Casey POV:

When I was seven months pregnant, my mother-in-law sent a rogue into my bedroom.

In my past life, the violent struggle cost me my baby. Then, my so-called best friend stood before the pack council and testified against me, branding me a cheating whore.

Stripped of my rank and exiled to freeze to death, I could only watch in despair as my mate threw his life away in a suicidal rage, trying to avenge a truth he never knew.

Why? Because I was weak. Because I was obedient.

When I opened my eyes to the sickening stench of the rogue's sweat, the paralyzing terror of my past life evaporated. It was replaced by a cold, murderous rage.

"Your mother-in-law said you were lonely," the filthy man sneered, reaching his grimy hands toward my swollen belly.

I didn't scream. I didn't beg.

I grabbed the heavy brass lamp from the nightstand and smashed it mercilessly into his face, shattering his teeth.

But merely surviving the night wasn't enough.

Covered in his blood, I dragged his broken body straight into the Pack Hall. Looking at my fake, sobbing mother-in-law, I didn't defend myself—I initiated a ruthless trial that would cost her everything.

As for my backstabbing best friend, currently parading around in my stolen clothes? She’s next.

They thought they could frame me and destroy me all over again. But they are about to learn a terrifying truth...

This time, the real monster in the pack isn't the rogue. It's me.

——

A pungent stench of stale beer and sour sweat violently assaulted my senses, dragging me upward from the depths of sleep.

My eyes snapped open. Through the thin curtains, the weak moonlight filtered in, illuminating the silhouette of a strange man standing beside my bed. He was heavily built, his breathing erratic and heavy, looking at me like a piece of meat he was about to devour.

My chest tightened in panic. Instinctively, my hand flew down, landing on the firm, high swell of my pregnant belly.

Before my mind could even process how I was pregnant again, the man took a step forward. The floorboards groaned under his weight. A sickening grin split his shadowed face, revealing a row of yellowed teeth.

"Mrs. Kandi said you were lonely," he rasped. His voice was low and gritty, grating against my nerves like sandpaper. "She sent me to keep you company."

Kandi Bradley. My mate Jace's stepmother.

Hearing that name, a blinding white light flashed across my vision. The memories hit me with the force of a physical blow.

I was reborn.

Around this time in my past life, I was seven months pregnant. My mate, Jace, an elite warrior of the pack, had been dispatched to patrol the borders just days after we mated.

It was on this very night that this disgusting rogue crawled into my room. The fierce struggle caused me to go into premature labor, and the pup I gave birth to was sickly and frail from a young age.

I poured my heart and soul into raising my child until she was four, only for my stepsister to sell her to human traffickers when taking her out to play!

Driven mad with grief and desperate to find our pup, Jace secretly deployed the pack's elite trackers and even abandoned his post at the border.

For violating pack law and putting the territory at risk, the furious Alpha stripped him of his warrior title, completely ruining his promising future.

All these agonizing memories flashed by in a fraction of a second. The Moon Goddess had given me a second chance. I was going to rewrite this tragedy, and it started with the filth standing in front of me.

Seeing the man lunge, my inner wolf snarled. I threw my weight sideways, rolling off the narrow bed.

The impact sent a jolt of pain up my spine, but I ignored it. My fingers frantically scrambled over the rough wood of the nightstand until they closed around a cold, heavy base.

A solid brass lamp.

Wayne Tucker—the man Kandi had sent—grunted in frustration as he landed on the empty mattress. He pushed himself up and turned, his face twisting into an ugly mask of rage.

His eyes met mine.

A guttural roar ripped from the deepest part of my soul. I swung the heavy lamp with every ounce of strength I had. All the memories of my lost child, every tear Jace had ever shed, were channeled into that single, devastating blow.

Smash!

Wayne staggered backward, his hands flying to his face. Thick, dark blood gushed through his fingers.

I didn't stop. I backed away and started screaming at the top of my lungs. "Rogue! Help! Someone, help!"

Thundering footsteps echoed in the hallway outside. Wayne's head snapped toward the window, panic finally piercing his dull eyes.

The door burst open. Clayton Reynolds, the Beta of our pack, stormed in, flanked by two pack warriors.

