After My Alpha Believed Her Lies Over My Truth

The door to the Omega cabin slammed shut behind me, the lock clicking into place like a gunshot. I didn't waste time banging on it. I scrambled across the dirty floor to the cot where my mother lay. Sarah was huddled in the corner, sobbing into her hands, but I barely saw her.

My mother was unrecognizable. The silver poisoning was ravaging her vascular system. Black veins spiderwebbed up her neck, pulsing with a toxic rhythm that didn't match her heartbeat. She was thrashing, her back arching off the thin mattress as the metal in her blood burned her from the inside out.

"Mom," I choked out, grabbing her hands. They were ice cold, yet sweating. "I'm here. I'm here."

She opened her eyes, but the whites were gone, flooded with dark blood. She tried to speak, but only a wet, gurgling sound escaped her throat. I knew that sound. It was the sound of lungs filling with fluid. Without the chelation therapy—the medicine sitting just a mile away in a cabinet I had stocked myself—she was drowning in her own body.

"I tried," I whispered, smoothing her sweat-drenched hair back. Tears blurred my vision, hot and stinging. "Dominick... he wouldn't sign. He wouldn't listen."

A violent seizure gripped her. I held her down, using my own body weight to keep her from breaking her bones against the wooden frame. I could feel the bond in the back of my mind, that golden tether connecting me to Dominick. It was calm. He was probably looking at a map, or listening to Lillie’s lies, completely unbothered while my universe collapsed.

The seizure stopped abruptly. Her body went limp. The rattling breath I had heard over the link slowed. One. Two.

Then silence.

I waited for the next breath. It never came.

I didn't scream. I think I had screamed enough in the Alpha's office. Instead, a terrifying coldness spread through my chest, extinguishing the fire of my panic. It froze the tears on my cheeks. I laid my head on her stilled chest, listening to the silence, and felt the love I held for my mate turn into something black and hard, like obsidian.

The rain came an hour later, a torrential downpour that turned the pack grounds into mud. When the guards finally opened the door, it wasn't to offer condolences. It was to deliver a message.

"Alpha says no traitor blood in the Sacred Grounds," the guard muttered, refusing to meet my eyes. He tossed a shovel at my feet. "Take her to the rogue border. You have until dawn."

I didn't argue. I didn't plead. I wrapped my mother in the thin, gray sheet from her cot and lifted her into my arms. My wolf howled in grief, a mournful sound that echoed in my skull, but my human face remained blank. I was a vessel of hollowed-out sorrow.

The trek to the border was three miles of hell. The mud sucked at my boots, trying to drag me down, but I refused to fall. My arms burned, my muscles trembling under the dead weight, but I didn't stop. I would not let them see me stumble.

When I reached the edge of the territory, where the lush forest gave way to the rocky, barren rogue lands, I dropped to my knees. The shovel the guard had given me snapped on a tree root within the first few minutes. So, I used my hands.

I dug until my fingernails tore and my fingers bled, mixing my blood with the wet earth. The rain plastered my hair to my skull, washing away the sweat and the dirt, but it couldn't wash away the image of Dominick’s indifferent face.

I lowered her into the shallow grave. I didn't have flowers, so I placed a smooth river stone on her chest—a healer’s tradition. A weight to keep the soul grounded until it could fly.

"I'm sorry, Mom," I whispered, my voice raspy. "I'm sorry I was weak."

I filled the grave, patting the mud down with my ruined hands. As I knelt there in the dark, shivering violently, I made a vow. Not to the Moon Goddess, who had paired me with a monster, but to myself.

I would survive this. I would endure every humiliation, every pain, until I was strong enough to make them pay. Dominick Payne was dead to me. The bond remained, a cruel shackle, but the man was gone.

The next evening, the Alpha Command forced me into a stiff, starched uniform. It was a maid’s dress, humiliatingly short, designed to strip away any remaining dignity I had as a former high-ranking member.

"You need to learn humility, Davina," Dominick had said through the link earlier, his voice devoid of emotion. "You will serve the High Table tonight."

The Pack Hall was alive with the roar of celebration. The smell of roasted venison and spiced wine turned my empty stomach. I walked out of the kitchen with a heavy pitcher of wine, my head held high despite the whispers that followed me like a swarm of hornets.

*Look at her. The crazy healer. She let her own mother die.*

The lies had already spread. Of course they had.

I reached the High Table. Dominick sat at the head, looking regal and terrifyingly handsome. Lillie sat at his right hand, in the seat that should have been mine. She was wearing a red dress that I recognized—it was mine, stolen from my closet before I was dragged to the Omega quarters.

"Wine," Lillie commanded, holding out her goblet without looking at me.

I stepped forward, my hands steady. I poured the crimson liquid, watching it swirl in the glass.

*Thwack.*

A sharp pain exploded in my shin. Lillie had kicked me hard under the table with her heel.

I didn't flinch. I didn't spill a drop. I finished pouring and lifted the pitcher, stepping back into the shadows.

Lillie pouted, looking up at Dominick with wide, innocent eyes. "She's so clumsy, Dom. She almost spilled it on me."

Dominick turned his gaze to me. His eyes were searching, waiting for the explosion. He expected the Davina who screamed in his office, the Davina who fought for her research, the Davina who begged. He wanted me to lash out so he could justify his cruelty. He wanted to see the "unstable" wolf he had created.

I met his gaze. My eyes were dry. My face was a mask of absolute indifference. I felt the tug of the bond, demanding submission, demanding love, but I shoved it behind a wall of ice. I felt nothing for him. Not hate, not love. Just a vast, arctic emptiness.

"Is there anything else, Alpha?" I asked, my voice flat and hollow.

Dominick’s brow furrowed slightly. The satisfaction in his eyes faltered, replaced by a flicker of confusion. He didn't see the fire he was used to. He saw a graveyard.

"No," he grunted, looking away, his hand tightening around his glass. "Get out of my sight."

I bowed, a mechanical, jerky motion, and turned away. As I walked back toward the kitchen, Lillie’s high-pitched laughter rang out behind me, but it sounded distant. They couldn't hurt me anymore. You can't break something that is already dust.