Bite the hand

chapter 10: The shattered mirror

The ballroom, which seconds ago had been a masterpiece of gold leaf and crystal, suddenly felt like a tomb.

Miles’s words weren't just a whisper; they were a blade that bypassed my skin and sank straight into my marrow. I tried to pull back, to sneer, to let the "Shadowbite" mask settle into place with its usual cold arrogance, but the air in my lungs had turned to lead.

"You're mistaken," I managed to rasp, but even to my own ears, I sounded small.

"Am I?" Miles’s blue eyes were merciless, shining with a predatory glee. He didn't let go of my waist. In fact, he pulled me closer, and that’s when I heard it.

A low, rhythmic hum. It was a frequency that vibrated in my teeth, coming from a woman standing just a few feet away—a nondescript guest in a silver dress, her eyes fixed on me with terrifying intensity. A Siren.

The world tilted.

The golden lights of the skyscraper began to blur and bleed. The scent of expensive bourbon and cedar vanished, replaced by the suffocating, metallic stench of wet earth and rain-soaked fur. The polished marble floor beneath my stilettos grew soft and cold, turning into the churned-up mud of the Silverfang execution grounds.

Murderer.

The word didn't come from the guests. it came from the air itself. The Siren was pulling the echoes of my past out of the dark and forcing me to live them all at once.

"Stop it," I whimpered.

Suddenly, I wasn't the Queen of the underground. I was the girl on her knees. I felt the phantom weight of the rain soaking through my thin shift. I felt the cold, hard stares of the pack elders—men and women I had fed, cared for, and loved—all looking at me with nothing but disgust. Their collective hatred hit me like a physical wave, a "Mass Empathy" that stripped away every ounce of my new-found strength.

I could feel the mistress’s smug triumph. I could feel the cold, detached judgment of the man I had shared a bed with for years.

Lila Voss is dead to this pack.

"No," I gasped, my knees buckling. Miles caught me, his arms acting like a cage rather than a support.

"Look at you," he murmured, his voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "All that power, and you’re still just a broken little bird. You haven't changed at all, have you?"

I tried to find the curse. I tried to reach for the dark, hungry energy that usually protected me, but it was buried under the crushing weight of the pack’s grief and my own shame. I wasn't Shadowbite anymore. I was the wife who had failed. I was the mother who had been blamed for the blood of children.

"Lila!"

The voice was loud, booming through the fog. I felt a hand on my shoulder—heavy, familiar, and warm.

I looked up, but I didn't see the ballroom. I didn't see Miles Thorne’s expensive penthouse. I saw the grey, rain-slicked forest. I saw the silhouettes of the hunters closing in.

I saw a massive, muscular figure standing over me. In my clouded mind, the tailored black suit turned into the dark fur of a wolf. The brown eyes of the man looking at me with desperate concern transformed into the amber eyes of a judge.

I didn't see Finn Calder. I saw the Alpha. The man who held my life in his hands.

A sob broke from my throat, raw and jagged. I reached out, my fingers clawing at Finn’s lapels, my vision tunneling until all I could see was his face. I was shivering, my body relapsing into the trauma I thought I had conquered. The "Queen" had vanished, leaving only the hollowed-out remains of a woman who had lost everything.

"Please," I whispered, my voice trembling, my eyes wide and glassy with a terror that went back months. "Please, Alpha... don't let them take the pups. I didn't do it. Please, Darius... don't kill me."

I felt the entire room go silent. I felt Finn’s heart stop beneath my hands as he stared at me, his face pale with horror. I had regressed. I was back in the mud, begging for a mercy that would never come.