My Alpha Planned to Murder Our Pup to Save His Heir

I couldn't breathe. The world had collapsed into a single, suffocating point of pain. My body was on the floor of what had been my bedroom—our bedroom—but nothing felt real anymore. Not the silk sheets beneath my cheek. Not the fading scent of my son on his favorite stuffed wolf. Not even the hollow echo of my own heartbeat. Jayden was gone. My beautiful, innocent pup had fallen from the packhouse balcony. They said it was an accident. They said I was there. They said it was my fault.

The door clicked open, and I didn't turn to look. I knew who it was. The heavy footsteps of Alpha Davis, my mate, my supposed protector, filled the room with the same oppressive weight that had been crushing me since the news broke. Behind him, the lighter, sharper steps of Maren—his mother, the former Luna, the woman who had never thought me worthy of her son.

'This is pathetic.' Maren's voice cut through the silence like a blade. 'Look at her, Davis. This is the Luna you chose.'

I wanted to speak, to defend myself, but my throat had closed around a knot of grief so profound that words couldn't survive it. I had been there. I had been holding Jayden's hand. I had turned away for just a moment to answer a question from one of the pack mothers. And then...

'He was only three years old!' Maren's voice rose, her words hammering into my skull. 'A wolfless mother. What use is she to anyone? She couldn't even protect her own pup.'

The accusation hit like a physical blow. I tried to sit up, to protest, but Davis's Alpha tone filled the room before I could find my voice.

'Enough, Mother.' His voice was cold, controlled—the voice he used in pack meetings when someone had disappointed him. He knelt beside me, but there was no comfort in his presence. His hand gripped my shoulder, and I felt the pressure of his Alpha aura pressing down on me like a mountain. 'Katelyn, this is your fault.'

The words shattered what little composure I had left. 'Davis, please—'

'You were supposed to protect him.' His tone was relentless, crushing. 'You failed as a mother. You failed as a Luna. You failed as my mate.'

Each word was a nail in the coffin of the woman I had been. I was wolfless. I was broken. I was alone. And now, I was to blame for the death of my own child.

They left me there, on the floor, drowning in guilt and grief. I didn't move for hours. I didn't cry. I didn't think. I simply existed in a void where everything that had ever mattered had been taken from me.

A week passed in a haze. The pack's whispers followed me like shadows. I heard the words: 'unfit,' 'weak,' 'disgrace.' I stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped feeling anything except the crushing weight of my failure.

And then came the day of the