I thought I was losing my mind.

That was my first thought — not fear, not grief, just the cold, clinical certainty that something had gone wrong inside my head.

It was a Tuesday afternoon, the kind of grey October day that smelled like wet leaves and car exhaust. I pulled into the pickup line at Maplewood Academy the same way I did every weekday, fifteen minutes early, coffee going cold in the cupholder. Picking up Noah and Liam was the one part of my day I never delegated. Not to the housekeeper, not to any of the pack staff who would have gladly done it. These two boys had come into my life as newborns, red-faced and screaming and entirely without a mother. The least I could do was be the person they saw first when school let out.

I was checking my phone when the front doors swung open.

And then I looked up.

She was standing at the top of the stone steps, backlit by the pale afternoon light, one arm wrapped around Noah's small shoulders and the other around Liam's. Both boys had their faces pressed into her sides like they already knew her, like this was something that happened every day.

My coffee cup hit the floor of the car.

Vivian.

Vivian Ashford. My stepsister. Buried three years ago in a white casket while the rain came down in sheets and half the pack stood around saying what a shame it was — a woman that beautiful, reduced to ash. I had stood at the back of the crowd and felt nothing except a dull, complicated guilt about feeling nothing.

She looked exactly the same.

That was the worst part. Not that she was there — my brain hadn't caught up to that yet — but that she was *unchanged*. Same dark hair falling in loose waves past her shoulders. Same delicate features that had always made her look like she needed protecting. She was wearing a pale blue coat I didn't recognize, and she was smiling down at Liam, and my hands were gripping the steering wheel hard enough to whiten my knuckles.

*You're dead.*

I didn't say it out loud. I couldn't speak at all. I just sat there while the other parents' cars inched forward around mine, someone tapping their horn gently behind me.

My mind reached for logic, the way it always did when things got bad. I ran through the facts like a list.

Vivian Ashford. My stepfather's daughter by another woman — a woman who had been sleeping with my father long before the divorce, long before everything fell apart. Vivian and I had never been close. How could we be? Her existence was built on the wreckage of my mother's marriage. But she had been *real*. She had lived in the same house as me for two years. She had borrowed my shampoo and left her shoes in the hallway and died at twenty-six of causes the pack doctors called cardiac failure.

And then Alpha Damien Blackwood — her mate, the father of her children — had come to me four months later with his jaw set and his eyes hollow, holding a phone with her final text message still on the screen. He'd asked me to be a mother to Noah and Liam. He'd asked me to be his wife.

I had said yes without hesitating.

I told myself it was because I knew what it felt like to grow up without someone in your corner. That was true. But there was more to it than that, things I hadn't let myself examine too closely. Damien and I had built something quiet and steady in the months since. Not passionate, not electric, but *real* in its own way. We took care of each other. We took care of the boys. I had started to think that was enough.

The car behind me honked again, longer this time.

I forced my door open.

My legs carried me up the steps on autopilot. Vivian looked up when she heard my footsteps, and for one suspended second, her expression was completely unreadable.

Then she smiled — that same careful, practiced smile she'd always worn around me — and said, simply, "Isabella."

Like three years hadn't passed. Like she hadn't been dead.

Like this was nothing.

Noah tugged on her sleeve and pointed at me. "That's Mama Bella," he announced proudly.

Something moved across Vivian's face then. Fast, almost invisible. But I caught it.

And suddenly I wasn't sure which one of us she was more afraid of.

I didn't move.

For a long moment, I just stood there on those stone steps with the October wind cutting through my coat, staring at Vivian like I could make her disappear if I looked hard enough. Three years. Three years of grief and guilt and learning how to be something to two boys who had nothing — and she was just *here*, smiling at me with that careful mouth.

"Vivian." Her name came out flat. "How are you alive?"

She opened her mouth to answer.

But then I heard the cars.

Two black SUVs rolled up to the curb, moving fast. The doors opened before the engines even cut off, and four men stepped out — pack security, the kind Damien only sent when he wanted something done without argument. And behind them, stepping out of the second vehicle with his jaw set and his eyes cold as winter stone, was my husband.

