Chapter 2: The End

Rachel's POV

"What the—" The word died in my throat.

Jacob kept moving inside Lucy, her moans rising to fill the room, drowning out whatever was left of the woman I used to be. My presence meant nothing to them. The man I'd sacrificed everything for — my body, my humanity, the slim woman I used to see in mirrors — had thrown me away in front of the girl he'd once called his childhood friend.

I couldn't watch trust die in real time. I threw the crown from my head and let it hit the floor. My power. My title. Earned, and now worthless.

I turned to leave, some small foolish part of me still waiting for him to call my name, to say it was a mistake. Instead, the moans only grew louder.

I ran.

My hands shook as I dialed Alice again. This time it connected.

"Alice." I fought to keep my voice steady, wiping my face with the back of my hand. "Bring Rowan. Meet me outside the Claw hall. Now."

I didn't wait for her answer. By the time I reached the hall, Rowan was already there, small hand slipping into mine.

"We're going home, baby."

"Isn't this our home, Mother?" His voice was curious, too innocent for what I already knew.

I didn't answer. I just ran, dragging him beside me, my lungs burning until I couldn't run anymore. I fumbled for my inhaler, one desperate puff, and kept moving. My father's number was already ringing.

"Dad." My voice cracked on the word. "Meet me at the forest entrance. You were right about everything."

A shadow stepped into the road ahead of us.

I froze, pulling Rowan behind me.

"And where exactly do you think you're going, you obese thing?"

She stepped into the moonlight slow, unhurried, savoring it. Lucy. Her thin frame moved toward us like she already knew how this would end.

"Leaving so soon? The festival hasn't even started — and you're the whole reason it exists."

"Shut up, Lucy." Seven years of grief boiled into something sharper. Something I'd never let myself feel before. "You took my husband. You destroyed my family. Get out of my way or I swear to—"

"Watch your language, my Luna." She smiled, and it was the same smile she'd worn the day we met — I just hadn't known, back then, what it meant.

Her fingers snapped, claws sliding free.

"You're going back to the pack house to be exactly what you were always meant to be. A breeder. A human. Or I do something you won't like."

I looked at Rowan's face and every ounce of anger drained into fear. I was nothing against a weapon built for war. I was just a dying, fading mother standing between a monster and her son.

I turned back toward the pack house. If it kept him safe, I'd go anywhere.

"Rowan, sweetie, come to your aunt," Lucy cooed — that same soft, honeyed voice that had fooled me for seven years.

Rowan's fist tightened in my gown. I looked down at him, and something in my chest cracked in half. I nodded anyway, because I didn't know what else to do.

She pulled him from my side. The moonlight hung silent above us. I wanted to scream, but the festival roared on somewhere far from us, oblivious, joyful, too far away to hear anything.

Then I heard it. A gasp. A sound like breath fighting to escape a body that no longer wanted to hold it.

I turned.

Blood bloomed dark across his stomach. Lucy's claws were buried to the hilt inside my son.

"No—" The word wouldn't finish leaving my mouth.

I didn't feel anything and everything at once. Grief, rage, terror — they arrived together and canceled each other into silence. I threw myself at her without thinking, every one of my eighty-nine kilos crashing down on top of her.

"How dare you." My voice broke into pieces I didn't recognize. "First Jacob. Now Rowan. What did I ever do to you?"

She laughed beneath me, delighted, like my grief was the punchline to a joke only she understood.

I don't know how long I stayed there, hands shaking, fists useless against her. Then two hands closed around me and lifted me off her like I weighed nothing at all.

Jacob.

His claws were already out. They found my throat before I could speak, pressing in like he meant to finish what Lucy had started.

"Jacob—" I forced the words past his grip. "It's Rowan. She killed Rowan."

I waited for him to turn on her. To feel something.

"So?" His voice held no grief. Only ice, and something underneath it that felt like it had been waiting seven years to surface.

"You attacked my fated mate. You're now going to pay for that."

My legs gave out beneath me. This wasn't the Alpha I'd fallen in love with. This wasn't the man I'd given my body to, knowing exactly what it would cost me, my HEALTH

"I understand now, Jacob." I could barely speak through the tears. "You're all monsters."

I ran. He caught me from behind, his claws sinking deeper this time, deliberate, unhurried — savoring it the way Lucy had savored her walk into the moonlight.

"What should I do with her, my Luna?" he asked, like I was already gone. Like I was already nothing.

Lucy's smile was the last thing I understood clearly. "After everything her kind has done to us? She doesn't deserve to breathe. Kill her."

The pain that followed had no edges, no mercy — just a single unbroken wave that swallowed everything. My heartbeat filled my ears, slow, uneven, counting down.

"Now they'll finally see who we really are," Jacob said, and his voice grew distant as he walked away.

The ground rose to meet me before I even felt myself fall. My vision dimmed at the edges, the world folding inward.

No one to call. No one to save me.

I lifted my face to the moon one last time, its light falling over me like the only mercy left in the world.

Then there was nothing at all.