Seraphina's POV:

Dr. Vance’s words sent the sterile white corridor tilting around me. I reached out a hand, my palm slapping against the cool stone of the wall to keep myself upright. The world narrowed to a roaring in my ears.

"Is he... is he conscious?" I managed to choke out, my voice a stranger's rasp. "I need to see him."

A complicated expression, something like pity, flickered across the doctor's exhausted face. "His consciousness fades in and out. He has been calling a name..."

A fragile, impossible sliver of hope ignited in the wreckage of my chest. Was he calling for me? After ten years of silence, of being disowned, did some part of him still want his daughter?

"He's calling for Celeste."

The voice was like a whip crack in the tense silence. It came from behind me, laced with a venom so pure it was breathtaking. "Not you. Never you, you filthy little thief."

My body went rigid. I turned slowly, as if moving through water. My brother, Ethan Blackwood, stood there, blocking the hallway. He was taller than I remembered, broader, his presence radiating a raw, aggressive power that sucked the air from the space around us. The look in his eyes was the unforgiving cold of a winter storm.

Beside him, our mother, Luna Genevieve, stood like a statue carved from grief. Her face was a ruin of its former beauty, her eyes hollowed out by sorrow. She looked at me, and I saw a flicker of pain, of disappointment, but she said nothing to stop her son. Her silence was its own condemnation.

Ethan took a step toward me, then another. The sheer force of his Alpha-heir aura pressed down on me, making it hard to breathe.

A cruel, humorless smile twisted his lips. He glanced around at the watching elders, his voice ringing with theatrical contempt. "Well, look what the cat dragged in. The great shame of the Blackwood family. I'm surprised you have the nerve to show your face on this land again."

His words were lashes, striking me across the face in front of everyone. The heat of shame burned my cheeks.

"I came to see Father," I bit out, my teeth clenched.

"Father?" Ethan laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "You dare call him that? After what you did? You destroyed Celeste's life, you shattered her bond with her mate and forced her to go Rogue! Do you have any idea what she's endured out there alone for ten years because of you?"

The mention of Celeste was a fresh stab of guilt. I didn't remember what happened that night, not really, but I remembered her pain. That was real.

Ethan's rage seemed to feed on my silence. "He's in that bed because of you! The shame you brought on this family wore him down, year after year! It weakened him! And now, some enemy strikes, and you show up at his deathbed to torment him one last time!"

He was blaming me for this, too. For the attack. It was the most poisonous accusation he could have possibly made.

*We did nothing!* Lyra snarled in my head, a furious, desperate denial. *Tell him!*

But I couldn't. I had no proof, no memories to offer as a shield. My silence was my confession.

Ethan pointed a trembling finger at the closed door of the ICU. "He wants to see his daughter! His pure, honorable daughter, Celeste! The one whose life you ruined! Not some... some *thing* lower than an Omega whore!"

That broke me. I could withstand the insults, the blame for Celeste. But the thought that my father, in his last moments, wanted anyone but me… that was a pain too deep to bear.

My body swayed, and the faces around me blurred. The blood drained from my face, leaving my skin feeling cold and tight.

Dr. Vance stepped forward. "Ethan, this isn't the time—"

"Quiet!" Ethan snapped, his voice cracking with the authority of the next Alpha. "This is pack business. Family business. Stay out of it."

He turned his furious gaze back to me, and for a second, I saw murder in his eyes. "If you hadn't been carrying another Alpha's pup in your belly, the elders would have had you put down like a sick dog ten years ago. Don't think for a second we've forgotten that."

His words ripped open the old wound, the humiliating truth of my survival.

I lifted my head, hot tears finally blurring my vision, and met his hateful stare. "Let me see him, Ethan," I begged, my voice breaking. "Please."

My plea didn't soften him. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire.

His hand shot out, his fingers closing around my upper arm in a brutal grip. The strength in his hand was immense, threatening to crush the bone.

"You think you're in a position to ask for *anything*?" he snarled, his face inches from mine.

I looked past him, at the elders, at my mother, at the doctor. They just watched. No one moved. No one spoke up for me.

In that moment, a cold so profound it felt like death itself settled deep in my bones. I was utterly, completely alone, abandoned by my entire world.

