Elena POV

The weight of the life growing inside me pressed against my ribs, heavier than the grief that had become my constant shadow.

I spent the morning barricaded in my room, my hand protective over my flat stomach, shielding the tiny, flickering spark of life from the hostility that permeated the very stones of the Pack House.

I needed air. I needed to breathe. The walls were closing in on me.

I slipped out the back servants' entrance and ghosted my way to the royal gardens. It was a maze of high hedges and blooming roses, a place where Jackson and I used to play hide-and-seek when we were children, back when his laughter was the only sound I wanted to hear.

But today, the air was tainted. I heard voices near the fountain.

My feet rooted to the spot. I knew that giggle. It was high-pitched, grating, and dripping with artificial sweetness. Candida.

And then, the low rumble of a baritone that used to whisper love poems in my ear. Jackson.

I stepped behind a thick wall of ivy, my heart battering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"She looks like a walking corpse, Jackson," Candida whined, her voice scraping against my nerves. "It's depressing to look at her. And the Pack is talking. They want a real Luna. Someone strong. Someone who can give you a son."

I held my breath. Defend me, I begged silently to the universe. Tell her I saved your life.

"I know," Jackson said. His voice wasn't angry at her. It sounded... tired. Impatient. "She's useless, Candida. A barren womb and a broken wolf. What good is she to me now?"

The words were like jagged glass ripping through my chest. Useless.

"So, when?" Candida pressed, her voice dropping to a sultry purr. "When can I stop hiding? I want to be marked, Jackson. I want to be yours officially."

There was a pause, followed by the sound of rustling fabric and a soft moan. I squeezed my eyes shut, hot tears leaking out to burn my cheeks.

"Soon," Jackson murmured, the word a caress. "The Elders are stubborn about the 'Fated Mate' tradition. But accidents happen. Wolves get sick. Especially the weak ones."

My blood ran cold as ice.

"And once she's... gone?" Candida asked.

"Then you take her place. You get the title, the jewels, the access to the Pack treasury. Everything."

He wasn't just planning to leave me. He was planning to erase me. He intended to strip my life, my home, and my mother's legacy to adorn this intruder.

"I love you, Alpha," Candida cooed.

"You're my true Luna," Jackson replied.

I didn't stay to hear more. I couldn't.

I moved backward, step by agonizingly silent step, until I was clear of the hedges. Then I ran.

I ran despite the searing pain in my lungs, despite the weakness in my legs. I ran back to my room and threw the bolt on the door.

My hands were shaking violently as I went to my desk. I opened a hidden drawer and pulled out a document I had drafted months ago, in a moment of dark depression I thought I had overcome.

The Luna Separation Agreement.

It was a formal Pack document outlining the separation of assets and titles. But at the bottom, there was a clause rarely used in our world.

The Rejection Clause.

I grabbed a pen. My vision blurred with tears, but my hand was steady as I signed my name at the bottom.

Ding.

My phone buzzed. A Mind-Link notification forced its way into my head, an intrusive spike of pain.

Elena, where are you? You need to organize the seating charts for the Council meeting tomorrow. Stop being lazy.

It was Jackson. His mental voice was cold, commanding. He was talking to me about seating charts while plotting my death.

The audacity made me want to scream. It made me want to vomit.

But mostly, it made me angry.

I'm doing it now, I replied, my mental voice flat, hiding the tremor of my soul.

Good. And take those supplements. You look terrible.

I stared at the fireplace where the poisoned vials had burned to ash.

Okay, I lied.

Then, I did something forbidden. I visualized a brick wall in my mind. I built it brick by brick, stacking the mental mortar, sealing off the connection to him.

Block.

The link severed with a audible snap. The silence in my head was profound. It was lonely, yes, but it was safe.

I grabbed a duffel bag from the closet. I didn't pack clothes. I packed cash. I packed my mother's locket. I packed the small stash of emergency herbs I kept.

I moved to the window. Below, in the courtyard, I saw Candida walking with Leo, Jackson's Beta. Leo had always looked at me with disdain.

"She's clueless," Candida was laughing, loud enough for the wind to carry her voice up to my prison. "She thinks he's working late. The stupid bitch actually believes in 'Fated Mates' saving her."

