The stone wall scraped her palms raw as they dragged her up the stairwell.
Sera dug her fingers into every crack she could find, but it was useless. The two soldiers hauling her didn't slow. They moved like she weighed nothing, like her resistance was barely worth acknowledging. She had been locked in the dungeon below since the night Lady Sylke's men threw her in without a word, without water, without explanation.
She understood now.
Her father had failed.
The moment the soldiers shoved her through the heavy iron doors and into the open air, she understood everything else too.
Fire. That was the first thing. Torches blazed across the courtyard of Ironhollow Pack's great hall, and the cottages beyond were already burning — orange and gold eating through thatch roofs, columns of black smoke rising into the night sky. Screams stitched themselves together into a single, horrible sound. Pack members ran, fell, and didn't get back up. Soldiers in dark armor bearing a crest she didn't recognize moved through the chaos with brutal efficiency.
Sera stopped breathing.
Her father's pack. The only home she had ever known.
It was being erased.
She didn't ask the soldiers where they were taking her. The answer was already written in every burning building, every body face-down in the mud. Alpha Dorian Voss had tried to take the throne of the Veilborn Realm from the Alpha King himself. He had failed. And now the Alpha King's army had come to collect the debt.
She was the traitor's daughter. That was all she would ever be to these men.
They hauled her into the grand hall and shoved her to her knees.
The room was already crowded. Luna Cressida knelt near the center, her silver robes pooling around her on the marble floor. The rest of her father's household — his mistresses, her half-siblings, the servants who had walked past Sera without a second glance for years — all of them were on their knees too. Heads bowed. Shoulders shaking.
Then the sound came.
A single, sickening crack. A body hitting stone.
Sera flinched before she saw it. Her half-brother Dex lay crumpled beside a pillar, a dark pool spreading beneath him. A tall soldier in silver-trimmed armor stood over him, his blade already wiped clean on the edge of his sleeve.
No one screamed. No one breathed.
"Anyone else thinking of running?" the soldier asked. His voice was almost pleasant.
Sera knew him. Gamma Rael — she had seen him once, six months ago, when he came to Ironhollow with a sealed letter from the Alpha King. She had looked into his eyes by accident that day and felt the cold calculation inside him like a closed fist. He served his king without question and without mercy.
His gaze swept the room and landed on her.
"That one's human," he said flatly. "No silver required."
A guard reached for iron shackles anyway. The cold metal clicked around her wrists. When he yanked her forward, Sera stumbled — and for one unguarded second, she looked directly into his eyes.
His thoughts hit her like a bucket of ice water.
She is the most beautiful thing in this hall. What a waste to kill her. I'd rather—
Sera wrenched her gaze away, stomach turning. Her gift had always been like this — sharp and unwanted. One look into a person's eyes and she felt it all: the surface thoughts, the ugliest impulses, the truths they would never say aloud. It had saved her life more than once inside Ironhollow's walls, where poison and jealousy were as common as bread.
But it had never worked on everyone.
"You know the law," Gamma Rael said, his voice carrying easily through the silent hall. "Alpha Dorian committed treason. His bloodline must answer for it."
He paused, letting the silence stretch.
"If the pack swears loyalty, they may be spared. But the traitor's family — their fate belongs to the Alpha King."
Everyone in the room understood what that meant. There was only one fate waiting for Dorian's blood.
Death.
"The Alpha King approaches."
The words fell over the hall like a hammer strike.
Sera's head snapped up — and there he was.
Kael Dravon, Alpha King of the Veilborn Realm, walked through the great doors like a storm wearing a man's shape. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Every line of him radiated a power so absolute it needed no announcement. His dark riding armor was unmarked by the battle outside. His silver-grey eyes swept the room once — slow, unhurried, missing nothing.
The air itself seemed to rearrange around him.
Sera's breath caught.
Without thinking, she looked into his eyes — really looked, the way she always did when she needed to understand someone quickly. She braced for the rush of emotion and thought that always came.
Nothing.
Silence. A blank wall where there should have been a flood.
She had never once encountered a mind she couldn't read. Not in twenty years of living. She blinked, tried again, held his gaze a fraction longer — and still felt nothing but the unsettling weight of being looked at by a man who seemed to see straight through her.
Her pulse spiked. Why couldn't she read him?
Realizing she had been staring, she dropped her eyes to the floor.
"They are all here, my king," Gamma Rael reported. "Except for Alpha Dorian, his son Rett, and his Beta Cassius."
The Alpha King said nothing. He walked slowly through the kneeling crowd, his gaze moving over each face with the detached precision of a man taking inventory. He stopped in front of Luna Cressida.
The woman's forehead hit the marble. "Please, my king! We knew nothing of Dorian's plans. Have mercy — we'll do anything. Spare us!"
Silence.
Then his voice filled the hall — deep, cold, and impossibly calm.
"Will you die to save them?"
Luna Cressida went pale as chalk.
"The punishment for treason is death to the traitor's line," Kael Dravon continued. "But I will grant mercy. One life for the rest. Yours."
He looked at her. He waited.
Sera didn't need to look into Cressida's eyes to know what was happening behind them — but she looked anyway, and the thoughts came sharp and instant.
Why should I die? I am the Luna. Let the slave girl take it. Let her die.
"Take her!" Luna Cressida screamed, her arm shooting out to point directly at Sera. "Dorian's favorite daughter! Kill her — it will destroy him! She's nothing, a human born of a slave. No one will raise a rebellion for her. But Dorian? He'll suffer. He cherishes that girl above everything else!"
Every head in the room turned.
Sera felt the stares like heat. She didn't move.
"Take her life instead! She's the reason he lost his mind — kill her and end this!"
The Alpha King's gaze shifted. Slowly. Deliberately.
It landed on Sera.