---- Chapter 22 ROSALIE POV: The motel room smelled of stale cigarettes and despair. The floral bedspread was stained, and a single cockroach skittered across the grimy floor. My mother lay on one of the beds, weeping silently into a pillow. This was our new home. A twenty-dollar-a-night hellhole on the edge of the human part of town. We had been cast out, stripped of everything. My so-called friends from the pack wouldn't even answer my calls. We were Omegas now, the lowest of the low, pariahs. | stared at my reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. My designer dress was wrinkled, my makeup was smeared, and my eyes were hollow. All my life, | had been a princess. Now, | was nothing. There was a loud, forceful knock on the door. "Who is it?" | called out, my voice shaking. "Pack Enforcers," a gruff voice answered. "Open up." A new wave of terror washed over me. | opened the door to find two huge warriors from Laurence's pack, the Black Moon emblem stark on their black uniforms. ---- "Rosalie Harris?" one of them asked, though it wasn't a question. | nodded numbly. "You are under arrest for the conspiracy and murder of a pack member's relative and collusion with Rogues." They slapped silver cuffs on my wrists. The metal seared my skin, a white-hot agony that made me scream. It was a pain that didn't just burn the flesh; it burned the wolf within, a deep, soul-level torment. The trial was a blur. Laurence presented the evidence. The bank transfers. The recordings of my orders to the Rogues. There was no defense. | was found guilty before | even opened my mouth. The sentence was read out by a grim-faced elder. "Fifteen years in the Silence Mines." A collective gasp went through the council hall. The Silence Mines were the most brutal punishment imaginable. Deep underground, where the pull of the moon was weakest, the mines were laced with silver dust that suppressed a wolf's healing and strength. It was a slow, living death. Now, | am here. Inmate 734. My long, beautiful hair has been shaved off. My manicured nails are broken and black with grime. | spend eighteen hours a day swinging a pickaxe, my muscles screaming, the silver dust in the air making every ---- breath a struggle. The other prisoners, hardened criminals and Rogues, sneer at the former princess. They push me, steal my meager rations, and whisper threats in the dark. There is a single television in the common area, our only link to the outside world. Tonight, it was tuned to a human news channel broadcasting from a gala in Paris. And then | saw her. Josie. She was walking a red carpet, bathed in the flash of a thousand cameras. She wore a gown of shimmering silver- blue silk that looked like captured moonlight. The headline on the screen read: "Designer of the Year: Josie Watson's 'Moon Goddess's Tear' Gown Takes Top Prize at International Emerging Designer Awards." She was radiant. Powerful. Respected. Her white wolf aura, once suppressed and hidden, now shone around her like a halo. She was everything | had ever wanted to be. Everything | had tried to steal. Standing beside her, his hand possessively on her waist, was my brother, Chris. He looked at her with an adoration that made my stomach clench with a jealousy so fierce it was a physical pain. A guard shoved me from behind. "Get back to work, 734! The rocks won't mine themselves!" ---- | stumbled back to my corner, the image of Josie's triumphant face burned into my mind. Here in the dark, covered in filth and forgotten by the world, all | had left was my hatred. It was a cold, small fire in the crushing silence of the mines.