Leo chuckled. "Just keep him happy, Candida. Once you're Luna, don't forget who helped you get there."

"Don't worry," Candida smirked. "We'll strip this place dry."

A conspiracy. It wasn't just an affair. It was a coup.

I touched my stomach.

"I won't let them hurt you," I whispered to the tiny life inside me. "I won't let you be born into a Pack that wants us dead."

I couldn't leave tonight; the guards were too thick. I had to wait for the "New Luna Welcome Party" tomorrow night. Everyone would be drunk. Everyone would be distracted.

I would leave in the chaos.

But first, I had to survive the humiliation they had planned for me.

Elena POV

The banquet hall was a blinding assault of gold lights and crystal glasses.

Officially, it was the "Welcome Party" for Candida-to welcome her as a guest. But the subtext hung heavy in the air, thicker than the scent of roasted meat. Everyone knew what this really was.

It was her coronation in everything but name.

I sat at the far end of the head table, drowning in the shadows. My plate was empty. No one had bothered to serve me.

Jackson sat in the center, with Candida on his right-the seat sacred to the Luna. He was holding her hand, his thumb stroking her knuckles in plain view of the entire Pack.

"Friends, family!" Jackson stood up, raising a glass of champagne. The room went silent. "Tonight, we celebrate new beginnings. Candida has brought a fresh energy to the Bloodmoon Pack. Her vitality is... inspiring."

Cheers erupted. Warriors banged their goblets on the tables, a rhythmic, tribal sound of approval.

"To Candida!" they roared.

I shrank into my chair, feeling the weight of three hundred pairs of eyes sliding over me. Some held pity; most held nothing but sharp, glinting mockery.

Jackson turned to Candida. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box.

My breath hitched, stuttering in my chest. I knew that box.

He opened it, revealing a brooch made of sapphires and diamonds. The Pack Crest.

"This belonged to my grandmother," Jackson said, his voice thick with fake emotion. "She wanted the woman who holds the heart of the Pack to wear it."

He pinned it onto Candida's red dress.

That brooch was mine. It was in my jewelry box this morning. He had stolen it.

I stood up. My legs were shaking, but rage surged through me, lending me a brittle kind of strength.

"That is not yours to give," I said. My voice was quiet, but in the sudden, suffocating silence of the hall, it carried like a gunshot.

Jackson froze. He looked at me slowly, his eyes filled with simmering annoyance. "Sit down, Elena. Don't make a scene."

"You stole that from me," I said, stepping forward. "Just like you're stealing my dignity."

"You have no dignity left!" Candida snapped, her mask slipping to reveal the predator beneath. "Look at you. You're a ghost."

Suddenly, a small figure darted through the crowd. It was Joey, Candida's five-year-old son. He ran up to the dais, laughing.

"Mommy! Mommy!" he squealed, tugging on Candida's dress.

"Not now, Joey," Candida hissed, trying to push him away.

"But Mommy, you promised!" Joey shouted, his voice innocent and piercingly loud. "You said... you said after the sick lady is gone... and you make the baby in your tummy go bye-bye... we can get a puppy!"

He jumped excitedly. "And then you and Uncle Jackson will make a real baby!"

The silence that fell over the hall was instant and absolute.

Every wolf froze.

Make the baby in your tummy go bye-bye?

Candida was pregnant? And she was planning to abort it to secure her position with Jackson?

And "get rid of the sick lady." A child doesn't invent details like that.

Jackson looked down at Joey, then at Candida. For a second, the Alpha mask cracked, revealing pure shock.

"Joey, hush!" Candida shrieked, her face turning pale.

"Is it true?" I asked, my voice trembling. "You're pregnant?"

Candida glared at me, her eyes venomous. "So what if I am? It's none of your business."

"It's Jackson's business," I said, looking at my husband. "Did you know?"

Jackson didn't look at me. He looked at the crowd. He saw the confusion, the judgment, the murmurs rippling through his warriors. He needed to regain control.

He made a choice.

He stepped in front of Candida, shielding her from the crowd's gaze. He looked at me with pure hatred, blaming me for the truth that had just been exposed.