Seraphina's POV:

Ethan’s fingers were like a vise on my arm, the scent of his rage—like burning wood and ozone—assaulting my senses, making me feel dizzy. He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a low, venomous hiss right next to my ear.

"Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten how disgusting you were that night?"

His words were a key, twisting in a lock I hadn't known was there, forcing open a rusted door in my mind. His voice dragged me backward, pulling me into the swirling, chaotic memories of the Blood Moon Rite ten years ago. The night our pack celebrated the coming of age for all its eighteen-year-olds, the night the Moon Goddess revealed destined mates.

"Celeste," Ethan whispered, his voice a blade of poisoned honey. "Our perfect Celeste. She'd waited her whole life for that night. And the Goddess blessed her. She found her fated mate—Alpha Kieran Valerius. Powerful, noble, a future leader of a great pack. It was the happiest I had ever seen her."

Flickering images danced behind my eyes. Celeste's radiant face, lit by the bonfire. The way Kieran had looked at her, the visible sparks that crackled in the air between them, the undeniable pull of a true mate bond. I remembered the pure, unadulterated joy I had felt for my sister, mixed with a small, secret pang of loneliness for a mate I had not yet found.

"And you?" Ethan's voice dripped with contempt. "You were jealous. You saw a powerful Alpha, and you wanted him for yourself. But you weren't brave enough to challenge her, were you? No. You chose the coward's way. The slut's way."

His grip tightened, each word a hammer blow. "You slipped an herb into his drink. A potion to heighten his lust, to cloud his mind."

That was the official story. The truth everyone in the pack had accepted without question.

*No! It wasn't us!* Lyra howled, a desperate, frantic denial in the cage of my skull.

"I didn't," I gasped, trying to pull away from him, from the poison of his words. "I don't remember..."

"Don't remember?" He laughed, a cold, sharp sound. "How convenient. But Celeste remembers. She remembers everything. She remembers searching for Kieran, her heart full of joy, only to find him missing. She remembers hearing... noises... coming from your room."

He was painting a picture with his words, each stroke a fresh cut on my soul.

"She pushed open the door, Seraphina. And what did she see? She saw you. Naked. In her mate's arms. The scent of your coupling was so thick in the air it was nauseating."

The vile image he described made my stomach churn. Even without the memory, I could feel the second-hand humiliation, the imagined horror of that moment. I could feel Celeste's world shattering.

"You stole him," Ethan said, and I could hear a tremor in his voice now, a raw pain for his twin sister. "You stole her fated mate, Seraphina. You desecrated a sacred bond, a gift from the Goddess herself!"

In our world, there was no greater sin.

Tears streamed down my face as I shook my head, a useless, pathetic gesture. "No... I would never... I loved my sister..."

"Don't you dare say her name!" he roared, shaking me so hard my teeth rattled.

I cried out, a small, sharp gasp of pain. But the agony in my arm was nothing. Nothing compared to the weight of the accusation that was crushing my spirit.

I wanted to scream that I had been drinking, too. That I had woken up confused and horrified. But what was the use? They wouldn't have believed me then, and they wouldn't believe me now.

She was Celeste, the golden child, the future of the pack. I was just the quiet, lesser sister. The jealousy motive, it was just too perfect for them to ignore.

For a decade, I had worn the label: Mate Stealer. Whore. Traitor.

And now, here was my brother, pronouncing my sentence all over again, right outside our dying father's door.

A wave of blackness washed over my vision. It wasn't Ethan's strength that was felling me, but the sheer, suffocating weight of an injustice I could not fight.

My knees buckled.

Ethan looked down at me, his face a mask of pure disgust, as if I were something vile he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.

He let go of my arm. I crumpled to the cold stone floor.

He delivered the final blow, his voice flat and dead. "A creature like you doesn't deserve the name Blackwood."

Seraphina's POV:

I lay on the floor, the world a meaningless blur of motion and sound around me. Ethan's words echoed in the hollow space where my heart used to be. But beneath the roaring of his accusations, something was stirring. A memory. A single, sharp fragment from that night, rising from the depths where I had buried it.

The world dissolved.

