My father was the Pack’s bravest Warrior. The day he fell defending our borders against a rogue attack, half the territory came to honor him. The burial rites weren’t even cold before my mother collected the settlement — sixty thousand gold pieces — and bonded herself to the wealthiest Elite in the pack. I was left with my grandparents, just another forgotten pup no one bothered to claim. Three years later, the Alpha Council granted one sponsored placement into the Elite Guard to the bloodline of a fallen hero. My father had bled for that honor. It was mine. My stepfather gave it to his own son instead. That afternoon, he blocked the doorway and looked me over with the flat contempt of a wolf surveying something already dead. “Elara.” He held out a small pouch of coin. “Five hundred gold. Take it and go.” “And sign this.” He dropped a folded parchment at my feet. Voluntary Relinquishment of Bloodline Placement Rights. “After that, don’t let me see your face again.” I looked past him to my mother, Clara. A jade bracelet caught the light on her wrist — bright, expensive, blinding. Her eyes slid away from mine. “Elara, listen to your stepfather. Your brother Marcus is a better fit for the Guard.” I glanced at the sleek horses tethered in their courtyard, then down at my own tunic, washed so many times the color had given up entirely. So this is what my father’s life was worth. Five hundred gold. — My stepfather, Roland, went cold when I didn’t reach for the coin. He snatched the relinquishment parchment off the ground and snapped it against my cheek — the paper edge sharp enough to sting. “Don’t push me, girl.” His voice climbed. “You think you belong in the Elite Guard? A worthless pup like you?” My mother Clara stepped forward, catching his sleeve. “Darling, not in front of her.” Then she turned to me, her voice soft now, coaxing. “Elara, sweetheart. Roland’s only thinking of you. The Guard’s training is brutal. It’s no place for a girl.” Sweetheart. Three years of silence, and now sweetheart. The warmth of it almost reached me — until she kept talking. “Take the five hundred now. I’ll send you fifty gold a month after that.” My eyes dropped to the jade bracelet again. Green as envy, purchased with my father’s settlement. The memory surfaced without warning: the burial chamber, my father’s ash-box on the stone plinth, my mother weeping so hard her whole body shook — one hand pressed to her chest, the other quietly slipping his bank seal into her cloak pocket. I had thought she was overcome with grief. Now I wondered what, exactly, she had been mourning. “Elara.” Clara’s voice pulled me back. There was a flicker of something — guilt, maybe — in her eyes. “Do you remember what Father said to me before his last patrol?” My voice came out steadier than I expected. She stiffened. “He said if anything happened to him, I was to study hard and take the placement.” I held her gaze. “He said the Guard seat was mine. That he’d bought it with his own blood.” Roland waved a dismissive hand. “A dead wolf’s words. I’m the one keeping you fed now. I decide.” Clara’s expression closed like a shutter. When she looked at me again, the softness was gone. “Elara. Things are different now. Marcus has better scores. He’s more suitable.” Marcus. Her son. Her real child. The realization landed without drama, the way truths do when part of you already knew: I had never been her daughter. Not really. “Are you going to sign or not?” Roland’s brow furrowed. I didn’t look at the parchment. I didn’t look at the coin. I looked directly at him. “I’ll sign.” Clara’s eyes lit up. “The moment you return every coin of my father’s settlement. All sixty thousand. Not a piece short.”
My mother’s composure shattered. “Are you mad?” She was shaking. “That gold is for Marcus’s future — his bonding ceremony, his standing in the pack. You’ll get nothing. Nothing.” The word ‘Marcus’ landed in my stomach like a stone. All these years — had any of them truly thought of me as one of their own? Without my grandparents hauling salvage at the edge of pack territory to feed me, I would have disappeared into some forgotten corner long ago. Roland shouldered past her, smiling the way a wolf smiles when it has already decided what it’s going to do. “Bold little pup.” His gaze moved over me the way you’d measure livestock at a market. “Since you won’t be reasonable, I’ll stop being polite.” He grabbed me by the throat. The grip was absolute — I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t twist free. He dragged me like carrion toward the dirt track outside the gate, my knees dragging and cracking against the stones. I clawed at his hand, raking lines across his skin. “You little—” He released my throat to deliver a blow across my face instead. My ears rang. Half my face went numb. I hit the ground and tasted copper. Pack members appeared at the commotion, gathering along the road. Roland transformed instantly. One moment he was a man who had just struck a child; the next he was a pillar of wounded community leadership, pointing down at me with open palms. “Look at this! A hero’s daughter, and she’s turned against her own family!” “She’s willing to throw away her father’s honor for money. For a personal claim against me!” “I sheltered her for three years, gave her everything, and now she wants to extort sixty thousand gold from my household!” The crowd congealed around me. I pulled myself upright and looked at the faces — people I had called uncle, aunt, neighbor. “Fallen far, hasn’t she? Her father would be ashamed.” “Girl doesn’t know