"Restrain him," Clayton ordered, his Alpha-command aura filling the room.

In a heartbeat, the warriors tackled Wayne, dragging him away from the window and slamming him face-down onto the floorboards.

The doorway was now crowded with the faces of my Omega neighbors, their expressions a mix of shock and morbid curiosity. Their whispers rustled like dead leaves. Their eyes darted from Wayne, to my torn nightgown, and finally to my swollen belly. I could already smell their judgment.

I ignored them.

Slowly, painfully, I pushed myself up, ignoring the dull ache in my abdomen, and walked toward Clayton.

"Beta," I said, my voice clear and unwavering, slicing through the whispers. "I wish to press formal charges."

Clayton nodded, his expression grim. "Of course, Casey. He will face the pack's judgment. He won't get away with this."

I slowly shook my head. My gaze bypassed Wayne Tucker's struggling form and pierced through the walls of the small room, as if I could see the true mastermind.

"No," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous, suppressed whisper. "I'm not just pressing charges against him."

"I am pressing charges against the one who sent him."

In the stunned silence, with every eye fixed upon me, I delivered the fatal blow.

"I, Casey Robinson, formally accuse Kandi Bradley, mate of Judd Frye, of the attempted murder of a warrior's mate and her unborn pup."

Casey POV:

The Pack Hall was freezing the next morning.

The air was thick with the scent of aged pine, beeswax, and the unspoken tension of a pack trial. I stood alone on one side of the vast, circular room, my hands resting protectively on my belly. The steady, reassuring weight of it grounded me.

My pup was quiet, as if sensing the gravity of the moment.

In the center of the room, Wayne Tucker knelt, his hands bound tightly behind his back with silver chains. The bleeding on his face had stopped, leaving a grotesque, swollen mess around his nose and mouth. He glared at me with pure, unadulterated hatred.

The heavy oak doors swung open. Kandi Bradley strode in. Beside her stood her mate—Jace's adoptive father, Judd Frye. His face was a thundercloud of righteous indignation.

Clayton sat on the raised dais, looking down at Kandi with an unreadable expression. "Kandi Bradley," he began, his voice echoing in the silent hall. "You have been summoned because Casey Robinson has accused you of orchestrating last night's attack."

Kandi's head snapped up. She stared at me as if seeing me for the first time, her eyes wide with theatrical disbelief. Then, right on cue, her eyes welled up with tears.

"Me?" She pointed a trembling finger at her own chest. "Why would I ever harm my own daughter-in-law? The mother of my future grand-pup?"

She stumbled forward, turning to the crowd, her voice quivering with perfectly calculated sorrow. "I have been anticipating this pup more than anyone! I raised Jace as my own flesh and blood, loved him, and now... I am repaid with this?"

Judd Frye stepped forward, his fists clenched. "This is an outrage! Casey, you ungrateful wretch! Kandi has done nothing but care for you, and you repay her with this venomous lie?"

The wind of public opinion shifted instantly. The pack members who had previously looked at me with pity now began to point and whisper.

"Wayne Tucker," I said, my voice cutting sharply through her fake sobs. "Tell them again. Who sent you to my room?"

Kandi's eyes shot Wayne a subtle, warning glare.

Wayne, his mouth bloody and swollen, hesitated for a split second before his gaze hardened. He raised his head and pointed a bound hand directly at me.

"She did!" he snarled, his words slightly slurred. "She invited me! We've been mating in secret for weeks!"

A collective gasp sucked the air out of the hall.

Kandi seized the moment like a starving wolf. "Oh, Moon Goddess!" she shrieked, clutching her chest as if in physical pain. "Now it all makes sense! Casey... you've been unfaithful to my son!"

Riding her momentum, the lies spilled from her lips smoothly. "I've seen you and Wayne sneaking around! That pup in your belly belongs to him!"

A plump Omega named Doris—one of Kandi's notorious gossip cronies—immediately jumped up from the benches. "I saw her! I saw Casey going into the woods by the river with a man last Tuesday afternoon! They were acting so suspicious!"

Judd Frye roared in fury. "She has tainted my son's honor! She has disgraced this pack! Beta Clayton, I demand she be stripped of her rank! We must banish this whore and her bastard pup before they bring a curse upon us all!"

