I found out I was pregnant on a Tuesday.

Clara confirmed it with a quiet smile and a hand pressed briefly over mine—the kind of touch that said she understood exactly what this meant. Two years of hoping. Two years of watching other pack females round with pups while I smiled and said the right things and pressed my palm flat against my own stomach in the dark, willing it to mean something.

Now it did.

I walked back to the Alpha suite with my hand resting low on my abdomen, the way it always did when I was anxious. Except this time I wasn't anxious. I was full—so full I didn't trust myself to speak it out loud yet, not even to the empty hallway.

Neil was due back from the Lycan summit by evening. I had time.

I lit the candles he never asked for but always noticed. I set out the good wine—his, not mine, not anymore—and left a single glass. I let my scent settle into the room the way it does when I'm calm and unhurried, that soft floral warmth that Neil once told me he could find in a crowd of a thousand wolves. I wanted him to walk through that door and know, before I said a single word, that something had shifted.

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

I felt him before I heard him.

That's the thing about a mate bond—it doesn't announce itself, it just changes the air. The packhouse always feels different when Neil is in it, like the walls straighten slightly. I stood, smoothing my dress, and turned toward the door with the news already rising in my throat.

Then I caught his scent.

Woodsy, familiar—but wrong. Threaded through with something tight and anxious, the particular edge he carries when he's already decided something and doesn't want to be questioned about it. I'd learned that scent during pack disputes, during hard decisions about territory and rank. I had never smelled it directed at me.

The door opened.

Neil walked in. He was still in his summit clothes, jacket slightly rumpled, jaw set in that way that meant his mind was already three steps ahead of the conversation. He looked at me—really looked, for just a second—and something moved across his face that I couldn't name.

Then I saw the girl.

She was holding his hand. Eight years old, maybe, with dark hair pulled back unevenly and eyes that were too still for a child's. She stood slightly behind Neil's shoulder, but her gaze was already moving around the room—cataloguing it, the way a wolf does when it enters unfamiliar territory.

When her eyes landed on me, they stopped.

They didn't soften. They didn't do what a child's eyes usually do when they meet a stranger—that flicker of uncertainty, that instinctive reach for reassurance. She just looked at me, flat and assessing, and I felt something cold move through the mate bond.

"Neil." My voice came out even. I was proud of that.

"Mel." He released the girl's hand and crossed to me, pressing a brief kiss to my temple. His lips were warm but his body was angled away, already half-turned back toward her. "This is Aviana."

He held out the lineage scroll before I could respond. Pack-sealed, official-looking. I took it because my hands needed something to do.

Katalina Berry. Our late pack healer. Survived by one daughter, Aviana, age eight. Father unknown.

"Katalina saved my life during a border skirmish four years ago," Neil said. His voice was steady—rehearsed, I realized. "I owe her a debt I can never repay. Aviana has no one. She belongs with the pack. With us."

I looked up from the scroll. "You didn't discuss this with me."

"There wasn't time."

"Neil." I kept my voice low. "She's a child. Bringing her into the Alpha suite—into our home—without a single conversation—"

"It's pack duty." The register of his voice dropped, just slightly. Not a shout. Never a shout. Just that low, resonant weight that pressed against the chest and said: this is not a debate. "I need you to understand that."

The Alpha tone. In our bedroom. Directed at me.

I went still.

Across the room, Aviana watched me with those quiet, cataloguing eyes. And in that stillness, I understood something with a clarity that had nothing to do with logic: she wasn't afraid of me. She wasn't uncertain. She was waiting to see if I would yield.

My hand found my abdomen. The old anxious gesture. Except now there was something there to protect.

I folded the scroll carefully and set it on the dresser.

"All right," I said. "She can stay."

Neil's shoulders dropped half an inch—relief, quickly hidden. He turned back to Aviana with a warmth in his face that I hadn't seen directed at me since he walked through the door.

I watched them and said nothing. The candles were still burning. The wine was still poured.

The news stayed locked behind my teeth, where it would remain for a long time yet.

The first pack breakfast was supposed to be simple.

I'd been up since before dawn, which wasn't unusual. What was unusual was the reason—I'd lain awake running through every possible version of the morning, trying to find the one where it went smoothly. Where Aviana sat across from us and ate her food and let Neil and me exist in the same space without the air between us turning into something I had to navigate around.

