Chapter One: Nicole pain

Nicole's POV

"My daughter Nico is innocent! I'd trade my life for Alpha Caesar's fate! Alpha Caesar deserved to die!"

It always starts with his voice. Every night I am back in that auditorium, nineteen years old, standing in the packed crowd while Tate steps up to receive his alpha title.

In the room every seat filled, every face turned forward in reverence and I am doing the quiet, embarrassing thing I had been doing for years watching him from a distance, collecting small proofs of his goodness and holding them close like they were mine.

The way he'd helped someone up once without being seen. The way he listened when other people interrupted. The Moon Goddess chose that exact moment to confirm what my heart already knew.

The bond hit me like a current, warmth cracking open and spreading outward until my hands were tingling and my vision had softened and every part of me was saying him, it was always going to be him.

And then my father's voice split the auditorium in two.

The gunshot came before I finished understanding what I was hearing. Alpha Caesar's body jerked once, violently, and then the blood came spreading dark and fast across the front of his ceremony whites and the crowd erupted around me, screaming and surging, but I couldn't move. I stood completely still in the middle of all of it and watched Tate's face.

I had memorised that face from a distance for years. I had never seen it break. It broke now.

The sound that came out of him was not human. His wolf's howl tore across the auditorium at a frequency that rattled my back teeth and made the woman beside me double over, and he was already moving, lunging forward, catching Caesar before he hit the floor. Both hands pressed flat against the wound, blood soaking through his ceremony clothes, turning black at the edges.

"Doctor — get the doctor, GUARDS"

His voice fractured on the last word. Tate, who I had never once seen lose control of anything, was on his knees on the altar with Caesar's blood on his hands and tears running openly down his face, and Beta Michael was rushing the altar from the right, and the crowd was chaos, and the bond was still singing in my chest like it didn't yet understand what it had just walked into.

The bullet had been silver. Everyone in that auditorium understood, even before the doctor pushed through the crowd, it was already over, Alpha Caesar was dead.

My father was on his knees at the back of the room. I saw the silver ingot catch the light once before he swallowed it — deliberately, without hesitation and then the convulsions started, fast and brutal, and within seconds he was on the floor. The expression on his face as he went down was not fear. It was grief and fury.

He never looked at me, I think that was the only mercy he had left to give. The two most significant moments of my life arrived in the same breath and destroyed each other completely.

I woke up sitting, hand pressed flat against my breastbone, breathing like I'd been running.

The sky outside had gone from black to that grey-white that meant dawn was already arriving.

I sat still and then I looked at the ceiling and said nothing, because there was no one to say anything to.

One thousand and twenty days. That was how many mornings I had opened my eyes in this house and remembered everything all at once as I got up.

********

Tate's suit was pressed and ready by six. Breakfast ordered and confirmed by six-fifteen, I carried the tray from the kitchen myself because the maids had made clear — that helping an omega was beneath them.

"She's at it again." One of them didn't bother lowering her voice as I passed. "Playing Luna. Three years and she still hasn't learned her place."

In everyone's eyes I am the witch who bewitched the moon goddess to become Tate's mate and escape blame for my father's crimes. What they don't know is that Tate knows the bond is real but keeping me here, the daughter of the man who killed his father, is his revenge, nothing more.

I kept walking as I got to his bedroom, the door was closed, I knocked twice, the way I had been told to, and when there was no answer I pressed the handle and stepped inside.

The smell hit me before anything else. They were already in the middle of the bed, facing the door.

Sophia lay on her back, legs hooked high over Tate’s forearms, knees pushed toward her shoulders in a position that folded her open and exposed. Her dark hair fanned across the white sheets, mouth parted in lazy pleasure.

Tate was braced above her on straight arms, hips rolling in slow, punishing strokes. Every thrust was deep and measured he sank fully inside her, held for a second, then withdrew almost completely before driving back in again.

The wet, obscene sound of it echoed in the quiet room: slick withdrawal, heavy re-entry, the soft slap of his balls against her with every deliberate plunge.

His eyes were already on me. From the moment I crossed the threshold, Tate’s gaze locked onto mine

He didn’t flinch, simply kept fucking her with the same unhurried rhythm while staring straight at me over the top of her head, watching every flicker across my face. Making sure I saw exactly what he was doing, how easily he gave her what he withheld from me.

