Chapter 1 Blood And Tears

• A shriek tore through the dawn, slicing the fragile peace of Bobby’s dreams. Her eyes shot open. She jerked upright, tangled in the threadbare blanket, her heart hammering against her ribs.
• Wooden shutters rattled against the window frame as the commotion outside grew louder—angry voices, heavy footfalls, and the unmistakable sound of the pack gathering penetrated the thin walls. Silvercrest territory rarely saw such activity at dawn.
• Bobby pushed herself upright, silver-blue eyes blinking away sleep. She glanced at the window; dawn had barely broken, casting long shadows across her sparse bedroom. Something felt wrong. The air carried a heaviness, a foreboding that settled in her chest like stone.
• "Mom?" she called, slipping from beneath her threadbare blanket. The tiny cabin remained silent. Unusual. Madeleine always responded, always reassured.
• Her feet hit the cold wooden floor. Her mother’s room stood empty, the bed unslept in. Anxiety twisted inside her.
• She edged to the window, careful not to draw attention. Through the warped glass, figures rushed past, heading toward the pack's central clearing. Their expressions appeared grim, determined. Bobby's stomach tightened.
• "Mom?" she tried again, louder this time. Only silence answered.
• The threadbare dress she'd worn the previous day would have to do. Bobby pulled it on quickly and grabbed her mother's old hunting knife from beneath her pillow. The weight of it offered little comfort against the growing dread in her chest.
• Her mother should have been home. Madeleine never left without telling her, without leaving a note, especially not with the pack in such a state.
• A memory flickered—her mother’s gentle hands braiding her hair, whispering stories of a life before Silvercrest. “You’re different, Bobby, but that makes you strong.” The words felt hollow now.
• Outside, the morning air carried a metallic tang that made Bobby's skin prickle. Blood. The scent, unmistakable even to her dulled senses. While other wolves possessed heightened abilities, Bobby's remained frustratingly human-like, a constant reminder of her questionable status within the pack.
• She followed the crowd, keeping to the shadows cast by early sunlight. No one acknowledged her presence—nothing unusual there. Low-ranking and lacking the ability to shift, Bobby and her mother had existed on Silvercrest's periphery for years.
• The crowd thickened near the pack's central clearing, wolves pressing forward, voices hushed yet urgent. Bobby slipped between bodies, ignoring the disdainful glances and muttered comments.
• "Luna Diana found them together—"
• "—Alpha Matthew's office, half-dressed—"
• "—seduced him like the witch she was—"
• "—justice for what she's done to our Luna!"
• A circle had formed around something—someone—lying motionless on the ground. Through gaps between bodies, a shape sprawled in the mud—her mother’s body, hair fanned like a dark halo, skin pale beneath the rising sun.
• Bobby pushed forward, heart hammering against her ribs. The crowd parted reluctantly, expressions shifting from disdain to a sickening mixture of pity and satisfaction.
• "Move!" she shouted, pushing through the throng of pack members.
• They parted reluctantly. Bobby ignored them, focusing only on reaching the center of the circle.
• The world collapsed around her. There, sprawled in the dirt, lay her mother's body. Madeleine stared up unseeing at the bright sky, her throat torn open in a grotesque crimson smile. Blood pooled beneath her, soaking into the earth.
• "Mama?" The word escaped her lips as if barely a breath. "No! No! No!"
• Bobby dropped to her knees beside Madeleine's body, hands hovering uselessly over the wound, afraid to touch yet desperate to help. "Someone help her! Please!"
• Someone behind her spat on the ground. "The Alpha's whore got what she deserved."
• Bobby whirled, silver-blue eyes flashing dangerously. "What did you say?"
• Elder Margaret stepped forward, her weathered face set in harsh lines. "Your mother overstepped, girl. Seducing Alpha Matthew, thinking she could improve your standing." The old woman's lip curled in disgust. "Such delusions."
• "That's a lie," Bobby hissed, fury warring with grief.
• Her mother had disappeared last night, claiming she needed to speak with the Alpha about their rations for the coming winter. Bobby had thought nothing of it—Madeleine often fought for their basic needs, a necessity when you occupied the lowest rung of the pack hierarchy.
