I stood before the mirror in my small apartment, my fingers tracing the delicate silver chain around my neck. The Luna necklace caught the morning light, its ancient sapphire gleaming like captured starlight. Seven generations of Blackwood Lunas had worn this piece—each one a testament to power, legacy, and belonging.

Three years ago, on that secret mating night hidden from the pack's eyes, Sterling had fastened this very clasp behind my neck with trembling fingers. His breath had been warm against my ear as he whispered promises that felt eternal in the darkness. But I'd never worn it publicly. Our relationship existed in shadows, in stolen moments, in whispered conversations that no one else could hear.

Today felt different. Today I was going to sign the papers for the house—our first real step toward something permanent. Sterling had bought it for us, a modest two-story in the quiet part of town where we could finally stop hiding. My hand drifted unconsciously to my stomach, where a secret even more precious than our mating bond was growing. Four months along, and Sterling still didn't know.

The Target dress I'd chosen was simple—navy blue with small white flowers, nothing that would draw attention. I'd learned to dress down, to blend in, to never give anyone reason to question why Sterling Blackwood might notice me. But today, I wanted to wear something that was truly mine. Something that proved I belonged in his world, even if that world wasn't ready to see it.

The elevator in Blackwood Holdings carried the scent of expensive cologne and power. I'd been here dozens of times, but always through service entrances, always careful to avoid the main floors where Sterling conducted his Alpha business. The legal department was on the fifteenth floor—neutral territory where a nobody like me could handle paperwork without raising eyebrows.

The elevator hummed upward, passing floor after floor of Sterling's empire. My reflection caught in the polished steel doors, and for a moment, I almost looked like I belonged here. The necklace transformed everything—my posture, my confidence, the way the light hit my face.

Then the elevator lurched to a stop on the twenty-third floor.

The administrative level. Sterling's floor.

My heart hammered against my ribs as the doors slid open. This wasn't my stop. I pressed myself against the back wall, hoping whoever entered wouldn't notice me, wouldn't ask questions I couldn't answer.

A woman stepped in, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.

She was everything I wasn't—tall, commanding, dressed in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than my monthly rent. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and her green eyes swept the elevator with predatory efficiency. When her gaze landed on me, it stopped. Specifically, it stopped at my throat.

At the necklace.

"Interesting," she said, her voice carrying the crisp authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the sapphire pendant. "That's quite a piece of jewelry for someone of your... station."

Heat flooded my cheeks. I could feel her dissecting everything about me—my drugstore makeup, my discount dress, my nervous fidgeting. "Thank you," I managed, my voice barely above a whisper.

She stepped closer, and I caught her scent—expensive perfume layered over something sharper, more dangerous. Power. Dominance. The kind of confidence that came from never being told no.

"That necklace," she said, each word precisely enunciated. "Where did you get it?"

My fingers instinctively closed around the pendant, as if I could hide it from her penetrating stare. "It was... it's a gift."

Her laugh was like breaking glass. "A gift." She repeated the words as if they were a particularly amusing joke. "Do you have any idea what you're wearing?"

The elevator continued its ascent, but it felt like we were suspended in space, trapped in this moment of scrutiny. "I... what do you mean?"

"That," she said, pointing one perfectly manicured finger at my throat, "is the Blackwood family Luna necklace. Seven generations of pack leaders have worn that exact piece. It's been in their family for over two hundred years."

My mouth went dry. "I know what it is."

"Do you?" Her green eyes glittered with something between amusement and contempt. "Because that necklace was reported stolen five years ago. The insurance payout was substantial. And here you are, wearing priceless stolen property like it's some trinket from a jewelry store."

"It's not stolen," I said, finding my voice. "Sterling gave it to me."

The silence that followed was deafening. She stared at me for a long moment, then threw back her head and laughed—a sound devoid of any warmth or humor.

"Sterling Blackwood," she said, savoring each syllable, "gave the Blackwood family Luna necklace to you? A woman shopping at Target?" Her eyes raked over me again, cataloging every flaw, every sign of my ordinary life. "You expect me to believe that the Alpha heir would hand over his family's most precious heirloom to someone like you?"

The elevator dinged softly as we passed another floor, but she reached out and pressed the emergency stop button. The car lurched to a halt between floors, and suddenly the small space felt suffocating.

"I think we need to have a proper conversation," she said, extending her hand with mock politeness. "Ivy Castellan, Chief Beta of Blackwood Holdings. And you are?"

