MasukWella’s POV"You don't have months because you're not giving yourself the chance to heal!"The therapist's voice rose, sharp with frustration. "This is insane, Theo. You're walking on a leg that should be immobilized. You're coming in for extra sessions that are actively making you worse. And you're still trying to work? What do you think you're proving?"There was a long pause. I could see Theo's shoulders rise and fall with a breath, see the way his grip on the parallel bars tightened until his knuckles were bone-white."I'm proving nothing," he said finally, and his voice was quiet, almost lost beneath the hum of the lights. "I'm trying to get back to where I need to be. My duty is to protect the Luna, and yesterday—"He stopped. I could see his jaw working, see the muscles in his neck straining."Yesterday I stood at the bottom of those stairs and watched her fall, and I couldn't move. My leg gave out underneath me.""Of course you couldn't!" The therapist threw his hands up, clip
Wella’s POV"He's been avoiding me," I said, and my voice sounded hollow, empty, like it belonged to someone else. "He's—" He hates me, and he should. After what Alexander did to him, “Dorian was right, and I’m done taking from him.”“What did Dorian say this time?!” Anna frowned.“Nothing I shouldn’t hear,” I bit my lips for the slip of that name, “He just said Alexander hurt Theo because of me, which was true. Alexander is that possessive.” He saw me as his assesst, and he didn’t like anyone touching his.Anna sighed, “I don’t know what exactly happened between you and Theo, but here is what I do know:”“Theo's lungs were punctured. That's why he's been coughing, why he can barely speak without wheezing. And his leg—" She stopped. Swallowed."The bones in his left leg were crushed. Alexander's boot came down on him again and again. They had to piece the fragments back together one by one, picking the splinters out of the muscle and the marrow. Every day, he walks on those bones. Eve
Wella’s POVThe hospital ceiling was the same shade of white it had been when I woke up, same fluorescent hum, same antiseptic smell that clung to the back of my throat like old guilt.I had been staring at it for hours, counting the tiles, replaying the dream, the garden, the silver pup, the way he had curled into my arms like I was the only safe place in the world.My baby.I pressed a hand to my stomach, still flat, still hiding its secret, and tried to breathe around the terror that had taken up permanent residence in my chest.The door opened, and my heart tightened like instinct.It was only Anna.Her face pale but composed, carrying a paper bag that smelled like hospital cafeteria coffee and something sweet. She set it on the bedside table and forced a smile for me, “The little thing is safe. And no one is going to find out. Now you need to eat something. You passed out for a whole day."My breath caught in my throat. "How—""Dorian helped." Her voice was flat, carefully neutra
See? He was so obvious.Maybe I didn’t know who he was before. But after three years, I could read him like a book.From the day I saw him with Ava at the obstetrics, I knew his plan. Ava came back to the pack, ungracefully, with a baby in her. But Alexander didn’t make that a public knowledge, not until after she came back almost two months, and then appeared in public, accompanying her to the obstetrics.He was allowing the rumor to make that baby his.There would be no way for Ava to explain a baby in ten months. At least, no graceful way.But this way, no one would need to say anything, and the whole pack would assume that their Alpha just made the mistake all men would, with his one true love that fate took from him, and he was taking up his responsibilty.Because his Omega Luna shamefully tricked her way into the title she didn’t deserve.What a perfect, noble love story he wrote for his Ava.Ava was right. When Alexander loves, he protects. Even if that means he had drag his ow
Wella’s POVThe silence in the room was heavier than the ache in my ribs.Alexander sat in the chair beside my bed, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped so tightly together that the knuckles had gone white. He hadn't looked at me since I opened my eyes. He just sat there, staring at the floor, his jaw working like he was chewing on words he couldn't quite swallow.But it wasn't concern that I saw in his posture. It wasn't worry.It was anger. The kind that sat still and quiet, coiled like a snake, waiting to strike.My heart stuttered. My hand moved instinctively to my stomach—a reflex I couldn't control—and I felt the panic rise like bile in my throat. Was my baby okay?! Had they told him? Was he going to kill him, or did he already do that?!"Wella." His voice cut through the silence, flat and cold. "...why are YOU the one crying?""Alexander—""Don't." He held up a hand, and I stopped. "I came here to talk. Not to fight. So just—" He sighed, long and heavy, and ran a hand thr
Wella’s POV[Mama...]The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. Soft. Distant. Like a whisper through deep water.[Mama!]I tried to open my eyes, but my lids were too heavy. My body felt like it belonged to someone else—numb and distant, floating in a void where pain didn't exist. I couldn't feel my wrist, couldn't feel the ache in my ribs, couldn't feel anything except that small, insistent voice calling out to me.[Mama! Wake up!]I opened my eyes, expecting to see the hospital ceilling. I was wrong.The sky above me was soft and golden, the kind of light that doesn't come from a sun but from everywhere at once. I was lying on grass—not the coarse, dry grass of the pack's training fields, but something softer. Something that seemed to glow faintly beneath me, warm and gentle, like the earth was breathing.I sat up slowly, and my breath caught.It was my mother's garden.I knew it the moment I saw it—the old stone path she had laid herself, the wooden trellis where she used to gro







