Alanna Crosby POV:

I hovered under the cold, sterile lights of the emergency room, my entire existence focused on the small speaker of the nurse's phone.

"What? Alanna?" My mother's voice crackled through the line, sharp and annoyed over the background noise of clinking glasses and loud music. "What trouble has she gotten into now?"

A phantom pain, sharper than any claw, pierced my soul. No worry. No fear. Just the immediate assumption that I was a problem. The desperate plea that had risen to my throat died there, unspoken. What was the point? No one would hear it anyway.

The nurse kept her voice steady and professional. "Ms. Salinas, your daughter Alanna Crosby has been in a serious attack. She's at Central Hospital, and her condition is critical. We need you to come down—"

"What?" Frida cut her off, her voice rising to a screech. "You want me to come there? Do you have any idea how much a cab costs from here? Who's paying for it? Did she leave any money?"

The nurse was speechless. She glanced at my blood-soaked, inexpensive clothes, then back at the phone. "We didn't find any cash on her person, ma'am."

A cold, ugly laugh echoed from the speaker. "I knew it! That good-for-nothing! Nothing but trouble since the day she was born. Now I have to pay to bury her?"

Good-for-nothing. The words made my spirit tremble. This was my mother. My own mother.

I hovered there, feeling the last thread connecting me to the world snap. Caden rejected me. My mother cursed me.

My parents divorced when I was five. My father remarried quickly—a new wife with a daughter my age, a girl named Bonita. My mother didn't fight for me. She didn't even try. She drowned herself in bottles and casino floors instead. I remember sitting alone in her kitchen, watching her count crumpled bills, muttering about what I cost her. She called me a burden. A drain. She remarried later—a gambler she met at the tables. I became a ghost in my own mother's life, an extra piece. She only called when she needed money. And I always gave it, because I was still stupid enough to hope. Stupid enough to believe that if I paid enough, she might finally forgive me. Accept me. Love me.

I truly was alone.

The nurse's face was a mask of disbelief. "Ma'am, this is a necessary procedure for next of kin—"

"Procedure? I'll give you a procedure!" Frida's voice was pure venom now. "I don't have a daughter! It's better if she's dead, saves her the trouble of dragging me down any further! Throw her out, burn her, I don't care what you do. Just stop bothering me!"

The young nurse was stunned into silence, her mouth slightly open.

Frida wasn't finished. "She's a curse! She killed her father, and now she's trying to ruin me from the grave! I disowned her years ago!"

The line went dead with a sharp click, more final, more hateful than Caden's disconnection.

A heavy silence fell over our corner of the ER. The nurse held the phone, her hand trembling slightly. Her eyes, when they flickered toward the white sheet covering me, were filled with a pity that burned.

The doctor walked over, his expression tired. He saw the look on the nurse's face and asked softly, "What is it?"

She shook her head, her voice a low whisper. "Her family... they both refused to claim her."

He let out a long, weary sigh and glanced at the flat line on the heart monitor. "Record the time of death. Notify Social Services. We'll have to process her as an unclaimed body."

Unclaimed body.

The words branded themselves into my soul. I had a mate. I had a mother. And I was still an unclaimed body.

I watched as they covered my face completely with the white sheet. Then, they pushed the gurney toward a cold, steel door with a sign that read "Morgue."

I didn't follow. I could guess what came next—cremation or burial, whichever they decided for a body no one wanted.

Nowhere in this world was I meant to rest. My soul had no home.

A tearing sensation ripped through my spirit. A violent, agonizing pull. The mate-bond. It was being severed. The pain was excruciating, a spiritual agony that dwarfed the physical pain of my death.

I pushed that pain outward, through the fraying tether that still connected me to him. Up the thread, tracing it back to its source. To Caden. I don't know if it reached him. I don't know if he felt a single echo of what I was suffering. The bond was already too weak. The silence on the other end told me everything I needed to know: my pain had no witness. Not his. Not anyone's. It was mine alone.

