The Forgotten Daughter Of The Iron-claw Pack | Read Free Preview
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Chapter 1
Serafina’s POV
The Hall was a cathedral of shadow and silver. Thousands of wolves stood in breathless silence, their eyes reflecting the crimson glow of the Blood Moon filtering through the skylight.
Tonight was the Great Claiming.
After years of war, the Shadow-Stalkers and the Iron-Claw Pack were finally uniting.
Tonight, I was going to become Luna.
I stood at the altar, draped in heavy white velvet that felt like a shroud.
Beneath the lace, my skin was a map of faint, jagged scars, reminders of the three years I spent surviving the Feral Lands after being kidnapped at sixteen.
Across from me stood Malakai, the Alpha heir. His presence was a physical weight, his scent of rain and cold steel filling my lungs.
“Serafina of Iron-Claw,” the High Seer intoned, holding a bowl of sacred embers. “Do you offer yourself and your soul to the Alpha of the Shadow-Stalkers?”
I looked into Malakai’s eyes. They were amber, swirling with a hunger I had believed was for me.
“I do,” I whispered.
Malakai leaned in, his canines lengthening, ready to press the Marking Bite into the junction of my neck. This was it, the moment I became more than the Broken Princess who had returned from the dead.
I would be Luna.
Snap.
Malakai’s head jerked back. His eyes went pitch black, a total internal shift. He didn’t just receive a mind-link; he took it like a physical blow.
“Kira,” he choked.
The name struck like a slap.
Kira—the miracle child my father had adopted to replace me while I was missing.
The girl who had spent every day since my return reminding the pack that I was tainted by my time in the wild, while she remained pure.
“Malakai?” I gasped, clutching my veil as he stepped away from the altar.
“She’s at the Southern Border,” Malakai rasped, his voice vibrating with Alpha command. “The perimeter was breached. She’s—she’s screaming, Sera. I can hear her through the pack-link.”
“The border is guarded by fifty sentries,” I said, my voice hardening. “This is the Coronation. If you leave now, the Moon Goddess will reject the union. The treaty will shatter.”
“I don’t care about the treaty if she’s dying!” Malakai roared. He tore off his ceremonial cloak, his muscles rippling with the urge to shift.
“She has three brothers standing in the front row who can reach her in seconds,” I said, gesturing to my own brothers.
My eldest brother, Vane, didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, already half-shifted. “She’s right, Malakai. We’re going. But you stay—you have a duty.”
A sharp chime cut through the hall. The communication stone on the altar flared to life, and a frantic voice burst through the silence.
“Alpha! The rogues have her! They’re—oh Goddess, there’s so much blood! She’s calling for Malakai! Only him!”
Malakai didn’t wait for another word.
He turned to me, his face stripped bare by cold desperation. “Sera, be reasonable. You’re a survivor. You’ve lived through worse. Kira… she’s fragile. She’s not like you.”
“So because I didn’t break, I don’t matter?” I asked, a hollow laugh rising in my chest.
“It’s just a ceremony,” he snapped, already backing toward the exit. “We’ll finish this tomorrow. Stay here. Keep the guests calm.”
“If you walk out that door,” I said, my voice dropping to a frequency that made the nearby candles flicker and die, “there is no tomorrow for us.”
He didn’t flinch. “Don’t be dramatic, Serafina. It’s a bad look for a Luna.”
He shifted mid-air, a massive midnight-black wolf that shattered marble as he landed. He tore through the hall, followed by my father and my remaining brothers, all of them racing to save the precious Kira.
The Hall became a graveyard of whispers.
“The Broken Princess is left behind again.”
“Look at her—she doesn’t even have a single tear.”
“No wonder the Alpha prefers the other one.”
“Well, no one had ever survived the Ferah lands unharmed, and she had survived it without anything happening to her.”
“People who managed to get out of there were mostly mad and have issues with their heads,”
“Exactly! Compared to Kira, who had been here for years, Serafine doesn’t stand a chance! She isn’t as pure as Kira.”
“I wonder about all the dirty stuff she had done there.”
“And now the alpha has to get married to her due to a treaty.”
Though I heard all they had said about me, I pretended not to.
My mother, Luna Valerius, passed me without stopping, adjusting her clothes as she went.
“You should have been more sympathetic, Serafina. Your coldness is why he runs to her. Go to your rooms and wait for news.”
I remained alone on the altar, the white velvet of my gown dusted with debris from Malakai’s violent departure.
A faint vibration stirred in my pocket.
