The mind-link hit me like a physical blow, tearing through my consciousness with raw panic and desperation.

*Luna! Emergency at the eastern border! Rogue attack! The pups—Emma—*

I dropped the teacup I'd been holding, porcelain shattering against the kitchen floor as Gamma Reynolds' frantic voice echoed in my mind. My wolf, Celeste, surged forward instantly, her maternal instincts screaming danger.

*Luke!* I reached out through our mate bond, but found only silence. Not the comfortable quiet of distance, but the deliberate, impenetrable wall that had become all too familiar lately.

*Alpha Anderson is unavailable,* came Beta Marcus's strained response when I tried the pack link. *He's dealing with Nathan's emergency at the clinic.*

Nathan. Always Nathan. While my daughter played at the borders where rogues could strike.

I didn't waste another second. Shifting mid-stride as I burst through the back door, my wolf form hit the ground running. Celeste's powerful legs ate up the distance to the eastern border, her heart hammering against her ribs as we raced through the forest. Pine branches whipped past us, but nothing could match the speed of a mother's desperation.

The metallic scent of blood reached us first, followed by the acrid stench of fear and death. My wolf's enhanced hearing picked up the sounds before we crested the hill—sobbing, frantic voices, the terrible silence where children's laughter should have been.

I shifted back to human form as I reached the clearing, my bare feet hitting the bloodstained grass. The scene before me was every parent's nightmare. Three pack warriors stood in a protective semicircle around a group of trembling pups, their clothes torn and faces streaked with tears. Gamma Reynolds knelt beside a small, motionless form near the treeline.

Emma.

My legs nearly gave out as I stumbled forward, pushing past the warriors who tried to intercept me. "No, no, no," I whispered, dropping to my knees beside my daughter's broken body.

Emma lay crumpled against the base of an old oak tree, her favorite yellow dress torn and stained with blood. Her dark hair, so much like mine, was matted with dirt and leaves. But her eyes—those beautiful hazel eyes that had always lit up when she saw me—were open and aware, though growing dimmer with each labored breath.

"Mama?" Her voice was barely a whisper, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. "I called for Daddy... where is he?"

I gathered her into my arms, feeling how light she'd become, how fragile. "I'm here, baby. Mama's here." My voice cracked as I smoothed her hair back from her face, trying to hide my horror at the claw marks across her small chest.

"The bad wolves came," she whispered, her hand finding mine with trembling fingers. "I tried to be brave like Daddy taught me. But he always comes for Nathan when there's danger... why didn't he come for me?"

The question shattered something inside my chest. I pressed my lips to her forehead, tasting salt from my own tears. "You are so brave, sweetheart. The bravest little wolf I know."

"Will Daddy be proud of me?" Her eyes were struggling to focus now, that terrible glassy look creeping in.

"So proud," I choked out. "He loves you so much, Emma. We both do."

But even as I said the words, I knew they were lies. Luke wasn't here. He was miles away, tending to Zoey's son while his own daughter bled out in my arms.

Emma's breathing grew more shallow, each breath a monumental effort. "Mama... it hurts."

"I know, baby. I know." I held her closer, rocking slightly as if she were still my tiny pup. "Just close your eyes. Mama's got you."

Her small hand squeezed mine one last time. "Tell Daddy... tell him I waited for him."

The light faded from her eyes like a candle being snuffed out. The weight of her went completely still in my arms, and with it, something fundamental inside me died too.

I don't know how long I sat there, holding her cooling body, whispering apologies and lullabies she could no longer hear. The other pups had been taken away, the warriors maintaining a respectful distance. But I couldn't let go. This was my baby, my heart walking around outside my body, and now she was gone.

The sound of running footsteps finally broke through my grief-stricken haze. Luke's scent reached me a moment before his voice did.

"Isabella! I came as soon as I could—" He stopped abruptly as he took in the scene, his face going white. "Emma?"

I looked up at him then, this man who had sworn to protect our family, who had chosen another woman's child over his own daughter's life. His hair was disheveled, his clothes smelling of the clinic and Zoey's perfume.

"She's dead," I said simply, my voice hollow. "She called for you, Luke. She waited for you to save her, just like you always save Nathan."

He stumbled forward, reaching for Emma's still form, but I pulled her closer to my chest. "Don't," I whispered. "You don't get to touch her now. Not when it's too late."

