Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Ashes and Ruin

It started with a letter. Not a knock and not a scream. Not even with a whisper through the pack link. Just parchment and poison sealed with a crest that used to mean justice.

Lily didn’t open it. Her fingers already knew the weight of ruin. The envelope has a formal parchment manuscript sealed with the crimson emblem of the Crescent Moon Judiciary. The kind of letter no Beta wanted to receive. And it didn't come by accident.

Lily found it on the breakfast table, resting atop the morning reports. Her fingers brushed the wax seal. Cold. Heavy. Her father entered the room with his usual measured steps. But when he saw the envelope, he stopped.

“What is this?” she asked. His silence confirmed what her gut already knew. Trouble had arrived.

The Crescent Moon Trading Company was the legacy of the Rowan family. It spanned three generations, caravans, ships, and bonded vaults under their name. Silver, grain, furs, medicinal herbs all managed with precision and discipline. Her father ran it with honor. Her mother handled negotiations. Lily, until the rejection, was being groomed to lead.

Until now. A formal investigation. Claims of smuggling rogue goods. Tampering with transport manifests. Falsified trading routes. Every word in the letter was an accusation wrapped in formality.

“They’re saying we’ve been aiding outlaw packs,” her father muttered, reading the letter again. “This is political. Fabricated.” Lily didn’t ask who. She already knew.

Three days later, government enforcers stormed the company headquarters. They arrived without warning, without restraint. Every safe was opened. Every record seized.

Wolves in uniform tore through storage rooms, shouting orders and snapping photographs. Lily stood outside the gates, flanked by her mother and two legal advisors. They weren’t allowed inside. Papers flew past the windows.

Chaos danced behind glass. Her father was escorted out in silver cuffs. The moment hit like a blade. The man who once held the eastern trade under his command now stood shackled, silent, eyes hollow.

Lily rushed forward. “Father—”

“Don’t,” he said, voice brittle. “Don’t make a scene.”

They shoved him into the back of a black van. No trial. No bail. Just disappearance.

The crowd gathered fast. Faces she knew. Faces she dined with. Faces who once toasted her name at council events. None of them stepped forward. Not one.

The company folded within the week. Bank accounts frozen. Properties seized. Affiliates terminated their contracts overnight. Rowan Transport ceased to exist. Investors pulled out. Cargo vanished. Goods looted.

The estate itself was suddenly under surveillance. Wolves in grey uniforms lingered near their gates. The staff quit in waves. Two of their cousins packed and left without a goodbye. Even the gardeners stopped coming.

Lily watched it all fall apart with dry eyes. Grief had stopped showing itself as tears. Now it came as nausea, as numbness, as long silences and shorter nights.

Her mother barely slept. Pale. Starved. Moving through rooms like a ghost tethered to a dream that no longer made sense.

“I should’ve seen it coming,” she said one night.

“No one could’ve.”

Her mother looked at her. “You did.”

Lily didn’t deny it.

The Council remained silent. The judiciary refused to share trial dates. Her father's lawyers were denied access to evidence. Witnesses pulled out. All the strings once tied to the Rowan name now hung loose or burned entirely.

At the center of it all: Jace.

He never said a word publicly. But whispers trickled in from reliable places. That the new Alpha was ‘cleaning up corruption.’ That the Rowan family had ‘served its time.’ That ‘new leadership’ was required.

He never needed to issue an order. He just had to step back and let the fire spread.

Lily went to the council chambers herself. Dressed in dark grey, hair pinned back, posture ironclad. She asked for a hearing. She was denied.

Not enough evidence. No standing authority. Family bias. One Elder, Elder Tavian, paused before rejecting her. He didn’t look at her with disgust. He looked at her with pity. And that hurt worse.

One evening, she sat close to the window watching as dusk settled over the ruins of her family’s power. The wind carried the scent of ash from the woods nearby. Somewhere, a fire burned. A celebration, maybe. Or just wolves being wolves.

Then came the knock.

Three slow raps on the study door. Her mother answered. A courier stepped in, eyes downcast, arms full.

Letters. Documents. Official seals. All deliveries are meant for the Rowans. All returned unopened by former allies. Each envelope is a final nail.

Each seal was a memory of what they had lost. Lily sat at the desk and stared at them. She didn’t open any. She didn’t have to.

The last to turn were the Ashdowns. A family bound to them by blood and treaty. Their eldest son, once engaged to Lily’s cousin, announced his withdrawal from the bond. The message was sent through a public notice. Formal. Humiliating.

There were no more illusions. No more loyalties. Lily walked the estate in the rain that night, barefoot. She crossed the gravel paths, letting the cold numb her toes, her hands, her thoughts.

The ash in the air reminded her that they were now burned down and reduced to an irrelevant family.

Lily sat on the stone bench close to the coconut tree standing at the back of their building. The one her grandfather planted. The one who stood through storms.

She thought about her father, locked away in some dark cell. She thought about Jace, sitting on a throne built from other men's ruin. She thought about the silence from the council.

She whispered into the night, “You burned my name, Jace. But you forgot one thing…”

She opened her palm and dropped the broken family crest into the dirt.

“Ashes make it easier to rise unseen.”

A howl echoed from a distance, low, deliberate, and unfamiliar. It was not from the Crescent Moon pack.

She stood slowly, eyes narrowing. Someone had crossed the boundary. The person is not to mourn but to find her. And this time, they didn’t come with pity. They came with purpose.