“Exactly!Such audacity cannot go unpunished.Lady Lyra must make an example of her — or the whole territory will lose all discipline!”
The inner den had always been silent.
A place the Alpha once said was“where no harm could ever find me.”*
Now the noise pierced through the stone walls,gnawing at my skull.
A dull ache throbbed behind my temples.
I forced myself upright and looked at my attendant, Willow.
“What’s happening outside?” I asked.
“Why all this chaos?”
She knelt, her voice trembling.
“Luna… word spread that a she-wolf in the pack slept with a guard and is now with child.
Lady Lyra has gathered the ranked females and servants…
They say she’s going to punish the one who defiled the bloodline.”
My brows knit faintly.
There were hundreds of she-wolves in the territory.
Every single one of them dreamed of standing at the Alpha’s side.
Scheming, betrayal, silent wars —they had always existed.
But I had never involved myself.
Since the day he marked me,since the day his hand rested on my stomach and he whispered,
“This pup… will be our future.”
…I had devoted everything to guarding this child.
Yet now…
Sleeping with a guard and becoming pregnant —such filth, such an insult to the bloodline,would drag the entire pack into disgrace if it spread.
I could not ignore it.
Not when I carried the only heir.
Not when he had once told me —
“Until this child is born, nothing matters more.”
I rose quickly,led Willow toward the den entrance.
But the moment I opened the door—Lyra and the others crashed straight into my sight.
Her eyes lit up the second she saw me.
Before I could even speak,her palm flew.
The sharp crack of skin against skin echoed through the stone corridor.
My cheek burned.
I tasted iron.
“You filthy mutt banished to the inner den,how dare you sleep with a pack guard and carry a bastard whelp?!”
My fingers slowly curled against my swollen stomach.
This was the belly he once knelt before,pressing his forehead to my skin, murmuring my name like a prayer.
The same belly he protected with soldiers,with blood,with an entire bloodline’s wrath.
Yet now—“Today,” she stepped closer, her lips curving with cruel triumph,“I’ll make sure you remember what pack law truly means.”
The sudden slap hit me so hard my mind went completely blank.
Willow’s eyes widened in shock,frozen where she stood, unable to believe they actually dared to lay hands on me.