The sun barely peeked over the horizon when Eva comes back and heard the first scream rang through Silverstone.
Eva was wrapped in a thick shawl, staring out at the snow-covered trees. Her breath formed small clouds in the frosty air, and her fingers clutched the edge of the wooden bench as if bracing for something she couldn’t name. The celebration had ended late last night, but she hadn’t slept at all, she spent it walking. Something in her chest felt tight, as though the world was about to shift beneath her feet.
And then it did.
The scream came from a young scout coming from the pack house. Moments later, the heavy crunch of her boots on snow echoed through the clearing. Eva stood slowly, confusion turning into dread.
Tiana was the first to appear, limping, her golden dress ripped and stained with blood. Her face was pale, eyes wide and unfocused, as though she had witnessed something too terrible to speak aloud.
Dany followed, his shirt torn, deep scratches down one arm, and blood running from a wound on his forehead. His usual charm was gone, replaced with something grim and hollow.
Then Max appeared, dragging something behind him—no, someone.
Eva’s heart stopped.
It was one of the Crescent guards. Unconscious. Bloody. Barely breathing.
“Help!” Max barked. “Get the healers—now!”
Wolves rushed forward. Tiana stumbled and nearly collapsed. Eva caught her just in time.
“Tiana! What happened?” she asked, panic creeping into her voice.
Tiana shook her head, her lips trembling. “We were ambushed… They came out of nowhere…”
“Who?” Eva demanded, but Tiana just cried and clung to her.
Dany spoke, his voice hoarse. “The packhouse… You need to see it.”
Eva left Tiana with a healer and ran, following Max and the others toward the main building. As they approached, her breath caught in her throat.
The doors had been blown open. Blood was smeared across the floor and walls. Broken glass crunched beneath their feet. Furniture lay in splinters. The once-proud Silverstone Packhouse—her childhood home—looked like a battlefield.
Max paused in the doorway and turned to her. “Eva… don’t go in alone.”
But she was already moving.
Her footsteps echoed in the silence. The cold inside was worse than the snow outside. Her eyes scanned the wreckage, her heart pounding like a drum in her chest. She didn’t want to see it. She didn’t want to know. But her body moved forward anyway, as if pulled by invisible strings.
And then she saw them.
Georgina and Lucien lay side by side in the center of the great hall.
Her mother’s hair was soaked with blood, her eyes still open in shock. Her father’s chest had been torn open, claw marks still fresh. There was so much blood. Too much. It stained the wooden floor. It stained Eva’s shoes as she dropped to her knees.
“No,” Eva whispered. Her voice was small. Broken.
She reached out, her hand trembling, and touched her mother’s cold fingers. “No. Please… no…”
Behind her, footsteps approached. Someone tried to speak, but the words faded in the thick silence. Max stood in the doorway, jaw clenched, hands covered in blood that wasn’t his own.
Dany hovered behind him, a haunted look in his eyes.
The rest of the pack began to gather, drawn by the scent of death, by the awful truth that something terrible had happened.
Tiana entered last. Her knees buckled the moment she saw them, and she let out a broken sob.
Eva didn’t cry.
She just sat there between her parents, staring at their still faces. Her hands were soaked in red, but she didn’t notice. Her eyes were blank, her heart numb.
“This can’t be real,” she murmured. “This can’t be real.”
One of the Elders stepped forward—a tall, gray-haired man with sharp features and solemn eyes. He held a ceremonial cloak in his hands, the same cloak once worn by her mother.
The others formed a circle around her, heads bowed, silence stretching like a shadow over the room.
The Elder cleared his throat. “Eva Silverstone,” he said, his voice echoing through the ruined hall. “As the rightful heir of the Silverstone bloodline… we, the Council, name you our Alpha Queen.”
Eva looked up slowly, her eyes wide and glassy. She didn’t speak.
He stepped closer, placing the cloak over her shoulders.
“You carry your parents’ legacy now,” he said gently. “You are their strength. Their memory. Their voice.”
Still, she didn’t answer.
She turned her gaze to her parents again.
Lucien, who had always stood like a wall between her and danger. Georgina, who had brushed her hair back every morning and whispered that she was stronger than she thought.
And now… they were gone.
“I should’ve been here,” Eva whispered, her voice shaking.
No one responded.
“I should’ve been here,” she repeated, louder now. Her fingers curled into fists. “It should’ve been me.”
Tiana’s sobs filled the silence. Max turned away, his shoulders tense, his fists clenched at his sides. The hall was silent except for the sound of Tiana crying and the faint drip of blood from the broken chandelier above them.
Eva sat between the bodies of the people who had raised her, the people who had loved her most. And as the cloak of leadership settled over her shoulders, so did the weight of the world.
She didn’t feel like a queen.
She just felt broken.
“It should’ve been me,” she whispered again, as the Elders crowned her the new Alpha Queen in a silence thick with grief.