Damien.

My chest did something complicated at the sight of him. It always did. Even now.

He didn't look at me the way he used to. There was no warmth in it, no quiet recognition. He looked at me the way you look at a problem you've finally figured out how to solve.

"Damien—" I started toward him.

Two of the guards stepped in front of me. Hands closed around my arms, firm and practiced.

The shock of it stopped the air in my lungs.

"What—" I looked down at the hands on my arms, then back up at him. "What is this? Damien, *what is this?*"

He stopped a few feet away. Close enough that I could see the muscle working in his jaw. He didn't touch me. He didn't even flinch.

"Vivian told me everything," he said. His voice was quiet. That was somehow worse than shouting. "She told me what happened the night of the fire. That she didn't die in it — that she was left to wander for three years, her memory gone, because of *you*."

The words landed like a slap.

"What?"

"You did this." His eyes moved to Vivian, just briefly, and something passed through them — relief, maybe. Or guilt. "You arranged it. And you didn't think she'd ever come back."

I turned to look at Vivian. She was pressed against Damien's side now, arms wrapped around both boys, her face tilted down like she was too frightened to meet my eyes. Her shoulders trembled just enough to be visible.

The performance was flawless.

"I didn't do anything." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "You don't even have proof. Damien, *listen to me* — you don't have a single piece of evidence—"

"Captain Rowan will handle the investigation."

"There's nothing to investigate because I *didn't do it*—"

"Isabella." The way he said my name — like it was a door closing. Final. Decided. "I don't want to hear it."

The crowd around us had gone very quiet. Parents who had come to pick up their children were standing still now, phones half-raised, eyes wide. I could feel their stares like something physical. Curious. Condemning. Already decided.

I looked down at Noah and Liam.

They were my last hope and I knew it, even as I reached for them. Four years old, both of them. I had learned the difference between their cries in the dark. I had memorized which one needed the nightlight left on and which one needed the door cracked open just so. I had given them everything I knew how to give.

"Boys." My voice cracked on the word. "Boys, look at me."

Noah looked up.

Then he pressed his face back into Vivian's coat.

"She's the bad lady," Liam said, his small voice carrying clearly in the silence. "She made our mama go away. She kept us apart for three whole years."

The words hit me somewhere deep and hollow.

*Bad lady.*

"I made you breakfast every morning," I said, and I hated how desperate it sounded, how small. "I took you to every doctor's appointment. I sat with you when you had nightmares—"

"If you hadn't done what you did," Vivian said softly, "I would have been the one doing all of that. I am their mother."

I looked at her. Really looked at her.

And I understood then that she had been preparing this for a long time.

"Damien." I turned back to him, one last time. "Three years. Doesn't three years mean anything to you?"

Something flickered across his face. Gone before I could name it.

"Shut up," he said quietly. "I don't want to hear your excuses. Captain Rowan—" He lifted his chin toward the guard on my left. "Take her in."

"I deserve a fair trial!" My voice rose, sharp and raw.

"I am the Alpha." He turned away from me. "My word is the only judgment that matters here. Take her."

The guards pulled me forward, and the last thing I saw before they pushed me toward the SUV was Vivian watching me over the boys' heads — her expression perfectly arranged into something soft and sad and victorious.

And I thought: *She planned every second of this.*

But the question that burned hotter than the rest wasn't *how* she'd done it.

It was *who had helped her*.

They covered my mouth before I could scream.

A rough hand pressed hard against my lips, muffling everything — my protests, my breath, the sound I made when the metal handcuffs snapped around my wrists. Someone shoved me forward, and my shoulder hit the frame of the SUV door hard enough to bruise.

Then darkness. The door slammed shut.

I sat in the back of that vehicle with my hands locked behind me and my cheek still stinging from where I'd been pushed against the seat. Through the tinted window, I caught one last glimpse of the school steps. Damien had his hand on Vivian's shoulder. Noah and Liam were pressed against her sides.

