After My Mate Murdered Our Child, I Rose Again

Victoria came to the Omega quarters that evening with an audience.

I heard her perfume before I saw her—synthetic roses, too sweet, coating the narrow corridor like something sprayed from a bottle. My wolf stirred immediately, that low heat rising in my chest. I pressed my thumb against the mark scar on my neck and waited.

She knocked. Two light taps, performative politeness.

I opened the door.

Victoria stood in the doorway wearing a soft cream sweater and a concerned expression. Behind her, two junior pack members hovered—a Delta warrior named Marcus and an Omega girl I'd seen in the kitchens. They weren't trying to hide. That was the point.

"Selene," Victoria said, her voice pitched to carry. "I wanted to check on you. Make sure you're settling in all right."

I looked at her without expression. "I'm fine."

"Good. That's good." She glanced past me into the small room, taking in the narrow bed, the single window. Her mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "It's cozy. Simpler than what you're used to, I'm sure, but sometimes simplicity is exactly what we need after... loss."

My wolf sent a pulse of heat up my spine. I swallowed it down.

Victoria stepped closer, lowering her voice to something meant to sound gentle. "I know this transition has been difficult. Losing Oliver, then the bond... it's so much for one person to carry."

She said his name like it was any other word. Past tense. Casual.

I kept my face blank. "Is there something you need?"

"I just wanted you to know that Cason is doing wonderfully in his new room." She tilted her head, watching me. "Children adapt so quickly, don't they? We've refreshed the space—new paint, new furniture. It's like the room was always meant for him."

Oliver's room. She was talking about Oliver's room.

The heat in my chest built, layer by layer. My pupils wanted to dilate. I locked it down.

Victoria's eyes searched my face, looking for the break. When she didn't find it, something uncertain flickered across her expression. She recovered quickly.

"Anyway," she continued, her voice brightening, "I was thinking we should visit the clifftop memorial together. Pay our respects. It would mean a lot to Massimo to see us... united in honoring Oliver's memory."

The clifftop memorial. Where Oliver's ashes rested beneath a stone marker. Where I'd spent hours sitting in my wheelchair, tracing his name with my fingers.

I looked at Victoria for a long moment. Then I said, at conversational volume: "You chose the clifftop memorial for this conversation on purpose. You wanted me to know you know where his ashes are."

Her performance flickered. Just for a second—her smile tightening at the edges, her shoulders going rigid. Behind her, Marcus and the Omega girl exchanged a glance.

Victoria recovered with a soft laugh. "I don't know what you mean. I'm simply trying to—"

"I understand," I said quietly. "Thank you for the invitation."

She blinked at me, thrown by the lack of reaction. Then she smiled again, wider this time, and reached out to pat my shoulder. I didn't move.

"Wonderful," she said. "I'll let Massimo know you're agreeable. Good night, Selene."

She turned and walked away, her hips swaying, her perfume lingering in the corridor. Marcus and the Omega girl followed.

I closed the door and sat on the edge of my bed. My hands were steady. My wolf was not.

I pulled Oliver's drawings from my jacket pocket and smoothed the last one against my lap. Three figures in a field. The sun still unfinished in the upper left corner.

Victoria had just told me exactly what she intended to do. The clifftop. The memorial. The performance of reconciliation with Massimo as witness.

She wanted me to break there. At Oliver's grave. In front of the pack.

I folded the drawing carefully and tucked it back into my pocket. Then I pulled out the signed rejection papers and looked at them for a long moment.

My wolf sent another pulse of heat through my chest—not grief this time, not even rage. Something colder. Something patient.

I had spent four years learning to read Massimo's moods, to navigate his authority, to survive in the spaces between his commands. I knew how to watch. I knew how to wait.

And I knew exactly what Victoria had just given me: confirmation that she understood the memorial's significance. Confirmation that she knew where to strike to cause maximum damage.

Confirmation that she was careless enough to announce it in front of witnesses.

I pressed my thumb against the mark scar on my neck. It was cold and empty, the bond long dead. But my wolf was awake now. Fully awake.

And she was done being patient.

I would go to the clifftop memorial. I would let Victoria stage her performance. I would let Massimo witness whatever reconciliation theater she had planned.

And when the moment came—when she made her move, when she revealed exactly how far she was willing to go—I would make sure there were witnesses to that too.

I tucked the rejection papers back into my pocket beside Oliver's drawings and felt my wolf settle, warm and steady beneath my ribs.

Victoria thought she knew where to strike. She thought she understood what would break me.

She was wrong.

I had already broken. And what was left behind was something she had never bothered to look for.