I didn't take her hand. "Harper."

"Harper." She rolled my name around like she was tasting something unpleasant. "Well, Harper, I think you and I need to discuss exactly how you came into possession of stolen property. And what you plan to do about returning it."

Panic clawed at my chest. "I told you, it's not stolen. Sterling and I—"

"Are what?" Ivy's voice cut through my protest like a blade. "Dating? Engaged? Mated?" She studied my face with clinical precision. "Because I handle all of Sterling's personal affairs, and I can assure you, there's no Harper anywhere in his life."

The words hit me like physical blows. No Harper anywhere in his life. Three years of secret meetings, whispered promises, stolen moments—and to his Chief Beta, I simply didn't exist.

Ivy reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew a small spray bottle. The label was clinical, professional: "Wolfsbane Concentrate - Interrogation Grade."

"We have very effective methods for dealing with thieves and con artists," she said, her voice taking on a dangerous edge. "This will help ensure you tell me the truth about how you really got that necklace. And trust me, Harper—until I'm satisfied with your answers, you're not going anywhere."

She raised the bottle toward my face, and I saw my reflection in her cold green eyes—small, trapped, and utterly alone.

The wolfsbane hit my eyes like liquid fire. I gasped, my hands flying to my face as the burning sensation spread from my corneas down into my throat, my lungs. The world dissolved into a haze of tears and agony. I couldn't see Ivy anymore, couldn't see anything except the red-hot pain radiating through my skull.

"Can't shift now, can you?" Ivy's voice came from somewhere to my left, cold and satisfied. "Wolfsbane is so effective at keeping our kind... manageable."

I tried to blink the burning away, tried to focus, but my wolf was already retreating deep inside me, whimpering. The chemical had severed our connection, leaving me defenseless and human-weak. Strong hands gripped my shoulders, dragging me from the elevator.

"Where—" I choked on the word, my throat raw.

"Basement archives," Ivy said, her heels clicking against concrete as she hauled me through what felt like a stairwell. "Sub-level two. No cameras down there, no foot traffic. Perfect for a private conversation."

The air grew colder as we descended. My vision was starting to clear, but everything remained blurry, like looking through frosted glass. I stumbled, my legs unsteady, and Ivy's grip tightened.

"Careful now. We wouldn't want you to fall and hurt yourself. Not yet."

She pushed open a heavy door, and the musty smell of old paper and neglect hit me. Rows of filing cabinets lined the walls, covered in dust. A single fluorescent bulb flickered overhead, casting harsh shadows across the concrete floor.

"Welcome to your interrogation room," Ivy said, releasing me so suddenly I nearly fell. "Soundproof, isolated, and completely off the security grid. Amazing what you can accomplish when you have the right clearances."

I backed against a filing cabinet, my heart hammering. "Please, I told you the truth. Sterling gave me this necklace. We're—"

"Mates?" Ivy laughed, moving to a metal cabinet mounted on the wall. "Still clinging to that fantasy?" She opened the cabinet and withdrew something that made my blood freeze—a length of silver chain, thick and gleaming under the fluorescent light.

"Emergency restraint system," she explained, testing the weight of the chain in her hands. "We keep these in all the secure areas. You never know when you might need to subdue a rogue wolf."

The silver seemed to pulse with malevolent energy. Even from across the room, I could feel its wrongness pressing against my skin. "No, please—"

But Ivy was already moving, faster than my wolfsbane-addled reflexes could follow. She grabbed my wrists, and the silver touched my skin.

The pain was immediate and excruciating. My flesh began to smoke where the chain made contact, the acrid smell of burning skin filling the small room. I screamed, the sound echoing off the concrete walls.

"Silver burns, doesn't it?" Ivy wrapped the chain around my wrists with clinical efficiency, ignoring my struggles. "It's designed to keep our kind compliant. The more you fight, the deeper it burns."

She secured the other end of the chain to a pipe running along the wall, leaving me kneeling on the cold floor with my arms stretched above my head. The silver was already eating through my skin, leaving angry red welts that would scar.

"Now then," Ivy said, settling into a chair she'd pulled from behind one of the filing cabinets. "Let's try this again. How did you break into the Blackwood family vault?"

"I didn't break in anywhere," I gasped, trying to shift my weight to relieve the pressure on my wrists. "Sterling gave me the necklace on our mating night. Three years ago."

The slap came without warning, snapping my head to the side. Stars exploded across my vision.

