Chapter 5

Ella

The betrayal burned worse than any physical wound I'd ever treated. My own husband chose ancient magic over years of trust over me.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. 

After everything we'd been through, after all our years together, he was willing to doubt me, to doubt Jackson, based on Ava's word and some mysterious box?

"Fine," I snapped, crossing my arms. "But Jackson stays out of this. You can test me instead."

"That's not how it works," Ava said, already opening the box. Inside, nestled in dark velvet, was a clear crystal about the size of my palm. It caught the light strangely, seeming to bend rather than reflect it. "We need both potential father and child."

"Then we wait until Jackson is here," I insisted.

As if on cue, the office door opened again. I turned to see my neighbor standing there, looking uncomfortable, with Jackson's small hand in hers.

"I'm sorry," she said. "He was so upset that you left without saying goodbye. He insisted on coming to find you."

"Mommy!" Jackson broke free and ran to me, wrapping his arms around my legs. "Why did you leave?"

I knelt down, pulling him into a hug, shooting daggers at Ava over his shoulder. "I'm sorry, baby. Mommy had to talk to Daddy about something important."

"Is everything okay?" he asked, his big eyes, so like Marcus's, looking up at me with concern.

"Everything's fine," I lied, stroking his hair. "We're just sorting out a misunderstanding."

"Perfect timing," Ava said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "Now we can proceed."

"No," I said firmly, standing and keeping Jackson behind me. "I don't consent to this."

"I do," Marcus said, his voice heavy with authority, his Alpha voice. "As pack leader and the child's father of record, I have the right to know the truth."

The room seemed to close in around me.

I was trapped, cornered by Ava's machinations and Marcus's doubt.

Ava placed the crystal in the center of Marcus's desk. "The Lunar Prism," she announced. "It reveals bloodline truth through resonance." She turned to Jackson with a smile that made my skin crawl. "Hello, Jackson. We're going to play a little game. Would you like that?"

Jackson peeked out from behind me, suddenly shy. "What kind of game?"

"A magic game," she said. "All you have to do is put a tiny drop of your blood on this pretty crystal, and then your daddy will do the same. If you're really his son, the crystal will glow gold. Isn't that cool?"

"Don't you dare manipulate my child," I hissed.

"It's just a small prick," Ava continued, ignoring me. "Like getting a shot at the doctor's office. You're brave enough for that, aren't you?"

Jackson nodded hesitantly. "I guess so."

"This is wrong," I said, looking around the room for support and finding none. "This is so wrong."

But Marcus had already rolled up his sleeve. "Let's get this over with," he said, taking a small silver blade that Ava offered him.

Without hesitation, he pricked his finger and let a single drop of blood fall onto the crystal. It sizzled slightly on contact, and the clear prism began to pulse with a faint reddish light.

"Your turn, little one," Ava said, offering the blade to Jackson.

"No," I said, stepping forward to intervene, but two elders moved to block my path.

"Let the truth be revealed," one of them intoned formally.

I watched helplessly as Jackson, trying to be brave, allowed Ava to prick his finger. She guided his hand over the crystal, and a drop of his blood fell next to Marcus's.

The room went completely still. For a moment, nothing happened, and wild hope surged through me; maybe this ridiculous ritual would fail and prove nothing. 

Then, the crystal began to change. The two blood drops merged, swirling together inside the prism. Instead of turning gold as Ava had predicted, the mixture darkened, turning an inky purple-black that seemed to absorb light rather than emit it.

Gasps filled the room. Someone cursed softly.

"What does that mean?" I demanded, though I already knew the answer from the look of shock on Marcus's face.

"It means," Ava said, her voice dripping with satisfaction, "that Jackson doesn't carry the Alpha bloodline." She looked around the room dramatically. "The crystal never lies. If Jackson were Marcus's son, it would have turned gold. Instead..." She gestured to the dark, swirling mass inside the prism.

"That's impossible," I whispered, staring at the crystal in disbelief. "There must be something wrong with your test."

"The Crimson Verity has been used by our kind for centuries," one of the elders said gravely. "It has never given a false result."

"Well, there's a first time for everything," I snapped, pulling Jackson closer. He looked confused and frightened by the tension in the room. "Let's do this again. Something must be wrong."

The crystal sat there on the desk, its dark swirls mocking me. I wanted to smash it into a thousand pieces.

