I was the most even-tempered she-wolf the Moonhowl Pack had ever seen. So when my parents brought my newly widowed sister Samantha and her son to stay at my house, I didn't push back. Samantha stood at my bedroom door, her voice trembling with the start of a sob. "Emmy, your bed looks so comfortable..." "It's yours," I cut her off. "I've already moved my things into the guest room." At the pup school's craft fair, my mate Rodger stood on stage to accept an award, his arms wrapped tightly around Samantha and her boy.  My son's classmates whispered among themselves, naturally assuming the three of them were a perfect little family. Samantha's eyes welled with tears as she looked at us. "Jeff just lost his father, and he's so new to this school. He just wanted to feel like he belonged, to not be bullied... You won't blame him for taking Phil's project to the judges, will you?" My son, Phillip, spoke up with a calm. "It's fine, Aunt Samantha. Jeff can have the trophy. He can have my dad, too." Everyone praised us. They thought we were saints, fueled by nothing but kindness and compassion. The truth was, Phillip and I had returned from the future. They had no idea that I had already filed to sever my mate-bond. In our first life, I had fought against my family's blatant favoritism. We fought for every scrap of fairness, only to be branded a jealous shrew and a liar.  Later, when Phillip was dying of Wolf Spirit Atrophy Syndrome, they claimed I was coaching him to fake the illness just to claw back the spotlight. As punishment, they forced me to reflect on my "sins" in the freezing snow. In the end, Phillip missed the window for treatment and passed away. In utter despair, I carried his small, cold body into the depths of Moon Lake. This time, we chose to simply walk away. Yet this time, my mate and my parents were driven mad by their own regret.