Chapter 2

~~Imogene's POV~~

I froze.

Time didn’t just stop; it shattered. Like a crystal vase thrown against a wall, all the pieces of my life scattered before me. Damian’s shirt was rumpled. Vivian’s top hung loosely off one shoulder. Their breaths were uneven, and their bodies glistening with sweat.

Damian.

Vivian.

My husband and my own step sister, two pillars I had built my whole world upon, and now, it had come crashing down. 

My mind tried to make sense of it, looking for something, anything, that would make this a misunderstanding. That maybe they’d tripped and fallen…no, that was ridiculous. But wasn’t everything I was seeing ridiculous? This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

Damian’s head snapped toward me, guilt painted across his face in thick, ugly shades. He staggered backward and clumsily adjusted his clothes, fumbling with the buttons of his shirt like they’d personally betrayed him too. Vivian didn’t even try to pretend. She looked up at me with the smug smile of someone who’d already won.

Damian looked like he wanted to say something, but the words hung in his throat, and he gulped them down. He went, quiet. 

I couldn't breathe. Couldn’t think. I was shaking so hard I thought my bones might shatter but somehow I stepped forward, my legs moving against my will, being pulled by my desperate need to believe anything but the truth standing clear in front of me. 

“Damian,” I muttered, reaching out with a trembling hand. My voice was so small it barely felt real. “Please… tell me this is a mistake. Tell me I’m imagining things. Tell me I’m sick or dreaming or…” My words tangled and broke, shredded by the agony tearing through my throat.

And my husband, the man I had given everything to, just stood there silent like a stranger.

“Say something!” I screamed this time, my voice raw and cracked as if being ripped out from me. “Say you were drunk, say you were deceived, or maybe you were just lonely. Lie to me, Damian! I’ll believe it. I’ll believe anything if you just… if you just tell me this isn’t real!”

No answer. Just his eyes, dull and lifeless, watching me fall apart.

I turned to Vivian, my closest friend, my sister in every way that counted. “Vivian,” I whimpered, tears flooding my eyes so much that I could barely see. “You didn’t mean it, right? It was an accident, right? You thought he was someone else, you were lost, confused, anything, please, just say something I can hold onto!”

I stumbled closer, more desperate, clutching at the scraps of hope like they were the last air I’d ever breathe. “I forgive you,” I sobbed, collapsing to my knees in front of her. “I forgive you, Vi. We can fix this. We can pretend this never happened. Please… please… tell me it’s not what it looks like!”

My voice broke dissolving into hopeless gasps, because even as I was begging on my knees, I could already see the truth in their faces.

Still, I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't.

“Please,” I whispered again, my voice barely more than a prayer, “lie to me if you have to. I can’t bear this. I can’t bear that you…that you two…”

Damian looked away, silent and cold.

Vivian laughed now, cruel and sharp as glass and suddenly she shoved me hard, the floor slamming into my back as I let out a gasp. From the ground I looked up at her stunned, but what she said next stunned me even more than the fall.

“You’re pathetic, Imogene,” she said coldly. “Do you really think love is enough to cover up stupidity? You saw everything. And yet here you are, still begging. That’s just sad.”

Her words tore something inside me wide open. My whole body shook. Vivian had always been so warm and kind. She used to braid my hair when I was sick. She stayed with me some nights when it all became unbearable. I loved her like she was my blood. Like a real sister.

Vivian walked over to Damian and slipped her hand into his like it belonged there.

“I’m done pretending, Damian,” she said, her tone sharp and certain. “After all these years, it's finally time. Let’s stop the act.”

Act?

I pushed myself up, palms scraping against the rough stone floor. “What do you mean, act?”

Vivian tilted her head slightly, as if she pitied me. “You really didn’t know? Imogene, you’re more foolish than I thought. Damian never loved you. He’s loved me all along. I’m his fated mate.”

Her words hit me harder than a rock. 

No.

No! No!! 