The pack house felt different in the days following Emma's funeral. The walls seemed to echo with her absence, every corner holding memories that now cut like glass. Luke moved through our home like a ghost, his grief genuine but hollow—the remorse of a man who had lost something he'd never properly valued while he had it.

I found myself in Beta Marcus's office three days after we'd laid our daughter to rest, my hands steady as I placed a steaming cup of coffee before him. The dark circles under his eyes mirrored my own, but where mine held a cold, calculating fury, his showed only exhaustion and growing concern.

"Isabella," he said carefully, "are you certain you want to review these communication logs? It might be... difficult."

I settled into the chair across from his desk, my spine straight, my voice level. "I need to know, Marcus. I need to understand exactly how my daughter died alone while her father was elsewhere."

He hesitated, then pulled up the pack's internal communication system on his computer. The screen flickered to life, displaying weeks of mind-link records, emergency protocols, and priority alerts. What I saw there made my blood run cold.

Message after message showed a clear pattern. Every time Emma had needed something—a scraped knee during training, a fever in the middle of the night, even simple requests for her father's attention—the communications had been mysteriously delayed or rerouted through secondary channels. Meanwhile, Nathan's every minor concern had been flagged as urgent, sent directly to Luke with priority alerts.

"Look at this," I whispered, pointing to an entry from two weeks before Emma's death. "Emma fell from the climbing tree during pup training. The alert was sent to Luke at 2:47 PM. But see this timestamp? It wasn't delivered to his mind-link until 6:23 PM. Four hours later."

Marcus leaned forward, his frown deepening. "That's... that's not normal protocol. Emergency alerts should be instantaneous."

"Now look at this." I scrolled down to an entry from the same day. "Nathan complained of a stomachache at 3:15 PM. The alert reached Luke's mind-link at 3:16 PM. One minute."

We continued scrolling, and the pattern became undeniable. Emma's needs were consistently deprioritized, delayed, or buried in routine communications. Nathan's every whimper was treated as a crisis requiring immediate Alpha intervention.

"Someone's been manipulating the communication system," Marcus said, his voice tight with anger. "This level of systematic interference... it would require administrative access."

I felt something cold and sharp settle in my chest. "Who has administrative access besides you and Luke?"

"Only pack family members and... oh." His face went pale. "Zoey was granted temporary access when she arrived. Luke said she needed it to coordinate Nathan's medical appointments and schooling."

The pieces clicked into place with horrifying clarity. Every delayed message, every missed opportunity for Luke to be there for Emma—it had all been orchestrated. Zoey hadn't just stolen my mate's attention; she had systematically erased my daughter from his awareness.

"The day Emma died," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Show me the emergency alert."

Marcus's hands trembled slightly as he pulled up the fatal communication. There it was—Gamma Reynolds' frantic alert about the rogue attack, timestamped at 2:33 PM. But the delivery log showed something that made my vision blur with rage.

"Blocked," I read aloud. "Alert blocked by administrative override at 2:34 PM. Reason: Non-critical training exercise."

My daughter had died because Zoey Carr had decided her emergency wasn't worth interrupting Luke's attention to Nathan's routine check-up.

"Isabella," Marcus said softly, "what do you want to do with this information?"

I stood slowly, my decision crystallizing with the cold certainty of winter frost. Emma's funeral had been yesterday. Luke had sobbed over her grave, promising to be a better father, never knowing that his chance had been stolen by the woman he'd chosen to protect.

"I want copies of everything," I said. "Every blocked message, every delayed alert, every piece of evidence that shows how Zoey manipulated the system."

"Are you going to confront Luke?"

I walked to the window, looking out at the pack grounds where Emma would never play again. "Eventually. But first, I'm going to do something else."

Marcus waited, sensing the shift in my demeanor—the transformation from grieving mother to something far more dangerous.

"I'm going to reject the mate bond," I said simply. "And I'm going to make sure Luke signs the papers himself."

The first photograph came down on a Tuesday morning, while Luke was at the clinic tending to Nathan's supposed allergic reaction to breakfast cereal. I stood on the stepladder in our living room, carefully lifting the silver-framed wedding photo from its place of honor above the mantelpiece. Our younger selves smiled back at me—Luke in his ceremonial Alpha suit, me in the flowing white dress that had belonged to his grandmother. We looked so happy, so certain of our forever.

