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.

I don't know how long I lay on the floor.

The thunder kept rolling, indifferent, shaking the windows in their frames while I pressed both hands against my stomach and tried to breathe through the pain. It came in waves—hot, tearing, wrong in a way that had nothing to do with bruised muscle. This was deeper. This was the kind of pain that meant something was happening that couldn't unhappen.

Aviana was gone. At some point she had simply left, as quietly as she'd come in.

I got my knees under me. That took a while. The hardwood was cold against my palms and I focused on that—the cold, the grain of the wood, the specific pressure of my own weight—because if I thought about anything else I would stop moving. I couldn't stop moving.

*Get up,* my wolf said. Not gently. She said it the way you say something to someone who is about to go under. *Get up right now.*

I got up.

The hallway was long and the lights were too bright and I kept one hand on the wall the entire way. I didn't mind-link anyone. I didn't call out. I just moved, one foot and then the other, my free hand pressed flat against my abdomen like I could hold everything in place through sheer will.

Clara opened the healer's den door before I knocked. She took one look at me and her face went the particular kind of still that healers get when they are frightened and cannot afford to show it.

'Inside,' she said. 'Now.'

She had me on the cot in under a minute. Her hands moved fast and sure, pressing, probing, her aura pushing something warm and stabilizing through her palms. I stared at the ceiling and breathed the way she told me to and didn't ask the question I was most afraid to ask.

'The pup is still there,' she said finally, quietly. 'Heartbeat is faint but it's there. You got here in time.'

I closed my eyes. Just for a second.

She mind-linked Neil. I felt the pulse of it go out—that particular vibration of an urgent pack link—and I lay there and listened to the storm and waited.

I felt him the moment he entered the packhouse. That's still how it worked, even now—the bond still functioned, still lit up like a signal fire the second he crossed the threshold. His aura filled the building, moving fast, moving toward us.

And then it stopped.

Not slowed. Stopped.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling and felt, through the bond, the exact moment he changed direction.

Clara was watching the door. Her hands had gone still on my arm.

'He's not coming,' I said.

She didn't answer. She didn't have to.

Through the bond I could feel the shape of it—Aviana's small arms around his neck, the performance of breathlessness, the way his aura shifted from urgent to protective in the span of a single heartbeat. The same shift I'd watched happen at the breakfast table, in the kitchen doorway, every time she needed something from him. He had a register reserved entirely for her now, and it crowded everything else out.

I was lying on a healer's cot with my pup's heartbeat barely holding, and he was carrying her back to her bedroom.

Clara pressed a warm compress against my side and said something low and careful about rest and monitoring. I nodded. I said the right things. I kept my face composed.

And somewhere in my chest, I felt it happen.

Not a sound. Not a sensation I could describe to anyone who hadn't felt it. Just—a shift. Like a door closing in a room you'd lived in your whole life. The mate bond didn't break. It cracked. A clean, structural fracture, the kind that doesn't announce itself until the weight comes down and the whole thing gives.

My tears stopped.

I hadn't realized I'd been crying until they stopped.

I lay in the quiet of the healer's den with Clara's hands still moving carefully over my side, and I felt the grief drain out of me like water through a cracked vessel. What replaced it wasn't anger. It wasn't even pain.

It was clarity.

Neil would gaslight me. He would call this an accident, a misunderstanding, a child's nightmare. He would use his Alpha tone and his held-too-long eye contact and his absolute certainty that I would absorb it, the way I always had, because I loved him and because I believed in the bond and because I was the Luna and Lunas held things together.

Not anymore.

I pressed my palm flat against my stomach. The pup's heartbeat was faint but steady under my hand—stubborn, persistent, already fighting.

'I need you to keep this between us,' I said to Clara. My voice was even. Completely even. 'What happened tonight. Who was here. All of it.'

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded once.

I stared at the ceiling and began, very quietly, to plan.