The whispers in the room morphed into loud, hostile murmurs. The eyes staring at me were no longer curious; they were filled with disgust and contempt.

In a matter of minutes, I had been twisted from the victim into the villain.

A faint, ice-cold smile graced my lips.

"Kandi," I said, my tone eerily calm. "Are you done with your performance? Because if you're finished with your lies... it's my turn."

Casey POV:

"Doris," I said softly, stepping forward. "You claim you saw me in the woods by the river last Tuesday afternoon. Could you tell the Beta what I was wearing?"

Doris blinked, caught off guard by the direct question. She cast a nervous, fleeting glance at Kandi.

"A... a blue dress," she stammered. It was clearly the script Kandi had fed her.

My smile deepened. "Oh? That's fascinating. Because my blue dress was ruined by bleach last month. I had to throw it in the trash."

I turned my head slightly, my eyes landing on an elderly Omega sitting in the second row. "You remember that, don't you, Martha? I was so upset about it, and you told me not to stress too much for the baby's sake."

Martha, a woman renowned throughout the pack for her absolute honesty, nodded slowly. "That's right. The dress was ruined. Completely faded. Unwearable."

Doris's face drained of color. Kandi's expression froze.

I didn't give them a second to breathe. I pivoted back to face Kandi.

"You also claim I was at the river last Tuesday afternoon? What a coincidence." I raised my voice, making it loud and clear so it bounced off the stone walls. "Because last Tuesday, for the entire afternoon, I was at the Pack Clinic having my prenatal check-up with Healer Maeve."

I shifted my gaze to the dais. "Beta Clayton, you can send a warrior to ask Healer Maeve right now. I was there from one o'clock until nearly four-thirty. The pup was resting in a slightly awkward position, so she kept me under observation."

Clayton didn't hesitate. He gestured to a warrior standing by the door, who immediately slipped out of the hall.

Kandi looked trapped. A sliver of genuine panic finally cracked her composed scent, smelling faintly of sour sweat.

"I... I must have remembered the day wrong!" she blurted out. "It was Wednesday! Yes, last Wednesday!"

A soft laugh escaped my throat.

"Wednesday?" I tilted my head. "Last Wednesday, every Omega in the pack was assigned to gather Moonlight Petals for the upcoming Moon Goddess Festival. I was right there in the fields, Kandi. Along with over twenty other females who can testify that I was present from sunrise to sunset."

Several Omegas in the crowd nodded vigorously. One of them even spoke up, "She's right. Casey was with us the entire day."

The doubt in the room was now palpable, but it was no longer aimed at me. It was a heavy, suffocating cloak settling over Kandi Bradley's shoulders. Even Judd Frye looked bewildered, his furious bluster evaporating as he stared at his mate with dawning suspicion.

The door opened, and the warrior returned. He jogged up to the Beta's dais and whispered something.

Clayton's face, previously clouded with impartial neutrality, cleared into a mask of deep, suppressed anger.

"Healer Maeve confirms it," Clayton announced, his voice booming. "Casey Robinson was in her clinic for the entirety of last Tuesday afternoon."

Kandi's face went completely ashen. She looked like she had seen a ghost.

I walked toward her slowly. Every step I took sounded like a hammer strike, echoing the frantic, terrified beating of her heart. I stopped just a few feet away, close enough to see the beads of sweat forming on her upper lip.

"Kandi," I said, repeating my earlier question, but this time, it was a death sentence. "Are you done with your lies?"

Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

"Wouldn't a grandmother who is 'anxiously anticipating' her grand-pup know exactly where her daughter-in-law was for the past week?" I asked, my voice dangerously soft. "Would an innocent woman need to fabricate so many pathetic, easily disproven stories to condemn someone else?"

My questions hung in the air, sharp and lethal. Kandi stumbled backward, her eyes wide with terror, until she bumped into Judd—who made absolutely no move to steady her.

Then, I turned my head, my gaze falling back onto the trembling, kneeling form of Wayne Tucker. A chilling smile bloomed on my face.

"Now," I said, my voice smooth as silk but hard as steel. "Let's talk about the real reason you were in my room."