The moon hung heavy that night, casting an eerie blue sheen over the Alpha's quarters. Elisa sat by the window, brushing her pale hair with slow, deliberate strokes. She looked like a statue carved from ice, silent and still, her reflection warping in the glass. Rodriguez stood behind her, arms folded, his gaze locked on nothing and everything.
“She’s not dying fast enough,” Elisa said without turning.
Rodriguez didn’t respond immediately. He walked toward the fire, poking the embers until they flared up. The scent of burning pine filled the room.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, voice low, almost careful.
“That’s always dangerous,” she muttered.
He ignored the jab. “Anna’s not just some orphan we picked up. Her bloodline isn’t random.”
Elisa turned. “What are you talking about?”
“I found something in the old records,” Rodriguez said, pacing now, his voice taut with controlled fury. “She was adopted by the former Alpha, yes. But that wasn’t just a gesture of kindness. It was a concealment.”
Elisa stood, tension vibrating beneath her skin. “Concealment?”
Rodriguez looked at her. “Her parents were from the Bloodborne line. You know the name.”
Elisa’s breath hitched. “That’s impossible. They were all slaughtered during the purge.”
“Apparently not all.”
“Why wasn’t I told?” Her voice cracked, half fury, half fear.
Rodriguez’s jaw tightened. “Because no one was supposed to know. Not even the Council. My father made a pact—unwritten, buried. If any child of the Bloodborne survived, we were to keep them close until the right moment.”
Elisa scoffed. “So you mated her out of duty? Is that it?”
“I mated her,” he said coldly, “because my father ordered it. To keep her in check. To bind her to us.”
“And I had to watch while you put a pup in her,” Elisa snapped. “While you pretended she mattered.”
His eyes narrowed. “I never pretended. That was never about her. It was about control. About making sure her blood didn’t turn against us.”
She moved to him, close enough to feel the heat of his body. “Then why is she still alive?”
“Because someone outside the pack is watching,” he said. “I don’t know who, but I can feel it. Killing her now would trigger something worse.”
Elisa growled, low and guttural. “Let it. I’m tired of her scent. Of her pathetic eyes. She mated you before I did, Rodriguez. That humiliation doesn’t vanish just because you tell me she’s a pawn.”
He didn’t flinch. “I didn’t ask for your forgiveness.”
“Good,” she hissed. “Because I’ve already planned her last breath. You won’t even have to touch her. Just say when.”
Rodriguez turned back to the fire. “Not yet. We need to know who’s watching. And why they’ve waited this long.”
Elisa sneered. “Fine. But when it’s over—when the last drop of her cursed blood is wrung out—I want her to know. I want her to see that she was never loved. Just... tolerated.”
He gave no reply.
The cell reeked of urine and old blood. Damp stone walls pressed in from every side, swallowing light, swallowing time. Days blurred—hours lost meaning. Anna no longer counted them. Instead, she watched her belly swell beneath the torn fabric of her dress, watched the tiny life inside her stretch and kick and grow while the rest of her withered.
Her mind unraveled in quiet threads.
The whispers started softly—murmurs in the back of her skull. At first, they were hers: echoes of memories, of pain, of Maya’s voice, Rodriguez’s betrayals. But then they changed. Became other. Male and female, childlike and ancient. They murmured truths, or maybe lies. Sometimes they just laughed.
The walls pulsed with them.
Anna scratched symbols into the grime with her nails—curved lines, jagged hooks, spirals that meant nothing but made her feel less hollow. She talked to them. Talked to herself. Sang lullabies. Cursed the moon. When sleep came, it came in gasps, fractured and sweating.
Her stomach grew heavy with life, but her eyes turned wild.
She was no longer afraid. She was something else now. Something feral.
Footsteps echoed down the hall—slow, sure, a predator’s rhythm. The voices inside her went still. Anna straightened, her back aching, her mind coiled.
Rodriguez appeared at the bars. His shadow fell across her like poison.
“You’re looking more beast than mother,” he said with a smirk. “Fitting.”
Anna tilted her head, eyes too bright, smile brittle. “And you’re looking more like your father every day. Does the taste of rot please you?”
He didn’t flinch. “Your mind’s slipping.”
“It’s leaping,” she whispered. “Higher than yours ever could.”
Rodriguez glanced at her belly and scoffed. “You shouldn’t be alive. That thing inside you shouldn’t be alive.”
Anna laughed, and it was wrong—sharp, fragmented, almost songlike. “Yet here we are. I bleed. I breathe. And they grow.”
His face darkened. “Your parents owed us more than blood. What you carry now—”
“—is the last weapon I have,” she finished, grinning wider. “And you’re too much of a coward to take it.”
Rodriguez slammed the bars. “Don’t think your madness will protect you.”
“No,” she murmured. “But it makes me harder to break.”
He growled, turning sharply and vanishing into the dark.
The red moon hung low, casting its cold silver glow over the clearing where the pack had assembled. Wolves stood shoulder to shoulder, their fur bristling with unease. Tension laced the air like a drawn bowstring—Anna hadn’t been seen in days, and the whispers had grown claws.
Rodriguez stood at the head of the gathering, posture regal, chin lifted. A flicker of something dangerous shimmered behind his golden eyes. When he finally spoke, the weight of his voice silenced the murmurs.
"You all deserve the truth," he began, voice low and deceptively calm. "Anna is gone. She left the pack."
A ripple of disbelief swept through the crowd.
"Left?" someone echoed. "Why would she leave without a word?"
Rodriguez narrowed his eyes. "Because she was caught with another. A rogue wolf, from the eastern fringe. I confronted them, and she fled like the coward she is."
Gasps scattered like startled birds. A few wolves snarled, their muzzles curling in revulsion.
"She betrayed you?" barked Corren, one of the senior warriors. "While carrying your child?"
