Chapter 1

I'm the Alpha. A new omega named Chloe put me on blast online. All because I canceled the Winter Solstice Moonflower ornaments.

So I canceled everyone's ten-thousand-dollar bonus and gave them twenty-eight-dollar ornaments instead.

The frantic buzzing dragged me from sleep.

My phone was flashing like a strobe light, blown up by a flood of private messages.

I squinted at the time. 5:23 AM.

"Damn it."

I sat up and stabbed at the screen.

"Alpha Emilia, have you seen what's trending? The entire werewolf community is exploding!"

Trending?

I flicked over to the app's main page.

The top post hit me like a physical blow: #GreedyAlphaEmilia#

The views were already past three million.

"No way."

I clicked it. The pinned video at the top made my blood run cold.

In it, Chloe, the omega who joined my pack this year, had tears streaming down her perfectly crafted face. Her voice quivered with practiced vulnerability. "She just canceled our pack's most sacred tradition! The Moonflower ornaments carry the blessings of our ancestors, but she called them 'worthless junk'!"

My fingers tightened on my phone.

When the hell did I say that?

The video was a masterclass in malicious editing. They twisted my words from the last pack meeting. "Instead of these useless little trinkets, isn't ten thousand dollars in cash more practical? Money is freedom."

They cut the rest of my sentence: "—so you can take a vacation, go shopping, or invest. That's more meaningful than some symbolic keepsake."

The comments were a war zone.

"This Alpha is heartless!"

"It's all about the money! What about the Moon Goddess's blessing?"

"She's insulting our traditions!"

"I feel so bad for the New Moon pack. They get nothing!"

Get nothing?

I almost laughed.

For three years straight, I'd given every pack member a ten-thousand-dollar bonus for the Winter Solstice. No Moonflower ornaments.

Ten. Thousand. Dollars. Enough to live on in this city for half a year.

And now they were saying I gave them nothing?

My phone vibrated violently again.

"Alpha, this is bad. Alphas from other packs are all reposting the video."

"Emilia, you need to respond. Now!"

"Every wolf in North America is calling for your head!"

I scrolled through the feed. The number of reposts just kept climbing: 500k, 800k, 1.2 million.

Every share came with a vicious comment.

I put down my phone and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.

The city was still asleep, but my world had been turned upside down.

When the Werewolf Coalition forced us to integrate with human society, the old packs shattered. They couldn't adapt.

Three years ago, I founded the New Moon pack. I took in countless wolves who had lost their homes.

I gave them jobs. I gave them housing. I gave them dignity in the human world.

I paid $150,000 out of my own pocket for an alchemical potion to cure my Beta Liam's daughter of silver poisoning.

I thought I was their Alpha. Their family.

Now I knew the truth.

I was just their ATM.

The phone rang again. An urgent call from my second-in-command, Elara.

"Emilia! You finally answered!" Her voice was frantic. "The pack's public inbox is flooded with hate mail! The Blackstone Alpha is demanding an explanation. We have to deal with this now!"

I walked back to my desk and re-opened the video.

Watching Chloe's performance closely, I noticed a detail.

Her eyes kept darting just off-camera, like she was taking directions.

A planned attack.

"Elara," my voice was surprisingly calm. "Find out where this video was first posted. And what time."

"Now? But we need to issue a clarification—"

"Find it."

A few minutes later, I had my answer.

The video went live at 11 PM last night. Peak activity time for the North American werewolf community.

Chloe's account gained two hundred thousand followers overnight. And multiple major accounts had reposted it at the same time.

This was a carefully planned social media blitz.

And I was completely unprepared.

I played the video again, watching Chloe's innocent face. I remembered when she first joined the pack three months ago—timid, grateful, swearing to devote her life to the pack.

Now she was swearing to destroy me.

"My generosity had bred greed. My kindness had earned me a knife in the back," I whispered.

New hashtags were trending: #AlphaStealsBonus#, #NewMoonCivilWar#.

My fingernails dug into the wood. My Alpha power surged, the air crackling. The glass on my desk vibrated.

But inside, I was ice cold.