All Chapters of Everyone Thought My Screams Were Fake: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

My soul hovered above the stage, staring down at the black metal illusion box that still held my body.Only my head and one hand were visible. My face looked unusually pale beneath the stage lights, and a faint sheen of sweat clung to my temple. My half-open eyes stared past the front row, but from a distance, the stillness could easily be mistaken for commitment to the act.Selena glanced at me and faltered for half a second. Her fingers tightened around the microphone, but the hesitation vanished beneath the sweet, guileless smile she wore for everyone else.She bent over the box and lifted the small panel near my face. "Elena, that's your cue. Take a bow."My corpse didn't move.Her smile stiffened. Then she straightened and gave the audience an apologetic shrug. "Looks like our Omega Luna is still mad at me. Let's take ten while I go backstage and talk her down."A ripple of indulgent laughter passed through the ballroom. These were wolves who had trusted me to treat their children

Chapter 2

The moment Adrian and Noah disappeared down the corridor, Selena's wounded expression fell away.She listened until their footsteps faded, locked the backstage door, and walked back to the illusion box. Kneeling beside it, she opened a maintenance panel and looked in at the body wedged between the mechanisms.Blood still ran from all three wounds. She reached inside, pressed two fingers to my throat, and let out a slow breath when she found no pulse.“You kept telling Adrian I was crossing boundaries,” she murmured. “Once you’re gone, there won’t be any boundaries left.”She took a sealed pouch from the tool cabinet and scattered gray-white powder over my clothes, my wounds, and the inside of the box. The sharp chemical scent burned even through my ghostly senses.Concentrated scent suppressant. Wolfsbane. Cedar ash.Together they could smother a werewolf's natural scent long enough to confuse trackers and bury the trace of a mate bond beneath the smell of stage chemicals.Selena remov

Chapter 3

It was almost midnight when the celebration ended.Adrian returned to the pack house with Noah and Selena. The moment he stepped through the front door, he called into the silent foyer, "Elena, come out. We need to talk."Only his voice came back to him.He called again, then a third time. With every unanswered attempt, the line between his brows deepened.Noah lingered near the stairs. "Is Mommy still mad?""She probably went to her mother's," Selena said softly. "This is my fault. She must think you spent the whole night defending me."Adrian took out his phone and called me.My phone didn't ring inside the house. It was lying in a dark corner backstage, its case smeared with my blood.The call went unanswered. Worry touched his face, but it lasted only a few seconds before familiar irritation pushed it aside."She's done this before," he said. "She disappears and waits for me to come running."Selena studied him. "Maybe you should.""No." Adrian put his phone away. "If she thinks wa

Chapter 4

"Where's Elena?" Mara asked before Adrian could greet her. "I've been texting her since last night. She hasn't answered once."Adrian's expression shifted. "She didn't go to your place?""No." My mother's gaze sharpened. "What happened?"Selena appeared in the dining room doorway, still wearing the Blackwood pack shirt. Mara's eyes dropped to the crest on her chest, then moved to the empty space where my Luna nameplate had been removed from the table.She didn't call Selena a home-wrecker. She didn't raise her voice. She simply looked at Adrian and asked, "Why is another woman wearing your family's crest and sitting in my daughter's place?""You're misunderstanding the situation." Adrian frowned. "Selena stayed because Noah was upset.""Then where is Elena?""She caused a scene at the birthday performance and stormed off. She's hiding until I go after her."Mara's face changed. "What performance?"Selena explained the illusion in a careful, wounded voice. She said I had refused to come

Chapter 5

Adrian's lips moved, but no sound came out.Mara saw inside and swayed. Someone caught her before she hit the ground.The pack doctor crouched beside me. He checked my pupils, my pulse, and the place where a wolf's spirit should have responded.After several seconds, he stood and removed his gloves."The deceased is Luna Elena Hart Blackwood."“Estimated time of death was approximately nine forty-seven last night. She was already dead before the audience finished applauding.”After the pack doctor spoke, even the wind seemed to stop.Adrian stood frozen, staring past the Enforcer's shoulder at my face. "No."The word came out barely louder than a breath.No one tried to reassure him.The doctor ordered his assistants to remove the outer panels. Metal rails groaned as they were loosened one by one, and at last my body was lifted from the cramped mechanism.When the blade came free, dark blood began seeping from the wound again.Adrian lurched forward, then stopped as if an invisible chai

