1: Humiliated and Exiled
Sofia’s POV
I don’t understand how things ended up this way.
“Slut!”
“Traitor!”
“Death to the betrayer!”
The words cut through me like jagged glass, each one drawing blood I can’t see but feel all the same. I’m on the cold stone floor, my palms scraped raw from when they shoved me down, my knees aching against the unforgiving ground. My hair hangs in tangled curtains around my face, and I can barely see through the blur of tears.
Just yesterday, I was in his arms. His kisses were on my skin, his promises whispered against my hair. He told me the Moon Goddess doesn’t make mistakes. He told me my life was about to change. He held me like I was precious, like I was cherished, like I was finally, finally worth something to someone.
And now?
I lift my head, trembling, and meet his eyes. Alpha King Alex stares down at me from his elevated seat, and there is nothing but contempt in his gaze. Cold. Distant. As if I am nothing. As if last night never happened.
“Please,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “Please, I didn’t do anything. I swear it. I swear it on my life.”
“The evidence speaks for itself,” one of the council members declares, his voice booming across the hall. Elder Marcus. He holds up a stack of parchments, his face twisted with disgust. “Correspondence with the Shadowfang pack. Details of our border patrols. Information that could only come from within these very walls.”
The crowd roars with anger. Someone spits in my direction. I flinch.
“How?” My voice rises, desperate and breaking. “How do you expect someone like me to even have access to secret information? I’m an omega. I have no wolf. I scrub floors and wash dishes. I’m not allowed anywhere near the war room or the archives or—”
“Silence!” Elder Marcus snaps.
“I’m being framed!” The words tear from my throat, raw and pleading. I look around at the faces surrounding me. People I’ve lived among my whole life. None of them meet my eyes with kindness. None of them believe me. “Please, someone must see. Someone must know I couldn’t have done this. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. Why would anyone trust me with secrets?”
My gaze lands on him again. On Alex. My mate. My heart.
He’s looking at me like I’m a stain on his floor.
“Alex,” I breathe, and the name falls from my lips before I can stop it. A desperate, involuntary prayer.
Murmurs ripple through the crowd. I don’t care. He is my mate. He knows. He knows who I am. He knows I couldn’t—
King Alex raises his hand.
The room falls instantly, completely silent. Every breath is held. Every eye turns to him.
“This is my verdict.”
His voice is flat. Emotionless. Nothing like the tender murmur that lulled me to sleep just yesterday.
“The woman known as Sofia Valerian, is hereby exiled into the Evil Forest for her crimes against the Diamond Crescent pack.”
The words don’t make sense. They can’t. They hang in the air like poison, and I wait for someone to laugh, to say it’s a mistake, a cruel joke.
No one laughs.
“This isn’t fair!” The cry wrenches from somewhere deep inside me, a place I didn’t know still had voice. Tears stream down my cheeks, hot and endless. “This isn’t justice! I’ve done nothing wrong!”
Alex’s eyes narrow. Something flickers in them. Something hard and unforgiving.
“Then you shouldn’t have done what you did,” he says, his voice cold as winter steel. “Your actions led to the deaths of my parents.”
The world stops.
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. His parents. The former Alpha King and Luna. They were killed just a month ago. He thinks I... he thinks I had something to do with...
“How can you say that?” My voice is barely a whisper now, shattered and small. “How can you say that to your own mate?”
Silence.
And then, laughter.
It starts with one person. Then another. Then the entire hall erupts in cruel, mocking howls. They point at me. They clutch their stomachs. They wipe tears of mirth from their eyes.
“Did you hear that?” someone cackles from the crowd. “She thinks she’s the Alpha King’s mate!”
“Delusional little wretch!”
“An omega? Mated to the king? In her dreams!”
I shrink into myself, every laugh a lash against my skin. TThey don’t know what we did. They don’t know that just last night, he kissed every inch of my body and told me I was chosen. That the Moon Goddess saw my heart. That I was worthy.
Alex’s jaw tightens. His eyes flicker—just for an instant—but I see it. I see the shame. The denial. He won’t claim me. He won’t defend me. He’s going to let them believe I’m lying.
“Enough,” he says, and the laughter dies down. His gaze settles on me one last time, and it’s empty. Completely, utterly empty. “Stop spewing lies. This meeting is over.”
He turns away.
He turns away from me.
“Pack whatever you have,” he says over his shoulder, not even bothering to look back. “You will leave immediately.”
The guards haul me to my feet. My legs don’t work. They drag me anyway. I can’t stop looking at his back, at the broad shoulders I clung to, at the dark hair my fingers tangled in while he whispered that I was safe, that I was loved, that everything would be different now.
Liar.
The word echoes in my hollow chest.
I stop fighting. I let them drag me. What’s the point?
He never accepted me. Not really. It was all a dream. A beautiful, cruel dream. And now I have to wake up and walk into the Evil Forest alone, knowing the truth.
I am nothing. I am nobody.
And my mate wants me dead.
***
The journey to the Evil Forest took hours. e. The guards shoved me into a rusty cart dragged by two mangy horses, and I bounced against the hard wooden floor until my bones felt like they might shatter.
When the cart finally lurched to a halt, I knew we had arrived before I even lifted my head.
The air was different here. Thick. Heavy. It pressed against my skin like something alive, something watching. The trees ahead were ancient and twisted, their branches reaching toward the gray sky like skeletal fingers. No birds sang. No insects chirped. Just silence. Deep, swallowing, eternal silence.
Get up.” A rough hand yanked me from the cart. I stumbled forward, clutching my small burlap sack, my feet sinking into cold mud.
“Please,” I whispered. “Isn’t there another way?”
The scarred guard laughed. “What’s wrong, little omega? Scared?” He shoved me toward the tree line. “Walk.”
My legs trembled as I stepped forward. The moment my foot crossed into the forest, the temperature dropped. The air grew heavy, humming with something ancient and cruel.
“Bet she doesn’t last the hour,” one guard snorted behind me.
“I give her ten minutes,” another said. “If the shadows don’t get her, the rogues will.”
Their laughter echoed as I walked deeper, the darkness swallowing me inch by inch. I clutched my sack tighter and kept my eyes forward, tears burning down my cheeks.
Then I heard it.
A low growl. Wet and hungry. Right behind me.
I turned. Two glowing red eyes stared back from the dark.
