Rejected By The Pack, Now A Queen

Clyda POV:

The northern winds of the capital city howled like a dying beast, whipping my dark hair violently across my face as I kicked open the heavy door of the armored truck. I planted my combat boot into a muddy puddle, the freezing rain instantly soaking the hem of my black trench coat. Yet, the biting cold of the storm was absolutely nothing compared to the suffocating, absolute ice running through my veins.

Four Simon Pack guards stationed at the estate gates immediately raised their high-beam flashlights, the blinding glare cutting through the torrential downpour straight into my eyes. The heavy, wrought-iron gates of the Simon Pack Manor remained firmly shut, a silent, towering testament to the family's relentless rejection of my existence. Right behind my idling truck sat a custom-built cryo-coffin, radiating a bone-chilling frost that battled the storm, yet not a single soul from my so-called noble family dared to step forward and claim it.

"Halt! Pack territory is strictly off-limits! Exiles and banished wolfless like Clyda Simon are forbidden to enter!"

The guard captain barked the order over the roaring thunder, his hand already resting heavily on the holster of his silver-loaded sidearm. For three long years, the high society of the capital had relentlessly mocked me. I was the illegitimate Simon daughter banished to the remote, unforgiving borderlands-a genetic defect born without an inner wolf, incapable of shifting into a Dire Wolf at the age of eighteen, and completely cut off from the pack's telepathic Mind-Link. To them, I was less than human, a stain on their pristine bloodline.

I didn't slow my pace. I slammed the heavy truck door shut with a resounding metallic clang, my eyes colder than arctic ice as I walked straight toward their leveled gun barrels. Every step I took was slow, deliberate, and required every single ounce of my formidable willpower just to keep from tearing those massive metal gates right off their reinforced hinges.

The captain narrowed his feral eyes and projected his dominant Beta aura, intending to force me to my knees in genetic submission. He simultaneously sent a quick mental alert through the pack link-*Code red, the banished wolfless is back.* But because I possessed no inner wolf in their eyes, his mental link couldn't touch my consciousness, and his pathetic Beta pressure washed over my skin like nothing more than a warm, insignificant breeze.

"Giana, clear the way."

I tilted my head slightly, speaking softly into the deep shadows behind me. During my exile, I hadn't just survived; I had thrived, cultivating four personal shadow operatives within the underground Obsidian Syndicate, each possessing a lethal, highly specialized skill. Nora was the mastermind of intelligence and finance, capable of bankrupting an entire noble pack in seconds. Lyra was the phantom of toxins, her sweet smile hiding a thousand untraceable ways to stop a werewolf's rapid heartbeat. Vex handled the logistics of death, ensuring no trace of a body was ever left behind. But the one who stepped from the shadows now was my primary blade.

Giana Nelson, my personal shadow guard who owed her life solely to me, dropped from the roof of the truck like a phantom born of the storm.

Her steel dagger carved a lethal, invisible arc through the heavy rain. In less than three seconds, all four guards collapsed into the mud, clutching their slit wrists as their firearms clattered uselessly across the wet cobblestones.

I stepped right over the captain's trembling shoulder and walked to the back of the rig. My fingers brushed against the custom cryo-coffin, the frost biting at my skin. Giana stepped up beside me in perfect silence and yanked back the heavy waterproof tarp, exposing the complex mechanical latches underneath.

"Open it."

My voice came out raspy, my fingers curling into tight, white-knuckled fists at my sides. As the heavy mechanical locks popped open one by one with a hiss of depressurization, the bulletproof glass lid rose slowly, releasing a thick cloud of white frost into the driving rain.

I looked down through the dissipating mist, my gaze locked onto the lifeless body inside. That was my older sister, Gertrude York-once the most dazzling, envied socialite across the entire werewolf continent. She was the woman who had been my only source of sunlight in a family of vipers, the only one who loved me when the world cast me out. Now, she lay in the frost like a broken, discarded ragdoll.