"Enough!" Jackson roared, using his Alpha voice. The power of it vibrated in the floorboards. "Take the boy away. Elena, get to your room. You are confusing the child and ruining the night."

"I'm ruining it?" I laughed, a hysterical, broken sound that scraped my throat. "She just admitted to planning murder!"

"She is the future of this Pack!" Jackson shouted. "And you... you are the past."

He walked up to me. He loomed over me, his shadow swallowing me whole.

"Give me the Scepter," he demanded.

The Luna's Scepter was a small ceremonial wand I carried at formal events. It was the last symbol of my authority.

"No," I whispered.

"Give it to me!"

He grabbed my wrist. His grip was bruising. He wrenched the Scepter from my hand.

The pain was sharp, but the humiliation was worse. It was a public stripping of my rank.

I saw Candida smirking behind him. She had won.

Something inside me snapped. A tether, pulled too tight for too long, finally broke.

I grabbed a wine glass from the table. Red wine, dark as blood.

I didn't think. I just threw it.

The glass shattered against Candida's face. Wine splashed over her expensive dress, and a shard cut her cheek.

She screamed.

Jackson turned, saw the blood on his mistress, and roared.

He spun back to me. His hand raised.

Crack.

The sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed through the hall.

I hit the floor hard. My vision went white. I tasted copper in my mouth.

My husband, my Fated Mate, had struck me.

The bond between us screamed in agony. It felt like my soul was being torn in half, the mystic connection recoiling from the violence.

"Get her out of here," Jackson spat, looking down at me with disgust. "Throw her in the dungeon if you have to. I'm done with her."

He turned back to Candida, scooping her up in his arms, cooing softly to her.

I lay on the cold stone floor, watching them leave. The crowd parted for them. No one helped me. No one looked at me.

I closed my eyes.

The pain in my womb was sharp. My baby.

I have to die, I thought as the darkness took me.

But it wasn't a surrender. It was a strategy.

If Elena lives, the baby dies. So Elena must die.

Elena POV

Pain was the first thing to return.

It wasn't a single sensation, but a chorus. A throbbing pulse in my jaw, a sharp, stinging ache in my wrist, and a deep, hollow sorrow that seemed to cave in my chest.

I forced my heavy eyelids open. I wasn't in the damp darkness of the dungeon. I was in the Healer's clinic, tucked away in the private back room.

The air didn't smell of rot and fear; it smelled of sharp antiseptic and the dusty, comforting scent of dried sage.

"You're awake," a soft voice said.

It was Mara, the Pack's head Healer. She was an older woman, her gray hair pulled back into a severe bun that pulled at her temples. She was the one who had stitched me up after the poison dagger incident three years ago. In this entire hellhole of a pack, she was the only soul I dared to trust.

"My baby?" I whispered, my hands flying instinctively to my stomach.

Mara's eyes widened slightly. "You know?"

"I saw the report," I rasped, my throat dry as sandpaper. "Is it...?"

"The little one is stressed, but alive," Mara said, glancing at the monitor humming beside the bed. "But Elena... you can't stay here. The stress, the abuse... you will lose the pregnancy. Or worse, Jackson will end it."

I sat up, gritting my teeth against the wave of dizziness that washed over me. "I know. That's why I need your help."

I didn't hold anything back. I told her everything-the conversation in the garden, the prenatal supplements laced with Wolfsbane, and Joey's terrifying confession.

Mara listened, her face draining of color with every sentence. By the time I finished, her hands were trembling with suppressed rage.

"That bastard," she hissed, her voice shaking. "After everything you sacrificed for this family."

"I need to leave, Mara. Tonight."

"You can't just walk out," she countered, anxiety tightening her features. "The border guards are on high alert for rogues. Jackson has locked down the perimeter tight."

"I'm not walking out," I said, my voice steady despite the fear fluttering in my heart. "I'm being carried out."

I looked past her to the shelves of glass jars lining the wall. "You have Nightshade? And Ghost Root?"

Mara gasped, taking a step back. "Elena, that combination creates a state of suspended animation. It mimics death down to the faintest heartbeat. It's incredibly dangerous. If the dosage is off by even a milligram, you won't wake up."