• Memories flooded her mind: Madeleine teaching her to hunt when the pack refused to share food; comforting her after the other children tormented her for her strange appearance; whispering stories of her father, a rogue wolf who had loved Madeleine fiercely before hunters took his life.
• "You have his eyes," Madeleine would say, tracing the unusual silver-blue iris that marked Bobby as different. "And his spirit."
• Elder Margaret gestured dismissively at Madeleine's body. "The Alpha's mate found them together. She took her rightful vengeance."
• "The Alpha's mate murdered my mother in cold blood, and you stand here justifying it?" Bobby's voice rose, drawing murmurs from the crowd.
• Madeleine had worked as a healer for the pack, nothing more. She'd never so much as looked at Alpha Matthew with anything but professional courtesy. But as Bobby knelt in her blood, listening to her pack—her supposed family—celebrate her mother's murder, she understood that truth didn't matter. It never had for people like them.
• "Stand back from the traitor," commanded a deep voice.
• Alpha Matthew stood tall at the edge of the clearing; his expression thunderous. Beside him stood Luna Diana, her face a mask of cold satisfaction. Then Bobby saw him—Chad, the Alpha's son, her mate, and childhood tormentor. He pushed through the crowd—tall, broad-shouldered, with amber eyes that could melt or freeze hearts—watching with unreadable intensity. His presence commanded immediate respect—shoulders straightened; heads bowed. At twenty-four, he stood as his father's heir and enforcer, his power second only to the Alpha himself.
• Bobby looked up, tears blurring her vision. "What happened? Who did this?"
• "Justice happened," Luna Diana replied, her voice carrying across the now-silent gathering. "Your mother was found in my mate's bed. Our laws regarding such betrayal are clear."
• Memories flooded Bobby's mind—Madeleine's warnings about staying invisible, keeping quiet, and never drawing attention. Their tiny cottage at the edge of pack lands. The way her mother flinched whenever Alpha Matthew entered a room.
• "That's impossible," Bobby whispered. "She wouldn't—"
• She looked down at her mother's peaceful face, now slack in death. The woman who had raised her alone, who had sacrificed everything for her, reduced to a criminal, a seducer. The injustice burned in her chest.
• "Are you calling our Luna a liar?" Chad stepped forward, powerful and intimidating. Sunlight caught his dark hair, highlighting streaks of gold. Everything about him screamed dominance, power, and birthright.
• Bobby shook her head, struggling to breathe. "My mother feared the Alpha. She would never willingly—"
• "Silence!" Alpha Matthew's roar sent tremors through the clearing. "Madeleine betrayed this pack, betrayed my mate. Her punishment was deserved and lawful."
• "The evidence speaks for itself," Chad announced, barely sparing a glance at Madeleine's body. "The woman attempted to seduce my father and earned my mother's wrath."
• Bobby stood, her slender frame vibrating with fury. "Where's your evidence? My mother wouldn't—" Her hands curled into fists against the dirt. Twenty-two years of hiding, of keeping her head down, evaporated in the heat of grief and rage. "You murdered her."
• The backhand came so fast Bobby didn't see it coming. Her head snapped to the side, silver hair whipping across her face, and she tasted blood.
• Gasps rippled through the crowd. No one spoke to the Alpha that way.
• "Careful, little one," Alpha Matthew warned, a dangerous smile playing across his lips. "Remember your place."
• "My place?" Bobby chortled, legs trembling beneath her. "My place was with my mother, whom you butchered for a crime she didn't commit."
• Luna Diana stepped forward. "Your mother was nothing but a common whore. Everyone knows it. Just as everyone knows what you are—wolf-less, useless, a burden we've tolerated far too long."
• The words stung with familiar pain. Bobby had heard them all her life—whispered behind hands, thrown like stones since childhood. Half-breed. Defective. Wolf-less. Unable to shift like true werewolves, lacking their strength and senses, she represented everything the pack despised: weakness.
• Chad moved closer, studying her with disturbing intensity. "Look at her. Those strange eyes. That scent, like nothing proper wolf blood carries."
• Bobby fought the urge to step back. Chad had always unnerved her, even before her first moon ceremony four years ago had revealed the unthinkable—that this arrogant, cruel Alpha's son was her fated mate. The moon goddess's idea of a cosmic joke, perhaps. One Chad had publicly rejected with spectacular cruelty.
