Chapter 8

Elara POV

The morning air was brittle enough to snap. A distant, terrified scream echoed from the direction of Frostbite Creek-another desperate exile slipping on the treacherous ice. I stared at our empty water skins. No. I wasn't going to let my family play Russian roulette with a frozen river just to survive.

I gathered Mason and Finn. "We're digging."

When I explained the concept of a hand-pump well, they looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. In the werewolf world, water was a surface gift from the Moon Goddess; digging into the frozen earth for it was considered impossible, even blasphemous. But Mason didn't question me. He grabbed the new iron shovel and attacked the permafrost with brutal, relentless strength. Finn, always the craftsman, followed my instructions to hollow out an abandoned siege log, fashioning a crude piston valve from scrap leather and river stones.

By midday, a crowd had gathered around our muddy pit in the center of the outpost.

"The *wolfless* has finally snapped," a gaunt woman muttered, her voice carrying over the biting wind.

"Let her freeze," a warrior scoffed. "The whole Vance family has gone mad."

I ignored them, my hands bleeding and blistered as I guided the heavy log into the deep shaft Mason had cleared. At the edge of the crowd, Beta Alistair Knox stood with his arms crossed. He looked skeptical, but he didn't intervene. I knew Kaelen had ordered him to let me play out my "madness."

As the sun began to dip, casting long, skeletal shadows over the snow, the crude pump was finally assembled.

Every eye in the outpost was on me. The silence was heavy, thick with anticipation and ready mockery. I stepped up to the makeshift wooden lever, my muscles screaming in protest, and pushed down.

*Creak.*

Nothing. Just the dry, hollow groan of wood scraping against wood.

A ripple of suppressed laughter swept through the crowd. I saw the flicker of disappointment in Finn's eyes. Gritting my teeth, I threw my entire body weight onto the lever, pumping it furiously. *Come on. Come on!*

Suddenly, a violent shudder ran through the log. A wet, sucking gasp echoed from the depths of the earth.

A thick stream of muddy, brown water exploded from the spout, splashing violently over my boots and the frozen dirt.

The laughter died instantly. The entire Black Moon Outpost plunged into a deafening, stunned silence. Jaws dropped. Eyes widened in absolute disbelief. I had just pulled water from solid stone.

Alistair Knox was the first to break the paralysis. His eyes widened in sheer awe before he threw his head back and let out a resonant, triumphant howl that shook the snow from the nearby pines.

He rushed forward, looking at me with a reverence that bordered on worship. "She did it!" Alistair roared to the stunned crowd. "The little *wolfless* gave us the gift of the Goddess!"

He stopped abruptly, his eyes glazing over as his posture stiffened-the universal sign of a wolf opening a *Mind-Link*. Though I couldn't hear the psychic connection, his lips moved in a breathless, ecstatic whisper before he fully closed the bond: *Alpha, you won't believe this. The girl... she made water come from the stone ground. It's a miracle.*

My mother, Catherine, wept silently, clutching her hands in prayer. Mason and Finn beamed, their chests puffed out with fierce pride.

I wiped the sweat and mud from my brow, turning to the awestruck crowd. "It's muddy now," I said, my voice steady and clear. "But if we layer crushed stone and clean sand in a barrel, we can filter it into pure drinking water."

The whispers that erupted this time weren't mocking. They were frantic, filled with a desperate, burning gratitude. In the span of a single day, I was no longer the cursed *wolfless* burden; I was their lifeline.

But as the exiles began to eagerly murmur about the rationing and who would get to fill their buckets first tomorrow morning, my gaze caught a few hardened warriors at the back of the crowd. Their eyes weren't filled with gratitude. They were dark, calculating, and burning with a dangerous, bruised pride.