"The ceremony is cancelled, Clara. You’re too soft to lead Moonveil. Get out before my guards drag you into the cold." Those were the last words Alpha Ethan Blackwood threw at me on our wedding night—standing beside my cousin, who wore my dead mother's wedding dress. Framed for a treason I never committed and banished by the mate I gave my soul to, I fled into the stormy night. In the dark of the underground tunnels, my healing magic sparked to life, whispering the impossible truth: I was carrying his pup. Then my phone buzzed with an anonymous text that turned my blood to ice: “I know you’re pregnant. Run faster, little healer. The child is already marked.” Five years later. Clara Hale is dead. I am Clara Bennett, a quiet healer running a hidden herbal clinic in Portland. My only world is my five-year-old daughter, Lila—a magical prodigy who loves shining crystals and spends hours drawing a massive, sorrowful black wolf with crying eyes. I thought we were safe. Until the shadows find us—and the clinic door splinters open. But the man standing in the rain isn't the cold tyrant who shattered my life. He is ragged, bleeding, and looking at me like a dying man who just found his breath. When Ethan catches sight of the little girl hiding in the wardrobe—with his exact silver-gold eyes—the fiercest Alpha in North America crashes heavily to his knees, clutching my hem in raw, weeping agony. "Clara... I begged the moon to keep you alive. Let me save our daughter." I don't hesitate. I press a cold silver blade straight against his chest. "She is not your child, Alpha Blackwood. And you will never touch us again." He swears his betrayal was a secret blood-vow to protect me from the gallows. He claims he spent five winters in hell searching for my ghost. But can I ever trust the Alpha who broke me—when the dark ancient shadows coming for our daughter are closer than ever?