Aurora’s POV

When I opened my eyes the world was small and gray. My wrists hurt where the silver cuffs pressed into my skin. The spell marks from Father still pulsed under my veins.

I pushed myself up. The cell smelled of metal and mold and old sweat. A dull light hung from the ceiling. The bars in front of me cast hard lines across the floor.

A man outside the door laughed. “Alpha’s daughter finally wakes.”

Three women appeared at the gate, leaning against the railing like they owned the place. One of them had a long scar down her cheek.

Another bared a missing tooth when she smiled. The leader stepped forward, slow and certain.

“You’re the Alpha’s girl?” she said. Her voice was flat, not kind. “Thought you might be. Bet you think you’re better than us, eh?”

I folded my hands in my lap and did not answer.

She moved inside my cell without waiting. Her boots sounded loud on the concrete. She stopped in my face and smelled like stale smoke.

“On your knees,” she ordered. “We don’t need another spoiled brat thinking she outranks the rest of us.”

I had been humiliated by my family. I had been forced to lie about things I never did. I had watched my father record the confession he made me say.

I had felt my brother’s disgust like a blade. I wouldn’t let strangers treat me like prey too.

“No,” I said, my voice steady.

The leader’s mouth twisted. “Wrong answer.”

She struck first. Her fist hit my cheek and injured my mouth. The world narrowed to the strike and the faint, angry pulse of my wolf inside me.

I reacted. I shoved my weight low, grabbed her arm, and twisted. She stumbled. My training took over, I drove my knee into her ribs and she fell.

The two other women hesitated. The leader tried to climb up, but I pinned her arm behind her back.

I slammed her down when she squirmed. For a moment, the cell was still except for our breathing.

Then a guard’s voice cut the air. “Enough!”

A tall man in a dark coat stood at the door with a baton. He looked tired and bored. He strode in and pointed the baton like a preacher pointing a finger.

“Break it up. One more move and you go to solitary. Understand?”

They muttered and backed away. The leader spat at the ground and left with her gang. The guard’s gaze flicked to me with something close to respect, then away.

I let myself drop to the floor. My knuckles throbbed. I had won the fight, but the victory was small. The cuffs still bit into my skin.

The seal on the floor still glowed dim from Father’s magic. I was still here, locked, and accused, all alone.

The guards dragged me out the next morning. The corridor felt so bright my eyes watered.

Chains scraped with each step. Voices echoed around me, some curious, some cruel, some hungry for a show.

They led me into a courtroom that smelled of old wax and loud opinions. The room was full. Faces turned when I entered. Murmurs rose like wind.

“There she is.”

“The poisoner.”

“The cursed one.”

I sat at a long table, hands cuffed. A guard on each side. The judge took his seat. People rustled. I scanned the room and froze when I saw him.

Beta James sat at the defense table, he was my mate.

Even now, even in chains, the sight of him made my heart stutter. The bond hummed faintly under my skin, weak but alive, as if my wolf still believed he’d come for me.

Beta James had always been calm, logical, the one person who had once made me feel safe. The one I’d trusted to see through lies.

When our eyes met for a heartbeat, hope sparked painfully in my chest. He’ll help me, I thought. He knows me. He’ll tell them the truth.

But then, that hope faltered.

He didn’t smile. Didn’t even nod.

His gaze brushed past me like I was a stranger. The bond between us trembled, not breaking yet, but pulling thin enough to hurt.

The judge called the case to order, his gavel striking once, sharp and final.

The prosecutor stood with a stack of papers. “Your Honor,” he began.

“the evidence is clear. The defendant, Aurora Donald, deliberately administered wolf poison to Vicky of the Bloodfang Pack. The attack nearly killed her.”

Murmurs rippled through the courtroom. My pulse pounded in my ears. I turned to James. He rose slowly, composed as always, his dark suit perfectly pressed — as if none of this touched him.

“Your Honor,” he said, voice smooth and steady, the voice that used to calm me when nightmares clawed through my sleep. “On behalf of the Donald family, I acknowledge the defendant’s confession.”

The words didn’t register at first. No. He couldn’t. He knew the confession wasn’t mine. that it had been forced out of me by my father’s spell.

He’d seen my bruises. He’d held me through nights when I couldn’t breathe.

But he kept going. “The family asks for leniency. We believe the actions were the result of emotional instability, not premeditated malice.”

A hush fell over the courtroom. The blood drained from my face.

He was defending them. The family who had destroyed me and not me. He spoke like he’d rehearsed every line, his tone careful, professional, distant.

The mate bond in my chest twisted painfully. It screamed for me to reach out, to call his name, to remind him of what we shared, the moon’s mark, the promise that fate itself had carved between us. But his eyes didn’t find mine.

He looked straight ahead, unreadable, while his words sealed my fate.

He was the one person who could have saved me and instead, he buried me with my family.

Tears burned behind my eyes, hot and useless. “Beta James,” I whispered.

He didn’t move.

The space between us was clear and for the first time, I realized that sometimes fate didn’t give you a soulmate.

The judge pronounced the sentence. “Five years incarceration at the Wolf Prison for werewolves. Let record show mitigating circumstances. The court will hold to the sentence.”

They led me away with my head high and my heart breaking. In the hallway, Helen stood under the light by the door. She clapped slowly, eyes bright, a smile that had been practiced.

“You took everything,” she said, loud enough for the guards to hear. “You ruined our family’s name. I took it all, your place, your family’s trust. You belong where you are.”

Her voice was soft but sharp. People around her laughed. The sound felt like knives.

Then Alpha Damian arrived. He stepped into the hall like a cold wind. He looked at me, at my cuffs, at my face and his gaze landed on me with a kind of hunger.

He did not listen when I pleaded. He did not ask for the truth. He squared his shoulders and spoke with the kind of finality an Alpha carries.

“I will make your life a living hell,” he said. He did not bother with my name. “You will pay for what you did to my sister.”

There was no mercy in his words. Only a promise of pain.

As they shoved me into the transport, pain shot through my chest like a sudden, cruel bolt. It wasn’t the cold of the stone. It was a pull from deep inside me, the mate bond. For the first time since the bond had stirred, I felt it break.

A voice as cold as ice cut through my mind. It was Beta James, but the words were empty and sharp.

“I reject you as my mate.”

His voice had no compassion. No hesitation. It was a clean break, a clear line drawn where the bond had been.

The sound did more than hurt. It shattered something I had not known I was still clinging to. The blue thread of connection that had hummed in my marrow went dark.

I sagged against the metal wall of the transport. The guards watched me with interest, as if I were a lesson.

Alone in that cold box, all support and warmth stripped away, something inside me changed.

I had been beaten down, betrayed, and branded. My family had chosen Helen and given me away.

The man whose blood had once been linked to mine had spat on the bond. The pack across the way had left me for dead.

If I survived this, I would make them pay.

Not for the moment’s cruelty, but for the years of silence, the years of being pushed aside, the years they had stolen from me.