Vivian wasn’t finished. “He used you, Imogene. You were the stepping stone to get him where he needed to be. From ordinary Beta son to Alpha's husband and soon…Alpha himself. You were just a tool in our plan.”

“Plan?” I whispered, my thoughts spiraling in different directions.

She smiled. It was evil. Proud. “We poisoned your father, my dear stepdad, to make him sick. The moment he got weak, you took power. Damian seduced you, made you fall in love, and married you. Once things settled, we were going to kill you. Some unfortunate accident, perhaps. Then Damian becomes Alpha, and I become his Luna.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Everything, every single moment, every memory, every laugh, every kiss, for the past 2 years had all been part of a plan? My father's illness. Damian’s affection. Our marriage.

A lie.

A beautifully orchestrated lie.

For what? Power and authority?

I turned to Damian, who had been quiet all through this, clinging to the last shard of hope that maybe this was all in Vivian’s head. Maybe he wasn’t a part of it.

“Damian,” I whispered. “Please tell me it’s not true. Say she’s lying. Your vows weren't just rehearsed lies, right?”

He stared at me with empty eyes. All the warmth I thought I’d seen in them over the years was now gone, like he had been wearing a mask since and now he had taken it off.

“I reject you as my mate, not like you were one in the first place,” he finally spoke, his voice lacking any form of remorse. “And I dissolve our marriage bond, Imogene Howling.”

Pain struck me like a blade through the chest.

“No,” I whimpered, staggering forward. “No, you can’t do this. I gave you everything. My body, my love, my time… You were everything for me!”

He laughed, an actual laugh that echoed through my bones.

“That’s what made it so easy,” he said. “You were desperate for love, Imogene. And desperate women are easy to control. Your father didn’t love you. Your people hate you. And even you hated yourself. All I had to do was offer affection, and you came running like a starving dog.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks. My entire body shook, not from fear, but from devastation. My heart had cracked open, bleeding out right in front of the two people I’d trusted most.

“And you wonder why you never got pregnant?” Damian added, his voice slicing through my thoughts like a dagger. “I swapped your pain relief pills with hormone inhibitors. Every. Single. Time.”

My mouth dropped open. The truth struck me like a thunderbolt.

That’s why I never got pregnant.

But three months ago, I stopped taking the pills. I was trying to be strong, to heal from my past without depending on the drugs. And then… the recent nausea. The tiredness. The missed menstrual cycle. I hadn’t told anyone yet.

I was pregnant.

And Damian didn’t know.

Vivian’s voice yanked me back to the present. “Well, since it has come to this, it's now time for the final phase,” she said, pulling something from her pocket.

A syringe.

She turned at swift speed to my father, who was lying on the bed, and pointed the sharp needle in his direction.

“No…!” I screamed, rushing forward and ignoring the ache I felt in my bones.

Too late.

She got to my father's bedside before me and stabbed the syringe into his arm.

He began to convulse violently. Foam bubbled from his lips. I scrambled to his bedside, hands frantic and useless, trying to stop whatever poison she had given him. “Dad, please…stay with me!”

Just then Vivian’s cry pierced the air.

“Oh, my moon! Imogene, what have you done?!”

What?

She turned to Damian, who immediately joined in. “Imogene! You…you’ve poisoned the Alpha! Someone help!!”

My pulse hammered in my ears. “No! I didn’t!”

Vivian’s lips curled into a cruel smile as the shouting continued. “This is the end for you. You killed your own father, Imogene. And now there are two witnesses who saw it happen. It is your word versus ours… and everyone already hates you, so you know whose words people would believe.”

Damian sneered. “You came in through the front door. We came in through the back. Everyone saw you come in alone. And you’re the one who always gives him his medication. Who do you think they’ll believe?”

I staggered backward, heart pounding, hands trembling. Everything they said made horrible, twisted sense. They were building the perfect trap.

And I had walked right into it.

Banishment.

Or death.

Those were the punishments for killing an Alpha. For treason.

The realization hit me hard and fast. They weren’t just breaking me, they were taking me out of the picture, forever.