After My Alpha Sold Me to Another Pack

The silver glass bit into my palm as I sawed through the restraints. Five years. Five years of planning this moment, memorizing guard rotations, stealing fragments of broken mirror during the weekly hose-downs. The storm outside Wolf's Bane Asylum screamed louder than the voices in my head—the ones that whispered I was already dead, that escape was just another form of torture.

My wrists burned where the silver touched skin. I didn't care. Pain was an old friend now.

The guard's footsteps echoed down the corridor. I pressed myself against the wall, every muscle trembling from malnutrition and years of wolfsbane injections. My wolf—Luna, she used to be called—hadn't spoken in so long I'd almost forgotten her voice. The dormancy was complete. I was just a shell now, a broken omega who'd once been something more.

When he opened the cell door, syringe in hand, I moved on instinct. The glass shard found his throat before he could cry out. His blood was warm on my hands. I didn't feel guilty. I didn't feel anything.

The forest swallowed me whole. Rain lashed my face as I ran, barefoot and bleeding, through territory I once knew like the back of my hand. Blood River Pack land. Home. The word tasted like ash.

Maybe Greyson had realized the truth by now. Maybe he'd spent five years regretting what he'd done, searching for me, ready to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness. The hope was pathetic, but it kept my legs moving when everything else screamed to just lie down and let the cold take me.

I collapsed at the border just as music drifted through the trees. Laughter. Celebration. The Luna's Blessing festival—I'd organized that event for eight years, back when I was Luna, back when I mattered.

Hands grabbed me before I could crawl forward. Warriors. Their faces twisted with recognition and disgust.

"The mad rogue," one spat. "Alpha warned us she might come back."

They dragged me through the crowd. Pack members I'd once protected, once healed, once loved—they all stepped back like I carried plague. The festival lights blurred together, too bright after years of darkness. At the center of it all sat a throne I'd never seen before, draped in white silk and moonflowers.

And on that throne sat Camille.

My sister glowed. Her skin was perfect, her dress immaculate, her hand resting on a rounded belly that hadn't been there five years ago. She looked like everything I'd once been, everything I'd lost. The Luna crown—my crown—sat on her golden hair.

Beside her stood Greyson.

He looked older. Harder. His jaw was set in that way that meant his mind was made up, that nothing I said would matter. But I had to try. I had to.

"Water," I rasped. My voice cracked from disuse. "Please."

Camille's eyes went wide. She pressed a hand to her belly and recoiled, her chair scraping backward. "She's here to kill my baby! Greyson, she's going to kill our pup!"