"Wrong answer." Ivy's voice remained perfectly calm. "Who's paying you? Which rival pack wants the Blackwood heirlooms?"

"No one's paying me." Blood trickled from my split lip. "I'm telling you the truth. Sterling and I—"

Another slap, harder this time. My cheek felt like it was on fire.

"Lying only makes this worse for you," Ivy said, examining her manicured nails. "I have all day, Harper. And this room is very, very private."

The questions continued. The same ones, over and over, punctuated by slaps that made my ears ring. How did you get in? Who hired you? What's your real name? Where are the other stolen items?

I gave the same answers every time. Sterling. Mating night. Three years. The truth that she refused to believe.

Two hours passed. Maybe three. Time became meaningless in that windowless room. My face was swollen beyond recognition, my wrists raw and bleeding from the silver. But it was the growing ache in my abdomen that terrified me most.

At first, I thought it was just stress. Fear. But the pain was getting stronger, more rhythmic. A cramping sensation that made my breath catch.

No. Not now. Not like this.

"Please," I whispered, my voice barely audible through my swollen lips. "I'm pregnant."

Ivy paused mid-question, her green eyes sharpening with interest. "Pregnant?" A slow smile spread across her face. "How convenient. Let me guess—you're going to tell me it's Mr. Blackwood's child too?"

I nodded, tears streaming down my cheeks. "Four months. Please, the stress—it's not good for the baby."

"Four months," Ivy repeated thoughtfully. "And whose baby did you say it was?"

"Sterling's. We're mates, we—"

Her laughter cut through my words like broken glass. "Oh, this is rich. Not only did you steal the family necklace, but now you're claiming to carry the Blackwood heir? Do you have any idea how pathetic that sounds?"

The cramping intensified, and I felt something warm trickling down my thighs. Panic clawed at my chest. "Please, something's wrong. I need a doctor—"

"What you need," Ivy said, standing and walking toward me with predatory grace, "is to stop lying." She lifted her foot, positioning it directly over my abdomen. "Let me help you solve this particular problem."

I tried to curl into a protective ball, to shield my unborn child, but the silver chains held me fast. My wrists screamed in agony as I pulled against the restraints.

"No!" The word tore from my throat. "Please, don't—"

Ivy's foot began its descent toward my stomach, and I squeezed my eyes shut, preparing for the impact that would end everything.

But something stirred inside me. Not the baby—something else. Something that had been sleeping for fifteen years, buried so deep I'd forgotten it existed. A presence that suddenly unfurled like dark wings, rising through my consciousness with ancient, terrible power.

The fluorescent light above us began to flicker more violently.

Ivy's foot didn't stop.

The first kick landed squarely in my abdomen, driving the air from my lungs in a sharp gasp. Pain exploded through my core, radiating outward like shattered glass.

"Still lying?" Ivy's voice was conversational, as if she were asking about the weather.

The second kick came harder. I felt something tear inside me, a sensation like fabric ripping. The silver chains bit deeper into my wrists as I tried to curl into a protective ball, but the restraints held me open and vulnerable.

"Please," I whispered, but the wolfsbane had ravaged my throat. The word came out as barely a croak.

The third kick was the worst. I felt warmth spreading between my legs, sticky and wrong. The metallic scent of blood filled the stale air of the archives room. My body was betraying me, failing the tiny life I'd sworn to protect.

No. Not my baby. Not like this.

But I could feel it happening—the cramping, the wetness, the terrible loosening sensation that meant everything was ending. Four months of secret joy, of whispered promises to the growing life inside me, of imagining Sterling's face when I finally told him. All of it bleeding away onto the cold concrete floor.

Ivy stepped back, examining her shoe with mild disgust. "Messy," she commented, wiping the sole against the floor. "But effective."

I couldn't speak. Couldn't scream. The wolfsbane had stolen my voice along with my wolf, leaving me to suffer in silence. Tears streamed down my swollen cheeks as I felt my body expelling what remained of my hopes.

"Now then," Ivy said, pulling out her phone. "I think we need some witnesses for this interrogation. Can't have you claiming police brutality later, can we?"

She dialed a number, her tone shifting to crisp professionalism. "Sloane? I need you and two others down in sub-level two archives. Bring cameras. We have a situation that requires documentation."

Ten minutes later, the heavy door creaked open. Three women entered, their expressions shifting from curiosity to shock as they took in the scene—me, chained and bloodied, the growing pool of crimson beneath me, Ivy standing over it all with cold satisfaction.