Sophia noticed me a few seconds later. Her head lolled toward the door, lips curling into a slow, vicious smile. “Morning, little ghost,” she purred, voice breathy but sharp. “Come to serve breakfast… or just to watch?”

Tate didn’t speak, he simply tilted his hips slightly changing the angle so the next deep thrust dragged a sharper cry from Sophia all while holding my gaze without wavering.

I stood frozen, breakfast tray trembling in my hands. Sophia’s hand darted to the nightstand again. She snatched the heavy crystal vase still half-full of white roses and hurled it at me.

I could barely dodge as it struck me square above the right eye as fresh blood ran down my lashes, dripping onto the floor in thick red drops.

“Get the fuck out,” Tate said, voice low and rough, as his hips never faltered instead he drove into Sophia again, harder this time, making her gasp and clutch at his shoulders. His eyes stayed locked on mine the entire time. “Your disgusting blood is staining my precious floor bitch.”

Sophia laughed — breathy, broken by moans and wrapped her legs tighter around him, heels digging into his ass.

“Harder, Alpha,” she demanded, loud and cruel. “Make sure she remembers what she’ll never get.”

He obeyed without hesitation as the mate bond twisted like a blade slowly turning in my chest raw, humiliated, furious.

I set the tray down on the dresser with care as my voice came hollow. “The assembly starts at eight. You’ll want time to shower.”

Without waiting for a reply I turned and walked to the door, I refused to break down.

The cut was still seeping when I reached Tracy's room. Her bell had rung twice while I was in the corridor — three short, impatient pulls the first time, then four harder ones, the rhythm of someone offended by the delay.

She was at her vanity, still in last night's dress, a half-empty brandy bottle on the nightstand and a second open on the dresser, sitting among her jewellery like it belonged there.

The room had that particular smell that I associated exclusively with her — alcohol layered over old perfume. She had been this way since Caesar died. The mate bond severing had done something to her neurologically that was the clinical explanation, the one I had read about in textbooks but the practical reality was a woman who started drinking before breakfast and got sharper and meaner as the day wore on.

"You're late," she said to my reflection.

"Good morning, Luna Tracy." I picked up the glass on the floor beside her stool, retrieved the empty bottle from under the dresser where it had rolled, and reached for the one on the nightstand.

Her hand shot out and closed around it, fast and decisive, pulling it against her chest like I'd tried to take something vital. "Leave it."

"You've had enough. Alpha Tate will be downstairs in five minutes."

"How dare you." Her eyes found mine in the mirror, red-rimmed. "How dare you say my son's name. Three years, three years married and not one child. You can't even do the single thing your body was built for." She turned on her stool, swaying slightly, the bottle still clutched to her chest. "A hen that won't lay, the daughter of a murderer sitting in my house giving my son nothing, what kind of sick joke is that? What kind of Moon Goddess does this?"

I sorted her medications by the label, the way I did every morning. Blood pressure first, the blue ones with food. I had heard these words so many times, that I got so used to it at one point.

"Your blood pressure medication first," I said. "Then the blue ones with breakfast."

Tracy made a sound of pure contempt, unscrewed the brandy bottle, and poured herself a drink.

Breakfast was the usual theater. Tracy arrived at the table already fortified with drinks on her arm. Tate sat at the head chair, phone in hand, coffee going cold while I stood at the sideboard while serving.

"The heir situation needs to be addressed," Tracy said, twenty minutes in.

"It doesn't," Tate said.

"Three years, Tate. Your father built this pack on continuation and strength"

"My father is dead" He set his phone down and looked at his mother with the patience that was also a warning. "I said enough."

Tracy took her coffee with shaky hands as the table went silent. I refilled the juice and stared at a distance and waited for it to end.

She went upstairs eventually as I began working cleaning up.

"Nicole."

I stopped.

He was still at the table, watching me with the expression he used when he wanted to be certain I was listening. "I want to be clear about something." His voice was low. "I will never love you, I have no intention of giving you children. Whatever you have been telling yourself about time, or patience, or what the bond means —stop."