"It's the only way. If I die, Jackson will want my body gone immediately. He won't want a funeral with the pack watching. He'll want to bury his shame as quickly as possible."

"He'll burn you," Mara whispered, horrified. "That's the tradition for disgraced wolves."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "He won't. He wants to pretend he's a benevolent Alpha. He'll agree to a private burial outside the Pack lands. You'll tell him it's... infectious. A plague brought on by the poison."

Mara looked at me for a long, agonizing moment, searching my eyes for any sign of hesitation. Finding none, she slowly nodded.

"I have a contact," she said quietly. "A powerful Alpha in the North. Hamilton. He owes me a life debt. I can call him to retrieve your 'body'."

Hamilton. The name struck a chord of familiarity, a distant echo I couldn't quite place, but I didn't have the luxury of time to analyze it.

"Do it," I said.

We spent the next hour preparing. Mara mixed the potion with shaking hands. The result was a thick, viscous sludge that looked like liquid tar.

Just as she finished pouring it into a cup, the door to the clinic banged open.

Jackson strode in. He looked unkempt, his shirt collar askew. Was that guilt on his face? No. It was pure annoyance.

"Is she awake?" he barked at Mara.

"She is resting, Alpha," Mara said, stepping protectively in front of me.

Jackson pushed past her without a glance. He looked down at me, his eyes cold and devoid of warmth.

"You embarrassed me tonight, Elena. Attacking the future Luna? Are you insane?"

"She admitted to planning to kill me," I said, my voice quiet but firm.

"She was upset! She didn't mean it," Jackson said, waving his hand dismissively as if swatting away a fly. "Look, I'm tired of this drama. I have the rejection papers here."

He pulled a crumpled, stained document from his pocket and tossed it onto the bedsheets.

"Sign them. Admit you are unfit. And I will let you live in the servants' quarters. You can be a maid."

A maid. In the home I built. Scrubbing floors while watching him play house with her.

I reached into my bag, my fingers brushing against the cold manila folder I had prepared.

"I have a counter-offer," I said.

I threw the photos onto the bed next to his papers. Grainy images I had pulled from the security logs weeks ago-Candida meeting with known rogue wolves at the border. And then, the final blow: a DNA test report I had stolen from Candida's private suite.

Joey's paternity test.

Father: Unknown Rogue.

Jackson stared at the papers. The color drained from his face, leaving it a sickly gray. The silence in the room was deafening.

"She's playing you, Jackson," I said, watching him crumble. "But I don't care anymore. I don't want to save you."

"If this gets out..." he whispered, his voice trembling. "I'll be a laughingstock. The Pack will revolt."

"Exactly," I said. "So here is the deal. I will die tonight."

He snapped his head up, startled. "What?"

"I have a condition that is killing me. The poison damaged me more than you know. Mara will confirm it. I will die. You will let Mara take my body away quietly. No funeral. No scandal. You get to be the grieving widower, and then you can deal with Candida however you want."

He looked at the photos, then back at me. I saw the calculation shifting behind his eyes. He didn't grieve the loss of his mate; he was relieved by the solution to his problem.

"Fine," he said abruptly. "Do it."

He turned to leave, eager to be away from the mess he had created. At the door, he paused, his hand on the frame.

"You know," he said, his voice flat. "I never really wanted a mate who was stronger than me. You were always too much trouble. Even in death, you're a burden."

The door clicked shut.

That was it. The last thread of my heart didn't just break; it disintegrated.

I turned to Mara. Tears were streaming silently down her face. She handed me the cup of black liquid, her hands shaking.

"It will hurt," she warned. "Like fire."

"Not as much as staying," I said.

I raised the cup to my lips.

"I, Elena, reject Jackson as my Alpha and my Mate," I whispered into the liquid, sealing the words with the magic of the brew.

I drank it.

Liquid fire tore through my throat. My lungs seized, refusing to draw air. Darkness rushed in from the edges of my vision, consuming the room, consuming the pain.

My last thought was of the tiny spark of life inside me.

Hold on, little one. We're going to be free.

Then, the world went black.