My Alpha Believed Her Lies Over Our Bond

I needed air.

The burns on my chest and arms had been wrapped in whatever I could find in the bathroom cabinet—gauze, mostly, and a thin layer of salve that did almost nothing against the deep, radiating heat. Matthew hadn't sent the pack healer. He hadn't checked on me at all. The last I'd seen of him, he was carrying Loretta back to her suite like she was made of spun glass, whispering that it wasn't her fault.

So I walked into the woods.

The Black Moon Pack's forest stretched wide and dark behind the packhouse, the kind of quiet that swallowed sound whole. I didn't shift—my wolf had grown so dim over the past two years that the effort felt like trying to start a car with a dead battery. I just walked, letting the cold air pull some of the burning out of my skin, letting the distance from the packhouse let me breathe.

I heard her before I saw her.

Laughter. Light, free, completely unguarded.

I stopped.

Through the tree line, maybe thirty yards ahead, a clearing opened up in a pool of moonlight. And in that clearing, moving with a speed and grace that made my stomach drop straight through the forest floor, was a wolf.

Silver-gray. Powerful. Running laps around the clearing like she owned it, like her body had been built for exactly this.

I knew that wolf.

I had seen Loretta Harvey's wolf form exactly once, years ago, before she'd claimed the 'accident' that supposedly took her ability to shift. I knew the color of her coat. I knew the particular way she held her tail.

She shifted back at the edge of the clearing, smooth and practiced, landing on two feet without even stumbling. She threw her head back and laughed again—that same laugh I'd heard from her wheelchair a hundred times, but stripped of the tremor she always performed for Matthew's benefit. This was her real laugh. Bright and careless and entirely without pain.

I stood very still behind the oak tree.

Two years. Two years of watching Matthew carry her groceries, cut her food, miss our dinners because she needed him. Two years of being told I was jealous, paranoid, cruel for questioning her condition. Two years of a lie so complete and so sustained that I had started to wonder, in my lowest moments, if maybe I was the problem.

She wasn't disabled.

She had never been disabled.

I turned and ran back toward the packhouse.

I found Matthew in his study. He looked up when I came in, his expression shifting to that particular brand of tired irritation he'd developed specifically for me over the past year.

'Penelope—'

'She can shift,' I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. 'I just watched her. In the clearing past the east tree line. She shifted and ran the full perimeter, Matthew. She's been lying to you. The disability is fake.'

He stared at me.

For one heartbeat—one single, fragile second—I thought I saw something move behind his eyes.

Then his jaw tightened.

'Loretta came to me twenty minutes ago,' he said. 'She was in tears. She said you'd gone to her room and screamed at her. That you'd grabbed her arms.'

The floor felt like it tilted.

'I haven't been near her room,' I said. 'I went straight to the woods. Matthew, listen to what I'm telling you—'

'She has bruises, Penelope.'

'She put them there herself.'

The words fell into a silence so complete I could hear the candles guttering down the hall. Matthew stood up slowly, and when he looked at me, there was nothing in his face that resembled the man I had once believed he was.

'I'm not doing this tonight,' he said. 'I'm not going to stand here and listen to you invent reasons to torment a woman who cannot defend herself.'

'She was running,' I said. 'I watched her with my own eyes.'

'You're not well.' He said it like a diagnosis. Like a door closing. 'And I think the stress has made you—'

'Don't.' My voice cracked on the word. Just that one word. 'Don't tell me what I saw.'

He walked past me to the door and called for Victor, his Beta, who materialized in the hallway with the particular efficiency of a man who had been listening nearby.

'The restoration supplies in the Luna suite,' Matthew said, not looking at me. 'Lock them in the basement storage. All of them.'

Victor didn't hesitate. 'Yes, Alpha.'

'Matthew.' I couldn't keep the disbelief out of my voice. 'Those are my tools. They're worth—'

'They're pack property.' He finally turned to look at me, and his eyes were flat. 'You don't need hobbies right now. You need to get yourself under control.'

I heard them moving down the hall toward my suite. I heard the door open. I heard the sound of my brushes, my chemicals, my entire remaining connection to the person I used to be, being carried away in boxes.

I didn't follow.

I stood in the empty hallway and pressed my fingertips together until the trembling stopped.

Somewhere in the packhouse, Loretta was probably already asleep.