• "Your mother was desperate," he continued. His scent—pine and mountain air with undertones of power—enveloped her, making her heart race. "Desperate to elevate her strange, wolf-less daughter."
• Bobby had yet to shift, despite reaching the age where most wolves manifested their second form years ago. Many in the pack whispered she might be human despite her parentage, explaining her unusual eye coloring and scent that never quite matched the pack's.
• "I have a wolf," she whispered, more to herself than to Chad.
• She felt it sometimes, scratching beneath her skin, present but somehow trapped. The pack doctor had no explanation, leaving Bobby to endure the whispers and sidelong glances alone.
• Chad leaned closer; his voice pitched for her ears alone. "If you did, it would have come to your defense by now." His eyes, deep amber and flecked with green, studied her with clinical detachment. "Perhaps it's for the best. What kind of Alpha mate would you make, unable to shift, unable to run with the pack?"
• Bobby recoiled as though struck. "We are not mates."
• "On that, silver eyes, we agree." He chuckled with a snarl. "Strange how fate sometimes errs," he murmured, circling her now. "Silver-blue eyes that should be beautiful yet seem... wrong. A scent that should call to me yet repels."
• The pack watched, enthralled by this familiar drama playing out again. Bobby stared at her mother's body, refusing to give Chad the satisfaction of her response.
• A pack member stepped forward. "We should ensure she doesn't cause the same problems. Containment, at minimum."
• Bobby glanced around the circle, searching for a sympathetic face. She found none. Even Adira and Lulu, pack daughters who'd occasionally shown her kindness, looked away. Only Chad's gaze remained fixed, calculating.
• "The girl stays," he announced suddenly.
• Alpha Matthew turned to his son. "For what purpose?"
• Chad smiled, the expression never reaching his eyes. "Every pack needs its... examples. Bobby serves that purpose admirably." He approached her again, close enough that his breath stirred her hair. "Besides, there's something about her that warrants further... investigation."
• Bobby suppressed a shudder. "I want to bury my mother."
• "You'll do nothing of the sort," Luna Diana snapped. "Traitors are left for nature to reclaim. Pack law."
• "You can't do this," she protested, struggling against the urge to scream. "My mother deserves justice!"
• Chad smiled, cold and predatory. "Justice has been served. Your mother broke pack law."
• "At least let me be alone with her," Bobby demanded. "Let me say goodbye to my mother."
• Alpha Matthew nodded curtly. "You have until dawn. Then her body will be disposed of outside pack lands. Those who betray the pack do not rest in our hallowed ground."
• The crowd began to disperse, leaving Bobby alone with her grief and her mother's body. Only Chad lingered, hovering at the edge of the clearing.
• Bobby’s mind raced. If she begged, would they show mercy? No. Mercy didn’t exist for her kind. She forced herself to remember her mother’s words: stand tall, even when the world wants you to kneel.
• "Don't make this worse for yourself," Chad warned. "The pack has already shown mercy by sparing you."
• Bobby laughed, a hollow sound that echoed in the night. "Mercy? You call this mercy?"
• After a moment, Chad turned and walked away, rejoining his parents at the edge of the forest. Bobby watched him go. Whatever remained of the mate bond now felt like a chain, binding her to her mother's killers.
• She gathered her mother closer, rocking gently as she had been rocked as a child. The woman who had sung her to sleep, bandaged her wounds, and celebrated her triumphs now lay lifeless in her arms.
• As the night deepened around her, Bobby made a silent vow over her mother's body. She would not forget. She would not forgive. And somehow, she would discover the truth behind her mother's death, no matter the cost.
• Dawn approached, painting the sky in shades of blood and fire. Bobby hadn't moved, keeping vigil over her mother through the long hours of darkness. She knew what she had to do before they took Madeleine's body away.
• Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew her mother's silver blade. With steady hands, she cut a lock of Madeleine's dark hair and another of her own silver strands, twisting them together.
• "I'll find out what really happened," she whispered against her mother's cold forehead. "I promise you, Mom. They won't get away with this."
• In the distance, she could see the pack members returning, coming to take her mother away. Among them walked Chad, his face a mask of duty and detachment. Their eyes met across the blood-soaked ground, and the look that passed between them held no love, only a promise.
• War had been declared in the Silvercrest Pack, and only one side would survive.