her place. No wonder nobody wants her.” “Roland took her in and she has the nerve—” Each word landed like a lash. I looked around for one voice. Just one. There wasn’t any. These same wolves had howled their grief at my father’s burial. Now they ground me into the mud to stay in Roland’s favor, and didn’t lose a step doing it. Clara stood to the side, face covered, making the sounds of a woman in distress. “I don’t know what to do with her anymore,” she said to no one in particular. “She was always difficult. I’ve tried so hard.” She played the aggrieved parent so effortlessly that something inside me simply stopped aching and went cold. Roland saw that the crowd was his, and grabbed my wrist to force my hand to the parchment. “You’ll mark this. Here, now. One way or another.” His grip was a vice; my wrist bones ground against each other. “Let go!” I fought, but a seventeen-year-old girl has no leverage against a fully ranked Elite male. He was going to take this from me. My father’s last gift. The only thing he’d left me. No. I bit down on Roland’s hand with everything I had. He howled and released me. I scrambled back — and then his second blow came, harder than the first, and I went down and stayed down. His men joined in. I curled small and took it. Then, through split vision, I looked up and met Roland’s eyes. Blood was running from my lip, but my voice came out level. “You’ll regret this.” Quiet. Simple. Everyone on that road heard it. Roland laughed. His men laughed. The crowd shuffled and smirked. “You’ll regret it?” He crouched down to my level, amused. “A fatherless runt is going to make me regret something?” “You’ll never stand up again, girl. Not in this pack. Not anywhere.”
Roland sent for the Elder. When I saw the familiar figure appear at the gate, my last ember of hope went out. The Elder had always played the kindly patriarch around me — clapping my shoulder at festivals, murmuring that I was a good, obedient pup. But I had known for years: he was Roland’s creature, kept comfortable by steady contributions from Roland’s coffers. Roland’s dominance in this territory ran through him. The Elder’s face now held nothing but flat authority. “Elara.” His voice was a blade. “Show respect to your elders and apologize to Roland and your mother. Now.” I set my jaw and said nothing. Apologize. For what? “Are you deaf, girl?” He raised his hand. Then my grandfather’s voice split the air. He came around the corner leaning on his walking staff, back more bent than I remembered, pace slower — but he put his thin body between me and the Elder without a moment’s hesitation. “Roland. You touch my granddaughter again and see what follows.” His voice trembled with age and shook with certainty, both at once. My throat closed. The whole world had let me go. He hadn’t. Roland’s men didn’t wait. They closed in and shoved my grandfather aside — an old man past seventy, handled like an obstacle in a road. “Grandfather!” I lunged, but hands clamped me from behind. He went down hard. His staff skittered away. He tried to rise; his knee was bleeding through the fabric, the stain spreading dark and fast. “You animals!” My voice cracked. “He is your elder!” The pack Elder looked on and pointed at me with two fingers. “This one needs a correction facility. Keep carrying on, and I’ll have her sent to one.” A correction facility. I went still. “Exactly.” His voice turned vicious. “A fatherless stray, no discipline, no worth. Better for the pack without her.” I understood then — this wasn’t only about the Guard placement. They intended to dismantle me entirely. Several of Roland’s men dragged me through the territory to the abandoned homestead at the edge of the old ward. My father’s house. The one we’d shared before everything ended. The contest ribbons I’d won as a pup still hung on the wall. His favorite cup still sat on the table, exactly where he’d left it. The iron lock struck home with a clang that echoed through the empty rooms. Through the door, Roland’s voice, almost pleasant. “The hero ceremony is the day after tomorrow, Elara.” My heart stopped for a beat. The day after tomorrow. So soon. “Marcus will take the stage and deliver the address. Once the ceremony’s official record is sealed, I’ll let you out.” A pause. “Sit here and think about your choices.” I listened to their footsteps fade. Marcus — Roland’s son — standing at my father’s memorial. Reading words from a prepared script. Wearing the honor my father had purchased with his life as if it were a costume. I threw myself at the door and pounded until my fists bled. Until I couldn’t anymore. I slid down the wood and sat on the floor of my father’s house, looking up at his portrait on the wall. He was in his Warrior’s gear. He was smiling the way he always smiled — like sunlight had decided to wear a face. “Dad.” My voice barely made a sound. “Do you see what your pack has done?” I didn’t understand. I had never understood. Why do the good ones fall, and the scavengers inherit everything they built? Night came. The old homestead went fully dark. I sat in the corner, hollow with hunger, hollower with despair. In two days, it would all be finalized. Marcus on the stage, the seal on the record, my father’s name handed over to someone who had never earned a single scar in his service. And I would be locked in here, watching it happen.
Watch👉 https://cps-front.novelix.live/app-api/ext/new/20260701rUhYOhAKzv 🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “Novelix” app 🔍 search for “ni883465”, and watch the full series ✨! #Novelix
Leave a Reply