Serena Voss had not felt this kind of hope in years.
It was fragile, the way hope always was when it had been broken too many times, but it was there all the same — a small, quiet warmth unfurling beneath her ribs, as if her wolf were finally daring to believe again.
The council house stood ahead of her, its dark stone walls washed in the pale light of dawn. The pack was only just waking. Patrol wolves crossed the paths in low murmurs, steam curling from their breaths in the cold mountain air. No one paid her much attention anymore — not like before, when she had been the radiant Luna who walked beside the Alpha with pride.
Now she was the silent one. The patient one. The woman whose womb had failed too many times to be a miracle anymore.
Serena pressed her fingers against her stomach as she climbed the steps.
Please be real this time.
For weeks her body had felt different. Subtle things — the way her appetite shifted, the way the Moon called to her at strange hours, the faint dizziness that bloomed whenever she shifted forms. Her wolf had been restless, humming beneath her skin, refusing to sleep.
Last night, when she’d tasted the nightly tonic Rowan insisted she take, her wolf had recoiled.
She hadn’t said anything then.
But this morning, something had changed. It wasn’t certainty — not yet — but it was enough that her heart was beating too fast as she reached for the council doors.
She imagined telling him.
Rowan would look at her in disbelief first. Then that slow smile would curve across his mouth, the one he only wore in private. He would take her hands, feel the tremble in them, and say her name the way he used to — Serena — like it was something precious.
She never made it to the handle.
“Erase everything,” Rowan said from inside.
Her hand froze mid-air.
The council chamber doors were slightly ajar, light spilling through the narrow gap. Serena leaned closer without meaning to, her breath caught somewhere between curiosity and unease.
“I don’t care how loyal she was,” Rowan continued, his voice stripped of warmth. “The scout discovered the treaty drafts. That can’t be undone.”
Serena felt the first cold tremor slide through her spine.
Scout.
Treaty drafts.
Kellan’s voice followed, careful, subdued. “She didn’t even make it back to the den. The body was found near the ravine. But if the council inspects—”
“They won’t,” Rowan snapped. “Burn the trail. List her as a rogue casualty. This pack has lost enough wolves lately that no one will question it.”
Serena pressed her palm against the doorframe to steady herself.
The ravine.
Her northern scouts patrolled there. She knew every one of them by scent.
“She trusted Luna Serena,” Kellan said quietly. “That’s why she kept digging. I don’t think she meant harm.”
There was a brief pause.
Then Rowan spoke again, colder than before.
“That’s exactly why she had to die.”
The air left Serena’s lungs.
Her heart thudded so hard she thought it might give her away, echoing through the stone hall like a drum of war. She imagined the young she-wolf — quiet, steady, always bringing reports directly to her — lying alone in the ravine while the Alpha ordered her existence erased.
“What about the residue she collected?” Kellan asked. “The moonblood traces. If anyone tests—”
“They won’t test,” Rowan said. “I’ve already altered the archive seals. The council will see only what I allow them to see.”
Moonblood.
Serena felt faint.
Her moonblood.
The sacred bloodline every Luna carried — power that should never be taken without consent.
Taken.
“Lyra’s clan is demanding reassurance,” Kellan said. “They don’t trust that the tonics will hold much longer.”
Rowan exhaled slowly, like a man irritated by a minor inconvenience. “They will hold. The witch swore they would suppress conception completely. Serena’s body will never carry a child as long as she drinks them.”
The words struck harder than any blade.
Suppress.
Conception.
Serena’s mind reeled, reaching for logic that no longer existed.
The tonics. The nightly silver draughts he made her drink while stroking her hair, murmuring that her womb simply needed time, that her wolf was fragile, that the Moon had not yet chosen them.
They were never meant to heal her.
They were meant to break her.
“Lyra is growing impatient,” Kellan said.
At the name, something tore loose inside Serena’s chest.
Rowan laughed quietly — not cruelly, but with weary affection. “Tell her to be patient. Once she carries the heir, the Mane clan will secure the eastern territories. Serena will remain useful only as long as she stays childless.”
Serena bit down on her knuckle to keep from making a sound.
“Serena can’t get pregnant,” Rowan added flatly. “If she does, everything we planned with Lyra falls apart.”
The world ended.
Not loudly. Not in flames or thunder.
It ended the way real things do — in silence so complete it swallowed every sound, every thought, every memory she had ever cherished.
He never wanted her child.
He never wanted her.
Five years of loss. Five years of bloodstained sheets and whispered apologies. Five years of believing her wolf was broken.
All engineered.
Her hands were shaking so violently she had to clutch the doorframe to remain standing. The warmth beneath her ribs flickered — fragile, terrified — as if the life she had dared to imagine already knew it was not welcome in this world.
Serena turned away before her knees buckled.
She did not cry as she walked down the council steps.
She did not look back at the chamber where her mate had just buried her future.
She walked into the forest with her heart in ruins and one thought echoing louder than any howl:
The Luna he wanted is dead.
But the woman he made… has only just begun.
