At nineteen, I walked away from college to follow a rookie hockey player no one expected to become Alpha.

I packed Carter's road bags, iced his shoulder after losses, and learned exactly what food kept his wolf steady before a game.

When teammates laughed at our tiny apartment and my cheap recovery meals, Carter called me the only home he needed.

Three years later, he wore the captain's C, I wore his mate mark, and a positive pregnancy test waited inside our anniversary gift box.

Then Carter brought his injured first love, Sienna, through our front door without warning.

He gave her our bedroom because she needed the safer shower.

I moved my clothes into the guest room and told myself it was temporary.

That night, I heard them stop outside the nursery Carter and I had built together.

"You kept this room?" Sienna asked.

"Not anymore," Carter said. "You need it more than we do."

"And Lena?"

"She'll understand. She always does."

***

Carter dropped his away-game luggage on our hardwood floor, the thud echoing through the foyer. I barely noticed the black duffel. My attention went straight to the metal brace locked around Sienna's right leg.

I stood beside the dining table with my phone open to our anniversary reservation. Next to it sat a small gift box tied with a silver ribbon. Inside was the positive pregnancy test I had taken two days ago.

Tonight was supposed to be the night I told my husband we were finally having a baby.

I had already rehearsed how I would hand Carter the box after dessert. I had even booked the corner table where he first asked me to move in with him.

"Sienna's building elevator is out," Carter announced, shrugging off his team jacket. "Her surgeon doesn't want her using stairs. She'll recover here until she can bear weight."

He spoke the way he did in the locker room when a line change had already been decided.

I looked at Sienna. She leaned on two crutches, pale beneath the carefully applied makeup. Once, before Carter and I met, she had been the rising figure skater everyone expected him to mate. Then a rogue attack shattered her knee, she left Ashborne for surgery, and Carter built a new life with me.

At least that was the story I had believed.

"Did you have the staff prepare the guest room?" I asked.

Carter's gaze traveled toward the staircase. "The master suite is safer. It has the curbless shower, the wider doorway, and enough space for her brace at night."

For a second I thought I had misunderstood him.

"The master suite is our bedroom."

Sienna shifted awkwardly. "I can stay at a hotel, Carter. Really. I don't want Lena displaced because of me."

"A hotel doesn't have Pack security or a healer on call," he said. "This is temporary."

"Then she can use the downstairs guest suite. No stairs. Private bath."

"The shower has a lip. Naomi specifically said no unnecessary fall risks."

I folded my arms. "So your solution is to move your wife out of her own room without asking her."

His jaw tightened. "My solution is to keep an injured Pack member from ending up back in surgery. Why does everything have to become a territorial fight with you?"

Four years ago, Carter and I lived in a studio apartment three blocks from the arena. When his shoulder swelled after games, I woke at three in the morning to replace ice packs and tape his joint before practice. He used to bury his face against my neck and tell me I was the only home he needed.

Now he was using the word safety to explain why someone else deserved my bed.

"It's our anniversary," I said.

Carter glanced at the phone on the table as if he had forgotten the date entirely. "We can move dinner."

The reservation confirmation blurred for a moment.

Sienna lowered her eyes. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize," Carter told her immediately. Then he looked at me. "Lena understands priorities."

The little silver-ribboned box suddenly felt ridiculous.

A housekeeper appeared at the edge of the foyer. "Alpha Carter, should I move Ms. Hart's clothes to the downstairs suite?"

Ms. Hart. Not future Luna. Not his mate. Just the person whose closet needed clearing.

"Only what she needs for a few weeks," Carter said.

"Stop." I held up a hand. "No one touches my clothes. I'll move them myself."

Carter exhaled through his nose. "Fine. But Sienna needs to lie down."

He took her overnight bag before she could protest and climbed the stairs beside her, one hand hovering at her back.

I stayed in the foyer.

The anniversary reminder on my phone chimed at six.

I canceled the reservation.

By seven, I had moved enough clothes into the downstairs guest suite to make it functional. Carter came in while I was hanging my work jackets in the narrow closet.

"You didn't have to do all this tonight," he said.

I turned. "You told the staff to move me. When exactly was I supposed to wait?"

"You're making this sound permanent."

"You brought your first love home and put her in our bedroom on our anniversary. Tell me which part I should describe more gently."