**[Flashback]**

The blood moon hung low and heavy in the sky, staining the world in shades of crimson. The air was alive with the sounds of the celebration—the crackle of the bonfire, the thumping of a drum, the laughter of young wolves drunk on beer and possibility.

I saw myself, a younger, more naive version, in a simple white dress. I stood at the edge of the clearing, a shy spectator, watching my sister, Celeste. She was the center of it all, a queen in her element, her laughter like bells.

Then Alpha Kieran Valerius had walked toward her. The moment their eyes met, the world seemed to hold its breath. The sparks were real, a visible shimmer in the air between them. A murmur went through the crowd. The Goddess had blessed them.

My heart had swelled with so much happiness for her. I raised my cup of cider in a silent toast.

It was then that a server, one I didn't recognize, his face a blur in my memory, approached me. He held out a different cup, a darker, richer vintage. "A special toast," he'd said, his voice smooth. "For the Alpha's other daughter."

I'd smiled, touched by the gesture, and drank it down without a second thought.

The drink was spicy, with a strange, bitter aftertaste of herbs I didn't recognize. I assumed it was just part of the ceremonial brew.

But then a strange heat began to spread through my limbs. The world started to soften at the edges, the drumbeat growing louder, more insistent in my blood. A dizzying wave of vertigo washed over me. Lyra began to whine and claw at the inside of my mind, agitated, trapped.

I needed to get away, to find some air. I stumbled away from the firelight, my legs feeling clumsy and disconnected from my body. My vision swam.

I remember the feel of the cool night air on my feverish skin. I remember trying to make it back to my room in the Packhouse.

And then... nothing. A black, gaping void in my memory.

The next thing I knew, I was being ripped back to consciousness by a pain that was not of the body, but of the soul. It was the searing, brutal agony of a mate bond being forged by force, a brand on my very essence.

I gasped, my eyes flying open. I was in my own room, staring up at my own ceiling. But the air was thick with a scent that did not belong there—the overwhelming, intoxicating scent of a thunderstorm and pine. Kieran's scent. It was everywhere, sinking into my skin, claiming me.

A wave of panic seized me. I was naked. And Kieran was lying beside me, equally bare, his eyes closed, seemingly unconscious.

I tried to scream, but my throat was paralyzed.

That's when the door flew open, slamming against the wall.

Celeste stood in the doorway, her face a portrait of pure joy, a smile just beginning to form. And then her eyes found us. The smile froze, shattered, and was replaced by a look of such profound shock and devastation that it was physically painful to witness. Her lips trembled, but no sound came out.

Behind her, my father appeared, then my mother, then the elders, their faces a gallery of horror.

I would never forget my father's eyes. Not fury. Not rage. Just a deep, bottomless disappointment. The look of a man watching his most prized possession being ground into the dirt.

My mother made a small, strangled sound and collapsed.

And Ethan… Ethan launched himself into the room like a rabid animal, his face contorted in a mask of murderous rage, roaring my name. The elders had to physically restrain him.

**[End Flashback]**

I came back to myself with a violent, racking cough, my body convulsing on the cold floor of the medical wing.

I remembered.

The drink. The bitter, herbal taste.

It wasn't just a special brew. It was Wolfsbane.

A poison to our kind in large doses. But in small, carefully prepared amounts, it acted as a powerful aphrodisiac, a mind-altering drug that could confuse the senses and, most importantly, subdue a wolf's inner instincts, leaving the human half vulnerable and suggestible.

I wasn't the predator. I was the prey.

We both were. Kieran and I. We had both been drugged.

The truth, a decade late, hit me like a bolt of lightning, illuminating the dark corners of my mind. I wasn't a monster. I was a victim.

A surge of adrenaline, of pure, unadulterated rage, flooded my system. I had to tell them. I had to make them see.

I pushed myself up, my limbs shaking, my eyes scanning the faces around me. I saw Ethan's sneer. My mother's averted, grief-stricken gaze. The elders' cold, impassive expressions.

And the lightning of revelation was followed by the crushing thunder of reality.

Ten years had passed. My word against theirs. The word of a disgraced outcast against the memory of a perfect, heartbroken princess. I had no proof. No witness.

If I screamed the truth now, they would see it as nothing more than the desperate, pathetic lie of a cornered sinner.