Chapter 6

Lyra's POV:

A dead silence fell over the square. It lasted for three heartbeats, then shattered as the crowd erupted in laughter.

"Is the kid crazy?"

"She's talking to the Lead Warrior like that!"

Briar's face flushed a deep, ugly red. It was the color of fury and humiliation. "Guards!" she shrieked. "Get this little brat out of my sight!"

Two guards started toward me, their hands outstretched.

I didn't move. I just kept my silver eyes locked on Briar, and they seemed to deepen, to pull her in.

"You punish him not for his 'cowardice'," I said, my voice carrying a strange resonance, "but because you cannot punish yourself."

Briar flinched as if struck. The guards faltered.

"You punish him," I continued, my voice a flat statement of fact, "because every time you look at him, you are reminded of Caleb."

The name hit her like a physical blow. The color drained from Briar's face, replaced by a stark, bone-white terror.

The laughter in the crowd died. A few of the older pack members exchanged uneasy glances. They remembered the name.

Ryker stared, confused. Caleb had been a quiet warrior who'd left the pack years ago. No one knew he had any connection to Briar.

My sight shifted. I saw her past, the memories she kept buried under layers of pride and anger.

My voice took on an ethereal, distant quality. "You met him at the full moon Pack Run. The Goddess gave him to you. He was your Fated Mate."

Briar began to tremble violently. The hand holding the obsidian dagger shook. "You're... you're lying!" she hissed, but her voice was thin and reedy.

"You rejected him," I said, my words like hammer blows, cracking the armor of her lies. "Because he was the son of an Omega, and you were the Lead Warrior. You decided he was unworthy of you, a blemish on your ambition."

Gasps of shock and disgust swept through the crowd. To reject a Fated Mate was one of the greatest sins, a source of profound shame.

"So you performed the ritual of rejection," I went on, my gaze merciless. "You watched him leave, his heart broken, and you told yourself it was for the good of the pack. But every night, you feel the agony of your torn soul. You turned that pain, that self-hatred, into rage against others. Ryker is just the latest one to bear the weight of your sin."

Every word was a nail driven into the coffin of her reputation.

*Clang.*

The dagger slipped from her nerveless fingers and clattered onto the stone.

She staggered backward, her wild eyes seeing not the crowd, but their judgment. Their contempt. Her carefully constructed world crumbled around her.

She didn't spare another glance at me or Ryker. A raw, animalistic scream tore from her throat. She shoved her way through the stunned crowd and fled the square, a broken warrior running from a truth she could no longer escape.

The grand public sentencing was over.

On the platform, only Ryker and I remained. He stared at me, his expression dazed, as if he were trapped in a waking dream.

I walked over to him. I reached out and touched the iron chains binding his wrists.

Under my touch, the thick metal links crumbled into dust, falling away without a sound.

Ryker was free. He rubbed his wrists, staring at me with a mixture of awe and fear.

"Who..." he stammered, his voice hoarse. "Who in the Goddess's name are you?"