Chapter 2

Evelyn Thorne POV:

Two years later, on the night of my eighteenth birthday, I stood on the cold, flat surface of the Moonstone Altar. The entire pack surrounded the clearing, their faces pale and expectant in the glow of the full moon.

I took a deep breath, the crisp night air filling my lungs. This was it. The night I would finally meet my wolf, the night I would complete my first transformation and prove my worth.

In the crowd, I saw Desmond and Lily. They offered me tight, encouraging smiles. We had drifted apart over the last two years, the chasm of their status and my orphanhood growing steadily wider, but a thread of our old friendship remained. Or so I thought.

I focused on the sky, sending a silent prayer heavenward. *Let my wolf be strong. For Mom and Dad. For Ren.* I had poured every ounce of my being into training, pushing my body to its limits, all for this moment. All my hope was riding on this shift.

Elder Eleanor Vance, her voice a reedy chant, began the ritual, calling on the Moon Goddess to bless the transformation.

The moonlight intensified, bathing me in a silvery glow. A searing heat erupted from the base of my spine, a wave of pure energy that felt like liquid fire coursing through my veins.

A scream tore from my throat as an agony unlike anything I had ever known seized me. It felt like every bone in my body was snapping, grinding, and trying to reshape itself. I knew there would be pain-everyone went through it-but this was a torturous, brutal force that threatened to tear me apart. I bit down on my lip, tasting blood, and embraced the pain, waiting for the change.

I risked a glance at my friends. Their encouraging smiles had melted into expressions of alarm. Their own shifts had been painful, yes, but not like this. Not this violent.

I collapsed onto the stone, my body convulsing, the simple white dress I wore for the ceremony soaked through with sweat.

A nervous murmur rippled through the pack. "What's happening?" "It's taking too long." "I can hear her bones breaking, but she's not changing..."

Alpha Philip's face was a stony mask, his brow furrowed, his eyes sharp and critical.

The cycle of agony continued. Bones broke, reset, and broke again, a relentless, agonizing loop. But my form remained stubbornly human. The pain built to an unbearable crescendo, a white-hot nova of torment that consumed my consciousness, and then... it vanished.

Just like that. It was gone.

I lay gasping on the cold stone, my limbs trembling uncontrollably. I was covered in sweat and dirt, but there was no fur. No claws. No elongated snout. Nothing.

A dead, suffocating silence fell over the clearing.

Elder Eleanor Vance shuffled forward, her ancient hands hovering over my body. She drew back as if she'd been burned, her face a mixture of shock and horror. She shook her head slowly. "The Goddess has not answered," she rasped. "Her body... it has rejected the change."

The silence shattered. The whispers turned into a roar.

"It failed?"

"A werewolf who can't shift?"

"It's a curse! She's broken!"

My mind was a terrifying blank. I stared at my own hands, my very human hands, unable to process what had happened. I looked for Desmond, my eyes pleading with him. The alarm in his gaze had curdled into shock, and then, unmistakably, into a flicker of disgust.

My head snapped toward Lily. She had her hand clamped over her mouth, but she couldn't hide the look in her eyes. It wasn't pity. It was a cruel, triumphant gleam of satisfaction.

The memory of a childhood promise-the three of us, hands clasped, swearing we'd be friends forever, no matter what our wolves looked like-surfaced and then dissolved like smoke. Their betrayal hurt more than the breaking of my bones.

I tried to push myself up, but my muscles refused to obey.

Then I heard it. A single word, hissed from the crowd, that struck me like a physical blow.

"Wolfless!"

The word was a poison dart, and it found its mark deep in my heart.

Alpha Philip descended from his place of honor, his heavy boots echoing on the stone. He stopped before me, looming over my pathetic, broken form. His eyes held no pity, no compassion. Only the cold, hard finality of a judge passing sentence. In them, I saw my future, and it was a vast, terrifying darkness.

Everything I had worked for, everything I had hoped for, shattered into a million pieces.

I closed my eyes as a single, hot tear escaped and traced a path through the grime on my cheek. The sound of the pack's derisive, fearful chatter was the only eulogy for the death of my hope.