deliberate. Like the world owed him space.
Then I smelled him. Storm and ash and something darker underneath. Shadow. Power. Alpha.
KAEL
The prisoner was smaller than I expected. Filthy. Half-human stench clinging to her despite the wolf blood I could scent underneath. Illegal. Disgusting.
She was on her knees, chained, head bowed. But her spine wasn’t. Not broken yet.
“Look at me,” I commanded. Alpha voice. The tone that made purebloods submit and rogues piss themselves.
She flinched. Every muscle locked. But her head lifted.
Silver eyes. Not wolf silver. Brighter. Moon-bright. And full of hatred so pure it could cut stone.
My wolf stirred. Interested. I shoved it down.
“You’re the hybrid from the border raid,” I said. “The one that killed six of my warriors.”
“I killed six monsters wearing your crest,” she rasped. Blood on her teeth. “What does that make you?”
Varik moved to strike her. I raised one hand. He froze.
Hybrids were to be executed on sight. Law of Nytherra. Law of my father. Law of survival.
So why wasn’t she dead yet?
“Your name.” Not a question. An order.
She spat blood at my boots. “Elira Dawnshade. Remember it. It’ll be the last name you hear before your crown breaks.”
The cell went dead quiet.
The fall of all Alphas… and the rise of the broken crown.
Lyssara’s prophecy. A myth.
I stepped closer. Pressed my boot under her chin, forced her head up. My Alpha command poured out of me, meant to choke the will from her lungs.
"Submit"
Her pupils blew wide. She gasped. Choked.
And then her eyes flashed.
Not wolf gold. Not human brown.
Moon white.
My power snapped. Rebounded into my chest like I’d hit a wall of ice. My wolf recoiled, snarling.
For one second, I couldn’t breathe.
She smiled through the blood. “Your commands don’t work on me, Alpha.”
Varik drew his blade. “She needs to die. Now.”
I should have agreed. Should have ended it. One hybrid with command resistance was a threat to every bloodline in Nytherra.
Instead I heard myself say: “Put her in the trial pits at dawn. If she survives three days, she answers to me.”
Varik stared. “My King, your father”
“I am the future of Bloodfang,” I cut him off. Voice lethal. “And I decide what dies here.”
I turned and left without looking back. But I felt it.
Those moon-bright eyes burning holes between my shoulder blades.
ELIRA
He didn’t kill me.
He should have. Every Alpha would have.
But the Shadow Alpha of Bloodfang Dominion just walked away, and his scent was still choking the air.
My throat burned where his power tried to take hold. But it didn’t.
Moon-Blood Shift.
The thing my mother died hiding. The thing that just saved my life.
Trial pits at dawn.
I laughed. It hurt. It sounded like hope.
And I promised myself I’d survive his pits. I’d survive him.
And then I’d burn his perfect Alpha crown to the ground
Perfect.
Dawn in Bloodfang didn’t rise. It bled.
They dragged me from the cell before the sun cleared the walls. Hybrid chains replaced with trial shackles. Heavier. Laced with wolfsbane. Every step burned.
The trial pits were carved into the mountain itself. Circular. Deep. Walls slick with old blood that no rain could wash away. Purebloods lined the edges above, howling for death.
I counted them. Twenty guards. Four Blackfangs. One Kaia Draven with a spear and hate in her eyes.
And him.
Kael Viremont stood on the Alpha’s ledge, arms crossed, face carved from ice. No crown yet. Didn’t need one. The shadows clung to his shoulders like they belonged there.
“Rules are simple, hybrid,” Varik announced to the crowd. “Survive three dawns. Or die screaming.”
The gate across the pit screeched open.
Something huge charged out.
Not wolf. Not human. A feral. Wolf driven mad by moon sickness, fur matted with blood, eyes rotted white. Three times my size.
The crowd roared.
I had no weapons. No shift. The wolfsbane in my shackles made sure of it.
Just me. And the thing my mother told me never to be prey
.
KAEL
She should have been dead in seconds.
Ferals killed for sport. They didn’t hunt. They tore.
But the hybrid moved.
Not with wolf speed. Something else. She ducked under the first swipe, rolled through blood-mud, came up breathing hard but alive. Smart. She was reading it. Learning.
“Why isn’t she shifting?” Kaia muttered beside me. “She’s part wolf.”
“Wolfsbane shackles,” Varik answered. “She’s as human as they come in there.”
Then why was my wolf pacing? Why did the air taste like a storm before lightning?
The feral caught her shoulder. Claws raked. Blood hit the dirt. She didn’t scream.
She grinned.
And slammed her chained wrists into its jaw. Bone cracked. The feral staggered.
The crowd went silent.
No prisoner ever hurt a feral. Not without claws. Not without a wolf.
My father’s voice echoed in my head: Hybrids are an infection, Kael. Cut them out or they spread.
I should have ordered Varik to end it. Clean. Fast. Lawful.
I didn’t.
ELIRA
Pain was a language I spoke fluently.
The feral’s blood was hot on my hands. My shoulder was torn open. But I was still standing.
And he was watching me.
Kael Viremont, Shadow Alpha. Murderer of my kind. He thought he was studying me like an animal.
He didn’t know I was studying him back.
The way his jaw ticked when I didn’t fall. The way his shadows twitched when I bled.
The feral lunged again. I dove, grabbed a handful of blood-soaked dirt, and threw it into its rotted eyes. It howled, blinded.
One second. That’s all I needed.
I drove my knee up under its ribs. Heard something break. It went down thrashing.
Silence. Then the pits erupted. Half the crowd bayed for my blood. The other half… stared.
I turned, chest heaving, and looked straight up at him.
“One dawn,” I mouthed.
His silver eyes narrowed. Not angry.
Calculating.
KAEL
She was supposed to break.
That was the point of the pits. Break them, or kill them. Clean up the mess before my father heard I hesitated.
But Elira Dawnshade stood in a pool of feral blood, shackled, bleeding, smiling And my command still didn’t work on her.
“Get her out,” I ordered Varik. Voice flat. “Clean her up. She fights again tomorrow.”
“Kael, this is”
“Do it.” The Alpha tone slipped out. Varik bowed, furious.
Kaia stepped closer. “You’ve never let a hybrid see second sunrise. What’s different about her?”
I didn’t answer. Because I didn’t know.
I watched the guards haul Elira out. She stumbled once. Didn’t fall. And as she passed under my ledge, she looked up.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.
I’m not dying in your pits, Alpha.
My wolf snarled in my chest. Not in hate.
In interest.
Dangerous.
ELIRA
They threw me back in my cell. Neris, the old healer woman, was waiting with rags and salve that smelled like rot.
“You shouldn’t be alive, girl,” she whispered, cleaning the claw marks. Her hands shook.
“Tell your Alpha that,” I said through my teeth.
Neris leaned in. Her voice dropped to nothing. “He’s never stopped a trial. Not once in ten years.”
My blood went cold for a different reason.
“Why?”
Neris glanced at the door. At the shadows.
“Because you did something no hybrid has ever done.” She tied the bandage too tight. “You made Kael Viremont hesitate”
The cell door slammed.
And for the first time since the raid, I felt something worse than fear.
Hope
- Writer