Fated mates. What a joke. Caden was the strongest Alpha in the Pack. Any wolf would be drawn to that kind of power—and I was nothing but a lowly, worthless dormant wolf, wired by instinct to be pulled toward a protector. That was instinct. But I had mistaken it for love.

After the wave of pain passed, my spirit felt lighter. Colder.

A powerful, instinctual pull tugged at me, coming from the direction of the Fowler Pack. My home. The place I grew up. The place where Caden was.

Even after everything, my soul was drawn to him. Perhaps it was Lyra, my wolf spirit, demanding an answer.

I could still feel. I could still hear. My wolf spirit and my soul had fused into one—a tether that death itself could not sever. I knew what I was now. A ghost. A remnant. A thing that should not exist. And yet, I burned with something that refused to fade.

Caden didn't love me. Maybe he never had. But that wasn't the question that burned in my chest. The question was why. Why did the Moon Goddess bind us together—only for him to despise me? Why did he believe I killed his mother? Who told him that lie? And why did he swallow it so easily?

I could have drifted away. I could have let the wind scatter me like ash. But I couldn't leave without knowing. I couldn't let myself be erased by a story that wasn't even true.

So I ran. I rushed toward the familiar stone facade of the Alpha's mansion. Not for love. Not for mercy. For answers. For the truth I had never been given the chance to speak.

Alanna Crosby POV:

I hovered over the manicured lawn of the Alpha's mansion. A place I had dreamed of living in, a home I had imagined sharing with Caden. Now, every stone seemed to mock me with cold indifference.

A black Bentley, its engine a low purr, swept up the circular driveway and stopped before the grand entrance. It was Caden's car. I knew the license plate by heart.

My spirit tensed. He was back. On the night of my death, he was returning as if nothing had happened.

The driver got out and respectfully opened the rear passenger door. Caden's tall, powerful frame emerged. His face was a mask of cool indifference, just as it always was.

But he didn't move toward the house. He turned, extending a hand back into the car with a gesture of startling gentleness I had never seen from him.

My non-existent breath caught. Who was in there?

A slender, pale hand rested in his. Then, a familiar figure in a flowing white dress emerged gracefully from the vehicle.

It was Bonita.

My sister.

Why was she in Caden's car? At this hour? A terrible suspicion, one I had always pushed away, began to crawl up my spine.

Bonita looked pale, leaning against Caden as if she were about to collapse. He instinctively wrapped an arm around her waist, a protective gesture I had craved my entire life but never received.

"Caden... I'm still a little dizzy," Bonita murmured, her voice as soft and sweet as honey. She clung to his sleeve, making herself look small and helpless.

He looked down at her, and his cold, gray eyes—the same eyes that held only disgust for me—were filled with a flicker of concern. Without another word, he bent down and swept her up into his arms.

I froze in mid-air, struck by an invisible bolt of lightning.

He was carrying her. He was holding my sister in the arms I wasn't even allowed to touch.

He was the Alpha King—the most powerful wolf in the Pack, maybe in all the territories. And she was an Omega—delicate, soft, everything an Omega was supposed to be. The Moon Goddess's perfect pairing. Strong and protected. Frail and cherished. They looked like the storybook version of what a fated mate should look like.

I had never seen him like this. To me, he was always cold—distant, formal, clinical. Even when we shared a bed, it was transactional. Duty. Nothing more. He never held me. Never looked at me the way he was looking at her now.

And yet, I had tried. For three years, I had tried to be everything he might want. I learned to navigate the Pack's world—its unspoken hierarchies, the way wolves deferred to power, the rituals of loyalty and challenge. I studied how the Pack functioned beneath the surface, because I thought if I understood his world well enough, I could finally belong in it. I wanted to be his partner. His equal. His home. I thought if I became perfect enough, he might finally see me.