His expression sharpened. "Sienna is not my first love right now. She's an injured athlete and a Pack member I failed to protect years ago."

There it was. The guilt he never admitted still owned him.

"And what am I?"

Carter stepped closer. "My mate. Which is why I expect you to understand me better than anyone."

The answer should have reassured me. Instead, it sounded like a job description.

A knock came from the open doorway. Sienna stood there in one of Carter's old team sweatshirts, the hem nearly reaching her knees.

"Sorry," she murmured. "The master shower worked. Thank you, Lena."

My eyes dropped to the sweatshirt. I recognized it. Carter had worn it the night he proposed.

"Where did you get that?"

She looked down. "It was in the closet. Carter said I could borrow something loose so the brace wouldn't catch."

Carter rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "It's just an old sweatshirt."

Of course it was.

Everything was just a room, just a shirt, just a temporary arrangement when it belonged to me.

Sienna's phone rang. She glanced at the screen. "It's the physical therapist."

Carter took the call when her crutches made it difficult. He listened for less than a minute before turning toward the hallway.

"She needs daily parallel-bar work and a stationary bike," he said after hanging up. "The therapist wants a dedicated rehab room on this floor."

"Use the basement gym."

"No stairs."

I already knew where his eyes would go before he looked past me toward the room across the hall.

The nursery.

The room with the crib he had assembled himself.

The room where a silver moon mobile waited above an empty changing table.

Carter pointed toward the closed door.

"We'll clear that one in the morning."

My fingers went numb as I unhooked the silver wolf-and-moon mobile from the nursery ceiling.

Carter had installed it six months ago, after we started trying for a baby in earnest. He had stood on a step ladder for forty minutes, refusing to let me help because he wanted the first thing our child saw to be something he built himself.

Now two delivery men carried a stationary bike through the doorway while a third rolled in a set of parallel bars.

Three cardboard boxes marked SIENNA - TROPHIES followed them.

"We can donate the crib," Carter said from the hall. "If we need one later, we'll buy another."

I turned slowly. "Donate it?"

"It takes up too much floor space."

"It arrived two weeks ago. You spent an entire Saturday assembling it."

"And right now Sienna needs room to rehabilitate."

I lowered the mobile into a packing box containing unopened baby blankets, prenatal vitamins, and the nutrition notes I had started the morning my test turned positive.

"The basement gym has more space than this room."

"The stairs are a fall risk," he repeated.

"Then use the downstairs office."

"The team physio needs access to the equipment closet next door. Lena, stop making every practical decision emotional."

He gestured to the delivery men. They lifted the crib and carried it into the hallway.

One of the wooden rails scraped the doorframe.

The sound made something inside me flinch.

Sienna appeared behind Carter with her crutches tucked beneath her arms. "Please don't get rid of it because of me. Put it in storage."

"We don't need to decide today," Carter said, softening immediately. "I'll have it taken apart and wrapped."

I almost laughed. He could find gentleness after the decision, never before it.

Before the delivery crew left, one man asked where to send the crib. Carter answered "storage" without looking at me. I took the inventory tag from the worker and wrote my own name across the owner line. Whatever happened to this room, the things we bought for a child were not becoming team property simply because Carter had changed its purpose.

"I'll handle my things," I said.

I carried the box to the guest suite and slid it beneath the desk. My tote bag sat on the chair beside it, the positive test buried in the inner pocket where I had hidden it after our anniversary collapsed.

When I returned, Sienna was seated on the nursery window bench while a physical therapist adjusted her brace. Carter stood beside the parallel bars, discussing recovery targets as if the room had always belonged to her.

The silver-and-white wall paint Carter chose for a baby now framed Sienna's skating medals.

"Try ten steps," the therapist instructed.

Sienna gripped the bars and pushed herself upright. She made it three before her injured leg buckled.

Carter caught her around the waist.

"Easy," he said. "I've got you."

I looked away.

After the therapist left, I went downstairs to make dinner. Carter had a team meeting, and Sienna's medication schedule was taped to the refrigerator beside my canceled anniversary reservation.

At eight, she entered the kitchen without her crutches, using the counter for support.

"Naomi wants me to take the anti-inflammatory with food," she said. "Do you know where Carter put the crackers?"

