Chapter One

If Spencer found out Ruby was dead, his scouts would descend on this hospital within hours. And if he discovered she had given birth to a child that wasn’t his,a child carrying the faint, undeniable scent of a powerful rival Alpha,he would slaughter her. He would tear this innocent baby apart to erase the stain on his pride.

"I promised her," I choked out, my inner wolf whining in deep, agonizing sorrow. I reached down and gently scooped the baby into my arms. She was so light, warm against my chest, her tiny fingers twitching against my shirt. "I promised I'd protect you, Maya."

The door to the private room clicked open, and I jumped, my heart leaping into my throat. I squeezed Maya tighter, my body instinctively shielding her as my omega instincts flared, screaming at me to run, to hide, to defend.

A man in scrub pants and a faded blue t-shirt slid into the room. He wasn't a doctor. He was older, with greasy gray hair, a permanent scowl, and bloodshot eyes that scanned the room with a calculating look. His badge read Mathew - Night Administration.

He didn't look at Ruby’s body with pity. He looked at the flatlining monitor, then at me, and finally at the baby in my arms. A slow, greedy smirk touched his lips.

"Tragic," Mathew said, his voice a low, gravelly drawl. "An unregistered female. No medical history. No insurance. And now, a flatline. The police are going to have a lot of questions when we report this. Especially since she doesn't seem to have a legal ID."

He was testing me. He knew exactly what we were,shifters hiding in the human world. He might not know our pack names, but corrupt humans in neutral-zone border towns made a living off exploiting desperate wolves who couldn't risk police involvement.

"She’s my sister," I said, keeping my voice as steady as possible, though my knees were shaking. "And the baby..."

"The baby is a complication," Mathew interrupted, stepping closer. He tapped a clipboard against his thigh. "Standard procedure means we call Child Services for an abandoned newborn with no legal mother. It takes hours. Paperwork. Background checks. Your family secrets? They’ll be all over the local registry by morning."

By morning, Spencer will have her.

I couldn't let that happen. I had to erase her. I had to make Maya vanish from the face of the earth before the Ash Pack scouts arrived.

"How much?" I asked bluntly.

Mathew blinked, his smirk widening. "Excuse me?"

"You're the night administrator. You control the digital intake logs," I said, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. I reached into my jacket pocket, my fingers wrapping around the thick envelope of cash I had brought with me,everything I had managed to steal from my own savings and Ruby's hidden stash before I fled the Ash Pack borders. "I want you to file the death certificate for my sister. But I also want you to write down that the infant was stillborn."

Marcus's eyes locked onto my hand as I slowly pulled the envelope out. The paper was slightly crumpled, but the thickness of the stack inside was unmistakable. It was thousands of dollars. Enough to buy his silence twice over.

"Stillborn?" Mathew murmured, his tongue darting out to wet his dry lips. "Falsifying a birth and death record is a federal crime, kid."

"Only if someone finds out," I countered, stepping closer. The sweet, innocent scent of Maya seemed to give me a burst of desperate courage. "Log both Ruby and the baby as deceased. Close the file. No police, no social services, no trace. If anyone comes looking for a pregnant woman named Ruby, she died, and her baby died with her. Do we have a deal?"

I shoved the envelope toward him.

Mathew stared at the cash for a long, agonizing second. I could hear the rapid thumping of his human heart. He looked at the flatline monitor, then back at me. With a swift, practiced movement, he snatched the envelope out of my hand and slid it deep into his scrub pocket.

"I'll have to manually override the nursery intake sheet," Mathew muttered, his tone suddenly businesslike and cold. "I’ll write it off as a maternal death with a co-occurring stillbirth. The body of the infant will be logged as sent to the cremarium with the mother. You have ten minutes to get out of this hospital before the on-call doctor comes down to sign off on the time of death."

"Thank you," I breathed, a heavy weight lifting slightly from my chest, only to be replaced by the sheer panic of what came next.

"Don't thank me. If anyone asks, I never saw you," Mathew said, turning on his heel and slipping back out the door, the click of the lock echoing like a starter pistol.

Ten minutes.

I looked down at Ruby's peaceful face one last time. I bent over, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to her cold forehead. I'll find him, Ruby, I promised silently, my chest aching. I'll find her father. I'll keep her safe.

I pulled my oversized winter coat tightly around Maya, tucking her head gently beneath the thick fabric to shield her from the bitter wind and the rain waiting outside. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a small, metallic vial of illegal scent-blockers. I unscrewed the cap and downed the bitter liquid in one swallow, gagging as the chemical taste burned my throat. Within minutes, my sweet, vulnerable Omega scent would be choked out, leaving me smelling like a completely ordinary, undetectable Beta.

I couldn't look back.

Cradling my sister's baby close to my heart, I pushed open the heavy wooden door of the hospital room and stepped out into the dimly lit, silent corridor.