I pulled out my phone. A single message shimmered across the screen from an unknown number:
“I told you, Sera. You were always just a placeholder. He’s mine tonight. He’ll be mine forever.”
Obviously, it was Kira, and she had done it on purpose.
I stared at the message, then at the empty throne that was meant to be mine.
For four years, I had fought to be enough. I hid my scars, softened my voice, and accepted their neglect to belong.
But as the blood-red moon began to set, the lightness in my chest wasn’t grief.
It was a relief.
“Naya,” I said softly.
My only friend, a scout hidden in the rafters, dropped beside me, her eyes burning with fury.
“The rides are ready at the postern gate, Sera. Say the word.”
I lifted the heavy silver Luna crown, a masterpiece of diamonds and wolf-teeth, and set it carelessly on the High Seer’s altar.
“Let them have their fragile miracle,” I said, my voice as cold as the Feral Lands that had raised me. “I’m done playing the pawn.”
I turned my back on the altar, and soon I might be doing the same to the family that had forgotten I was ever their blood. I walked away from the altar, my white dress dragging through the dust.
The remaining guests who still stood there made their way for me and looked at me as I left, but I had nothing to say to them.
I glanced once more at the words on my screen—the you lost from a girl who believed she had finally broken me.
A small, dangerous smile curved my lips.
Maybe she won tonight.
But I wasn’t going to let her keep winning.
Chapter 2
Serafina’s POV
The memory of Kira’s voice was a poison that wouldn’t leave my system.
A week ago, she’d caught me in the gardens, her fingers tracing the petals of a moon-lily as if she already owned the soil it grew from.
“You think that silver, ornate ring makes you the prize?” she’d purred, her eyes, those amber pools the pack mistook for innocence, flickering with a predator’s greed as she stared down at the ring on my finger.
That was the look she gave whenever she wanted something that was mine. And the ring was proof of the treaty between Malakai and me.
“Malakai is signing a treaty, Sera. He isn’t getting married to you because that’s what he wants. We both know it’s because of politics,” she continued smoothly. “He isn’t signing his soul over to a ghost who spent three years rotting in the Feral Lands. A contract can be shredded. A girl like me? I’m the one he’ll always come home to.”
I hadn’t given her the satisfaction of a flinch. I’d simply continued honing my blade, the scrape of metal on stone the only music between us.
“By the time the moon sets on your Binding,” she’d whispered, “you’ll realize that being a true daughter doesn’t mean anything when nobody wants to look at you.”
She’d played her hand perfectly.
I would never have thought she’d use the excuse of being attacked to get him to leave the Great Claiming ceremony.
Now, standing in front of the hall where my coronation was supposed to be held, I watched the others leave one after another until the entire place was empty.
At that moment, a single notification from the same number made my phone buzz.
Glancing down at the screen, I read the message.
‘The crown was never yours, Sera. Check the hospital wing if you want to see who really holds his leash.’
I looked down at the heavy, ornate ring, a piece of history I had bled to return. The symbol that proved I was meant to marry Malakai.
With a numb flick of my fingers, I tossed it into a half-filled goblet of bitter ceremonial wine.
Clink.
It didn’t look like an heirloom anymore. It looked like trash at the bottom of a glass.
“Keep the scrap metal,” I whispered. “I’m done.”
The silence in the Great Hall pressed against my chest like a physical weight. I stood by the massive entrance doors, watching the last of the guests trickle out.
Their hushed whispers and judgmental glances didn’t even register anymore.
One by one, the lights dimmed as the atmosphere grew colder. I was alone in the wreckage of my own life, staring at the spot where Malakai had turned his back on me—for a lie.
“Sera, come on. Let’s go,” a soft voice said beside me.
It was Naya. She was still here, her face etched with worry and anger. She was the only one who hadn’t run toward the hospital the moment Kira’s name was mentioned.
“You should go, Naya,” I said, my voice hollow even to my own ears. “There’s nothing left to see here. The party’s over.”
Naya shook her head, her jaw set in that stubborn way I knew so well. “I’m not leaving you like this. I don’t care if the whole pack ran off to worship at Kira’s feet. I’m staying right here.”
I turned to her, ready to argue, ready to tell her I didn’t need a witness to my shame. I opened my mouth to speak, to say anything that would make her leave for her own safety.
But I froze.
A faint, foul scent drifted through the open doors on the cool night breeze. It wasn’t cedar or forest air. It was sour—putrid—the stench of unwashed fur, old blood, and rot.