I made eggs the way Neil liked them. I sliced fruit. I brewed coffee and set out juice for the child, because she was eight and eight-year-olds drank juice. I did all of it with my hand pressed briefly to my stomach between tasks, the way I always did, and I told myself this was manageable. She was a child. I was the Luna. I could do this.

Then Neil came downstairs with Aviana at his side, and before he reached his chair, she slid into the seat next to him—the seat that had been mine every morning for two years—and folded her hands on the table like she'd always sat there.

Neil pulled out the chair on her other side and sat down.

I stood at the counter for a moment with the serving dish in my hands. Then I set it on the table and took the seat across from them.

Fine. It was fine.

I served the food. Aviana watched me do it with those flat, careful eyes, and when I set a plate in front of her, she looked down at it and pressed one small hand to her stomach.

'It hurts,' she said quietly. 'I don't feel well.'

Neil's attention snapped to her immediately. 'What kind of hurt? Where?'

'Here.' She pressed harder. Her face arranged itself into something pained and fragile.

'You don't have to eat if you're not feeling well,' he said, already reaching for her plate to move it aside.

I watched this. I kept my expression neutral. 'She should eat something. She hasn't eaten since last night.'

Neil glanced at me—brief, slightly impatient—then back to Aviana. 'What sounds okay? I can get you something else.'

'Maybe just a little,' she said softly. 'If you give it to me.'

He picked up the serving spoon. He put the same eggs, from the same dish, onto her plate. She ate every bite.

I drank my coffee and said nothing. Across the table, Aviana's eyes found mine once, just for a second, over the rim of her juice glass. There was nothing childlike in them.

I looked away first. I hated that I looked away first.

---

A few days later I was in my study when I heard it—a sound I couldn't immediately place. A crash, sharp and heavy, followed by a high, breathless scream that cut straight through the packhouse walls.

I was already moving before I understood why.

The kitchen doorway stopped me cold.

The Omega—one of the younger ones, assigned to morning prep—was on the floor. The silver platters she'd been carrying were scattered around her, one still spinning slowly on the tile. She was trying to push herself up and failing, her palm sliding on something slick and gleaming that spread across most of the kitchen floor.

Oil. A massive, deliberate pool of it, catching the morning light.

Aviana was standing at the edge of the pantry doorway, both hands pressed to her face, making a sound that was almost crying. Almost. Her shoulders heaved. Her eyes, above her fingers, were dry.

'She came at me,' Aviana gasped. 'She was going to hurt me—'

'That's not—' the Omega started, her voice strained with pain.

'I was so scared—'

Neil arrived thirty seconds after I did. I felt his aura before I saw him—that low, pressurized weight that filled the room and made the air feel thinner. He took in the scene in one sweep: the Omega on the floor, the scattered platters, Aviana trembling at the pantry door.

He didn't look at the oil.

'Neil.' I kept my voice steady. 'Look at the floor. This was deliberate—'

'She's eight years old, Melanie.'

'I know how old she is. Look at how much oil that is. Someone poured it. The Omega was carrying platters—she couldn't have—'

'Enough.' The word landed like a stone. His eyes were on the Omega now, and the aura pressed down harder. 'You're confined to Omega quarters until I decide otherwise. If I hear you've gone near Aviana again—'

'She didn't go near her,' I said. My voice was still even. I was working very hard to keep it that way. 'She walked into the kitchen to do her job and she fell. That's what happened.'

Neil looked at me. That held-too-long eye contact, the one I'd learned to read. 'I said enough.'

The Omega didn't speak again. She gathered herself off the floor slowly, carefully, and left without looking at anyone.

Aviana had stopped making the almost-crying sound. She was watching me from the pantry doorway, hands lowered now, face composed.

I held her gaze this time. I didn't look away.

Something shifted in her expression—small, almost imperceptible. Not fear. Recalculation.

I turned and walked back to my study. I sat down at my desk. I opened the pack ledger and stared at the numbers without seeing them.

Then I opened my laptop and began researching hidden cameras.

I waited until the packhouse settled into the heavy, suffocating quiet of midnight before I slipped out of the Alpha suite. The air in the basement hallway was stale, a stark contrast to the rich pine and fresh air of the upper floors. I knocked softly on the last door.

