5

Emily

The sun was bright, but it didn’t feel warm. It just made the dirt and the ruined bread on the ground easier to see.

I stood in the back corridor for a long time, staring at the spot where they had disappeared. I waited for Josh to come running back. I waited for him to tell me it was a trick, that he was only pretending to follow her to keep me safe.

But the only sound I could hear was the wind. I looked down at the bread. It was covered in dust now. I picked it up. I didn’t eat it; I just held it in my hand, feeling the grit against my skin.

I promise.

The way Josh had said those words to Anna... it wasn’t just fear. It was a promise he had made many times before.

“Stupid,” I whispered to the empty hallway.

I wasn’t talking about Josh. I was talking about the girl in the mirror. The girl who thought a few potions and sharing a loaf of bread meant she wasn’t alone.

I walked toward the kitchen, my legs feeling heavy and stiff. My fingers were still throbbing from the glass cuts, but the pain felt different now.

When I entered the kitchen, Clara was already there. She was leaning against the counter, drinking tea from one of my mother’s favorite bone china cups. She looked at me, and then her eyes moved to the dusty bread in my hand.

“Still eating scraps like a dog?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t look down. I walked straight to the bin and dropped the bread inside.

“I’m here to cook the next meal,” I told her.

Clara set her cup down slowly. She stepped closer to me, her eyes searching my face for the usual tears. When she didn’t find them, her expression shifted into a small, cruel smile.

“Anna told me about your little friend,” Clara murmured. “The Alpha’s mistake. She said he was very... obedient.”

I kept my back to her as I started the hot water. The steam rose up, burning my face, but I didn’t flinch.

“He’s nothing to me,” I muttered.

I knew I was lying. I wanted an explanation. I wanted to see Josh and ask him what was truly wrong. If Anna had threatened him with my life.

“Good,” Clara hissed, leaning into my ear. “Because Anna has decided she likes him. And in this house, Anna gets whatever she wants. Whether it’s a room, a title... or a man.”

I gripped the edge of the sink so hard that my knuckles turned white. The image of Anna touching his arm and Josh shivering flashed through my mind.

“Is he still with her?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“In her room,” Clara laughed. “Discussing his new... duties. And—”

I couldn’t let her finish her words. I ran off, dashing toward Anna’s room. I was breathless by the time I reached her door. I stood there, adjusting my breathing before barging in without knocking.

“Who the hell is that?”

Anna’s scream was like a slap, waking me up from my daze. She jumped off the bed, her silk robe fluttering around her.

I couldn’t move. My eyes were locked on the man in front of me.

Josh.

He was there, on Anna’s bed. Naked. His skin was pale, and shock was written across his face. He looked at me, and for a second, the room went completely silent.

The first tear escaped before I could stop it, carving a hot path down my dirty cheek. I sniffed, trying to hold the rest back, but my chest felt like it was being crushed by a heavy stone.

How could he?

We didn’t need the Moon Goddess to tell us we belonged together. We had chosen each other years ago, back when my mother was still alive and I was still a princess. Even when the world was perfect, I had picked him. And when my world fell apart, he was the only thing I had left to hold onto.

I didn’t even realize I was trembling until Anna spoke again. My knees were shaking so hard I thought I might collapse onto the floor I had spent hours cleaning.

Everything we had—every secret kiss, every shared piece of bread, every promise—was now just as dirty as the dust on my hands.

“Seriously,” Anna mocked, her voice thin and cruel. She looked at Josh, then back at me. “You’re shivering over a boy who isn’t even your fated mate? How pathetic.”

The air in the room seemed to vanish. All the hunger, all the hours of scrubbing floors, and all the glass cuts in my hands suddenly turned into a white-hot flame in my chest.

“Shut up!”

My hand moved through the air before I could stop it.

SLAP.

The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room. Anna’s head snapped to the side. Her eyes widened with total shock. I was a slave. I was wolf-less. I was nothing. And yet I had struck her.

A thin line of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth.

Before Anna could raise her hand to strike back, a shadow blurred at the corner of my eye.

I didn’t even have time to scream.

The force hit my shoulder like a crashing wave, lifting me completely off my feet. My body flew across the room and met the wall with a sound I felt more than heard. I slid to the floor, the world spinning, my lungs gasping for air that wouldn’t come.

I lay there and took inventory the way I had learned to do. My left shoulder was grinding when I breathed. I could feel that at least two ribs were injured. My fingers were still bleeding from the glass.

Every inch of me screamed in agony, but I forced my head up. I had to see. I had to know who had done this.

My breath hitched.

Josh stood there, chest heaving, fists clenched. He no longer resembled the boy who had cried over my wounds. He looked like a soldier guarding a queen.

“Josh,” I whispered. “Why?”

“You don’t touch her,” he said. His voice was low, hard, and empty of any love we had ever shared. “Ever.”