Rogues.
My instincts, honed by three years of hell in the Feral Lands, screamed. Before Naya could blink, I lunged forward, grabbing her arm and shoving her behind my back.
My body went taut, my heart rate slowing to a steady, lethal rhythm.
“Sera? What’s wrong? You’re shaking,” Naya whispered, her voice trembling as she sensed the shift in my energy.
“Don’t move,” I commanded, eyes narrowed as I stared into the darkening treeline beyond the hall.
In the shadows of the oaks, I saw them. At first, just two pinpricks of glowing yellow light. Then four. Then eight.
“Sera… what is that?” Naya’s breath hitched as she finally noticed the eyes reflecting the moonlight.
I didn’t blink, my gaze sweeping the woods, calculating.
Five. Ten. Fifteen.
Fifteen rogues.
This wasn’t random. They’d waited for the hall to empty. They were waiting for me.
“Naya, listen to me,” I said quietly. “You need to run. Now. Use the back exit through the kitchens.”
“What? No! I’m not leaving you to fight them alone!” she cried, clutching my silk sleeve.
The first rogue stepped into the light, a mangy, scarred beast that let out a low, guttural snarl. The others followed, a wall of fur and teeth closing in.
“GET OUT!” I roared, flashing molten gold eyes at her. “Go, Naya! Run and don’t look back!”
Startled by the raw power in my voice, she finally broke. She turned and sprinted toward the back of the hall, her footsteps echoing before fading into the darkness.
I stood my ground, fingers curling into claws as the shadows detached themselves from the trees.
One by one, the rogues emerged. They weren’t just mangy, they were arrogant.
They fanned out in a semicircle, blocking the grand entrance. Their leader, a brute with a jagged scar across his snout, let out a raspy chuckle.
“Well, that was a mistake,” he sneered. “You just sent away the only person who could’ve helped you survive a few seconds longer. Brave… or just stupid?”
I didn’t flinch. “I don’t need a witness for what I’m about to do to you.”
The rogues exchanged glances, dark amusement passing between them.
“Actually,” the leader said, stepping closer, “we’re feeling generous tonight. We were told to give you a choice.”
I narrowed my eyes. “A choice?”
“Call one person,” he said. “Put them on speaker. If they agree to come save you, if they say yes, I’m coming—we walk away. We won’t touch a hair on your head.”
I exhaled slowly. “And those were your instructions? To wait for me to make a call?”
He grinned. “As long as they agree. If they don’t…” His eyes gleamed. “Well, we haven’t eaten a wolf in a long time.”
I considered it. Fighting fifteen rogues wasn’t impossible but it wasn’t easy. And this felt like a setup.
Still, part of me needed to know.
Malakai had been adamant about my safety after I returned from the Feral Lands. He’d made me promise, over and over, that if anything felt wrong, I would call him.
‘If anything happens, Sera, you mindlink me or you call. I don’t care where I am. I’ll come.’
I pulled out my phone, fingers steady, and dialed.
The line rang twice.
“Malakai,” I said.
“Serafina?” he snapped. Medical machines beeped in the background. “Where the hell are you? Do you have any idea how disrespectful you’re being? You didn’t even come to the medical wing to see your sister. Are you really that petty over the ceremony?”
“Malakai, listen,” I cut in, eyes locked on the rogues. “I’m in worse condition than Kira. I’m at the Great Hall. I’m surrounded by fifteen rogues, and they’re going to kill me if you don’t come.”
Silence.
Then my mother’s voice sliced through the line.
“Serafina! Shut up and stop being so dramatic!” Luna Valerius hissed. “If rogues were actually there, they’d kill you already. We are not abandoning Kira for your lies. Maybe if they do kill you, we’ll finally have some peace.”
My heart didn’t break.
It turned to stone.
“Malakai?” I whispered, waiting for him to speak.
“Be good, Sera,” he said tiredly. “You heard your mother. Stop making things up. Kira’s heart rate just spiked because she’s worried about you.”
My eyes widened.
Of course.
Kira always comes first.
Chapter 3
Serafina’s POV
He had been the one to tell me to call him if I was ever in danger, and now he refused to believe me.
At that moment, Kira’s voice drifted into the call, soft, high-pitched, and dripping with fake concern.
“Oh, Malakai… maybe she’s telling the truth? Maybe we should check?” she said gently. “I don’t want Sera to be hurt because of me. I’d never forgive myself…”
I heard Malakai sigh, his tone softening instantly as he turned to her.
