Chapter 2: ALIVE

Death should be darkness, silence, nothingness. But what I felt was pain. A piercing pain that ran through every inch of my body.

“Where am I? Is this hell?”

“She’s alive. I can’t believe it,” I heard a female voice, distant, as if speaking to me through a tunnel. “By the Moon Goddess, how is this possible?”

I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt as heavy as lead. The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth.

“She shouldn’t be,” another voice replied, rougher. “With those injuries… she should have drowned after falling off the cliff.”

“The cliff. Ricardo. My baby.”

The memories hit me like an avalanche: Ricardo shifting, his claws tearing into my abdomen, the void beneath my feet as I fell…

“I couldn’t let her die,” another voice answered, deep and male.

“You shouldn’t have rescued her,” the woman insisted. “She’s not our responsibility.”

Footsteps fading away. A door closing. And then gentle hands touching my forehead.

“Easy, little one,” the first voice whispered. “You’re safe now.”

---

A week later, I was finally able to stay conscious for longer periods. The healer, who introduced herself as Dalia, looked at me with compassionate eyes as she cleaned a wound on my arm.

“By the Goddess, child, who did this to you?” she murmured, shaking her head. “No one deserves such cruelty.”

I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain shot through my abdomen.

“Don’t move!” Dalia exclaimed. “Your wounds are barely closing, and very slowly. I’ve never seen a she-wolf with such little regenerative ability.”

“I’m not… a normal she-wolf,” I managed to say hoarsely.

“That much I can see,” she replied gently. “But you’re a survivor.”

“I want to see myself,” I suddenly asked.

With a resigned sigh, Dalia handed me a small mirror. What I saw was not me. The woman in the reflection had three deep scars slashing across her face. The freshly stitched skin was inflamed and red. And my abdomen… a massive scar ran from one side to the other.

“My baby,” I whispered, and tears began to fall. “My pup…”

“I’m sorry, little one. Your uterus was torn out. It was a miracle you didn’t bleed to death.”

I didn’t cry for my disfigured face. I cried for that little being I would never meet, for that life Ricardo had ripped away with the same cruelty with which he had pretended to love me for five years.

“Take this,” Dalia said, offering me a greenish tonic. “It will help you rest.”

I drank the bitter liquid and closed my eyes, but I didn’t fully fall asleep. My mind remained active, processing everything that had happened, when I heard voices in the hallway.

“It’s been a week, Damián,” Dalia was saying. “She doesn’t seem like a common she-wolf. She’s an omega, but there’s something else… I can’t feel her inner wolf.”

“And what does that matter?” the male voice replied. “She’s injured and needs help.”

“She could bring us trouble,” Dalia insisted. “We don’t know where she comes from or what exactly happened to her.”

“Punished? No punishment justifies what they did to her. We’re not abandoning her to her fate. She’s a living being, just like us.”

Their footsteps faded, and I was left alone with my thoughts.

I didn’t want to cause more trouble. I had already been enough of a burden in one life. With my body still aching and my wounds barely closed, I slowly got up. I found clean clothes folded over a chair and dressed with difficulty.

I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t be a burden to these people. And above all, I couldn’t risk Ricardo discovering that I was still alive.

As I moved away from the Solarium Pack, the reality of my situation hit me like an icy fist: I had nothing. No money, no documents, not even clothes beyond what I was wearing.

“Where do I go now?” I murmured to myself, stopping at the edge of the forest.

The city glittered in the distance, but it was a mirage of safety. Without resources, I couldn’t escape. And I needed to escape, get as far away as possible, maybe even leave the country. But for that I needed my documents, some money, my few personal belongings.

Everything was in Ricardo’s mansion.

A chill ran down my spine. Going back there was madness—suicide. But… what alternative did I have?

I took a deep breath, ignoring the stabbing pain in my ribs. I knew the Lobezno Pack better than anyone. I had lived my entire life there, first under old Rosún’s protection and then as Ricardo’s Luna. I knew every entrance, every exit, every vulnerable point in the perimeter. I had helped Ricardo organize the complex’s security, placing traps and surveillance systems to prevent humans from breaching their barriers.

I also knew the patrol schedules, the cameras’ blind spots, each guard’s routines. If anyone could enter undetected, it was me.

And I had my small advantage: my curse. The same one that had made me the object of mockery and scorn for years could now save me. No one could detect my scent unless I allowed it. Ricardo only perceived me when I wore perfume—a trick I had learned to please him. It was as if I were a ghost, invisible to the wolves’ sharp senses.

With renewed determination, I headed toward Lobezno Pack territory. Every step was agony, but the physical pain paled in comparison to the torment in my thoughts.