Chapter 6

The investigation lasted two full days before the Pack Enforcers announced what had happened.Selena's purchase records were recovered first. Using the identity of an unaffiliated wolf, she had ordered the silver blades from an underground marketplace. Over the next three months, she bought wolfsbane concentrate and industrial scent suppressant in separate transactions.She had deleted everything from her phone, but Mooncrest technicians restored the records from cloud backups.Her search history was worse.[How long after a silver wound does a werewolf lose motor control?][Can wolfsbane conceal a mate scent?][Will an industrial compactor destroy DNA?]There was no room left for doubt.This hadn't been a reckless decision made backstage. Selena had planned my murder for months.The cruelest part was why she chose a magic show.She knew that no matter how loudly I screamed, everyone would assume my pain was part of the act.She hadn't created their prejudice against me. Adrian had don

Chapter 7

Noah was placed in a temporary family care center with a pack counselor assigned to him around the clock.For two days, he barely let go of the gray stuffed fox in his arms. I had sewn it for him when he was four and burning with fever. One ear tilted higher than the other, and he used to complain that it wasn't as nice as the toys from the pack store, but he had never truly been able to throw it away.A counselor named Grace sat across from him and kept her voice gentle. "Noah, I need you to think about the night of your dad's birthday. What happened to your mom onstage?""She was doing the trick.""Why did you think it was a trick?""Dad said so."Noah picked at the fox's crooked ear. His voice grew smaller. "Mom kept calling him. Then a lot of red stuff came out, but Dad said it was fake blood. He said she wanted everyone to look at her."Grace waited before asking, "Did you smell anything strange?"He wrinkled his nose. "It smelled bad. Like the disinfectant at school, but also lik

Chapter 8

My funeral was held three days later.When a werewolf died, the body was usually returned to the forest in wolf form so their scent could merge with pack territory one final time. Wolfsbane had destroyed my wolf spirit too completely. The pack doctor couldn't help me shift, even in death.Mara chose a grave beside Moonlight Lake, not far from the clinic where I had once worked.White bellflowers covered the hill in spring. In winter, wolves could be seen running across the frozen water from the opposite shore.Every member of Mooncrest attended.Three nights earlier, they had laughed while I died.Now no one dared make a sound. Some lowered their heads when Mara passed. Others cried as though their grief could separate them from the laughter preserved on the recording. Mara accepted none of their apologies. She walked through them with Noah's hand in hers and kept her eyes on my casket.There was no wedding ring on my casket and nothing bearing the Blackwood crest. Mara placed the repa

Chapter 9

After losing his title, Adrian moved out of the pack house.He remained inside Mooncrest territory under Council order. His long-term sanctions included rebuilding the pack's safety procedures, attending mandatory wolf-counseling sessions, and transferring most of his personal assets into a Luna protection fund.The fund supported female wolves facing mate abuse, pack exclusion, or the systematic erasure of their authority.It wasn't redemption.No policy, money, or regret could return what he had taken from me.It was simply the responsibility he would carry for the rest of his life.Adrian moved into a small cabin near the eastern border. There was no Alpha office, no line of pack members waiting for orders, and no Selena looking at him as though every word he spoke mattered.Every night at nine forty-seven, he woke from the same dream.There were no monsters and no elaborate punishments.Only his birthday party.The first blade entered my body.I called his name.The crowd looked at

Chapter 10

One year later, white bellflowers covered the hill beside Moonlight Lake.Mara brought Noah back to visit my grave.He had grown taller and could control his shift without help now. He placed a small courage badge from school against my headstone and told me, very seriously, that he had made friends in the northern pack and started learning basic healing."Grandma says I'm a little like you."He sat in the grass and traced the edge of the badge. "I still miss you, but I don't think you chose not to come home anymore."His voice softened. "I know you really can't."Mara waited several yards away without rushing him.Her hair had gone much whiter, but calm had returned to her eyes. She hadn't spent the year living for revenge. She had built a new life and brought Noah with her.That was what I wanted for them.Adrian didn't appear.He came every month to clear weeds and clean the stone, but he never approached on the days Mara and Noah visited. He obeyed the only thing my mother had ever

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