HAZEL

The casual certainty in his voice made something inside me crack. He’d thought this through. Planned it. Saw all the angles I’d missed while I was unconscious and bleeding on his floor.

"Please don’t." My voice broke. "I will do anything. I will be your slave."

"You were supposed to die that day at the elder’s circle." He stood, moving toward the bed. "For your crimes. But you were spared."

I watched him pick up a pillow. White and pristine against all the red surrounding us.

"I think it was fate," he continued. "For you to be my sacrificial lamb today."

He turned back toward me, and I saw my death in his eyes. Not rage. Not passion. Just inevitability wearing the face of a man I’d underestimated at every turn.

"I saw what you did and rage consumed me entirely." He spoke like he was rehearsing testimony. "I could not wait for a trial. I had to bring justice to my father."

"You have no heart."

I started dragging myself backward. The broken legs screamed with every movement, but terror overrode the pain. My hands slipped on blood and debris. I gained maybe three inches before he reached me.

He flipped me over with effortless strength and dropped his weight onto me, pinning me exactly where he wanted me. The pressure on my broken legs made me sob.

"Delta!" The name ripped out of me. "Delta knew my plan!"

Lysander paused.

I seized on it. Finally... fucking something.

"You will never get away with this. My pack will know unless you add more bodies to this."

"You do not even want to die alone."

The observation landed like a slap. He was right. Even now, facing death, I was trying to drag someone else down with me. The pattern of my entire life distilled into one desperate moment.

"While you were unconscious," he said, "I realized the strange white powder on you was flour."

My stomach dropped.

"I had to clean that off to douse you in wolfsbane powder to sell what needs to happen." He leaned closer. "But tell me if I am wrong. We went to Silvercreek for you to get something to get my dad to take you, right? But your Omega servant, sick of your bullshit, pulled a quick one on you."

The truth settled over me like a shroud. Of course Delta had switched the powder. How many times had I belittled her? Threatened her? Treated her like property instead of a person?

Lysander’s breath warmed my ear. "I think Delta will keep her mouth shut and be grateful to be rid of you. I will even give her a slot in this pack if she wants."

Tears tracked down my face. Not from pain this time. From the crushing weight of understanding.

"What do you think will happen?" he continued. "Did you treat her kindly for her to refuse and stand by your side?"

I had nothing. No defense. No justification. Delta would celebrate my death. Probably dance on my grave if given the chance.

A laugh bubbled up from somewhere broken inside me. It came out strangled and wrong.

"None of this would have happened if I had married Cian."

And that was when the pillow dropped over my head.

Pressure followed. Immediate and crushing. I tried to breathe but got only fabric and the increasingly stale air trapped beneath it. My hands came up on instinct, clawing at his arms, but the broken legs left me without leverage. Without any real way to fight back.

I bucked and thrashed. My lungs started burning. The need for oxygen became all-consuming, overriding every other sensation. Even the pain from my legs faded into background noise compared to the desperate screaming in my chest.

A memory surfaced.

Years ago. Back when I still had friends who pretended to like me. Fair weather bitches! We’d visited a witch with a reputation for prophecy. The kind of thing young girls did when they wanted glimpses of futures they assumed would be bright.

My friends had gotten exactly what they wanted to hear. Trisha had been promised a big rose diamond engagement ring. Another girl who I hated so much that I could not even remember haer name even now learned that a boy she liked would finally notice her. They’d giggled and squealed and even paid the witch.

Then came my turn.

The witch’s expression had changed. Her demeanor had gone cold. She’d stared at me with eyes that saw too much and said words I’d somehow gotten myslef to completely forget... Until now.

"The sins of your mother will never let you go. You will need love and warmth and you will never get either. Your nature will deny you it too when it comes your way and your greed will cause you to desire more. In the end, you will toil and toil and it will not matter in the end because your pathetic life will be snuffed out in the same cruel and callous manner your mother once used."

I’d called her a fake, laughed in her face and told my then friends she was just bitter and wanted to ruin our good time.

But look at me now.

Suffocating beneath a pillow. Legs broken. Covered in the blood of a man I’d tried to seduce and manipulate. Alone. Unloved. Exactly as she’d predicted. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

My mother had killed Fia’s mother by smothering her while she was awake. It had supposedly been a clean thing. The perfect murder. The funny part even was I’d been there that night. I’d watched her do it, through a crack in the door I wasn’t supposed to be behind. She’d held the pillow down with the same sick patience Lysander showed now.

The parallel would have been poetic if I could still appreciate irony.

Darkness crept in at the edges. Not the darkness of the pillow, but something deeper and frighteningly permanent. My struggles weakened. The burning in my lungs shifted into something almost peaceful. Like my body had finally accepted what my mind refused to acknowledge.

I’d spent my entire life fighting. Scheming. Clawing my way toward power and safety I never quite reached. Every person I’d betrayed. Every line I’d crossed. Every choice made in service of survival.

All of it led here.

To a blood-soaked floor in a foreign pack with a man I’d underestimated killing me the same way my mother had killed another.

The witch had been right about everything.

I needed love. I craved it with a desperation that drove every terrible decision. But my nature as she had called it, combined with the legacy my mother left me, meant I’d never learned how to accept it. Even when Cian offered something real, I’d chosen ambition instead.

My greed had consumed everything good before it could take root.

And now I was dying.

Alone.

Unmourned.

Exactly as I deserved. I wondered how Fia would react. Would that pathetic bitch celebrate?

My hands dropped.

The fight bled out of me the same way life bled from the Alpha across the room. Cold fingers gripped my consciousness, pulling me down into something vast and empty. I stopped struggling. Stopped trying to breathe. Stopped hoping for rescue that would never come.

The darkness welcomed me with the same indifference I’d shown the world.

And then there was nothing at all.