The first woman, a blonde in her thirties with kind eyes, pressed her hand to her mouth. "Jesus Christ, Ivy. What happened here?"

"Sloane, meet our thief," Ivy said smoothly. "She broke into the Blackwood family vault and stole the Luna necklace. When confronted, she became violent."

Sloane's gaze flickered to the silver chains, to my burned wrists, to the blood. "This is... this seems excessive. Shouldn't we call security? Or the police?"

Ivy's green eyes turned arctic. "She assaulted me first. Everything you see here is justified self-defense and citizen's arrest." Her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "Unless you'd like to lose your job for sympathizing with a criminal?"

The threat hung in the air like poison gas. Sloane's face went pale, but she stepped back without another word.

The other two women—a nervous brunette clutching a tablet and an older woman with graying hair—exchanged glances but said nothing. They knew the rules. Ivy Castellan was Chief Beta. Her word was law.

"Excellent," Ivy continued, as if the moment of tension had never happened. "Now, I need you three to assist with this interrogation. Sloane, you'll document everything she says. Maria, photographs for evidence. And Janet, you're on security—if she tries anything, use this." She handed the older woman a silver spray bottle identical to the one she'd used on me.

I watched these strangers settle into their assigned roles, my heart sinking deeper with each passing second. They were going to help her. They were going to stand by and watch while she destroyed what was left of me.

"Now then," Ivy said, turning back to me with renewed energy. "Let's continue where we left off."

She walked over to where I'd dropped my purse when she'd first dragged me from the elevator. Dumping the contents onto a nearby table, she rifled through my belongings with clinical efficiency.

"Wallet... keys... lip balm..." She paused, holding up my phone. "And what do we have here?"

My heart clenched as she powered on the device, swiping through my contacts with predatory interest. Her eyebrows rose as she found what she was looking for.

"Sterling❤️," she read aloud, her voice dripping with mockery. "Complete with a little heart emoji. How... thorough of you."

The other women shifted uncomfortably, but none of them spoke.

"You really committed to this fantasy, didn't you?" Ivy continued, scrolling through our text messages. "Look at this, ladies. Months of fake conversations. 'Missing you,' 'Can't wait to see you tonight,' 'Love you too.' She even faked his responses."

She held up the phone so the others could see the screen, displaying our most recent exchange from yesterday morning. Sterling telling me he loved me. Me sending him a photo of the house documents, excited about signing the papers.

All of it real. All of it dismissed as elaborate fiction.

"The dedication is almost admirable," Ivy said, then smiled with cold satisfaction. "Almost."

She raised the phone above her head and brought it down hard against the concrete floor. The screen shattered with a sound like breaking bones, plastic and glass scattering across the room.

"Destruction of evidence," she announced to her makeshift jury. "Forging communications with a corporate executive. Identity theft. The charges just keep piling up, don't they, Harper?"

I tried to speak, to protest, but only a rasp emerged. The blood loss was making me dizzy, my vision swimming in and out of focus. The silver chains felt like they were burning through to my bones.

"Maria, are you getting all this?" Ivy asked the brunette with the tablet.

"Yes, ma'am," Maria replied, her fingers flying over the screen. "Should I note the... medical situation?"

Ivy glanced down at the blood pooling beneath me with clinical detachment. "Note that the suspect became violent and injured herself during the struggle. Self-inflicted wounds from resisting arrest."

The lie was so brazen, so utterly shameless, that I felt what remained of my hope finally die. These women were going to help her bury the truth. They were going to document her version of events and call it justice.

Sloane was staring at the broken phone, her face troubled. "Ivy, if she really did fake all those messages, how did she get Mr. Blackwood's personal number? That's not public information."

"Corporate espionage," Ivy replied without missing a beat. "She probably hacked our systems. We'll have IT run a full security audit once we're done here."

But even as she spoke, I saw something flicker across her face. A moment of uncertainty, quickly masked but unmistakably there.

Then the door burst open.

A young woman in an IT department polo stumbled into the room, her face flushed from running. She clutched a tablet against her chest, her eyes wide with panic.

"Ivy," she gasped, struggling to catch her breath. "I just ran the trace you requested on the Luna necklace. The GPS tracker..."

The room went dead silent.

"The signal," the IT girl continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's been sending location data to Mr. Blackwood's personal phone. For three years. Continuous tracking."

Ivy's face went white as bone.