Anais POV
The black SUV had vanished into the rain, leaving me shivering on the cracked pavement of the Omega sector. Marcus, the Alpha's warrior, had dumped me here with a warning glare that promised violence if I spoke a word of what happened.
I stumbled toward the small, peeling door of my home. My legs felt like lead, weighed down not just by exhaustion, but by the lingering, electric hum of his touch.
I pushed the door open. The familiar scent of lavender soap and dried herbs usually brought me comfort, but today, it felt suffocating.
My mother, Amber, was pacing the small living room. Her head snapped up the moment I entered. Relief washed over her face, instantly replaced by a look of sheer horror as her nose twitched.
"Anais?" She rushed forward, grabbing my shoulders. Her grip was bruising. "Where have you been? I've been calling—" She stopped, her eyes widening as she inhaled sharply. "By the Goddess. You smell like... like winter. Like him."
She recoiled as if I were radioactive. The scent of the Alpha heir—crushed mint and ice—was clinging to every pore of my skin, overpowering the damp wool of the cheap grey dress Dimitri had thrown at me.
"Mom, I..." My voice cracked. I didn't know where to start. The white room. The blood. The amnesia.
"Did he hurt you?" Her voice rose to a frantic pitch. "Did Alpha Dimitri force you?"
"No! I mean... I don't remember!" I cried, wringing my hands.
That was when the light from the hallway bulb caught it. The moonstone ring.
Amber froze. She snatched my hand, staring at the heavy silver band engraved with the Alpha's initials. Her face went the color of ash.
"Take it off," she hissed, clawing at my finger.
"I can't! It won't move!" I pulled back, tears streaming down my face.
"Do you know what this means?" Amber whispered, terror trembling in her voice. "If the Pack sees a wolfless Omega wearing the Alpha heir's ring... they won't just kill you, Anais. They will make an example of us. We are invisible. We are supposed to be nothing."
"I didn't ask for this!" I screamed, the panic finally shattering my composure. I ripped my hand from her grasp and bolted for my room, slamming the door and locking it.
I slid down against the wood, clutching my chest. The ring pulsed on my finger, warm and heavy, a shackle binding me to a monster I couldn't remember meeting.
Beatrice POV
The steady beep... beep... beep of the heart monitor was the only music I needed.
I stood over the withered form of Alpha Grafton Barrett. The man who had once commanded armies was now reduced to a husk, his skin grey and papery.
"You held on longer than I expected, my love," I whispered, smoothing a stray hair from his forehead. My voice was soft, the picture of a grieving Luna, but my eyes were dry.
I leaned down, my lips brushing his ear. "You thought you could give the Pack to that stray? To Dimitri?"
Grafton's eyelids fluttered, but he was too weak to wake. The silver tincture I'd been slipping into his evening tea for the past year had done its work beautifully. It was a slow, agonizing rot from the inside out.
"Bryson will be Alpha," I promised him, a cruel smile curving my lips. "And your precious Dimitri? I have a special surprise for him. The Elders will never accept a wolfless Omega as Luna. Your precious Lycan's bond with that trash is a mockery to the Moon Goddess. It will be his undoing, my love. I will make sure of it."
The door handle turned. I straightened instantly, my face falling into a mask of tragic devastation just as the door burst open.
Dimitri POV
The smell of death hit me before I even crossed the threshold. It was a cloying, metallic stench that made Ragnar, my inner Lycan, howl in grief.
"Father!"
I rushed to the bedside, Bryson right on my heels. Alpha Grafton was convulsing, his body arching off the mattress as the machines screamed a flatline warning.
"Do something!" I roared at the Pack Doctor.
"We can't, Alpha! His heart—it's giving out!" the doctor shouted, his hands glowing with healing magic that fizzled and died against Grafton's skin.
I grabbed my father's hand. It was cold. So cold.
"Dimitri..." Grafton gasped, his eyes flying open. They were milky, unfocused. He looked at me, desperate to speak, but a violent cough tore through him, spraying dark, almost black blood onto the white sheets.
And then, he was gone. The machine let out a long, singular tone that signaled the end of an era.
"No," I whispered. The silence in the room was deafening.
Beatrice let out a wail and collapsed onto Bryson's chest. My brother held her, his face twisted in sorrow, but his scent... his scent was steady. Too steady.
"How did this happen?" I demanded, turning on the doctor. The Alpha's Command rolled off me, shaking the glass vials on the shelves. "He was strong. He was an Alpha!"
Bryson stepped forward, placing a hand on my shoulder. "Dimitri, stop. The doctor... he told me last week."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Told you what?"
"Father was sick," Bryson said, his voice thick with unshed tears. "It was a rare condition. Chronic silver poisoning. Someone had been exposing him to it for months, maybe years. He forbade us from telling you. He didn't want you to worry while you were handling the border disputes."
Silver poisoning?
Ragnar snarled in my head. Lies? Or betrayal?
"He kept this from me?" I looked back at the lifeless body of the man who raised me.
"He wanted to protect the Pack from panic," Bryson said smoothly. "He wanted to protect you."
I stared at my father's black blood. Silver poisoning wasn't an illness; it was murder. An inside job.
Grief hardened into something cold and sharp in my chest. I had woken up with no memory, mated to a wolfless nobody, and now my father was dead from a secret poison.
The walls were closing in. And I didn't know who held the knife.
