Chapter 76 - The Beta’s Betrayal

Rafe POV

The room smelled of lavender and ash, like someone had tried to polish a ruin. I held my ground by the bed, every muscle coiled. The photograph still smoldered at the edge of my vision - Luna in a gown, perfect and naive - and I hated how human that made her, how much I wanted to protect that impossible, fragile thing.

Aldric stood in the doorway like a ghost who’d found a place he’d been allowed to haunt. He didn’t look like a traitor; he looked like a man who had spent his life convincing himself he was not one and who finally belived it. Ash smeared his jaw, sleeves singed, eyes hollow with a hunger that felt like religion.

My wolf told me to kill him. The feeling rang in my bones, a raw, black thing that wanted blood for scent. But I wasn’t an animal with a single action. I was an Alpha, and I had a Luna breathing under this roof who’d bled for these people whether she remembered it or not.

“Step away from the bed,” I said, voice steady and hard as flint.

Aldric didn’t mo