---

The night was my ally. I moved through the shadows, easily avoiding the patrols. I knew their routines, their weak points. I reached the main mansion undetected and headed for the service entrance, a small side door leading to the kitchen that few people knew about.

But something wasn’t right. Too many lights were on for that hour of the night, too many cars parked in front of the mansion. An emergency meeting? Had they discovered that my body wasn’t at the foot of the cliff?

With my heart pounding in my chest, I slipped through the service door and entered the kitchen. The sound of laughter and conversation drifted from the main hall. I approached cautiously, staying in the shadows, and what I saw left me paralyzed.

It wasn’t an emergency meeting. It was a celebration.

In the center of the hall, surrounded by the Zubieta family and other important pack members, stood Ricardo. He was smiling. Smiling as I had never seen him smile with me. And he was holding a woman who stood with her back to me, a woman in a red dress that clung to her body like a second skin.

When she slightly turned her head, I felt the ground open beneath my feet.

Cristina.

My only friend. The only person in the pack who didn’t look at me with contempt or pity. The beta who sat with me in meetings and made me laugh when everything seemed dark.

“Attention, everyone!” Ricardo’s voice rang through the hall, and the group fell silent. “As you know, a week ago we suffered a tragic loss. My beloved Luna left us too soon.”

There were murmurs of false condolence. Some even pretended sadness, but I could see the relief on their faces. The cursed omega had finally disappeared.

“But life goes on,” Ricardo continued, raising his glass. “And the Moon Goddess, in her infinite wisdom, has shown me the path to my true mate. In one month, under the full moon, Cristina will join me as my new Luna. To a new beginning for the Lobezno Pack!”

“To the new Luna!” they all echoed, raising their glasses.

Cristina smiled radiantly and turned to kiss Ricardo. It was a passionate, possessive kiss—the kind of kiss he had never given me.

I stood frozen in the darkness of the kitchen, feeling something inside me break. It wasn’t just Ricardo’s betrayal—that I already knew, had felt in my own flesh when he threw me off the cliff. It was Cristina’s betrayal. My friend. My only friend.

How long had they been together? Since when had they been deceiving me? Did she know what Ricardo had done to me? Or did she truly believe I had suffered a “tragic accident”?

The party went on for hours. I remained hidden, watching, absorbing every detail, every gesture, every word. I saw how they touched when they thought no one was looking. I saw the familiarity in their movements, the ease of a relationship that was clearly not new.

Eventually, the guests began to leave. Ricardo and Cristina went upstairs to the master bedroom. My bedroom. Our room.

I waited another hour, making sure everyone was asleep or gone. Then, with the stealth of a ghost, I climbed the stairs to my former room. I needed my documents, some money I had hidden, a few pieces of jewelry I could sell. They were in a secret compartment behind my vanity, a hiding place not even Ricardo knew about.

But when I reached the hallway, I heard sounds that froze my blood. Moans. Gasps. The unmistakable sound of two bodies meeting with unrestrained passion.

They were coming from my room.

Part of me wanted to flee, grab whatever I could find elsewhere in the house and disappear forever. But another part, a dark part I had never acknowledged before, pushed me toward the half-open door.

What I saw tore away the last shred of humanity I had left.

Ricardo and Cristina were in my bed. In the same bed where I had cried night after night for not being able to conceive. Where I had dreamed of the day we would finally have a pup. Where I had endured his cold, mechanical “attentions” for five years.

Now he took her with wild passion, with a desire he had never shown me. And she responded with equal intensity, scratching his back, biting his neck, moaning his name over and over.

“I love you,” he whispered to her, and those two words, which he had never said to me, were the trigger.

A burning heat coursed through my body. The rage, the pain, the betrayal—all fused into a single primitive, devastating emotion. My vision turned red, and I felt my body change, my bones breaking and reforming, my skin giving way to fur.

I was shifting. For the first time in my life, the transformation was complete. I wasn’t trapped between forms as I always had been. This time, the wolf emerged in all her glory—strong, powerful, lethal.

I don’t remember entering the room. I don’t remember leaping onto the bed. I only remember the taste of blood in my mouth, the sound of bone snapping, Cristina’s muffled scream.

When I came back to myself, I was standing beside the bed, once again in human form. Ricardo lay motionless, his head separated from his body, his eyes open in an expression of eternal surprise. Cristina was curled up in a corner, trembling, covered in blood, staring at me in absolute terror.

“Ema…” she whispered. “You’re alive… What have you done?”

I looked at my blood-covered hands. Then at Ricardo’s decapitated body. And finally at the woman I had once considered my friend.

“What I should have done a long time ago,” I replied in a voice I did not recognize as my own.

Blood dripped from my chin, down my neck, staining the borrowed clothes. But for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel weak. I didn’t feel cursed.

I felt powerful. And this was only the beginning.