Chapter 2

The moment Adrian and Noah disappeared down the corridor, Selena's wounded expression fell away.

She listened until their footsteps faded, locked the backstage door, and walked back to the illusion box. Kneeling beside it, she opened a maintenance panel and looked in at the body wedged between the mechanisms.

Blood still ran from all three wounds. She reached inside, pressed two fingers to my throat, and let out a slow breath when she found no pulse.

“You kept telling Adrian I was crossing boundaries,” she murmured. “Once you’re gone, there won’t be any boundaries left.”

She took a sealed pouch from the tool cabinet and scattered gray-white powder over my clothes, my wounds, and the inside of the box. The sharp chemical scent burned even through my ghostly senses.

Concentrated scent suppressant. Wolfsbane. Cedar ash.

Together they could smother a werewolf's natural scent long enough to confuse trackers and bury the trace of a mate bond beneath the smell of stage chemicals.

Selena removed the escape panel built into the bottom of the box, sealed it from the outside with metal clamps, then stuffed torn sandbags into an empty compartment so the prop would feel as though it were loaded with broken equipment.

When the stagehands returned, she had already put her gentle smile back in place.

"Elena crawled out through the bottom hatch," she told them. "She's still upset, so she left before the curtain call. The mechanism's jammed now. It's only sandbags and used blood packs inside, so send the whole thing to industrial disposal."

Neither man questioned her. One of them mentioned that the box felt heavier than it had during rehearsal. Selena tapped the side and reminded him that the lower compartment was packed with counterweights. He apologized for asking and kept pushing.

This was the Alpha's birthday celebration, and Selena was the orphan the Blackwood family had raised as their own. Everyone knew she was Adrian's beloved little sister. If she declared a prop useless, no one was going to tear it apart to check.

They rolled the box through the service exit and loaded it onto a scrap truck.

I followed it across the edge of Mooncrest territory to an industrial processing yard. Wind passed through my body as the truck wound between warehouses and smokestacks.

The workers dumped the box in a metal holding area among bent stage frames, ruined projection screens, and rolled backdrops stiff with dried paint. A night supervisor slapped a tag on it for processing at dawn.

Selena had planned for my body to vanish beneath a hydraulic crusher and then an incinerator.

What she didn't know was that the machinery had been shut down for emergency maintenance. Nothing would enter the processing line until morning.

I watched my body disappear into the cold warehouse and realized I wasn't afraid anymore. The worst pain had already happened.

What hurt now was knowing the music was still playing at the pack house while my mate and son applauded the woman who had murdered me.

By the time I returned to the ballroom, Selena had changed costumes and stepped back onto the stage as if nothing had happened.

She invited Adrian up to complete the closing illusion. He agreed without hesitation. When she deliberately missed a step, he caught her by the waist, drawing whistles and teasing cheers from the audience.

They didn't kiss. They didn't do anything anyone could point to and call an affair.

That almost made it worse.

Hovering above them, I finally saw how thoroughly Selena had occupied the space that used to belong to me. Adrian listened patiently while she explained every trick. He murmured reassurance when she looked nervous. He let the entire pack spend the night celebrating something that mattered to her.

Whenever I asked him to sit down and talk about the cracks in our mate bond, he was always too busy.

After the show, Adrian hosted a private dinner in Selena's honor at the Alpha dining hall. Noah sat beside her, bombarding her with questions about trapdoors and hidden wires.

Selena sliced his roast, passed him her blueberry tart, and asked, "Did you have fun tonight?"

Noah nodded so hard his hair fell into his eyes.

"Imagine how much fun we'd have if I lived at the pack house all the time."

He was too young to understand the invitation buried inside her words. "Would you practice shifting with me every day?"

"Of course I would."

Selena looked across the table at Adrian.

He didn't correct her. He didn't remind her that living in the Alpha residence wasn't a decision she could make for herself.

I watched my son's face light up and remembered the first months after his birth, when his wolf was too weak to answer the pack doctor's call.

He had only slept with his tiny fist wrapped around my finger. I spent night after night beside his crib, counting every breath, terrified that if I closed my eyes, his fragile wolf would go quiet forever.

I resigned from my position as a pack healer to care for him. For almost a year, I couldn't shift without collapsing afterward.

Now he was smiling at the thought of another woman being there every day.

Noah never said he didn't want me. He was only responding to warmth, attention, and the promise of play. That was what made it hurt. Selena didn't need him to hate me. She only needed him to become comfortable with her standing where I should have been.

He was already imagining a home without me, and Adrian sat across from him and allowed the picture to take shape.