Alicia’s POV
I laid the last dish on the long wooden table with trembling hands. My arms ached from exhaustion, and my chest felt like it was carrying boulders. Still, I forced myself to move, to serve, to endure. The scent of roasted venison and seasoned roots filled the room, the very meal Alpha Stephen always loved.
Even in my broken state, I cooked it for him. Even after everything, I thought maybe, just maybe, the taste of home, the food I always prepared with love, would remind him of me.
He sat at the head of the table, his eyes hard as stone. But when his gaze flickered toward the spread, I caught it, a fleeting softness. He looked at the food as though he missed it, as though memory clawed at him. My heart squeezed painfully, but I didn’t allow hope to rise.
“Sit,” my mother-in-law commanded sharply.
I was about to occupy one of the chairs when she started talking again. “Not there. On the floor.”
I gasped. Mouth opened. I couldn’t believe what I just heard. I tried to look at Stephen, hoping he would not let me experience such lowness, but he didn’t care.
I swallowed hard, feeling my stomach boil in hunger.
Reluctantly, I lowered myself to the ground. Not at the table. On the floor. Like a mutt. Like I was less than the lowest omega.
The humiliation stung, but my body was too weak to fight. My stomach churned with emptiness, gnawing at itself. I pressed my lips together, swallowing down my pride. This wasn’t the first time I had been forced to bow lower than anyone else in this pack… but never had it been Stephen and his family demanding it.
I reached for the plate set before me on the floor and began to eat, each bite scraping against my dignity.
A sudden cough broke the tense silence.
“Alpha—!” Sophia’s voice rang out. She coughed again, this time speckled with blood. Her pale hand shot to her mouth, her eyes wide with trembling fear. “I—I’m poisoned!”
Gasps filled the hall. The warriors jumped to their feet. All eyes swung toward me—me, the woman eating from the floor, the one Sophia had always marked as her enemy.
I froze, food half-chewed in my mouth, as Sophia collapsed dramatically into the arms of another wolf.
Stephen’s chair screeched against the floor as he shot up, his face thunderous. He stormed forward and kicked the plate from my hands, sending food scattering across the ground.
“You dare?” His voice was laced with fury, his aura pressing down on me like a crushing mountain. “You didn’t learn your lesson, Alicia. And now you’ve stooped low enough to poison food?!”
My body flinched at the blow of his words more than the scattering food. “No! I didn’t—”
He didn’t listen. His eyes burned with betrayal.
“Take Sophia to the hospital wing!” he barked. “Now!”
Warriors rushed to obey. In the chaos, as bodies shuffled around her, I caught Sophia’s face for the briefest moment. Her lips curled into the faintest smirk—sharp, triumphant, venomous.
My blood ran cold.
She planned this. She did this.
And yet, Stephen didn’t see it. He didn’t even hesitate.
“Wolf elites!” Stephen’s voice cut through the panic like a blade. His gaze swung back to me, cold, unyielding. “Punish her. Lock her in the Death Garden.”
The blood drained from my face. My knees buckled.
“No…” My voice cracked, tears springing to my eyes. I scrambled forward on my knees, my palms pressed against the floor in desperation. “Alpha, no! You can’t. You know what that place does to wolves. Anyone who enters—”
“Silence!” His command reverberated through the hall, suppressing even my wolf’s whimper inside me.
My chest heaved. I stared up at him, broken. “Please… listen to me! I would never poison her. You know me. You know my wolf couldn’t—”
His jaw clenched. His eyes, once my haven, looked at me as if I were nothing but filth.
And then I knew.
He wouldn’t believe me.
Not over her.
The warriors grabbed my arms and dragged me across the ground. My pleas turned into screams, then into sobs. No one listened.
When the iron gates of the Death Garden opened, I felt it immediately—the suffocating aura of decay, the death-flowers that strangled wolves’ spirits. My wolf whimpered, shrinking back inside me. The moment my bare feet touched the soil, my body sagged, weak and sluggish.
The gates slammed shut behind me.
My breaths came shallow, my chest tightening as if invisible hands were squeezing me. My vision blurred, but I forced myself to move, to cling to a single thought: survive.
In desperation, I slipped my hand into my pocket, pulling out the burner phone I had hidden there for weeks. My father’s voice answered within seconds.
“…Alicia?”
I struggled to keep my voice steady. “Change of plans,” I rasped, my throat raw. “Burn the Death Garden. Make it look like… make it look like I died here.”
“Alicia—”
“Do it.” My eyes burned with tears as my legs gave out beneath me. “If Stephen wants me gone so easily… then let him believe it. Let him carry the guilt of throwing me to my death. Let him regret.”
My father’s wolves came swiftly, shadows slipping through the night. I was barely conscious when strong arms lifted me, when smoke filled my lungs, when flames devoured the cursed garden behind me.
A lifeless body, already prepared, was left to burn. And around its charred neck, they placed the necklace Stephen had once given me—the one I used to treasure as proof of his love.
Now, it would be proof of my death.
And the beginning of his torment.
Stephen’s POV
The door burst open, and my Beta stumbled in, breathless.
“Alpha!” His face was pale with horror. “The Death Garden—it’s burning! The fire was too
huge. We couldn’t rescue her. We found a body… too burnt to recognize. But…” He swallowed hard. “It had her necklace. The one you gave Alicia.”