"The test is conclusive," the elder with the gray beard stated, his tone flat and final. "There's no need to repeat what we already know."

"No, you don't understand." I stepped forward, keeping Jackson behind me. "These old artifacts can be temperamental. Maybe it needs to be cleaned or-"

"The Crimson Verity has never failed," another elder cut in. "Not once in three hundred years."

"Mommy, did I do the game wrong?" he asked in a small voice.

"No, baby, you did nothing wrong," I assured him, though my mind was racing.

How could this be happening? I'd never been with anyone but Marcus. Never.

Ava wasn't finished. "I know exactly who the father is," she announced. "Ella has been having an affair with Liam Blackwood."

The name hit me like a bucket of ice water.

Liam Blackwood was the Alpha of our rival pack to the north. The pack we'd been in conflict with for generations.

"What?" I gasped. "That's insane! I've never even met the man!"

But the damage was done. Murmurs rippled through the crowd, growing louder by the second.

"Traitor!"

"Spy!"

"She's been sleeping with the enemy!"

I looked around at the faces of people I'd known for years, people whose children played with Jackson, whose injuries I'd treated, whose births I'd attended.

Now they were looking at me like I was something they'd scraped off their shoes. My heart hammered against my ribs as panic clawed up my throat. They weren't going to listen to reason. People never do when they've already decided what they want to believe.

It took me so long to prove myself to the pack that I was useful, trustworthy, and respectful as an omega Luna, but all of a sudden, all the trust had gone just because of some fake evidence provided by someone who had a more respectful background.

Marcus stood frozen, his face a mask of fury and humiliation.

"I've never betrayed this pack," I said, trying to keep my voice steady despite the panic rising in my chest. "I've never even spoken to Liam Blackwood. This is ridiculous!"

"Is it?" Ava raised an eyebrow. "Then how do you explain this?" She pulled photographs from the folder and spread them across the desk.

I stared in horror at what appeared to be images of me with a tall, dark-haired man I'd never seen before in my life.

The photos were grainy, taken from a distance, but showed a woman who looked remarkably like me in intimate situations with this stranger.

"That's not me," I said, my voice rising. "Those are fake!"

"And I suppose these are fake too?" Ava sneered as she slammed a stack of documents onto the table. "Phone records between you and Blackwood—discussing pack secrets, scheduling secret meetings." 

She turned dramatically to the crowd. "She's been feeding information to our enemies for years!" Her twisted expression turned to me, voice rising with fury. "You're a traitor! Do you have any idea how many of our warriors—including my father—have died on the battlefield because of you?"

The accusation struck like lightning. The crowd erupted.

"Kill the whore!"

"She's been sleeping with the enemy!"

"Hang the traitor!"

Their roars drowned me. I shouted over them, voice cracking with rage and desperation. "No! These are lies! I've never done any of that!" 

I turned my fury on Ava. "You lunatic! If you wanted to steal my mate, there were better ways to do that. How evil are you to fake evidence to cheat on the whole pack and even endanger a small kid?! You're the one disgracing your father's name!"

"I swear! None of this is personal! What I've said today has nothing to do with my own feelings. I swear it in my father's honor—I'm doing this for justice, for the good of the pack! To expose this poisonous snake in our midst!"

The furious crowd erupted again and tried to surge into the door as if wanting to devour me alive. The guards barely managed to hold them back.

"That's nonsense!" I shouted back. "I never betrayed our people! And I've been grateful for Gamma's sacrifice!"

My hands trembled as I gathered Jackson closer. "These photos are doctored. The records are fake. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to frame me, and I think we all know who benefits from destroying my reputation."

I stepped forward, my voice steady despite my racing heart. "Look at our son. Really, look at him. He has your eyes, smile, even that crooked little grin when he's up to something. How can you doubt he's yours?"

For a moment, I thought I saw doubt flicker in his eyes. Then his hand shot out, striking me across the face with such force that I stumbled backward.

The room went silent. Even Ava looked shocked at the violence of his reaction.

"Don't you believe me?" I whispered, my cheek burning. "You are my husband, my mate! Don't you know what kind of person I am?"

Marcus looked down at me, his expression cold and distant. "You're just a lowly omega. I gave you a good life, making you my Luna, and this is how you repay me with humiliation?"