“Kira, stop. You’re too kind for your own good. You’re the one lying in a hospital bed, and you’re still worrying about her? She isn’t in trouble. She’s just trying to ruin your recovery.”
He came back to the phone, his voice turning icy. “Don’t call this number again tonight, Serafina. Focus on being a daughter for once instead of a nightmare.”
Click.
The line went dead.
I slowly lowered the phone, the silence feeling heavier than before. The rogues were howling now, sounds of pure, mocking triumph.
“Looks like he said no,” the leader laughed, his muscles tensing as he prepared to spring.
I looked at the phone, then at the rogues, and finally let out a long, slow breath. The Broken Princess, the girl who had been trying to win her family back, died at that moment.
“He didn’t just say no,” I said quietly, a dark, terrifying smile spreading across my face as I dropped the phone and reached for the dagger strapped to my thigh. “He gave me exactly what I needed. Permission to stop holding back.”
The rogue leader didn’t wait for another invitation.
With a snarl that echoed off the high marble arches, he lunged, claws extended like obsidian blades.
I didn’t shift. Shifting was too loud, too honorable for a fight like this.
Instead, I stepped into his space, the silk of my ruined wedding gown whispering against stone. I drove the silver dagger upward, burying it beneath his jaw and twisting until I felt the satisfying snap of vertebrae.
He didn’t even have time to whimper before I kicked his lifeless body into the two rogues charging from the left.
“Who’s next?” I asked, wiping a spray of blood from my cheek.
My voice was eerily calm, the kind of calm that only comes when you have absolutely nothing left to lose.
The remaining fourteen didn’t hesitate for long. They realized I wasn’t the fragile daughter they’d been promised.
They attacked all at once, a chaotic blur of fur, teeth, and raw aggression.
Inside my head, Nyx paced, her claws scraping against the walls of my mind.
“Look at them, Sera,” she snarled, her voice a low vibration of malice. “They smell like garbage and arrogance. They think we’re a meal. Let’s show them what kind of wolf they decided to mess with.”
But I had spent three years in the Feral Lands, where even the trees tried to kill you.
These wolves were just animals.
The second rogue lunged. I didn’t retreat—I stepped into him.
My hand caught his wrist, snapping the bone like a dry twig. I pivoted and hurled his panicked weight over the stone railing. His fading howl echoed into the ravine below.
Two more vaulted from the pillars. I dropped low, silk whispering against stone, and sliced their hamstrings in one fluid arc.
They hit the floor, useless and broken.
The fourth was a brute reaching for my throat. I was faster. My hand locked around his windpipe, and I stopped suppressing my strength. It surged like liquid fire.
I squeezed.
The muffled, wet snap was the symphony I needed.
I became a blur of white silk and red gore. I fought like a scavenger, using whatever I could—iron candle stands, silver chalices. I smashed a wine decanter over a rogue’s head and used the jagged glass to open his throat.
“Let them see the monster the ‘True Daughter’ really is,” Nyx laughed.
By the time the count hit twelve, the hall had become a slaughterhouse.
The rogue leader, the one who had mocked me minutes ago lay propped against the base of the altar, clutching a gaping wound in his side.
He stared at me, eyes wide with a terror that bypassed logic.
“Who… what are you?” he wheezed, blood bubbling at his lips. “The information… they said you were weak. A broken Omega who came back with nothing but scars. You aren’t— you can’t be an Omega.”
I stepped over a corpse, my heels clicking against the blood-slicked floor. I looked down at him, my white velvet dress nearly entirely crimson, my hair falling around my face like a dark shroud.
“Is that all?” I asked coolly. “I was just starting to enjoy the attention my mother mentioned.”
His breath hitched. “Answer me! Are you an Omega? How is an Omega doing this?”
I tilted my head, the silver of my dagger catching the dying candlelight.
“And why,” I whispered, the gold in my eyes flaring into something ancient and terrifying, “exactly do you think I owe an answer to a dead man?”
“Because he’s not worth the breath,” Nyx growled. “Finish it.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I didn’t need his confirmation and I certainly didn’t need his mercy.
The last three rogues backed away, tails tucked, eyes wide with terror.
I stood at the center of the hall as silence returned, but this time, it was a silence I had earned.
“I’d say you’ve had quite enough attention for one night,” a deep, resonant voice drawled from the shadows.
I spun, dagger raised, heart hammering against my ribs.
I hadn’t heard him.
I hadn’t smelled him.
How did he get so close?
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