Chapter 1

On the eighth anniversary of our marking ceremony, I received a paternity test report.

The conclusion section contained just one line—yet it was enough to split my life cleanly in two:

“Confirmed: Lyra is the biological mother of Lucas.”

As I struggled to process this cold “confirmation,” my phone screen lit up.

It was a photo sent by Lyra.

She lounged lazily against a black velvet sofa.

My cub, Lucas, curled beside her in his wolf form, silver-gray fur brushing the hem of her skirt.

And my mate—Ethan, the reigning Alpha of the Western Pack—sat on her other side.

His hand rested on her stocking-clad thigh.

They looked like a perfectly matched wolf family.

The caption read:

“Lucas said he missed me. Thank you for raising him so well, Rosalie.”

I typed my reply one letter at a time:

May the Moon Goddess bless you.

Half an hour later, Ethan kicked the door open, slamming it against the wall..

“Rosalie!” he roared. “Do you really have to be this vicious? Always sarcastic, always pushing the blame onto others!”

My little wolf ran out of his room.

“Bad mom,” he snarled, repeating words he’d clearly said countless times. “I wish Lyra were my real mom.”

I smiled bitterly.

Lucas, your wish has already come true—by blood and by law. And your “father” has been working toward that outcome all along.

As a Beta woman incapable of bearing children, I didn’t even have the right to argue with blood.

Lucas was the child Ethan and I had adopted.

Back then, Ethan had said, “I love you. But we still need a child—to carry on the bloodline, to strengthen alliances. Lucas… I feel a connection with him. I’ll treat him as my own.”

He did treat him as his own flesh and blood.

Just not ours.

I turned and walked toward the long-sealed drawer.

I took a document out and laid them gently at the center of the cold dining table.

“Fine,” I said calmly. “It’s all my fault. Now—may I leave?”

The mate-bond dissolution agreement had been sitting in that drawer for far too long.

Just in case.

I hadn’t prepared it because love had faded.

I’d prepared it precisely because I had once wanted this family to remain whole—because I needed that just in case to give myself a false breath of hope.

I wasn’t blind to everything.

Ethan’s drifting gaze. The subtle lift of his lips when he stared at his phone. The vague, hastily crossed-out blanks in his schedule—I saw it all.

But he was a good father.

To Lucas.

And there had been a stretch of time—not a short one—when his kindness had been real, and it had been mine.

So I swallowed my doubts and gave him space.

Once.

Twice.

Even a third time.

Even after learning Lucas’s origins, I told myself—looking at the red circle on the calendar marking our eighth year—wait a little longer. See what he chooses.

That morning, before leaving, he’d said he’d pick Lucas up early from school and come straight home.

I believed him.

The roast beef in the oven released the charred aroma he always claimed to love most.

On the table sat an ice-cream cake I’d gone out of my way to buy—Lucas would have cheered the moment he saw it.

But the toll of midnight swallowed my last scrap of hope.

The fat on the meat cooled and congealed into a pale gray film. The cake collapsed into a sticky, undignified pool of sugar.

And then the photo arrived.

Lyra.

Her smile bloomed on the screen.

In that instant, something that had been holding on for years snapped—with a soft, final crack.

“You want to dissolve the bond? Just because I took Lucas to visit Lyra?” His jaw tightened. “You know how badly she’s been doing since the incident! I told you I was going to check on her tonight!”

“No,” I said, my voice stripped of all warmth. “You just ‘forgot’ to mention it. Or you were too busy there—too busy to remember what day today is.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. He shifted into that softened, placating mode I knew all too well.

“Fine. My fault. I lost track of time. But don’t overreact just because of Lyra.”

He stepped closer, reaching for the untouched plates. “I’ll clean this up. Go rest. Tomorrow—tomorrow we’ll go out. That place you like.”

There it was again.

The endless loop: absence, forgetting, then filling the gap with syrupy apologies and carefully chosen gifts—playing the perfect husband for a few days, until the next crack appeared.

For years, I had allowed that cycle to keep turning.

But tonight, something had gone completely cold.

I simply stood there, watching him prop up his tenderness like a stage performance.

“I’ve already signed the last page,” I said evenly. “If you have any questions, my lawyer will contact you.”

The sharp crash of shattering porcelain exploded through the room. Like a frustrated child, Ethan hurled the plate to the floor.

“Happy now?” he accused. “You just have to make everyone around you suffer like you do, don’t you? Always the victim. Always selfish!”

My gaze drifted over the broken shards and the congealed gravy on the floor.

“Call it whatever you want,” I said. “I’m just tired of living like this.”

He scoffed.

“You dare accuse me for visiting her? Have you forgotten—it was you who pushed her into that cursed shadow! Lucas and I… we’re just paying off a blood debt on your behalf!”

“On my behalf?” I blinked slowly. “And what, exactly, do I owe her?”

It had been my first social season as Ethan’s Luna, officially installed in his family estate.

Lyra had once been my closest friend. We grew up together from childhood.

Then Ethan appeared.

What had been a friendship between two she-wolves turned into a delicate, three-wolf balance.

The three of us were born under the shadows of different families on this same land.

My family ran a high-end financial investment firm.

Ethan’s family controlled a vast pharmaceutical empire.

And Lyra—by then, her parents’ company was already showing signs of decline.

That banquet was meant to secure a critical collaboration between Ethan’s family and several powerful houses of the Northern Pack.

Non-core members were never supposed to enter the core negotiation area.

When Lyra begged to see the “important people” up close, I hesitated—then agreed.

I arranged for her to wait in a lounge adjacent to the main hall—relatively safe.

Then a senior family member urgently summoned me. There was an oversight that had to be handled immediately.

As I left, I glanced back. Lyra was still sitting on the velvet sofa, swinging her legs idly, waving at me.

When I rushed back after dealing with the emergency, the sofa was empty.

I assumed she’d grown impatient and gone home.

Until dawn the next morning—when Ethan’s fists pounded on my door.

He burst in, his face twisted with fury.

“How could you do this to her?” he shouted hoarsely, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “You left Lyra alone there—do you know she wandered into the Northern Pack’s delegation area? One of them humiliated her!”

I froze, unable to piece together his words.

Lyra… something had happened?

Later, my parents told me, grave-faced, that Lyra had somehow entered the core negotiation zone.

The truly dangerous figures of the Northern Pack were there.

One of them humiliated her.

But I hadn’t known.

I’d been in another room, frantically handling an unexpected crisis.

I had no idea what had happened in my absence.

And Lyra told a different story.

She said I had led her there on purpose. That I had offered her up as a sacrifice to demons, to solidify my position as Luna—to eliminate an “old friend.”

She called it my scheme.

A vile betrayal.

I tried to defend myself, but my voice drowned beneath the Pack’s whispers.

There was no surveillance.

No evidence.

Only my pale howl—

set against her blood-soaked lament.