The sweet, sickening voice of Blaire Mitchell shattered the freezing silence of my bedroom. I struggled to turn my heavy head against the sweat-soaked pillows. My husband, Auguste, the Alpha of the Sullivan Pack, stood at the foot of my bed. But he was not alone. Blaire clung to his arm like a blood-sucking parasite, her manicured fingers deliberately tracing the broad expanse of his chest. They looked down at my broken, dying body with a sickening mixture of pity and absolute superiority.
"Auggie," Blaire cooed, her innocent facade slipping entirely to reveal the greedy, venomous core beneath. "She stole my rightful place as your Mate for five long years. She squandered her usefulness, worked herself into a literal walking corpse just to pay off your family's debts, and now she is just deliberately dragging this out to torture us, isn't she? Our four-year-old son is playing in the snow outside, waiting for his mother to officially become the one and only Luna of Sullivan Manor. We cannot let this useless, barren woman occupy my throne any longer. Once she breathes her last, everything she brought from the Kensington estate will finally be ours."
The sheer, unadulterated audacity of her words struck me harder than any physical blow. My vision blurred, not from the deadly fever boiling my blood, but from the violent surge of fury that ripped through my chest. The blatant, shameless display of their affair right in front of my dying eyes ignited a blazing inferno within my soul. My heart, which I thought had died from exhaustion, pounded with a fierce, agonizing hatred.
Barren? Useless?
I, Ellery Sullivan, was his true, legal spouse. For five long years, I had bled myself dry to save the crumbling Sullivan Pack. When Auguste returned from the war, claiming a devastating silver-poisoning injury had left him completely impotent and unable to sire an heir, I stayed by his side. I bore the vicious whispers of high society, willingly taking the blame as a barren female to protect his fragile Alpha pride.
While he played the tragic war hero, I took over his family's massive debts. I worked day and night, pouring my mother's vast Kensington fortune into his failing businesses. I sold my own jewels, stayed up endless winter nights balancing ledgers in the freezing study, and drove my body to the absolute breaking point just to keep the Sullivan name pristine. I literally worked myself into an early grave for this family, sacrificing my youth, my health, and my very soul just to see him succeed.
And this was my reward. Only yesterday did I discover the bloody truth. He was never impotent. It was all a meticulously crafted lie. He had simply been hiding his true love and their four-year-old bastard son. While I was coughing up blood over his endless account books, Auguste was using the very wealth I exhausted my life to rebuild to construct a magnificent, luxurious manor for his secret family, leaving me to rot in this decaying, drafty villa once my usefulness ran out.
"Soon, Blaire," Auguste promised, his low voice a brutal knife to my heart, pulling me from my agonizing memories. He stroked her hair, his tone carrying a sickeningly gentle assurance. "When her body finally gives out, I will make you my true, my one and only. She will leave everything to us."
The sheer injustice of it boiled my blood. A violent, rattling cough racked my frail body. Dark, warm blood spilled from my lips, staining the coarse linen sheets. But I refused to look weak.
I gathered the absolute last shred of my fading life force and forced my head up. I locked my gaze onto Auguste, channeling every ounce of my burning, venomous hatred into that single stare.
Auguste's gaze fell upon me, and he suddenly froze. The pure, unadulterated hatred burning in my eyes seemed to catch him completely off guard. For a heartbeat, the air in the room grew heavy, thick with a dark, suffocating tension. His jaw clenched. A strange, almost predatory hunger flashed in his dark eyes, a magnetic, dangerous pull that had never existed in our five years of sterile marriage.
It was the look of an apex predator, fierce, dark, and overwhelmingly possessive, completely contradicting the cold, untouched husband he had played for years. The raw sexual tension in that single, burning stare was undeniable, sending a phantom, electrifying shiver down my spine. My inner wolf stirred, confused by the sudden, scorching heat flaring in her belly, a twisted, undeniable pull that still refused to fully break. He took a half-step toward my bed, as if hypnotized by the violent fire in my dying eyes, completely forgetting the woman clinging to his arm.
Sensing his dangerous distraction, Blaire dug her sharp nails into his sleeve. Her sweet mask slipped further. "Auggie? Do not look at that hideous creature."
His expression instantly shifted, snapping back to that familiar, icy mask. Distant. As if looking at a stranger, an inconvenience.
The moment he turned back to his lover, my hand moved on its own, reaching for the pendant at my throat. It was the Kensington family crest, a howling wolf, my mother's last gift to me. The very same one I had given Auguste as a symbol of my love, which he had later returned with a casual shrug.
It once represented my everything, my heritage, my love, my hope. Now, it was just a cold, cruel joke.
With the last ounce of my strength, I tore the pendant from my neck. The metal chain bit into my skin, leaving a sharp, stinging line. I didn't care.
I squeezed my hand shut. The hard edges of the pendant dug into my palm, a piercing, grounding pain.
A sharp crack echoed in the silent room.
The Kensington wolf shattered in my fist.
But I did not let the darkness take me. The sharp, bloody pain in my palm anchored my fading consciousness, awakening a dormant, ancient power deep within my blood. I refused to die just yet. I refused to let my soul plunge into the abyss before I made them pay for this ultimate betrayal. If they wanted my life, they were going to have to drag me to hell themselves. The true nightmare for them was only just beginning.