After My Alpha Framed Me, I Took Back Everything

The jet lag hit me the moment I crossed into Moonstone territory, but I pushed through it. Five years as Luna had taught me to function on fumes when necessary. The London negotiations with the Ironclaw Pack had gone better than expected—three new trade routes secured, two defense contracts signed. I'd wrapped everything up a day early, eager to surprise Cooper with the good news.

My wolf, Sera, stirred restlessly as we approached the Pack House. Something's wrong.

I knew it the second I stepped through the front doors. The scent hit me like a physical blow—cloying vanilla mixed with cheap musk, artificial and suffocating. It was everywhere, coating the walls, the furniture, drowning out the cedarwood aroma that had been my father's signature scent for decades.

The staff scattered when they saw me. Maria, our head housekeeper who'd known me since childhood, couldn't meet my eyes. Her hands trembled as she clutched a dust cloth.

"Maria, what—"

She fled before I could finish.

My heart hammered as I walked into the main hall. The space felt wrong, violated. Then I saw it. The mantle above the fireplace stood bare where my father's portrait had hung for thirty years. In its place, some generic modern art piece—abstract swirls of color that meant nothing, were nothing.

They removed him. They erased him.

Sera snarled inside my mind. Find Cooper. Now.

I took the stairs two at a time, that sickening vanilla scent growing stronger with each step. It led me straight to the master suite. My ancestral bedroom. The room where my father had died peacefully in his sleep, where generations of Alphas had been born.

I didn't knock.

The door slammed open under my hand, and there they were. Cooper and Daisy King—his supposed "distant cousin" who'd moved in three months ago—tangled together in my bed. In my father's bed. Daisy wore my silk robe, the emerald one Cooper had given me on our mating anniversary.

Something inside me snapped.

Sera surged forward and I let her. The shift tore through me, bones cracking and reforming. I expected Cooper to scramble, to beg, to show some shred of the mate I'd thought I knew. Instead, he smiled.

"There she is," he said, his voice cold and satisfied. "Right on cue."

He moved faster than I'd ever seen him move, pulling something from the nightstand. Metal flashed. Before I could react, the suppression collar snapped around my neck, silver burning into my fur. The shift reversed violently, leaving me gasping and human on the floor.

"Cooper, what—"

His Alpha Command slammed into me, amplified by something that made my bones ache. Drugs. He'd taken something to boost his power. His hands locked around my arms, hauling me up.

"You're so predictable, Marceline," Daisy purred from the bed, adjusting my robe with a satisfied smirk. "Always so emotional. So unstable."

"Get your hands off me." I tried to summon my own Alpha dominance, but the collar choked it down to nothing.

Cooper dragged me toward the balcony. I fought him, but whatever he'd taken made him stronger than he should be. The evening air hit my face as he shoved me outside. Below, the pack was gathering for the evening run, dozens of faces turning up toward us.

"Members of Moonstone Pack," Cooper's voice rang out, clear and commanding. "I call you to witness."

No. No, he wouldn't—

"For five years, I've tried to make this work. I've covered for her instability, her violence, her failures." His grip on my arm tightened, bruising. "She's barren. She's mentally unstable. And tonight, she attacked me in my own bedroom like a feral rogue."

Gasps rippled through the crowd. I saw shock, confusion, and worse—belief—on faces I'd known for years.

"Cooper, stop this," I managed, my voice raw. "You know that's not—"

"I, Cooper Wells, Alpha of Moonstone, reject you, Marceline Harper, as my mate."

The bond didn't just break. It shattered.

Pain exploded through my chest, white-hot and all-consuming. It felt like someone had reached into my ribcage and ripped out my heart while it was still beating. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but feel the mate bond tearing away from my soul.

I collapsed. Cooper let me fall.

Through the haze of agony, I saw Daisy step onto the balcony. She placed one delicate hand on her stomach, the gesture deliberate and unmistakable. The crowd's confusion shifted to understanding, then acceptance.

She was claiming to carry his pup. The pack would follow the heir.

I lay there on the cold stone, my father's legacy crumbling around me, and realized I'd been played from the very beginning.