"No! Gloria!" I screamed, feeling the world collapse around me as I watched her fall, her body going limp in the dirt. She had fought for me, died for me. I should have been the one. I should have—
A roar tore through the chaos, a sound so deep and filled with wrath that it seemed to shake the earth itself. My vision blurred with tears, but I saw him then—a tall, powerful figure cutting through the rogues like a force of nature. Alpha Lucas Casimir of the Lockheart Pack, Gloria's intended mate. His eyes burned with rage and grief as he laid waste to the rogues that remained. His warriors followed his lead, and soon, the ground was slick with blood and bodies.
But it was too late. Far too late.
I knelt beside Gloria's broken form, numb to everything. I could hear my heart breaking with every ragged breath I took. She was gone. They were all gone. And I was alone.
Alpha Lucas's shadow fell over me, and I looked up my vision swimming. His eyes were wild, filled with a hatred so raw that it made my blood run cold. "Why are you still breathing?" he spat, his voice a low, venomous growl. "Why did she have to die for someone as useless as you? A girl without a wolf who couldn't protect her own pack!"
His words cut deeper than any blade. My lips trembled, but no words came out. What could I say? He was right. Gloria, my parents, my pack—none of them deserved this. And I—what was I? A weakling. A disgrace. My sister had died saving me when it should have been the other way around.
Lucas's hand gripped my arm, hauling me to my feet. "You don't get to die here," he said, his voice cold and unforgiving. "You'll come with me. And you'll pay for what happened today."
I didn't fight him. What was the point? I had nothing left. As his warriors took me away, my mind whispered to me, a bitter, broken thought. If I had known it would come to this, I would have prayed to die instead, I should have been the one to die, not her. Not Gloria.
But fate had other plans. And I was about to face them, whether I wanted to or not.
Nadia'S POV
It had been weeks—maybe months—since I’d arrived at the Lockheart Pack. Days passed like a never-ending cycle of torment and exhaustion. I didn’t have a place among these wolves. I was neither friend nor foe. I was less than the dirt beneath their boots, and they made sure I knew it every single day.