My hand trembled violently as my fingertips brushed her pale, sunken cheek. The freezing cold traveled up my arm, and an invisible, crushing hand squeezed my heart so hard I couldn't draw a single breath.

Her beautiful, peerless face was ruined, marred by horrific, blackened lacerations that made her almost unrecognizable. She was barely covered by a thin white shroud, exposing arms and legs that were completely covered in desperate defensive wounds and deep, necrotic burns.

There was no permanent mate mark on her neck. Instead, deep, bone-exposing lacerations with blackened, sizzling edges tore across her delicate collarbones.

Those were burns from high-purity liquid silver. In our world, silver is the only lethal poison capable of halting a werewolf's rapid cellular healing and burning their inner wolf to ash. My sister was dead. The realization hit me like a physical, devastating blow to the chest. Someone had tortured her, broken her spirit, and left her to die in unimaginable agony.

I slammed my eyes shut as a furnace of pure, unadulterated rage roared to life in my chest. The dormant, ancient Sacred White Wolf bloodline-a secret I had kept hidden from the world-boiled violently through my veins. I wanted to carve the flesh from their bones. I wanted to drag whoever did this down to the deepest, darkest pits of hell to keep her company.

Giana and the other hidden operatives in the perimeter felt the sudden, terrifying shift in the air. The sheer bloodlust radiating from my body made the falling raindrops seem to freeze in mid-air. They knew I was on the absolute verge of a massacre.

"Don't be afraid, Gertrude," I whispered, my voice terrifyingly soft and laced with a deadly, unbreakable promise as I gently stroked her ruined cheek. "You won't be lonely on the road to the afterlife. I will send every single person who hurt you straight to hell to serve you."

I slowly closed her half-open eyes, my expression settling into a mask of absolute, dead calm. It was my fault. When Elder Lady Agatha banished me to the borderlands, I thought my absence would remove the stigma from Gertrude, allowing her to live a peaceful, happy life as a Luna in the capital. I was wrong. If I had stayed, no one would have dared to touch a single hair on her head.

"Who did this?"

I ground out the words through clenched teeth, each syllable tasting like copper and blood in my throat. I turned around and looked down at the bleeding guard captain, my gaze stripped of all human warmth.

The captain whimpered pathetically, pressing his hands against his bleeding wrists. Whispers were already starting to spread among the terrified servants peeking through the cracked gates. They remembered me. They remembered that years ago, when the arrogant son of the Marquis Pack tried to drug and defile Gertrude, I had publicly severed his reproductive organs with a hunting knife, leaving him a permanent cripple. They knew I was a demon when it came to protecting my sister.

"It... it was the Lewis Pack... They said the eldest miss went insane..."

The captain clamped his jaw shut, still trying to protect the pack executives' pride despite his bleeding wrists. "Elder Lady Agatha gave strict orders! No one is allowed to investigate this matter!"

I let out a cold, hollow laugh and drew a custom whip braided with fine silver wire from Giana's tactical belt. I flicked my wrist until the tip cracked a sonic boom through the wet air, bringing the silver lash down hard across the captain's thigh.

The metal seared into his flesh with a loud sizzle and a plume of white smoke, ripping a gut-wrenching, agonizing scream from his throat as the silver halted his healing.

"I will ask one last time."

I pressed the bloodied silver whip directly against his chin, keeping my voice soft and terrifying. "Who. Did. This?"

The captain convulsed violently in the puddle, his eyes wide with sheer terror as the silver toxin ate into his bloodstream.

"It was Alpha Dillon! He announced in public that she couldn't bear high-ranking pups and tore up their mate contract on the spot!"

Hearing my former brother-in-law's name, my lips curved into a freezing, psychotic smile as I rolled the dark wooden beads on my wrist-the special enchanted bracelet hiding my divine scent-until the wood groaned under my crushing grip.

"Good."

I tossed the silver whip back to Giana. "Since he cares so much about breeding, I'll go cut off his bloodline myself."