The severed head of Alpha Silas lay in the grey slush, a grisly testament to the death of the old world. His eyes, once full of a cold, calculating cruelty, were now merely glassy marbles reflecting the violet sky. I stared down at the man who had sired me, shunned me, and finally sold me. There should have been a surge of grief, or perhaps a burst of triumphant cathargy, but there was only a hollow, ringing silence in my soul. Silas was a relic, and in the new world Selene had built, relics were meant to be broken.
"Do you see it now, Elara?" Selene's voice drifted through the black mist, melodic and mocking. She sat perched atop her bone-beast, her silver crown gleaming like a circle of frozen starlight. "Father was a man of the earth. He believed in borders, in treaties, in the slow, grinding politics of the packs. He was a coward. He feared the very blood that ran in his veins. So, I did him a favor. I relieved him of the burden of breathing."