I turned away.

The drive took forty minutes. I know because I counted. It was the only thing I could do — count seconds, breathe, keep the panic from swallowing me whole. My stomach had been aching since the school steps, a low, persistent throb I'd been ignoring all afternoon. I ignored it now too.

When the car finally stopped and they pulled me out, I saw the sign above the iron gates.

*Solnar Prison.*

I knew the name. Everyone in the pack knew it. This wasn't where you sent people awaiting trial. This was where you sent the ones who were already finished — the murderers, the rogues, the wolves so dangerous they were kept in silver-lined cells. The kind of place you went into and didn't come out of.

Something broke open in my chest.

The tears came without warning, and I hated them. I hated that I was crying in front of these guards, in front of these gates, like it would make any difference. Three years. I had spent three years building a life in that house — learning the boys' schedules, their fears, their favorite songs at bedtime. I had thought that meant something. I had thought *I* meant something.

Not one person had spoken up for me.

Not one.

---

They gave me a cell at the end of a stone corridor. Cold, damp, lit by a single overhead bulb that buzzed faintly in the silence. I sat on the edge of the narrow cot and pressed my hands against my abdomen where the aching had settled into something steadier. Something I couldn't keep ignoring.

I didn't sleep.

By morning, I had stopped crying. Grief had curdled into something harder, something I could hold onto. I sat with my back against the stone wall and waited, because there was nothing else to do.

The door opened just after nine.

I heard her heels first.

Vivian stepped into the corridor looking like she'd just come from somewhere pleasant. Pale coat, hair loose, expression arranged into something warm and satisfied. She stopped outside my cell and looked at me through the bars the way you look at something you've finally gotten rid of.

"I'm so glad to see you here," she said.

I stood up slowly. My legs ached. My stomach ached. Everything ached.

"Why?" I asked. My voice was steadier than I expected. "Why did you do this? I never did anything to you, Vivian. Whatever happened between our parents — I had nothing to do with that. I spent three years taking care of *your* children."

She tilted her head, and the warmth dropped off her face like a mask.

"Because of you," she said, "I was born a bastard. Your existence made me illegitimate. Everything I should have had — I had to fight for it." A thin smile. "And I needed a reason for my disappearance. A good one. Who better than the jealous stepsister who always resented me?"

"If it's Damien you want," I said carefully, "take him. I'll sign whatever papers you need. Just let me out."

She laughed. It was a soft, almost gentle sound.

"That was the original plan." She reached into her coat pocket and held up a folded document through the bars. "But then I got your medical report."

I went very still.

"Look at your stomach, Isabella." Her eyes dropped to my abdomen. "You're carrying his child. A little wolf, tucked away in there." She let the paper fall to the floor. "That can't be allowed."

My hands flew to my stomach. "Vivian—"

She had already turned to the guards.

"Bring her to the punishment room."

The two guards exchanged a glance. One of them hesitated, shifting his weight.

"She's pregnant," he said quietly. "We shouldn't—"

"I am your Luna." Vivian's voice cut through the corridor like a blade. "Past, present, and future. The only Luna this pack will ever have. She harmed me. She committed crimes against your Luna." Her eyes swept over them, cold and absolute. "Why are you still standing there?"

They moved.

I fought. I begged. I told them about the baby — *Damien's baby*, I said it over and over, as if the name would protect me. Vivian only smiled.

"Or perhaps," she said softly, "it isn't his at all."

What happened in that room — I cannot write it in clean sentences. There was pain, and then there was a different kind of pain, and then there was loss. A loss so complete and so final that the world went grey at the edges.

I lay on the cold stone floor afterward, barely conscious, and I stared at Vivian's face above me — that beautiful, ruined face — and I used the last thread of strength I had left.

Not to scream. Not to curse her.

I reached out the only way I still could, the way wolves reach across distance when everything else is gone.

*Help me. Brother. Alexander. Please.*

The word dissolved into silence.

And I didn't know if anyone had heard it.