Three days later, the Vanderbilt Club.

I didn’t want to come. But my mother was right: hiding is a sign of weakness.

I wore a simple black slip dress, with nothing but the delicate diamond chain Julian had given me years ago—the same one Liam had called “cheap,” but the only thing I’d clung to for comfort during the electroshock treatments.

Liam was still the center of attention, his arm around Sophia, his voice deliberately loud. “A real man takes action! Sophia and I are already married—she’s my legal wife now, the future Luna of the Blackwood pack!”

Sophia nestled against him, a fresh bite mark on her neck glaring under the lights. She twisted the sapphire ring on her finger, a Foster family heirloom that should have been mine, its inner moon sigil flashing.

“Liam defied the entire pack for me,” she said in a sickly-sweet voice. “I will cherish him.”

Their cronies laughed and flattered them, but their eyes kept darting toward me.

I sipped a non-alcoholic drink, trying to disappear. But a sharp pain from my White Wolf’s Eye told me I was being watched.

Sophia had spotted me. Her pupils constricted for a second before she put on a mask of fake concern.

“Liam,” she whispered, her fingers tightening on his arm, “Elena’s over there… Do you think she’s not over it?”

Liam looked at me, his eyes cold, his Alpha presence washing over me like a suffocating tide. “Still hanging around? Elena, this is pathetic.”

“Being invited to a gala is ‘hanging around’?” I met his gaze calmly. “Did the club change its name to Blackwood?”

Sophia picked up a glass of dark red wine and walked over with a smile. “Since it’s a coincidence, why not drink this as a toast to us? Drink it, and we’ll believe you.”

The wine in the glass had a strange glint under the lights.

A searing pain shot through my White Wolf’s Eye—a warning! There was something in the wine, something dark and viscous, like swamp mud.

“I’m allergic to certain grapes,” she added, her eyes gleaming with a snake-like greed.

She wanted to steal my power. It was a voodoo potion, designed to weaken a wolf’s soul and create a sinister connection.

I reached for the glass—

With an expert flick of her wrist, she tilted it.

The dark red liquid splashed across the front of her expensive gown, staining it instantly. At the same time, a dense rash of red welts erupted across her exposed skin like poisonous vines!

She shrieked and clutched her chest, but the rash was real—the voodoo had backfired on her.

“Elena!” Liam roared, his Alpha pressure crashing down on me like a mountain. “You’re fucking dead!”

“I didn’t touch—”

“Shut up!” he snarled, scooping Sophia into his arms, his eyes murderous. “Kyle!”

His cousin, a Beta wolf named Kyle, stepped forward with a lecherous grin.

“Hold her down,” Liam ordered, his gaze fixed on a champagne tower. “She likes to spill drinks? Let her have her fill.”

Four hands grabbed me from behind, pinning me to the sofa. Kyle’s foul aura surrounded me as he grabbed my chin, forcing my mouth open.

Ice-cold champagne poured down my throat.

One glass, two, three… The bubbles burned, and the alcohol rushed to my head. My wolf soul struggled, but it was suppressed by the presence of multiple Alphas.

Twenty glasses. My stomach cramped.

Thirty. My vision blurred. All I could see was Liam’s indifferent profile and Sophia’s triumphant smirk—she was staring at my neck, as if calculating how much blood she needed.

Just as the fortieth glass was being forced down, a commotion erupted at the entrance.

A voice cut through the noise, quiet but as sharp as a blade of ice, silencing everyone.

“Get your filthy hands off her.”

Everyone turned.

Julian Thorne was standing in the doorway.

He had come back early.