Chapter 30: Soul-Scalding, Spirit-Spitting Sermon

The flame had two settings: life-changing revelation and emotional demolition. The Goddess apparently did not believe in in-between.

Nova seriously wondered how this helped with repopulating Helix after the Great War. Because it seemed like plenty of worthy women were getting turned away.

Why put them through an arena and a leaderboard and a twenty-mile run just to tell them no at the finish line? It was cold as hell and felt intentional. Nova was not in a position to ask the Goddess for a design review but she was filing the feedback internally.

The hits kept coming. One woman got darkness and her knees buckled and two others had to help her off the hill.

Another woman stood at the flame for three extra seconds, willing it to respond through sheer determination, before the priestess touched her shoulder and she turned away with her hand over her mouth. Holding the sound in. Nova knew that gesture. She had made it a thousand times. The hand over the mouth that says I will not let you hear me break.

But by the three hundredth draftee, the fire was out more than it was on, so it was less of a surprise. When it did light, the premium colors had dried up. Ruby left the building around contestant one hundred fifty. Sapphire had made exactly one appearance like a celebrity cameo and then vanished.

By the four hundredth, if the fire could have yawned, it would have. Maybe one in every twenty women would get a flame at all. When it did work, it would burn a dim emerald in comparison to what it had been earlier. Then it would die immediately after like it was exhausted from the effort of caring.

As the line moved, the girls around Nova started to crack. A few started whispering.

"What if it goes dark for me?"

"Then our wolves will run the twenty miles together."

"There’s no way it’s going to light for me."

"Our packs made arrangements already for this reason."

It was the most human thing Nova had witnessed all night. She understood.

Her turn was coming. She could feel it in the shortening distance between her and the hill. Her pulse had moved into her throat and set up camp there. She did not expect a flame. She did not expect a color. She expected darkness and a long walk and the specific silence that follows when a fire looks at you and decides you are not worth burning for. She had been preparing for that silence her entire life. She was ready. She was not ready. She was both, simultaneously, and neither was winning.

By the time the line reached Nova’s number, the fire hadn’t lit since around the five hundredth draftee who went and Nova was the five hundred and forty-first.

Nova approached the flame.

Alpha Starborne’s eyes were drilling a hole into the side of her skull. She could feel it the way you feel a laser pointer on your skin, hot, focused, and entirely intentional. He wanted her to know he was watching. She knew.

She could also feel the eyes of the Thunderfang who had helped her earlier. The man who had carried her at Alpha speed, held her in his lap, kissed her knuckles, and wiped the tear from her cheek with his thumb. He was standing with his pack. It definitely looked like he was the Alpha or the Alpha’s brother because two of them were standing side by side, where the Alpha would stand. She wasn’t sure which one he was. But both of them were watching her with an intensity that made her face flush.

Maverick Emberclaw’s gaze was the fourth point of heat. The one who was maybe going to buy her. The one whose sister had just carried her through a forest on fire.

Four men. Four sets of eyes. All radiating something that had weight and temperature and intent.

Nova didn’t let her eyes linger on any of them. Her give-a-damn tank had been running on fumes.

The High Priestess looked at Nova’s silver cuffs. Then her face slot-machined through five emotions and jackpotted on the worst one. Surprise. Recognition. Denial. Contempt. But revulsion took the final spot.

"YOU DARE APPROACH THE SACRED FLAME OF THE GODDESS WEARING THE CHAINS OF SUBJUGATION?"

Her voice carried across the clearing like a whip crack. Just a soul-scalding, spirit-spitting sermon from a holy woman who had left her compassion at home.

"SILVER IS AN ABOMINATION ON THIS SACRED GROUND. THERE IS NO PLACE FOR YOU HERE."

Nova blinked, stunned for a moment. This woman had seemed so kind with the other rejected women. Public slave hatred wasn’t new for Nova. Granted, this was very public because every important wolf in Helix was watching. All they were missing was a jumbotron.

"YOU ARE NOT AMONG HER DAUGHTERS. YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF THE GROUND THEY WALK ON."

Those words landed in Nova’s chest more than she would care to admit. Being told she wasn’t one of the Moon Goddess’s daughters was something she already knew. She had always known that. But hearing it spoken aloud on sacred ground by a woman who served the Goddess, in front of every wolf who mattered, cracked something in the seal she’d built around that truth and for one terrible second the grief behind it rushed forward and pressed against her lungs so hard she forgot how to inhale.

Her expression cracked just for a second. The Goddess really didn’t want her here. She understood. The message had been sent.

Nova gave a small sad smile that cost her something. She felt it leave. A small, real, honest thing that she handed to a woman who didn’t deserve it, and the giving of it hurt more than the words that came before it because the words were cruel but the smile was kind and kindness when you’re breaking is the most expensive thing a person can produce.

Then she returned her face to neutral and held out her hand for the woman to prick her finger, steady, open, palm up.

The priestess looked at her open hand the way you look at something dead on the bottom of your shoe, like it was plague-carrying, holy-water-spoiling, fuck-word-generating trash.

Nova left it out. She could feel the eyes of every woman behind her and every wolf in front of her and all around her. None of that changed the position of her hand. It was up. It was open. It was going to stay that way even though every muscle in her forearm was fighting a tremor. She did not have a slave army of one thousand women salute her to be a coward right here.