Someone inside the Wall

I was a lowly Omega mated to Caleb, the Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack. I thought I had finally found my harbor. But when our five-year-old daughter, Aria, plunged into a frozen lake and nearly drowned, he was nowhere to be found. He had blocked our mental link to play house with my sister's daughters at the Gamma estate. For three days, Aria lay dying in a coma. The trauma forced her inner wolf into hibernation. To protect her mind, it erased every conscious memory of her father—but her wolf remembered the wound. His scent was not a memory anymore. It was a scar. When she finally woke up, she shrank away from the heavy velvet curtains. "Mama, it smells like cold ashes in a wet hearth. Make it go away." She was screaming in terror just smelling his lingering scent. Her mind could not name him, but her body still remembered what it felt like to be abandoned in the snow. He had given the healing moonstones and the winter pelt he promised our daughter to my sister's twins instead. My sister even sneered at my desperate pleas, telling everyone I was just faking the accident to get his attention. I had spent my entire life bending my neck to the Pack hierarchy, enduring my family's disdain and my mate's cruel neglect. But looking at my fractured child, the heavy chain around my heart simply vanished, replaced by cold iron. I didn't cry, and I didn't beg for his love anymore. Instead, I packed my meager dowry, went straight to the Luna Queen for a Royal Decree of Rejection, and took my daughter away to build an empire of our own.

My little brother, Leo, was dying, dependent on a miracle surgery our family couldn't afford. My only hope was my five-year relationship with Ethan Vanderbilt, the wealthy heir - a relationship I' d clung to despite his growing cruelty. Then, he called me to his penthouse, not for reconciliation, but to introduce Isabella Romano, his new, stunning fiancée. "You were always a bit... much, Mia," he sneered, discarding me for an "upgrade." Public humiliation followed, as society pages lauded their perfect match, branding me the desperate ex. My own father, desperate for Leo' s life, told me I should have "tried harder." Our last hope seemed to vanish. Just when I thought I was at rock bottom, Ethan' s ruthless uncle, Charles Vanderbilt, offered a bizarre lifeline: full funding for Leo' s surgery. The catch? I had to go to a remote Vermont clinic and act as a discreet observer for his "comatose" brother-in-law, Marcus Thorne. Spy on a dying man for the family who' d just ruined me? Why me? What dark secrets was I being forced into? It felt like a devil' s bargain, a humiliation worse than anything Ethan could inflict, and I couldn't ignore the chilling sense of injustice. But for Leo, I' d do anything. So I packed my bags, leaving everything behind for that bleak, uncertain future in Vermont. I expected silent days watching a still form, but the "comatose" Marcus Thorne wasn't so comatose after all. And the very first thing he said to me wasn't 'hello,' but, "As I recall, Mia Hayes, you were my first kiss."

I hid my identity as the Alpha King's daughter just to be Santino's perfectly submissive Luna. I thought deep love would be enough. I was wrong. Three years into our marriage, Santino brought a pregnant woman into our pack compound, and even gave my late mother's necklace to his mistress. I tried to argue, to make him respect our marriage. But he said, "Without my protection, you are nothing." I played the harmless, weak Luna for so long that he actually thought I was a helpless Omega. Santino wants a war? Then I will give him a war. "Damian," my mind was made up as I awakened the Royal Guard, "destroy everything." Santino could certainly start the fire. But when the war ends, only I can decide. By the time he regrets it, it will be too late.

I was arranging lilies for my engagement party when the hospital called. A dog bite, they said. My fiancé, Salvatore Moretti, was supposed to be in Chicago on business. But he answered my frantic call from a ski slope in Aspen, with the sound of my best friend, Sofia, laughing in the background. He told me not to worry, that my mother’s injury was just a scratch. But when I got to the hospital, I learned it was Sofia’s unvaccinated Doberman that had attacked my diabetic mother. I texted Sal that her kidneys were failing, that they might have to amputate. His only reply: “Sofia is hysterical. She feels terrible. Calm her down for me, okay?” Hours later, Sofia posted a photo of Sal kissing her on a ski lift. The next call I got was from the doctor, telling me my mother’s heart had stopped. She died alone, while the man who swore to protect me was on a romantic vacation with the woman whose dog killed her. The rage inside me wasn't hot; it turned into a block of ice. I didn't drive back to the penthouse he gave me. I went to my mother’s empty house and made a call I hadn't made in fifteen years. To my estranged father, a man whose name was a ghost story in Salvatore’s world: Don Matteo Costello. “I’m coming home,” I told him. My vendetta wouldn’t be one of blood. It would be one of erasure. I would dismantle my life here and disappear so completely, it would be as if I had never existed.

I was the lowest Omega in the Blood Moon Pack, forced to scrub greasy floors while enduring the daily abuse and kicks of the Warriors. On the night of Alpha Kael's succession ball, the fated mate bond suddenly snapped into place between us. The powerful, ruthless Alpha had found his destined Luna, and it was me, the dirty scullery maid hiding behind the curtains. But the magical peace of our bond lasted only seconds before reality crashed down. Faced with the disgusted whispers of the nobles and the political threats from his Gamma, Kael chose his power over me. He dragged me to the center of the grand hall and publicly rejected me. "I, Kael, Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack, reject you, Elara, as my mate." The violently severed bond felt like crushed glass in my lungs, snapping my soul in half and leaving me coughing up dark blood on the pristine marble. Surrounded by mocking eyes and an unnatural chill, I dragged my broken body out into the freezing, fog-filled Shadow Forest to die. I didn't understand why the Moon Goddess would give me a protector only to let him become my cruel executioner. Why was I destined to be nothing more than a pathetic, disposable Omega meant to be trampled on? But as three feral Rogues lunged to tear my throat out under the midnight moon, the searing agony in my veins suddenly vanished. I didn't shift into a weak Omega wolf. Bathed in a blinding, divine light, my body expanded into a towering, flawless White Wolf. Looking at my massive silver reflection in the water, I made a silent vow. I was no longer a servant, and I would make them all kneel.

For eighteen years, I endured the Miller family's constant comparisons and casual neglect, trying desperately to earn their love. Then the DNA results came back. Their biological daughter, Joella, returned home, and they threw all my belongings onto the front lawn like trash. "The DNA results came back this morning. You're not our daughter." My adoptive mother looked at me with the detached appraisal of someone viewing a piece of furniture that no longer fit the decor. They didn't just kick me out. As I picked up my worn suitcase, they demanded I fulfill an ironclad marriage contract with the legendary Blackwood family to save their failing corporation. "You were always a placeholder, Chloe. Like a dress worn by mistake. Now, the rightful owner has come to claim it." Joella smirked triumphantly from my old bedroom window, while my adoptive father screamed that I was a jinx and a curse who owed them my life. I looked at the three of them—a perfect, complete family. After a lifetime of craving their approval, the last thread of hope finally snapped, replaced by a cold, hard fury. Why should I let them use me one last time when they had treated me like a counterfeit part for eighteen years? I didn't cry or beg. Instead, I calmly pulled out my phone and sent a single encrypted message to pull all funding from their corporation. As their phones began to ring frantically with the news of their sudden bankruptcy, a man wearing a Patek Philippe watch bowed deeply before me. He was here to take me back to my real parents—the legendary Beaumont family, one of the wealthiest and most powerful bloodlines on the planet.