I placed it face-down in the donation box I'd positioned by the front door.

Celeste whimpered in my mind as I moved to the next frame—our mating ceremony, surrounded by the entire pack. Luke's hand rested possessively on my waist, his eyes bright with pride and love. That man felt like a stranger now.

"Thirty days," I whispered to myself, adding the frame to the box. "Twenty-nine now."

By the time Luke returned that evening, reeking of Zoey's vanilla perfume and full of apologies about Nathan's 'emergency,' I had removed seventeen photographs. In their place, I'd hung portraits of Emma—her first day of school, her seventh birthday party, her bright smile as she held up a drawing of our family. The walls now told a different story, one of a mother's love and a daughter's light.

Luke paused in the doorway, his brow furrowing as he scanned the room. "Did you... redecorate?"

"I'm honoring our daughter's memory," I said simply, not looking up from the book I was pretending to read. "I thought you'd approve."

He nodded absently, already reaching for his phone as it buzzed with another message. Probably Zoey, wondering if Nathan needed a midnight check for imaginary symptoms.

"That's... that's good, Isabella. Emma deserves to be remembered."

But he was already walking away, heading upstairs to shower off the scent of his betrayal. He hadn't even noticed that our mating portrait was gone.

The next morning found me at Emma's grave, my arms full of her favorite things. I'd stopped by the toy store at dawn, buying every item that had once made her eyes light up—the stuffed unicorn she'd begged for last Christmas, the set of colored pencils she'd used to draw our family, the little wooden wolf figurine she'd carried everywhere until she'd lost it in the woods.

The morning mist clung to the headstone as I arranged the toys carefully around the fresh earth. Each placement felt like a prayer, a promise that her mother would never forget what mattered most.

"I'm going to make this right, baby girl," I whispered, kneeling beside the grave. "Daddy chose to protect the wrong child, but Mama's going to make sure he understands what that cost us."

A cardinal landed on the headstone, its red feathers bright against the gray marble. Emma had always said cardinals were messages from the Moon Goddess. I chose to believe she was telling me to be strong.

"Luna Isabella?"

I turned to find Sarah Mitchell, one of the pack mothers, approaching with obvious hesitation. Her expression held the uncomfortable mix of sympathy and judgment that I'd grown accustomed to seeing.

"Sarah." I stood, brushing dirt from my knees.

"I... we've been worried about you. You've missed the last three Luna council meetings, and the charity fundraiser planning committee is wondering when you'll return to your duties."

The audacity of it hit me like a physical blow. "My duties?"

"Well, yes. The pack needs its Luna, especially during difficult times. People are starting to talk about your... absence from pack responsibilities."

Something cold and sharp crystallized in my chest. "Let me understand this correctly, Sarah. My daughter has been dead for less than a week, and you're concerned about fundraiser planning?"

She flinched at my tone, but pressed on. "Of course we're all grieving Emma's loss, but the pack—"

"Where was the pack when Emma needed protection?" I stepped closer, my voice dropping to the dangerous quiet that made even Alphas pause. "Where were all these concerned pack members when she was calling for her father during a rogue attack?"

"Luna, that's not fair. Alpha Anderson was—"

"Alpha Anderson was playing house with his first love while his daughter bled out alone." The words came out like shards of ice. "So tell me, Sarah, where exactly has our devoted Alpha been during these 'difficult times'? Have you seen him at any council meetings? Any pack events? Or has he been too busy with Zoey and Nathan to remember he has other responsibilities?"

Sarah's face went pale. "I... that's not... we shouldn't question the Alpha's—"

"But you'll question mine?" I laughed, the sound bitter and sharp. "My daughter is dead, Sarah. She died because the people who were supposed to protect her chose to protect someone else instead. So forgive me if I'm not particularly concerned about your fundraiser right now."

I turned back to Emma's grave, dismissing her with the gesture. "When you find our Alpha, you can ask him about his duties. I'll be here, doing mine—remembering the child everyone else seems eager to forget."

Sarah retreated without another word, but I could feel her shock and uncertainty radiating behind her. Good. Let her carry that discomfort back to the pack. Let them all start asking the questions they should have been asking all along.

Twenty-eight days left.