Fae's POV:

The world was a haze of red-tinged pain. I lay in a spreading pool of my own blood, the wolfsbane a fire devouring me from the inside out. My limbs were leaden, unresponsive. But the hatred, that burning, all-consuming hatred, kept a flicker of consciousness alive.

My gaze found Heidi. She was watching me, her expression one of detached fascination, like a scientist observing a dying insect.

A guttural sound escaped my throat. It was meant to be a plea, a bargain.

"The baby..." I rasped, blood bubbling on my lips. "Please... save the baby..."

Heidi threw her head back and laughed. The sound was sharp and brittle, echoing off the tiled walls. It was the most hideous sound I had ever heard.

She knelt beside me, her silk dress brushing against the blood on the floor. She tapped my cheek with the flat of the silver dagger, a gesture of ultimate contempt.

"You still don't get it, do you?" she said, her voice laced with cruel amusement. "The person who wants this little bastard gone more than anyone... is Colten."

His name was a fresh stab wound to my heart. My mind recoiled, refusing to accept it. He was my fated mate. The Moon Goddess herself had bound us. He couldn't... he wouldn't...

"No," I whispered. It was a denial against the crushing weight of reality.

Heidi's smile widened. She seemed to relish this, the slow, methodical destruction of my soul.

"We were lovers long before your ridiculous mating ceremony," she purred, tracing a pattern on the floor with the bloody tip of her dagger. "He never wanted you. He wanted your pack's alliance. You were just the price of the treaty, sister. A necessary, but temporary, inconvenience."

Flashes of memory assaulted me. Colten's coolness, his frequent absences, the way his touch sometimes felt more like a duty than a desire. I had explained it all away. He was an Alpha, burdened with responsibility. I was a fool.

"He never intended for you to carry his heir to term," Heidi continued, her voice a relentless torment. "A child with Blackwood blood? A threat to our future children. A threat to my children."

She stood up, pacing the room as if she were on a stage, delivering a grand monologue.

"The plan was perfect. A slow poisoning to weaken the pup. A tragic 'accident' during childbirth. Everyone would mourn the poor, unfortunate Luna. And Colten would be free to comfort, and eventually claim, the grieving sister."

My breathing was shallow, each gasp a struggle. My inner wolf whimpered, a dying animal trapped in a poisoned cage.

Heidi paused by the window, gazing out at the full moon. "Soon, I will be the Luna of Silvermoon. This pack's true queen."

She turned back, her brow furrowing in annoyance as she saw I was still breathing.

"Why are you taking so long to die?" she sighed, walking towards me, raising the dagger for a final blow.

Just then, the sound of a key turning in the lock echoed through the room.

Heidi froze. In an instant, the monstrous predator vanished. She hid the dagger in her skirts, and her face crumpled into a mask of terror and grief. It was a masterful, sickening performance.

The door swung open.

Alpha Colten Shields stood there, his powerful frame filling the doorway. His eyes, the color of a stormy sky, swept the room, widening in shock as they landed on me, bleeding out on the floor.

Heidi launched herself into his arms, her sobs wracking her body.

"Colten! Oh, Colten, thank the Goddess! I came in and she was... she was like this! It must have been Rogues! A Rogue attack!"

I watched them. My mate, the father of my child, holding my murderer in his arms. The last fragile thread of hope inside me snapped.

I tried to speak, to scream the truth, but all that came out was a wet, gurgling sound as blood filled my throat.

Colten's gaze met mine over Heidi's shaking shoulders. His expression was a complex mixture of shock and something else... something cold and appraising. There was no love. No pain for his dying mate.

He gently set Heidi aside and walked towards me, his heavy boots silent on the blood-slicked floor.

My vision was blurring, the edges of the world turning dark. He knelt beside me, his handsome face swimming in and out of focus.

For a fleeting, insane moment, I thought I saw a flicker of remorse in his eyes. I thought he might offer a word of comfort, of apology.

He leaned in, his lips close to my ear, his voice a low rumble meant only for me.

And he spoke the words that shattered what was left of my soul and damned me to an eternity of hatred.

"Your purpose is served, Fae," he murmured, his voice devoid of all emotion. "Thank you for the alliance."

Fae's POV:

The words settled over me with the weight of a death sentence.

I held onto consciousness by a thread, needing to see his face, needing to burn the image of the man who had thanked me for an alliance into my dying mind.

There was no grief in his eyes. No feigned sorrow for the cameras that weren't there. Only a cold, transactional finality.

A transaction. I wasn't his mate, his Luna. I was a contract, fulfilled and now terminated.

The words didn't just break my heart; they annihilated it.

He straightened up, his gaze flicking to Heidi. He gave her a subtle, almost imperceptible nod. It was a look of shared conspiracy, of a plan perfectly executed.

Heidi's face, still tear-streaked, bloomed with a triumphant smile. She moved to his side, and his arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her possessively against him. A public declaration, made to an audience of one dying woman.

They stood over me, the perfect couple, silhouetted against the sterile lights of my death chamber.

Something inside me broke free. A primal roar from my dying wolf, not of pain, but of pure, undiluted rage. It wasn't a plea for life, but a demand for vengeance.

A strange power, born of death and desperation, surged through my veins. It was the last, explosive gift of a she-wolf's spirit. My eyes, which could barely focus moments before, snapped open, locking onto them. A silver fire ignited in my pupils.

My lips, cracked and bloody, parted. I forced the words out, each one a shard of my shattered soul, clear and steady.

"I... curse you... with my soul..."

Their triumphant expressions faltered. A flicker of unease, of a primal fear they couldn't name, crossed their faces. They felt it-the chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

"...May you never know peace. May all you love be lost to you, and all you desire turn to ash in your hands!"

The final word left my lips on a sigh. The silver fire in my eyes extinguished. My head fell back against the cold floor.

I was dead.

The mate bond snapped. I felt it as a distant severing. From Colten's brief frown, I knew he felt it too, but it was a flicker of discomfort, not the soul-tearing agony it should have been. As if the bond had been a lie from the start.

Heidi shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as if a cold wind had swept through the room.

Colten recovered quickly. "Clean this up," he ordered her, his voice clipped and business-like. "Stick to the story. It was a Rogue attack."

Heidi nodded, her composure returning.

Colten gave my body one last, dismissive glance before turning and striding out of the room. He was going to rally his warriors, to play the part of the grieving, vengeful Alpha.

My spirit, a translucent shimmer in the air, watched it all.

I watched Heidi take the dagger and carve new wounds into my cooling flesh, creating the illusion of a struggle. I watched her overturn a table, smear blood on the walls.

My spirit followed Colten and watched him deliver a heart-wrenching, lie-filled speech to his pack, his voice breaking with false grief as he announced the death of his "beloved mate and unborn child." They howled in sorrow, their loyalty and sympathy completely misplaced.

Hate was a black hole, and it was consuming me. I would not accept this. I would not fade into nothingness while they built their lives on my bones.

Just as the darkness began to pull my consciousness apart, a single, pure beam of moonlight pierced through the window, through the very walls of the building. It bypassed the bloody scene and enveloped my spirit in a gentle, silver luminescence.

A voice, ancient and kind, echoed not in my ears, but in the very core of my being.

My child, this was not your fate.

A tremendous force seized me, pulling me from the room, from the pack, from time itself. The world dissolved into a swirling vortex of light and shadow.

The last image burned into my mind was of Colten and Heidi at my funeral, accepting condolences, their faces perfect masks of sorrow.

And then, everything went backward.