Ethan's fingers were like a vise on my arm, the scent of his rage-like burning wood and ozone-assaulting my senses, making me feel dizzy. He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a low, venomous hiss right next to my ear.

"Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten how disgusting you were that night?"

His words were a key, twisting in a lock I hadn't known was there, forcing open a rusted door in my mind. His voice dragged me backward, pulling me into the swirling, chaotic memories of the Blood Moon Rite ten years ago. The night our pack celebrated the coming of age for all its eighteen-year-olds, the night the Moon Goddess revealed destined mates.

"Celeste," Ethan whispered, his voice a blade of poisoned honey. "Our perfect Celeste. She'd waited her whole life for that night. And the Goddess blessed her. She found her fated mate-Alpha Kieran Valerius. Powerful, noble, a future leader of a great pack. It was the happiest I had ever seen her."

Flickering images danced behind my eyes. Celeste's radiant face, lit by the bonfire. The way Kieran had looked at her, the visible sparks that crackled in the air between them, the undeniable pull of a true mate bond. I remembered the pure, unadulterated joy I had felt for my sister, mixed with a small, secret pang of loneliness for a mate I had not yet found.

"And you?" Ethan's voice dripped with contempt. "You were jealous. You saw a powerful Alpha, and you wanted him for yourself. But you weren't brave enough to challenge her, were you? No. You chose the coward's way. The slut's way."

His grip tightened, each word a hammer blow. "You slipped an herb into his drink. A potion to heighten his lust, to cloud his mind."

That was the official story. The truth everyone in the pack had accepted without question.

*No! It wasn't us!* Lyra howled, a desperate, frantic denial in the cage of my skull.

"I didn't," I gasped, trying to pull away from him, from the poison of his words. "I don't remember..."

"Don't remember?" He laughed, a cold, sharp sound. "How convenient. But Celeste remembers. She remembers everything. She remembers searching for Kieran, her heart full of joy, only to find him missing. She remembers hearing... noises... coming from your room."

He was painting a picture with his words, each stroke a fresh cut on my soul.

"She pushed open the door, Seraphina. And what did she see? She saw you. Naked. In her mate's arms. The scent of your coupling was so thick in the air it was nauseating."

The vile image he described made my stomach churn. Even without the memory, I could feel the second-hand humiliation, the imagined horror of that moment. I could feel Celeste's world shattering.

"You stole him," Ethan said, and I could hear a tremor in his voice now, a raw pain for his twin sister. "You stole her fated mate, Seraphina. You desecrated a sacred bond, a gift from the Goddess herself!"

In our world, there was no greater sin.

Tears streamed down my face as I shook my head, a useless, pathetic gesture. "No... I would never... I loved my sister..."

"Don't you dare say her name!" he roared, shaking me so hard my teeth rattled.

I cried out, a small, sharp gasp of pain. But the agony in my arm was nothing. Nothing compared to the weight of the accusation that was crushing my spirit.

I wanted to scream that I had been drinking, too. That I had woken up confused and horrified. But what was the use? They wouldn't have believed me then, and they wouldn't believe me now.

She was Celeste, the golden child, the future of the pack. I was just the quiet, lesser sister. The jealousy motive, it was just too perfect for them to ignore.

For a decade, I had worn the label: Mate Stealer. Whore. Traitor.

And now, here was my brother, pronouncing my sentence all over again, right outside our dying father's door.

A wave of blackness washed over my vision. It wasn't Ethan's strength that was felling me, but the sheer, suffocating weight of an injustice I could not fight.

My knees buckled.

Ethan looked down at me, his face a mask of pure disgust, as if I were something vile he'd found on the bottom of his shoe.

He let go of my arm. I crumpled to the cold stone floor.

He delivered the final blow, his voice flat and dead. "A creature like you doesn't deserve the name Blackwood."

Chapter 4

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