My Mate Let Them Kill Our Pup

The cold from the moonstone staff still buzzed against the base of my skull, a phantom ache that wouldn’t let me forget where I was or what I’d just lost. If I closed my eyes, I could almost smell the iron tang of blood in the font. But shutting them only made the memories surge up harder—the truth-compulsion had opened something in me, and now the past wouldn’t stop spilling out, thick and raw.

She stole more than my brooch—she stole my voice.

I don’t remember the exact moment I realized it. Maybe it was gradual, a slow unthreading of self that started years ago, long before Ethan or Ironveil or the day my body became a battleground. But the first time Victoria Hollow wrapped her arms around me, crying soft and desperate into the crook of my neck, I believed her.

I was eighteen. Still new enough to Ironveil that the packhouse felt like a cage dressed up as a home. The day Victoria came back from boarding school, the whole house was thrown into a fever of preparation. Polished silver, new candles, a roast in the oven that made my stomach twist with longing. Ethan barely said a word that morning—he was always quieter around family, a tension I’d learned to read but never dared to name.

When Victoria finally arrived, it was all at once—door swinging wide, her arms flung around Ethan’s neck, her dark hair spilling down his back. Then she turned to me, eyes shiny with tears, and pressed herself into my chest as if she’d known me her whole life.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she sobbed, her fingers cold on my bare arms. “Ethan told me everything. I’ll love you like a sister, I promise. Like a real one.”

I remember standing there, stiff, feeling the weight of her head against my shoulder. I wanted to believe her. I wanted family so badly it made my teeth ache. For twenty minutes, she cried. For twenty minutes, I patted her back, awkward and hopeful, letting her grief—real or not—bleed into me like ink into water.

Three days later, I found my grandmother’s last letter was missing. I’d kept it hidden, pressed between the pages of my diary, the paper soft with age, still carrying the faintest scent of lavender and smoke. It wasn’t just a letter—it was a goodbye I’d never gotten to say out loud. The words were mine, written by a hand that shook, full of the things I wanted to believe about myself.

I tore the room apart looking for it. Under the mattress, behind the loose brick in the wall, between the dresses in my closet. Nothing. I told myself I’d misplaced it. That the housekeeper had moved it while dusting. That I was being foolish.

A week later, Victoria read it at the dinner table.

She passed it off as a tribute to her father—a poem she claimed she’d written in his honor, words thick with loss and longing. Only I recognized the lines, the way they caught in her throat just the way they’d caught in mine the night I wrote them. No one else noticed. Everyone wept. Even Ethan’s eyes went soft and wet at the edges.

"How poetic," someone said. "You have such a gift, Victoria."

I sat there, hands folded in my lap, nails biting into my palms. I didn’t speak. I didn’t accuse. I just watched her, watched the way her eyes flicked to me, a small, secret smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She wanted me to see. She wanted me to know.

That was only the beginning.

For the next three years, Victoria made a slow, deliberate study of me. At first, it was subtle—little things, little thefts. She started wearing her hair the way I did, loose braids tucked behind her ears, wisps left to frame her face. She borrowed my sweaters, my shoes, the silver hairpin my grandmother had given me. Once, I found her in the hall before a pack gathering, twisting her mouth in the mirror, practicing my smile.

She started mimicking my voice, too. The way I said Ethan’s name when I was tired, the lilt I used when I was nervous. At first, I thought I was imagining it. But the others noticed. They started to laugh about it, calling us twins, sisters in every way that mattered.

Victoria’s favorite game was to sit behind me on the rug, fingers deft and gentle, weaving my hair into intricate braids. She’d hum under her breath—a song I’d taught her, once, before I’d learned better.

One afternoon, she twisted a lock of my hair around her finger, her grip just tight enough to sting. “We're sisters now, Wren. Twins, almost. Won’t it be funny if Ethan one day can’t tell us apart in the dark?”

She said it softly, eyes dead and empty, her hands so careful they could have been loving.

I didn’t answer. I kept my face blank, let her finish the braid, and told myself that if I stayed very still, she might get bored. She never did.

She took my laugh next. My way of tilting my head when I teased Ethan. My habit of tracing the edge of my cup with my thumb when I was thinking. She watched, she learned, she claimed. By the end of that third year, she’d even taken the only thing I thought was mine alone—the mark at the base of my neck, the one Nathan told me to hide. I found her in her room one morning, the neckline of her dress slipping low enough to reveal a new tattoo, fresh and silver and shaped exactly like the flower that bloomed beneath my hairline.

She caught me staring. She smiled, slow and secret.

“Now we match,” she whispered.

The memory flickered, then faded, and I was back in the present—strapped on the treatment table, the cold light glaring down, the weight of the pack’s eyes pressing in from every side. My body felt hollow, scraped clean, as if the staff had scooped out everything that was still mine.

I squeezed my eyes shut. The room faded. In the darkness behind my lids, I could hear Victoria’s voice—a whisper at first, then louder, clearer, cutting through the fog of pain and memory.

She was speaking to Ethan. I couldn’t see her, but I didn’t have to. I knew the shape of her body pressed close to his, the angle of her face turned up toward his ear. I knew the exact cadence she would use—soft, pleading, the way I’d spoken to him three months ago, the night I begged him not to shut me out.

“Please, Ethan,” she murmured, her voice my voice, her words the ones I’d thought were safe. “I know you’re angry, but I can’t breathe when you’re like this. I need you.”

Ethan’s shoulders tensed. For the first time since they’d strapped me down, his brow furrowed—just a flicker, a shadow passing across his face. But he didn’t turn. He didn’t look at me. He let her words—my words—curl around him like smoke, and he kept his eyes fixed on some point beyond the edge of the table.

Victoria kept talking, kept weaving her web. I could feel her watching me, daring me to speak, to break, to scream. I didn’t. I lay there, silent, listening to the echo of my own voice coming from her lips, and wondered how much of me was left for her to take.

The air in the room shifted, heavy with things unsaid. Something in me hardened. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, tasting iron and defiance, and waited. Outside, the wind rattled the old stained glass, and somewhere deep inside the church, a door slammed closed.

I opened my eyes.

Victoria’s eyes met mine across the room—dark, unblinking, full of secrets. She smiled, just a little. And I understood, finally, what it meant to be hollowed out by someone who wanted you not dead, but empty.

The straps on my wrists tightened as Soren checked them, his hands clinical and indifferent. I didn’t fight. I didn’t beg.

I watched Victoria, and I waited for the next thing she would take.