CHAPTER 1: BETRAYER

"Your mother's blood pressure is getting dangerously high. Her wolf isn't responding to treatment, and we need to get her in for brain surgery as soon as possible."

I stared at the doctor, fighting back tears as he laid out my mother's condition.

Behind him, a nurse's cart rattled past, the only sound in the hallway besides my own pulse in my ears.

"How much time do we have?" I managed to ask him.

"Not much," he said, not unkindly. "I'd feel better if we could schedule it this week."

I nodded, unable to trust my voice with anything more, and watched him walk away to attend to another patient down the hall.

Everything was too much to bear. Yet, even though my mother was so critically ill, her mate completely ignored her，refusing to contribute even a single penny toward her medical expenses.

It wasn't that I didn't have a father — I did, the pack Beta. But he always had an excuse ready, and money was never something he claimed to have.

He hadn't contributed a single penny to this family in longer than I could remember.

I was the one who'd dropped out of school because of it — the one working two jobs just to keep my mother's hospital bills from swallowing us whole.

Sometimes, I wondered if he was doing it on purpose, because how could an Alpha's Beta always claim not to have money?

I dragged my feet back into my mother's ward, where she lay almost lifeless.

Her face had gone pale from the lack of blood, and her wolf, which was meant to fight and help her heal, had slipped into slumber instead.

I sat beside her and held her hand, smoothing my thumb over it.

"Hang in there, Mother. Just wait for me." I whispered as tears streamed uncontrollably down my chin.

It broke my heart that I don't have any savings to save her life.

Goddess, help us.

I stood and walked outside into the heat of the sun. I still needed to get home and to get something she might need when she woke up.

I spent the small amount of cash in my pocket on a cab and had it take me straight to my father's small mansion instead.

I climbed out and started toward the front door, only to find it already open.

"But I locked it before I left," I muttered, brows knitting together.

‘Is Toby back?* The thought surfaced and just as quickly fell apart — my eighteen-year-old brother was away at his classes, classes we still hadn't managed to pay the tuition for.

Had they sent him home?

A dozen worse possibilities crowded in behind that one as I pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside.

"Toby! Are you back?" I called from the bottom of the stairs, waiting for an answer.

What I got instead was a moan — low, unmistakable, drifting down from somewhere above me.

I froze with one foot still on the bottom step, my heart lurching sideways.

"Yeah, baby, right there—" a woman's voice moaned aloud. She didn't seem to mind if anyone heard her.

‘Toby brought a woman home?’ The thought lasted half a second before the voice came again, and it wasn't Toby's door it was coming from.

"Luca, baby, right there—" the woman moaned, louder this time.

‘Father?’ Impossible.

I climbed the stairs anyway, each step landing heavier than the last, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

Maybe I'd misheard. Maybe there was some explanation that didn't make me a liar for hoping.

Then his voice, unmistakable, cut through my last shred of doubt.

"Do you like the way I fuck you? You taste better than my wife," he groaned.

"Yes, Beta. Fuck me harder."

It was him. The clap of skin and low grunts filled the air.

Tears blurred my vision as I reached his door and found it open just a crack. Through the gap I saw enough — him rising off her, both of them still tangled in my mother's sheets, in my mother's bed.

‘Where was the mate bond? Why were some men so heartless? Why choose now, of all moments, to do this to her?’

Every instinct in me wanted to shove the door open, drag that woman out by her hair. And sink my teeth into my father until he bled for what he was doing to a wife who was dying one floor of consciousness at a time.

But my feet stayed rooted to the spot. I couldn't make myself move, couldn't look away from that sliver of a room where another woman lay where my mother belonged.

‘This is disrespectful.’

"When are you divorcing that sick bitch?" the woman asked, her voice curling into a pout.

My hands curled into fists so tight my nails bit into my palms.

"Calm down," my father said, stroking a hand down her arm like he was gentling a spooked animal.

"She's already dying. Just taking her time about it. Once she's gone, I'll send the kids off, sell this house, and build us a new one. A fresh start."

My knees nearly buckled. Tears spilled freely now. This was the man my mother had poured her entire life into supporting, and this was what he thought she was worth?

I'd heard enough.

I angrily pushed the door open, barged in, and stood in front of them. Shockingly, the shameless man and his mistress didn't flinch — not even a little.

‘Whoa. They must have already planned this out.’ They weren't even afraid of being caught anymore.

My father's eyes dragged from my head down to my toes as he stared at me in disgust, as if my very presence irritated him to his core.

Tears threatened to fall again, but I refused to give them the satisfaction. I would not cry for this wicked man.

Silence stretched between us, though it lasted only a minute.

"What are you doing here, Kathleen?" he asked, a scowl twisting his face. "Shouldn't you be at the hospital with your dying mother?"