Born beneath an omen-lit sky, Layla is no ordinary wolf. She is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy—a child blessed by the Moon Goddess with the power to heal, resurrect, and stand undefeated. But such power comes at a cost.  

Her birth shakes the foundations of the White Shen Pack, a territory ruled by treachery. Her father, Alpha Rhys, and his lover, Luna Catherine, fear what she might become. To protect their rule, they orchestrate the massacre of those who know the prophecy, leaving Layla’s mother, Maelis, cursed with a wasting sickness. Thought dead at birth, Layla is hidden away, cast into a life of cruelty and deception.  

Years later, she is nothing more than a shadow in her own pack—a girl ridiculed for her inability to shift, despised by the very people who should have protected her. The only light in her world is Kain, the Beta’s son, her first love and the boy who once saved her from years of torment. But love, too, becomes a weapon when Kain betrays her in the worst way—murdering her siblings and delivering her to her enemies.  

As punishment for crimes she did not commit, Layla is thrown into darkness, her fate sealed when she is offered as a gift to the most feared rogue in existence—the cursed Beast King.  

For two thousand years, the Beast King has sought a way to break the Moon Goddess’s wrath, his soul trapped in a monstrous body, his humanity slipping away. When Layla is thrown before him, he senses something he has never encountered before: a power strong enough to shatter his curse… or doom them both.  

But Layla is not a girl to be broken. She has her own vengeance to claim, her own past to uncover, and the Beast King may just be the key to it all.  

Bound by fate and cursed by the past, Layla and the Beast King must navigate a world that seeks to control them, betrayals that run deeper than blood, and a prophecy that threatens to consume them both.  

Will she rise as the weapon they tried to forge, or will she become the force that shatters their world?

They've never heard the kind that crawls into your bones and whispers that you're nothing.


Barefoot and half-naked in the woods, dried leaves clinging to my skin, my legs trembling with every step. My body, still reeling from the violent swell of heat, moved on instinct, but my mind... it was gone. Detached. Somewhere between memory and madness.


I saw my brother's smile in the curve of the trees. My sister's laugh in the rustling leaves. And Kain's voice...


For two full days, I lived in the forest like an animal, crouched beneath roots, shaking through the last waves of my heat with no comfort, no warmth, no hands to hold me. I clawed the earth like it could offer answers. I howled silently into the wind, and the wind howled back.


On the third morning, I woke up to the sound of boots crunching twigs.


"Found her," someone said, as if I were a lost dog. "She looks half-feral."


Felissa stepped forward, her lip curling in triumph. "Of course she does. She's nothing but a curse in human skin."


I didn't flinch when the first guard grabbed me by the arm, yanking me to my feet. I didn't fight when they dragged me back to the estate. Through the village. Through the crowd of pack members who stared and whispered like I wasn't even real.


"I heard she tried to seduce the Beta."


Each word was another stone against my ribs.


When we reached the main house, Luna Catherine stood on the steps with folded arms and a smile that chilled the marrow in my bones.


"Chain her," she said. "We'll deal with her properly before the King arrives."


Past the kitchens. Past the servants' wing. Down the stone staircase that led to the old war dungeons—the place where traitors were once kept. I'd only ever heard of it in whispers.


They shackled me to the wall with wolfsbane-laced cuffs, raw iron biting into my wrists. The cold floor beneath me was damp and unforgiving. My body gave out before I could beg it not to.


Chapter 19 - Silence