But he never did. To him, I was nothing more than a tool—a servant he could summon at will and dismiss just as easily. A fixture he tolerated, never welcomed. Because I wasn't really an Omega. I was a dormant wolf—a failure of the bloodline. And an Alpha King didn't cherish a failure. He cherished someone who looked like Bonita. Soft. Fragile. Deserving of protection.

Sometimes, late at night, when I dreamed, I saw myself running through a forest I had never visited—ancient trees, silver rivers, a sky full of stars that seemed to follow me. My fur was the color of moonlight. I always told myself it was just my imagination. Just a dormant wolf's pathetic fantasy of what she could never be.

But now, looking at my silver paws, I wasn't so sure. What if I really am just a dormant wolf? But what if I'm not—what if I was born with noble blood and freedom instead? Would happiness finally be within my reach then?

And now I was watching him carry my sister in his arms like she was the most precious thing in the world.

They looked like the perfect Alpha-and-Omega pair. The kind the Moon Goddess wrote into the old songs. The kind that made other wolves look away because it was too beautiful to watch.

I was the wrong story. I had always been the wrong story.

No. They were lovers. The ugly suspicion became a bloody, undeniable reality.

My only mate. My only sister. The two people I had trusted most in the world—and they had been together all along, and I never even knew. The betrayal was so complete it left no room for tears.

I thought I had already hit the bottom. Rejected by my fated mate. Cursed by my own mother. That should have been enough, shouldn't it? Enough pain for one lifetime. But no—the Moon Goddess wasn't done with me. She had brought me back in my wolf spirit form, and She had given me eyes to see. Not for mercy. Not for closure. She brought me back to watch. To witness every single knife as it went in. To feel the sting of each betrayal, one after another, with no body to bleed and no voice to scream. Was this my punishment? To be a hollow spectator at the theater of my own destruction? To be forced to watch the people I loved tear apart everything I was, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to break?

I was already dead. So why did it still hurt like this?

Caden carried Bonita toward the front door. The house butler was already there, waiting. He saw them, and his face showed no surprise, only a quiet understanding and respect. This wasn't the first time. Their relationship was an open secret among the Pack's elite.

Rage, black and furious, surged through me. I wanted to fly at them, to rip that fake, innocent mask off Bonita's face, to scream at Caden for his lies. But my hands passed straight through their bodies. I could do nothing.

I could only watch as he carried her through the main doors of the Alpha's private residence—a place I, his fated mate, had never been allowed to enter.

My wolf, Lyra, howled in my soul, not with jealousy, but with the agony of absolute betrayal. Liars! They are all liars!

I didn't hesitate. I passed through the heavy oak door and followed them inside. I would see just how shameless they could be.

The living room was vast and luxurious. Caden gently placed Bonita on a plush velvet sofa, even tucking a pillow behind her back.

"Are you okay? Should I call Dr. Evans?" he asked, kneeling beside her, his voice laced with genuine concern.

Bonita shook her head weakly, her eyes glistening. "I'm fine, Caden. I was just... startled at the gala tonight. Thank goodness you were there." She was talking about a business event, one she had apparently attended with him.

That's when I noticed it. A dazzling diamond bracelet on her wrist.

The design... it was so familiar. The delicate twists of platinum, the arrangement of the stones... it was almost identical to my own signature style. A horrifying thought, cold and sharp, pierced my consciousness.

Was she not only stealing my mate, but my work, my very identity, as well?

Caden's gaze fell on the bracelet. He reached out and gently touched it. "Your designs are always so inspired, Bonita. You were born to be a designer."

I felt like my soul would dissipate from the sheer audacity of their lies.

Bonita lowered her eyes shyly. "As long as you like it." She looked for all the world like the brilliant artist behind the masterpiece.

I watched the two of them, the man who had stolen my heart and the woman who had stolen my life's work. And I, the true victim, could only hover in the shadows, a pathetic, invisible audience to their disgusting play.