My brother, the pack's chief healer, watched me swallow the poison and convulse on the floor. Hours later, he stood over my hospital bed and told me the rooftop was thirty stories high-if I really wanted to die.
Even Caleb, my fated mate, choked me until my bones creaked. He threw me into a silver dungeon swarming with rabid rats, accusing me of stealing a necklace I had never touched.
I couldn't understand how their love had become so blind. How could they not recognize my own soul? They watched me swallow a fatal flower, convinced I was nothing more than the witch throwing a tantrum.
They didn't realize they had tortured their real daughter to death until my heart flatlined and a maid found the missing necklace tucked inside a cat's bed.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't in that cold hospital. My guardian spirit had woven me a new, breathtaking body-the vessel of a legendary White Wolf.
This time, when they come crawling back, I won't feel a thing.
Chapter 1
Serena POV:
I stood before the washbasin, watching the reflection of a stranger dissolve under my scouring fingers. For three years, I had worn this mask of kohl and bruised-purple lipstick-a garish war paint chosen by Tanya.
Tanya had adored the fiction of a wild, rebellious spirit.
But I was Serena, and whatever was left of the Blood Moon Pack's true daughter was clawing its way back to the surface.
Tanya's dark magic had frayed during the lunar eclipse, granting my suppressed consciousness just enough purchase to reclaim my own bones. She had kept my body alive through three years of wolfsbane-a poison that should have killed me in childhood-by wrapping my internal organs in layers of black magic. But the eclipse had stripped those shields away. The allergy was mine again, raw and lethal as it had always been.
**But Tanya's magic had done more than poison-proof my veins. It had woven a shroud over my very soul-signature, dulling the instinctive recognition every wolf relies on to identify their own blood. My family could smell my skin and hear my voice, but my essence-the thing that should have screamed Serena to every fiber of their being-was buried beneath three years of black enchantment. The eclipse had let me slip back inside my body. It had not broken the shroud.**
I slipped into a plain white dress-a gesture of peace, a plea for my family to finally see the girl they had lost.
My inner wolf was a faint pulse, a barely audible tremor in the ruins of my mind.
I closed my eyes, reaching for the familiar warmth of the pack's mental network.
Mom? Dad? Julian? It's me, Serena. I'm back.
I cast the thought into the void, bracing for the wave of relief I had rehearsed in my dreams.
Nothing.
It was not an empty silence, but a slammed door-the psychic echo of a connection deliberately severed.
They had excommunicated me from their minds.
A leaden weight settled in my gut, but I descended the staircase into the grand dining room.
The pack mansion was draped in heavy gothic tapestries, a morbid stage set to Tanya's liking.
My parents, the former Alpha and Luna, presided over the head of a long, dark table.
She did not so much as lift her gaze.
With a flick of her wrist, she sent a delicate porcelain teacup skidding across the polished wood toward me.
"Drink it," she commanded, her voice toneless.
I looked down at the pale, murky yellow of the liquid.
The acrid, root-rot scent of wolfsbane stung my nostrils-a bitter poison laced with the metallic tang of silver dust.
Tanya, the rogue witch who had puppeteered my body for three years, had called this her special floral tea. Her dark magic had kept the poison from reaching my heart. That protection was gone now.
And for my body, it had always been a lethal poison to which I was deathly allergic.
"Mom," I whispered, the word a fragile thing in my throat. "You know I'm allergic. I nearly died from it as a child."
My mother's palm struck the table, the crack of the impact making the silverware jump.
"Cease this pathetic charade!" she snapped. "Tanya drinks this every morning. We will not indulge these theatrics you stage for attention."
I turned my eyes to my father. He angled his head away, his profile a cold, stony refusal. But I caught it-the briefest tremor in his jaw. A hairline fracture in the wall of his certainty. It was gone before I could name it.
They truly believed I was Tanya performing a new cruelty. Or perhaps, the distinction no longer mattered.
A soft, glowing voice echoed in the private space of my mind.
It was Orion, the guardian spirit sent by the Moon Goddess-the entity who had shielded my consciousness when Tanya had evicted it. He had hidden my soul in the shadow realm between bodies, keeping it safe while dark magic puppeted my flesh.
Serena, let me expend my energy. I can pull you from this house, Orion pleaded. They mean to kill you.
No, Orion, I sent back, a silent resolve hardening within me. Conserve your strength. Let them have what they seem to want.
The porcelain's rim was cool against my lower lip, the undissolved powder of the wolfsbane a gritty torment to my senses. No one spoke. No one moved to intervene. I stared into the cloudy depths of the cup, felt an involuntary tightening in my throat, and then tilted my head back, pouring the liquid fire down my throat.
A chemical blaze erupted in my throat-a searing heat that felt as if it were turning my very blood to steam.
Angry, red pustules bloomed across my skin, a constellation of agony where the silver burned its way out from within.
My legs gave way and I struck the floor, my body convulsing in violent, uncontrollable shudders.
But this was a clean, physical pain-a paltry thing next to the agony of their rejection.
My mother rose from her chair.
She released no calming pheromones, offered no soothing touch.
Instead, her eyes fixed on the shattered remains of the teacup. She strode over and slapped my burning face.
"You've ruined Tanya's favorite cup!" she shrieked. "You do this deliberately, just to spoil her memorial day! What have you done with her spirit? Where did you send her?"
She turned and swept from the dining room, off to prepare a festival for the daughter she had chosen.
She left me twitching on the marble floor, which felt like a vast, heat-sucking sponge, greedily drawing the last of the warmth from my veins.
My throat was swelling shut.
I could not draw a breath.
A black tide was pulling me under.
The heavy oak doors swung open, and a sharp scent of sterile alcohol and antiseptic cut through the air as my eldest brother, Julian, stepped inside.
Julian's presence was always preceded by the biting scent of the hospital-a chemical warning that arrived before his Beta authority ever did. As the pack's chief healer, his hands were meant to mend, but now they were just shoved deep into the pockets of his white coat.
He smelled the thick, coppery scent of my blood and swore, a low, guttural sound.
He scooped me from the floor and rushed me to the pack hospital.
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