The young Omega opened it. Her eyes were wide and fearful, and a nasty, dark purple bruise bloomed along her jaw where she had struck the kitchen tile.

"Luna?" she whispered, shrinking back a little.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. "Sit," I told her gently.

She perched on the edge of her narrow bed. I reached out, pressing my warm hands gently against her jaw. I let my Luna aura flow through my fingertips, pushing soothing, healing energy into her bruised skin. She flinched at first, then slowly relaxed as the swelling began to fade.

"You didn't fall on your own," I said quietly, keeping my eyes on her face.

She looked down at her lap. Omegas were taught to survive by being invisible. Speaking against the Alpha's protected ward was dangerous, and Neil had made his stance terrifyingly clear.

"I won't let him punish you," I promised. "But I need the truth."

She took a shaky breath, her fingers twisting the fabric of her sleep shirt. "I saw her, Luna. The little girl. She dragged the heavy gallon jug out of the pantry. I watched her pour the oil across the floor, set the jug back perfectly, and then she just... waited in the doorway. For someone to walk in."

The chill that washed over me had nothing to do with the basement draft. I thanked the Omega, healed the rest of her scrapes, and walked back up the stairs like a ghost.

My hand found my lower abdomen, pressing flat against the tiny, secret flutter of life inside me. My perspective shattered and rearranged itself in the dark. Aviana wasn't a broken, grieving orphan acting out of fear or trauma. She was a calculating threat. She was actively campaigning against me, hunting for my weak spots.

And I was the prey.

Two nights later, the sky tore open.

A fierce thunderstorm rolled over the Shadowpine territory with violent, deafening cracks. Rain lashed against the bedroom windows in heavy sheets, blurring the dense tree line into a dark, swirling mess.

Neil stood by the door, pulling on his heavy waterproof jacket. His jaw was tight. "The southern river border is flooding," he said, his voice clipped. "Harrison and I are going out to secure the perimeter."

"Be careful," I said. It was a reflex, a remnant of the mate I used to be.

"Lock the doors. Stay inside." He didn't look at me. He didn't kiss my cheek. He just walked out, his mind already swallowed by the storm.

I stood alone in the center of the Alpha suite. The thunder shook the glass under my fingertips, the booming so loud it easily masked every other sound in the massive packhouse.

Inside my mind, my wolf paced in tight, agitated circles. She was whining, her hackles raised, snapping her jaws at empty air. She felt it—a deep, primal unease that made my skin crawl.

*Something is wrong,* she growled in my head.

I rubbed my stomach, trying to soothe both of us. "We're fine," I whispered to the empty room, though my heart beat a frantic rhythm against my ribs. "We're safe."

*Click.*

The sound of the heavy brass deadbolt turning was small, but it cut straight through the rumble of the thunder.

I spun around.

Aviana stood just inside the room, her hand dropping from the lock. She didn't look like the fragile, trembling child who clung to Neil's leg. Her shoulders were square. Her posture was perfectly steady. The wide, tear-filled eyes were gone, replaced by a stare so flat and empty it made the blood freeze in my veins.

"Aviana," I said, forcing my voice to stay even. "What are you doing in here?"

She took a step forward. Then another.

"He's mine," she said. Her voice wasn't small or hesitant anymore. It was dead flat, carrying a chilling, adult certainty. "He will only ever love me."

"Where is your chaperone?" I asked, taking a slow step backward. My hand instinctively dropped to cover my belly.

Aviana noticed the movement. Her dark eyes locked onto my stomach, and her mouth twisted into an ugly, cruel line.

"There is no room for a Luna," she said coldly. "And there is no room for anything else."

Before I could process the threat, she lunged.

She didn't move like a child. She moved with the explosive, desperate violence of a cornered rogue. I tried to twist away, twisting my body to shield my womb, but the heavy fabric of my dress tangled around my knees.

Her heavy boot connected directly with my stomach.

The force of the kick stole the breath right out of my lungs. A sharp, agonizing tear of pain ripped through my abdomen, so intense it blinded me with white light. I collapsed hard onto the hardwood floor, curling into a tight ball, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

Thunder cracked directly overhead, rattling the floorboards beneath my cheek. Through the ringing in my ears and the blinding, hot agony radiating from my womb, I opened my eyes.

Aviana stood over me, looking down at my writhing body. She didn't blink.