THE ALPHA WHO REGRETTED ME

They brought me out in chains, and the whole pack came to watch. I counted the faces as the guards walked me toward the circle. Emily, arms crossed, refusing to look at me. Ethan, jaw tight, saying nothing. A hundred people who used to bow when I passed, now standing in a ring around me like I was already a corpse they hadn't buried yet. My heart ached. Alpha Adrian sat above all of it, on his father's throne, and he did not look like a man about to save me. He didn’t look like my Adrian. "Sylvia Hale." An elder stepped forward holding a thin stack of papers. "You stand accused of leaking confidential pack records to outside territories." "That's a lie." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I would never do that." "These documents came from the eastern archive. Only three people have access to that archive." He held up the papers like a verdict already written. "You are one of them." "Then ask the other two!" I almost didn’t say, but it escaped. "We have." His mouth twisted, satisfied. "They were with witnesses the night these were taken. You weren't." "Because I was home! Alone! Being alone isn't a crime—" I would have looked at Adrian to speak for me but…. "And where is Liam?" the elder cut in, voice rising for the crowd. "Your closest friend. The only person who might confirm your account of that night. Conveniently, he has vanished." A murmur ran through the pack like wind through dry grass. "She did something to him," someone shouted from the back. "Traitor," another voice spat. "I didn't do anything to Liam!" My throat burned. "He's missing. Don't you understand what that means? Someone made him disappear because he could clear my name! That's not evidence against me, that's proof someone is doing this on purpose.." "How convenient," the elder said, "that every piece of evidence against you has an excuse attached." It made sense, but it didn’t make it right. I looked up at Adrian. "Please. You know me. You know I would never betray this pack." He didn't answer right away. His hands were folded in his lap, too still, and I remembered those hands on my face two nights ago, his voice low against my hair. I don't know what I would do without you. That man was gone. Something colder sat in his place now, wearing his skin. "Do you have proof of your innocence, Sylvia?" His voice was flat. Formal. Like I was a stranger standing trial. "Anything at all?" "I have me. I have five years of loving you. Doesn't that count for something?" I was so fixed on his eyes, I wanted to find something words might not say. "Evidence, Sylvia. Not feelings." "Adrian.." "Answer the question." I looked around the circle one more time, searching for anyone who might step forward, and that was when I understood, really understood, how perfectly this had all been built. Every gap I could have filled with the truth had already been filled with something else. Liam gone. My alibi gone. Even my own voice sounded like a liar's voice now, breaking exactly where a liar's voice would break. "No," I whispered. "I don't have anything. Because none of this is real, and you are letting them win anyway." Near the front, Nora stood among the other witnesses, and I caught her eyes for half a second, wide, wet, shaking her head slightly, like she was trying to tell me something she didn't have the courage to say out loud. Adrian stood. "No." My whole chest seized. "Adrian, no, please don't…." "I, Adrian, Alpha of the Red Moon pack…" "Please." He continued with even looking at me. "reject Sylvia Hale as my mate." The bond didn't break quietly. It tore straight through my ribs, and I went down onto my knees in front of the entire pack, both hands pressed to my chest like I could hold the wound shut with my fingers. "You are wrong," I sobbed, to no one, to everyone. "You are all wrong about me." Guards pulled me up by both arms. Somewhere behind me, Nora made a sound like something breaking. Adrian didn't watch me go. He had already turned away. They threw me into a cell carved into the mountain itself, stone on every side, and left me there until my throat gave out from screaming his name into the dark. When a guard finally came, he slid a cup of water through the bars without meeting my eyes. "Drink," he said. "Alpha's orders." I drank it because some foolish, loyal part of me still couldn't believe this pack wanted me dead. I barely believed this was reality. The first cramp folded me in half. " ahhhhh! Something's wrong," I gasped, to the empty corridor. "Something's wrong with…" The second cramp dropped me to the floor. Through the dimming edges of everything, a shape crouched outside the bars, not to help. To check. A silver ring caught the last of the light, and everything paused. I had seen that ring before. On someone's hand, somewhere, laughing at something, close enough to touch, and the memory wouldn't come clear, wouldn't hold still long enough for me to understand what it meant, except that it meant everything, that Liam hadn't simply vanished, that none of this had started tonight. Now I have a feeling everything was planned. But who planned it? Can he?…. Can Adrian?…No… Nora's face. Nora's shaking hands. Had she known? Had someone made her into this too? My wolf was fading, I could feel her slipping under like something drowning. It wasn't the dying that hurt the most. It was that he never once believed me. If I ever get another chance, I thought, as the dark folded in from every side, I will never be his Luna again. I will prove to every single one of them that I was never what they said I was. Then there was nothing. Blank… Then I opened my eyes.