Beside him, Anna didn’t hide her triumph. She leaned back against his chest, her hand moving toyingly over him, making sure I saw every inch of her claim.

“She is a fool,” Anna muttered, her voice purring with satisfaction. Her eyes locked with mine, sharp and cruel. “This man? He belongs to me now.”

A cold, sick feeling washed over me. It was history repeating itself. Her mother had crawled into my mother’s bed to steal her mate, and now Anna was doing the exact same thing to me. They were hunters, and I was the prey they liked to tear apart.

I didn’t cry this time. Instead, a laugh bubbled up in my throat—a hollow, broken sound that echoed off the walls.

“You really are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you?”

The smirk vanished from Anna’s face. Her eyes blazed with fury. The insult had landed exactly where it was meant to.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” she hissed. “Are you calling me a boyfriend snatcher?”

“I’m saying you only know how to take things that don’t belong to you,” I whispered. “But remember this, Anna: my mother’s mate was a liar, and it looks like yours is, too. You can have him. Trash belongs in the bin.”

“Bitch!” Anna screamed.

She lunged forward and stepped directly on my head, grinding my cheek into the floor with her feet. The wood pressed into my skin, but the pain was nothing compared to the fire in my heart. “I’ll kill you! I’ll end you right here!”

“Wait,” Josh said, his voice calm. He reached out and caught Anna’s arm, stopping her. “Don’t do it. You shouldn’t stain your beautiful hands for someone as filthy as her.”

Anna spun around, her eyes wide with rage. “Are you actually siding with her right now? After what she called me?”

“No, honey,” Josh whispered.

He stepped closer, wrapping his arms around Anna’s waist and pulling her flush against him. Right there, in front of my shattered body, he kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was deep, loud, and cruel—the sound of their lips meeting filled the quiet room, a wet, sloppy rhythm that made me want to vomit.

I looked on speechlessly, my face still pressed against the floor, watching the boy I loved give himself to the girl who hated me.

Finally, he pulled away. He turned his head slowly to look at me. His eyes were cold, like a predator watching a dying animal.

“I’ll always choose you over her, Anna,” Josh said. He stared directly into my soul, a small, dark smile touching his lips. “Think about it. If I had actually chosen Emily, would I have been the one feeding her the potions that killed her wolf every single night?”

The world stopped.

The air in my lungs turned to ice.

Every memory of him sitting by my bed, every time he whispered, ‘Drink this, it will make you stronger,’ flashed before my eyes. He hadn’t been trying to save me. He had been the one pulling the trigger.

The only person I trusted was the one who had truly destroyed me.

“What did you just say?”

Josh looked at me with a look of pity, like when you see something small and broken on the ground. He didn’t repeat himself.

“You were the one,” I whispered. “Every night. Every potion. That was you.”

He smiled, a small, patient, unbothered smile that was the most terrifying expression I had ever seen on a human face.

“You made it very easy,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, the word sounding small and childlike. But I needed to hear him say it.

“Why?” he repeated it like he was tasting how foolish it sounded. “Because Anna asked me to prove myself. And you were the proof.”

“You loved me.”

“I loved what you were,” he simply said. “Beta’s daughter. Strong bloodline. Powerful wolf. You were useful. But since you lost all of that...”

He didn’t even finish the sentence. Instead, he looked down at Anna. She let out a soft, needy moan as he pinched her nipple, his fingers claiming her right in front of me.

“It’s only right for me to be with Anna now,” he continued, his eyes flicking back to me with total boredom. “She is the princess of this house. And you? You’re just a slave who sleeps in the dirt.”

He killed my Amy. He killed the only part of me that was strong.

I pushed myself off the floor. Every bone in my body screamed, but I forced my legs to lock. I rose through the white-hot pain, my teeth clenched so tight I thought they might shatter.

“I will kill you,” I snarled.

I swung with everything I had left.

CRACK.

My knuckles connected with his jaw, snapping his head back. For one beautiful, silent second, the room stood still. I had marked him. I had drawn blood from the man who killed my wolf.

Then his fingers closed around my throat.

He lifted me off the ground with a single hand, his face twisting into something terrifying. The boy I had loved was gone; in his place was a monster filled with cold, killing intent.

I gasped. My hands clawed at his grip. My legs kicked and shook in the air, my lungs burning.

The room was going gray at the edges. My legs had stopped kicking. My hands had fallen away from his wrist because they no longer had the strength to pull.

No.

Not like this.

I wasn’t going into the dark until I had watched their world burn the way they had burned mine.

The last thing I saw clearly was Anna’s face.

She was watching me with a familiar expression, the one that indicated she was contemplating something. Her eyes scanned me deliberately, as if she was unsure about what to do next.

Her mouth opened.

Then the gray became black, and I heard nothing at all.