My Alpha Destroyed My Hands to Protect His Mistress

I don't remember crawling to my room. The pain swallowed everything else—time, distance, thought. Just the endless throb of shattered bones and the wet warmth of blood soaking through my sleeves.

My door. I had to reach my door.

Somehow I made it. The handle turned under my elbow because my hands were useless, twisted things I couldn't bear to look at. Inside, I kicked the door shut and collapsed against it, gasping.

The hidden compartment. Behind the loose floorboard under my bed.

I crawled. Each movement sent fresh waves of agony through my arms. The tattoos on my hands—the intricate channels that had once glowed with power—were dark now, lifeless. The magic couldn't flow through broken pathways.

My fingers—what was left of them—scraped uselessly at the floorboard. I used my elbow instead, prying it up. Inside lay a small crystal, no bigger than my thumb, pulsing with a faint silver light.

The emergency beacon. Protocol Zero.

I'd hoped I'd never have to use it.

I pressed my forehead against the crystal, focusing past the pain, past the mate bond that still whispered River's name in my chest. The high-frequency mind-link opened like a door I'd kept locked for years.

*Your Majesty.* My mental voice shook. *I'm invoking Protocol Zero.*

Silence. Then, a presence—ancient, powerful, unmistakable.

*Julie.* The Lycan King's voice resonated through my mind, steady as stone. *What has happened?*

*He destroyed my hands.* I couldn't keep the tremor out of my thoughts. *The Falcon's Eye is gone. The wards will fail. I can't—I can't do this anymore.*

*Extraction approved.* His tone shifted, colder now. *The rejection will be finalized within forty-eight hours. Hold on, child. Justice is coming.*

The connection severed. I slumped against the floor, the crystal rolling from my forehead. Darkness pulled at the edges of my vision, and I let it take me.

---

I woke to screaming.

Morning light filtered through my window, gray and weak. My hands were on fire—or felt like it. Someone had bandaged them while I slept. Macie, probably. She was the only one who'd dare enter my room uninvited.

But the screaming wasn't mine. It came from outside.

I dragged myself to the window. Below, chaos. Pack members ran in every direction. Three rogues had breached the northern perimeter—the exact section protected by the Falcon's Eye. Without the amulet in place, without my daily maintenance of the runes, the wards had collapsed.

River stood in the center of the courtyard, his Alpha aura blazing. He was shouting orders, directing warriors to intercept the rogues. But his eyes—his eyes kept darting to the pack house, to the invisible barrier that should have held.

"Julie!" His voice carried up to my window. "Julie, get down here!"

I didn't move.

He appeared at my door minutes later, slamming it open. "What did you do?"

I turned from the window slowly. "Nothing."

"The wards failed." He stalked toward me, his face twisted with fury. "You cursed us. You're punishing me for—"

"For breaking my hands?" My voice came out flat, empty. "The hands that maintained those wards every single day for five years?"

He stopped. Something flickered in his eyes—confusion, maybe the beginning of understanding. But then Alondra appeared in the doorway, the Falcon's Eye gleaming at her throat.

"She's lying," Alondra said softly. "She's always been jealous, River. Now she's trying to make you feel guilty."

River's jaw clenched. The moment of doubt vanished. "Where are your spell books? Your scrolls?"

"River—"

"If you won't fix this, I'll find someone who can." He turned and strode toward my library—the small room adjoining my bedroom where I kept centuries of knowledge, irreplaceable manuscripts passed down through Lycan generations.

"No." I stumbled after him, but my legs wouldn't hold me. I fell, catching myself on my elbows because my hands couldn't bear weight. "River, those scrolls are sacred. They're not just mine—they belong to—"

He wasn't listening. He grabbed an armful of scrolls from the shelves, ancient parchment crackling in his grip. Alondra handed him something. A lighter.

"River, please." I crawled toward him, my bandaged hands leaving smears of blood on the floor. "Those are the only copies. The defense spells, the history—"

"Should've thought of that before you cursed my pack." He flicked the lighter.

The first scroll caught instantly, flames racing across centuries-old ink. He dropped it onto the pile of manuscripts. Fire spread like a living thing, hungry and bright.

I watched my life's work burn. The spells I'd studied since childhood. The wards that had protected not just this pack, but dozens of others. The counter-curses for threats River couldn't even imagine.

Gone.

"Stop," I whispered, but the word had no power. Not anymore.

River stood over the flames, his face illuminated by the orange glow. Alondra wrapped her arms around him from behind, resting her chin on his shoulder. The Luna Stone—his mother's stone—caught the firelight.

They looked like a portrait. Alpha and Luna. Exactly what River had always wanted.

I closed my eyes and felt the mate bond pulse weakly in my chest. Forty-eight hours, the King had said. Forty-eight hours until I was free.

I just had to survive until then.