ISOBEL

"Yes. She might be at the funeral too if it is her wish."

Rage burned hot in my chest. "Hazel did not have that. Mother’s anger over my choice of a husband ensured that she refused me that right. Hazel is not in Northern Ridge Nocturne’s official documents."

"I will make that change. Both girls will be added."

I laughed, and it came out sharp and ugly. "Because I complained, right?"

"I just wanted you to know." Father’s voice went formal, and in doing that, it also became distant. "So, should you see her at the funeral, please act with decorum. It is a known fact that the kind of tense relationship you had with Muna and Fia, with the research I have done."

"Father—"

"Goodbye."

The line went dead.

I stared at my phone, at my reflection in the black screen, and tried to process what he’d just told me.

Muna was my half-sister.

That woman, that Omega who’d stolen my husband’s attention, who’d produced a daughter that reminded me daily of my own failures, she’d been family. True family. Blood family.

Did she know?

The question burned in my mind. Had Muna known who she was when she showed up at our pack? Had she planned it, orchestrated her arrival to claim what she thought was hers?

But Joseph had said he found her out of the blue, and she had allegedly escaped a raid against traffickers.

Was that true?

The goddess had to be mocking me.

This couldn’t be a coincidence. The threads were too tangled, too perfectly designed to cause maximum pain.

I needed answers.

Joseph would know the details. He’d been the one to find Muna, to bring her to our pack. He would remember where exactly she’d been found and more.

I threw on a robe and headed downstairs.

The packhouse was quieter than usual. A few sentinels stood in corners, talking in low voices. Their conversation cut off when they saw me, and several looked away.

Something was wrong.

I could feel it in the air, in the way people avoided my eyes, in the tension that hung over everything like a shroud.

One woman was crying near the kitchen entrance. She saw me and quickly wiped her face, but not before I noticed the tears.

"What’s going on?" I asked a sentinel standing nearby.

He looked stricken. "I am so sorry for your loss, Luna Isobel."

My blood went cold. "What do you mean?"

"Lily of the Valley sent..." He swallowed hard, his face going pale. "I think you should see the Alpha in the lounge."

I didn’t wait for him to finish.

My feet carried me down the hall faster than I’d moved in days. The suppressant-induced ache in my joints disappeared, replaced by sharp, animal fear. The sentinels at the lounge door looked shocked to see me, but they didn’t try to stop me.

I pushed the door open.

Joseph stood in the middle of the room, staring down at something. His shoulders shook, and I realized with distant shock that he was crying. I’d never seen him cry like that before. Not once in all our years together.

"What is wrong?"

He jerked around, and his face was a mask of devastation. "What are you doing here? You should not be here."

That made me walk faster. He moved to block my path, but I shoved past him. I was stronger than I looked, stronger than he expected, and he stumbled.

That was when I smelled it.

Blood.

It was not fresh blood but it was blood nonetheless and it had that metallic and sharp tang to it that filled my nose and making my wolf surge forward in alarm. Because followed with the pungent smell of blood was another stench.

A familiar stench.

I looked down at the box on the table.

For a moment, my brain couldn’t process what I was seeing. The shapes didn’t make sense, the colors were wrong, the way things were arranged defied logic.

Then it clicked into place.

Hazel’s head sat at the top of the box, her eyes half-open, her mouth slack. Below it, arranged with surgical precision, were pieces. Parts of my daughter, separated and packed like butchered meat.

Her hands were still wearing a nice ring I’d given her for her last birthday.

Her torso, the nightgown she’d been wearing torn and stained.

Her legs, bare feet that I’d held when she was a baby.

All of it was there. All of it was wrong.

The scream tore out of my throat before I could stop it.

It came from somewhere deep, somewhere primal, a sound I didn’t know I could make. My knees hit the floor, and I didn’t feel the impact. All I could see was Hazel’s face, her beautiful face, staring at nothing.

Joseph grabbed me, tried to pull me away, but I fought him. I clawed at his arms, at his chest, desperate to get back to the box, to my daughter, to the pieces of the person I’d carried inside my body and brought into this world.

"No." The word came out broken. "No, no, no."

This wasn’t real.

This couldn’t be real.

Hazel was supposed to be at Lily of the Valley. She was supposed to be safe there. Protected.

"Who did this?" My voice didn’t sound like mine. "Who did this to her?"

Joseph said something, but I couldn’t hear it over the rushing in my ears. The room spun, and I grabbed onto his shirt to keep from falling completely.

My daughter was dead.

Hazel was dead, and someone had cut her into pieces and sent her back to me like a package, or some fucked up threat.

I looked at her face again, at those eyes that would never see anything again, at the mouth that would never smile or laugh or call me Mother.

Everything I’d tried to protect her from, everything I’d fought to keep her safe from, it hadn’t mattered.

She was gone.

And I hadn’t been there to stop it.

The grief hit me like a physical blow, so intense I couldn’t breathe. My lungs seized, my heart hammered against my ribs, and I bent double over the pain.

Joseph pulled me into his arms, and I let him. I buried my face in his chest and screamed until my throat was raw, until no more sound would come, until there was nothing left but the hollow ache where my daughter used to be.

Hazel.

My sweet, reckless, foolish girl.

Gone.

Someone would pay for this. Someone would suffer the way I was suffering, would feel this same crushing agony, would know what it meant to lose everything that mattered.

I would find whoever did this, and I would make them wish they’d never been born.

"Who did this to our girl?" I demanded with nothing but malice in my heart.