"Second cabinet."

She opened it, then winced when she reached up.

I took the box down and set it beside her.

"Thank you." Her gaze dropped to my left hand. "No ring tonight?"

I looked down. I had removed my wedding band while kneading dough and forgotten to put it back on.

"I'm cooking."

"Of course."

Her tone was harmless. Too harmless.

She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out an amber prescription bottle. "Could you open this? The childproof cap is impossible with my wrist like this."

I stared at the bottle.

"Ask Carter."

"He's at the arena." She tried the cap and hissed, letting it slip against the counter. "Never mind. I'll wait."

The responsible answer would have been to walk away.

Instead, I picked it up, pressed down, and twisted.

The cap clicked free.

"There."

I handed it back without touching the pills.

Sienna watched my fingers for half a second too long.

Then she smiled. "You're kinder than you think you are, Lena."

"Don't turn opening a bottle into a personality assessment."

I wiped my hands and returned to the dough.

My phone rang in the guest room. I left the kitchen to answer a call from the university admissions office about the sports nutrition program I had postponed four years earlier. The conversation lasted twelve minutes.

When I came back, Sienna was gone.

So was my tote bag from the chair by the guest-room desk.

I found it ten minutes later on the hallway console, zipped closed.

"Did you move this?" I asked the nearest housekeeper.

The zipper pull sat on the opposite side from where I always left it. My wallet was upside down, and the paper sleeve around the pregnancy test had been crushed. Nothing appeared missing, but someone had searched more than the initials on the outside of the bag.

"Miss Sienna asked me to bring it out because she thought it was hers," the woman said. "I realized the initials were yours and left it there."

I opened the bag. My wallet and keys were inside. I touched the inner pocket and felt the pregnancy test beneath the lining.

Still there.

I told myself I was being paranoid.

At midnight, Carter had not returned from the arena. I woke to a crash upstairs.

Sienna sat on the master-bedroom floor beside the bed, one hand gripping her stomach. The amber bottle lay open near her knee.

"I feel wrong," she whispered.

I grabbed the bottle and checked the label. "How many did you take?"

"Two. The normal dose."

Her skin was clammy.

I called the team clinic while Carter raced home.

By the time the ambulance arrived, Sienna was barely conscious.

A paramedic sealed the prescription bottle in a clear evidence bag. Before he carried it away, he asked who had last opened it.

Sienna's lashes fluttered.

Her eyes found mine.

"Lena did," she whispered.

"I opened the bottle because she asked me to," I said, my voice cutting through the sterile silence of the team's rehab clinic.

Carter stood by the examination bed, gripping a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside sat a small, amber prescription bottle.

"The lab rushed the results," Carter stated, holding the bag up to the fluorescent lights. "The ingredients in this bottle do not match her prescribed painkillers. And only two sets of fingerprints are on the plastic. Yours, and hers."

"She struggled with the childproof cap last night," I told him, meeting his hard stare. "I twisted it off and handed it back. That is all."

Julian, one of the senior Pack managers, crossed his arms. He stood near the door, blocking the exit. "And you didn't think to mention this earlier?"

"Nobody asked me who opened the bottle," I shot back, turning to face him. "You asked who was in the room."

On the bed, Sienna offered a weak, trembling sigh. The heart monitors beeped a steady, irritating rhythm next to her pale face.

"Maybe I just remembered it wrong," Sienna whispered, her gaze dropping to the white hospital blanket. She picked at a loose thread, refusing to look at me. "But Lena was really angry yesterday that I took the guest room."

I stepped toward the bed. "Sienna, do not do this."

"I'm just saying," Sienna continued, shrinking back against the pillows as if my presence physically threatened her. "Tensions were high. You made it very clear you didn't want me in your house."

Carter stepped between us, acting as a human shield.

Julian moved over to the corner counter, where my leather tote bag rested. "We need to clear all variables."

Before I could object, Julian unzipped the main compartment and tipped it over. My wallet, my keys, and a tube of lip gloss clattered onto the metal counter. Then, he reached into the zippered side pocket.

My stomach plummeted. That was the exact pocket where I had stashed the positive pregnancy test.

Julian pulled out a crushed cardboard medicine box.

"I found this in the side pocket of your bag, Lena," Julian announced, holding the carton up.

