​The first thing I learned about being a queen was that it felt a lot like being a corpse.

​Cold, discarded, and waiting for the earth to take what was left.

​I was only six years old the night my father, the Alpha King, decided I was a defect.

​I can still see the North Star pinned between black branches as I ran until my lungs burned like swallowed coals.

​Behind me, the Great Hunt wasn’t chasing a deer. They were chasing me.

​“Faster, little wolf,” the King’s Beta mocked from the shadows.

He moved through the frozen woods like a predator. He was the man who had tucked me into my bed only a week before, smiling at me with what I thought was kindness. Now, he was a total stranger.

“A daughter of the Throne should at least provide a good chase before she’s culled!”

​I tripped over a root and hit the ground hard.

​I lifted my head, shaking, and saw him.

​The Alpha King stood at the edge of the clearing. Even in his wolf form, his presence was heavier than the cold itself.

​He didn't look at me like a father. He looked at me like a piece of trash that needed to be burned.

​“You have no scent,” he said. His voice was a door locking forever.

​“No wolf. No power. You are a human stain on a royal bloodline.”

​He turned away without another word.

​The hunters followed him, disappearing into the trees like ghosts.

​They didn't leave because I had escaped. They left because I wasn’t even worth the effort of a final blow.

​When I woke again, the world had changed.

​I was in a small human home with a woman who looked at me with pity.

​That was the beginning of my second life—the life of a "found child."

​For eleven years, I lived in the blank spaces. I didn't remember the forest or the King.

​I convinced myself that my night terrors were just a glitch in a broken brain.

​Until tonight.

​I woke up with a pain in my chest so sharp it felt like a physical blow.

​The air in my room was heavy. It felt like a storm was about to break.

​Crack.

​The wooden floorboard beneath my bed splintered down the middle. I hadn’t even moved.

​My skin began to burn—a deep, itchy heat moving just beneath the surface.

​Then, the window shook. A violent rattle that made the glass scream.

​The wall in my head didn't just crack. It disintegrated.

​The forest. The snow. The King’s back as he walked away.

​It all came clawing to the surface, louder than the room around me.

​“This can’t be real,” I whispered.

​But my body disagreed. Something in me was finally awake.

​I grabbed my jacket and bolted out the door.

​I walked without a plan, my feet taking over while my brain stayed trapped in that clearing in the woods.

​He was the Alpha King. The words fit inside me perfectly, like a key sliding into a lock that had been rusted shut for a decade.

​I started running. I felt like if I just moved fast enough, I could outrun the memories.

​I didn't notice the main crossing. The sound of traffic was just a dull roar.

​I stepped off the curb without looking.

​Then the horn came.

​A sharp, violent blast tore through the fog like a gunshot.

​I turned my head just as the world dissolved into blinding, white-hot light.

​Headlights filled my vision, erasing the street and the memory of the forest.

​There was the scream of tires, the smell of burnt rubber, and two tons of steel hurtling toward me.

​The moment stretched out into a slow-motion nightmare.

​I could see the individual cracks in the car’s bumper. I could see the terrified expression of the driver behind the glass.

​Everything was too clear. Too final.

​The car was a wall of metal hitting the space where I stood.

​The impact wasn't a sound—it was a feeling that shattered the world.

​As the ground vanished beneath me, the last thing I heard wasn't the car.

​It was a howl, louder than it had ever been.

​It wasn't coming from the woods. It was echoing from somewhere deep inside my own shattering bones.