Chapter 4

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital bed in the pack healing center.

Ethan sat at my bedside, exhausted but visibly relieved.

"My love, you're pregnant. We're having a pup."

He leaned down, kissed my forehead, and stroked my belly.

"The next full moon is coming. I'll mark you in front of the whole pack."

He kept going with plans, promises, a future he was already mapping out.

I couldn't feel any of it.

"I'm hungry."

Ethan blinked, straightening up.

"I'll go get—you like ice cream, but you probably can't have that now. Let me ask the doctor. Just wait, I'll be right back."

He was talking over himself, backing toward the door, nearly tripping over his own feet.

I didn't laugh. I just watched him leave.

On my phone, I found a family photo of my stepfather, my mother, and Sera, all smiles, along with more photos of Sera posing with Ethan's friends.

She didn't deserve to be that comfortable.

I thought of the video from yesterday. Sera calling herself and Ethan childhood sweethearts.

Growing up, Ethan had given Sera everything she ever wanted.

She moved freely between multiple Alphas, flirting with one today, going out with another tomorrow.

Ethan knew all of it, but his feelings for her made him swallow every excuse she offered.

"I just have a lot of friends. You're all reading too much into it."

I remembered being twelve. The first time my mother brought me into that house.

Sera stood at the top of the stairs in a pink dress.

My mother smiled, walked over, and crouched down to hug her.

"Sera, would it be okay if I took care of you from now on?"

Sera didn't pull away. She shoved my mother down the stairs.

Then she answered her own question, accusing my mother of being her father's mistress.

After that, my mother poured every ounce of herself into Sera.

She woke early every morning to make her breakfast, memorized what she liked and didn't like.

When Sera came down with a fever, my mother stayed up the entire night, sitting by her bed, pressing a damp cloth to her forehead over and over.

At some point in the haze of fever, Sera grabbed my mother's hand and whispered, "Mom."

My mother cried. She thought her effort had finally paid off.

But the next morning, when the fever broke and Sera opened her eyes to see my mother still there, the first words out of her mouth were:

"Why are you still here? Can't wait for me to die so your daughter can have everything?"

At school and in the pack, Sera painted my mother as a scheming homewrecker.

She told everyone my mother had killed her own mate to marry Sera's father.

She burned me with a curling iron. She rallied the entire school to bully me.

But my mother had never hurt anyone.

Her mate died of natural causes. The medical records were still in the pack archives.

Yet because of Sera's lies, life in the pack was hell for us.

Our house leaked. In winter, the walls let in drafts, and there was no heating.

My school tuition came from my mother working herself to the bone.

When I was little, we weren't even treated as members of the pack.

No vendor at the market would sell to us. When we were sick, the healer made us wait until every other patient had been seen.

We lived worse than rogues.

I was still thinking about her when Sera stormed in.

Her eyes were full of venom when she saw me. She screamed.

"Your mother killed her own mate. To climb. To trade up. She wrecked my parents' marriage. My mother died because of her, of grief, depression, take your pick. Like mother, like daughter. Your blood doesn't carry loyalty. It carries poison. You seduce. You betray. You destroy."

The moment she saw me, her hand shot up with her palm open.

I shut my eyes on instinct, bracing for the blow.

It didn't come.

A cold laugh drifted down from above.

"Look at you. Pathetic. Just like your shameless mother."

I opened my eyes. Her palm hung frozen in the air.

"Hitting you would just dirty my hand."

She pulled her hand back and wiped it on her skirt, as though touching me would contaminate her.

Sera looked down at me.

Her gaze cut like a blade, peeling me apart strip by strip.

"My father took pity on your family. Gave you food, put you in school. You even got Beta status the day he took your mother in. Wasn't that enough for you? But no, you had to go and seduce the man I was promised to."

My body was shaking beyond my control, but I fought back.

"Stop lying. You know exactly what happened. Your birth mother didn't die. She left you. She ran off with a rogue.

"You're terrified. Terrified the truth will come out, terrified someone will see through your lies, terrified that one day even Ethan will find out that your so-called dead mother is alive and well, living in another city with another man, living a completely different life."

I forced myself to look straight through the fear she'd built in me.

"Sera, you just can't accept that you're the one nobody loved."

Maybe my words hit a nerve.

Sera dragged me off the bed. The IV line swung with the motion.

The needle in the back of my hand shifted from the force.

Blood seeped out along the edge of the tape, blooming into a small, dark stain.

She threw me to the floor and kicked me in the stomach.

The pain made me curl into a ball, mind racing for a way to fight back.

"What are you doing here?"

Ethan pushed through the door. His eyes went to Sera first.

Looking at him, Sera nearly lost it.

"I told you to play with her, not fall for her! Ethan, don't you see what's happened to you? She's a manipulative little gold-digger, and you can't even see it."

"That's my business. The second you pushed me toward someone else, you lost the right to complain."

I lay on the floor, listening to their passionate argument.

My body was growing heavier. My skin was burning up.

Neither of them noticed the dark stain of blood spreading beneath me.

Through the haze, I heard Sera shout.

"If you don't love me, why did you go along with my plan? Why did you help me torment her? It was all to get my attention, to make me jealous."

After that, the words blurred together.

I pressed my hand to my belly.

Poor little one. Maybe it was better this way.

At least I hadn't been foolish enough to believe again that Ethan still loved us.