He turned the box toward Carter.

"The batch number on this empty carton matches the tainted pills," the team doctor noted, checking a clipboard in his hands.

"Someone went through my bag," I said, rushing forward.

I grabbed the tote from Julian's hands, my fingers frantically searching the lining. The plastic stick was gone from the side pocket. Whoever planted the box had shoved my things around, burying the test deep inside.

"Who else would go through your bag?" Carter demanded.

I clamped my mouth shut. If I mentioned the pregnancy test now, in front of Julian, the team doctor, and Carter, it would become a desperate defense tactic. A shield. I refused to use my baby as a shield to deflect a criminal accusation.

My hesitation hung in the air, thick and damning.

Carter stepped closer. His eyes, usually warm when he looked at me, were completely foreign. "You can hate me, Lena. But when did you become someone who takes it out on another person's body?"

The words struck my chest like a physical blow. "You think I poisoned her over a bedroom?"

"The security camera outside the rehab room caught you walking in with the bottle last night," Carter replied, his tone chillingly flat. "It didn't catch anyone else."

"Because she was already inside," I argued, pointing at Sienna. "The camera only covers the hallway."

"Enough." Carter held up a hand, silencing me. "The press already got wind of an ambulance at the facility. We are holding a brief media statement in twenty minutes."

"To say what?" I asked.

"To issue an apology," Carter said. "You will apologize to Sienna."

"I didn't swap her pills!"

"Even if you didn't, you should never have touched an injured player's private medication," Carter fired back. "If you still want to stand beside me as the future Luna, you need to know when to protect the Pack first."

Twenty minutes later, camera flashes blinded me in the facility's media room.

I stood at the podium, gripping the wooden edges until my knuckles turned white. Carter flanked my right side, his presence a heavy, oppressive weight. Sienna sat in a wheelchair to my left, looking every bit the tragic victim.

The room buzzed with impatient reporters, their microphones thrust toward the stage.

"Read the statement," Carter muttered under his breath, leaning close to my ear. "Just read it."

I stared at the index card on the podium. I refused to read the confession they wrote for me.

"I apologize for not disclosing that I handled the medication bottle beforehand," I told the microphones, enunciating every syllable.

I did not confess to tampering. I offered nothing else.

Before the reporters could shout their questions, Sienna reached up and grabbed my wrist. Her fingers dug into my skin, her nails sharp.

"I forgive you, Lena," she said, her voice amplified by the mic.

A collective gasp rippled through the press corps. The cameras clicked furiously, capturing the exact second my guilt was publicly cemented by her mercy.

I yanked my arm away from her grip.

Sienna swayed in her chair, letting out a soft, dramatic gasp.

Carter immediately turned his back on me. He grabbed Sienna's shoulders, steadying her, his face etched with panic. He didn't even glance in my direction to see if I was okay.

The crowd dispersed. Pack security ushered the reporters out of the building.

I retreated to the empty hallway outside the clinic. My hands shook as I dug deep into the bottom of my tote bag. My fingers brushed against smooth plastic. The pregnancy test. Whoever planted the box had shoved it down into the lining.

I pulled it out and slipped it into a small paper pharmacy bag I found on a nearby medical cart. It was time to tell Carter the truth. Not just about the baby, but about the fact that his blind trust was destroying our family.

I marched toward Sienna's clinic room, my steps silent on the linoleum.

Just as I reached the door, it swung open. Dr. Naomi Pierce stepped out, clutching a digital tablet. Carter followed right behind her, his expression grim.

"The reaction caused severe internal inflammation," Naomi told him, ignoring my arrival. "Sienna requires reconstructive surgery immediately. But there is a complication."

"Fix it, Naomi," Carter ordered.

"Her wolf biology is rejecting standard blood products," the doctor explained, tapping the screen. "She needs a rare Moon Blood transfusion to stabilize during the procedure. The Pack database just finished the automatic screening."

Naomi handed the tablet to Carter.

I stepped closer, my eyes catching the bright blue text at the very top of the screen.

Match Found: Lena Hart.

Carter stared at the glowing letters for a long second. Then, he raised his head. His gaze dropped to the small paper bag clutched in my hand, before locking onto my eyes.

"Lena," Carter commanded, his voice leaving no room for negotiation. "You cannot say no this time."