Chapter 1

I pushed the check back toward him.

"I'm not the one who should be taking this."

Alexander assumed I wanted more. His face darkened instantly. The Alpha pressure rolled off him in waves.

"Thirty thousand isn't enough for you?"

"Selena, let me make something clear. Your mother was a rogue wolf. The fact that she could trade her life for thirty thousand is the last bit of value she'll ever have. Don't push your luck."

I shook my head. "You're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying it's too little."

"I'm saying this money should go to you."

Alexander's brow knotted tight. Disgust filled his eyes.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"That money came from selling your mother's body. What does that have to do with me?"

"You think everyone's like you? Living off something that sick?"

Alexander was Isabella's only son.

His father died in battle when he was young. Isabella raised him alone.

To give her son the strength to become a powerful Alpha, she'd taken on countless dangerous pack missions in her youth. Her body was covered in scars, but she never once complained about it in front of Alexander.

So from the time he was a boy, Alexander valued his mother above everything.

At first, I couldn't figure out why he refused to come home and handle her funeral after she died. Why he'd use his Alpha authority to protect Claire, the trainee healer who killed her.

Now I had my answer.

Because he thought the person who died was my mother, Margaret.

I looked at the man standing in front of me and spoke slowly, one word at a time.

"Alexander, I strongly suggest you return that thirty thousand."

"Then go get Mom's body back."

"Otherwise you are going to regret this."

He scoffed. Clearly didn't take a single word seriously.

"You think that's how it works?"

"Once a body's been donated to a medical facility, there's no getting it back."

"Besides, your mother's body has probably already been dissected for Claire's research by now. You want it back? Keep dreaming."

My fingers curled into fists.

Isabella wasn't my birth mother. But she'd treated me like a real daughter.

Now she was dead. Innocent. Branded with the accusation of deliberately causing a treatment accident. And her own son had handed her body over to be turned into a specimen.

Thinking about what she might be going through, my chest went cold.

"Alexander, you know exactly what medical facilities do with bodies. How could you bring yourself to send Mom there?"

"Doesn't any part of you think that's cruel?"

Alexander actually smirked.

"She's your mom. Not mine."

"Why would I care?"

"Dead people can't feel anything. Letting Claire study her properly is the last value she has."

He kept going, his expression getting even colder.

"She's the one who deliberately hid her allergy to moonfern. Tried to scam compensation money."

"Made Claire look bad. Even gave her nightmares for days."

I watched his face, so sure of itself, and suddenly I wanted to know.

If one day he found out that the body he'd handed over, the one he'd let strangers cut apart, wasn't my mother at all, but his own beloved Isabella, what would his face look like then?

But the Alexander standing in front of me had no idea.

When I stayed silent, he took it as surrender. He threw in one more line with a cold smile.

"Honestly, I could see it from the start. Your mother was never going to live long anyway."

"Even if she didn't die this time, she wouldn't have lasted."

"Walking away with thirty thousand? You should be grateful."

"Take the money. Tomorrow, buy something nice and go to the Healing Temple. Apologize to Claire. Then we're done."