Chapter 3

Selena’s disappearance ended exactly the way I expected.

She was found in a luxury hotel suite an hour later, wrapped in Adrian’s coat, weeping for the cameras.

By noon, the whole pack believed I had tried to hurt her.

By evening, Adrian froze my accounts.

By nightfall, he called the Northbridge Broadcast Center and had me suspended from my own show.

My director looked at me across his desk and smiled the stiff smile of a coward.

“Elena, you know how this works. In fifteen days, Alpha Adrian will recover. He always does. Everyone knows you’re the one he truly loves.”

Love.

I looked at the suspension notice on the table.

Then I asked, “Do you know how Adrian’s parents died?”

The director’s smile vanished.

“What?”

“His father had the same curse. During his seventy-eighth cycle, he killed his Luna for another woman. When he woke, he jumped from the twentieth floor holding that woman in his arms.”

The room went silent.

I picked up the notice.

“I’m not waiting for history to repeat itself.”

Outside the station, Selena’s messages came one after another.

Photos first.

Adrian on his hands and knees while Selena sat on his back, laughing for the camera.

Adrian kneeling at her feet.

Adrian washing her feet in a silver basin.

Adrian fastening diamonds around her throat.

Adrian emptying every luxury store in Northbridge because she had said, laughing, that she wanted a mountain of gifts.

Then came the words.

You were always the main character, Elena.

I was always the friend standing in the background.

But now he belongs to me.

Soon your crown, your wealth, your home, and your happiness will all be mine.

Are you jealous?

I hope it hurts.

I stared at the screen.

Then I took screenshots and uploaded everything.

Gift Two.

I drove back to the Alpha estate for one reason.

My grandmother’s moonweave.

It was the only thing I had left from my mother’s bloodline, a silver-threaded tapestry stitched by the women of my family for five generations. It carried our old crest, our birth moons, our names.

My grandmother had placed it in my hands before she died and told me never to give it to anyone who did not understand what it meant.

Adrian had once begged me for it.

“Give me something that matters to you,” he had said, holding me after the seventh curse almost destroyed us both. “Something I can keep safe. Something that proves you won’t leave me.”

So I gave him the moonweave.

He framed it himself.

Now I wanted it back.

Clean break.

Clean hands.

Clean ending.

But when I stepped into the estate, Selena was already in the great hall, holding a filthy stray pup against her chest.

The animal was wet, trembling, and so terrified it had urinated down the front of her dress.

Adrian stood beside her, pale from the fur allergy he refused to admit he had.

“Poor thing,” Selena cooed. “Adrian, hand me that ugly cloth on the wall. I need to wipe him down.”

My heart stopped.

She was pointing at the moonweave.

“Don’t,” I said.

Adrian didn’t even look at me.

He shattered the frame with one hand and pulled out the tapestry.

“Why would anyone hang an old rag in the Alpha hall?” he said, disgust curling his lip. “Elena really has no taste.”

The male who once kissed that cloth and swore it made him feel safe now tossed it to another woman like trash.

Selena smiled at me.

Then she dragged the mud-soaked, urine-stinking pup across my grandmother’s moonweave.

Something in me finally tore open.

I lunged.

I didn’t reach her.

Adrian caught the back of my coat and hurled me away from her as if I were filth.

My body struck the floor-to-ceiling glass.

The window exploded.

Shards raked across my back, my arms, my thighs. For one second, I heard nothing but the wet sound of my own blood hitting the marble.

Adrian froze.

His eyes dropped to the blood spreading under me.

His face went white.

There.

A crack in the curse.

“Elena...” he whispered.

Then Selena sobbed.

“Adrian, she scared me. She scared the pup. I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

The gold came back into his eyes.

He shook his head hard.

“No. No, I don’t care about her.” He pulled Selena close. “I love you. Only you.”

I lay on the floor and reached for the ruined moonweave with bloody fingers.

Selena passed me in Adrian’s arms.

Her lips formed silent words.

You are just like this rag.

If I want it, he gives it to me.

Then she let the stray pup slip from her arms.

The animal, panicked by the smell of blood and waste, lunged back toward the cloth. Its teeth sank into my arm when I dragged the moonweave to my chest.

Pain tore white through me.

I held on anyway.

By the time I woke again, I was in a private healer’s room.

My hand was still clenched around a corner of the stained moonweave.

A young nurse changed the bandages along my back and muttered under her breath, “Your Alpha is a monster.”

I turned my head toward the window.

Morning light warmed the sheets.

“Healers called him last night,” she said. “They said you might not make it. They needed him to sign for emergency blood transfer.”

I closed my eyes.

“What did he say?”

The nurse’s mouth tightened.

“He said he was busy comforting Miss Vale. He said if you wanted to die, then let you die.”

Let you die.

I opened my eyes.

“Can you repeat that?” I asked.

She blinked. “What?”

I lifted my phone.

“For the record.”

Her face hardened with understanding.

She repeated every word.

I saved the audio.

Then I pulled the estate security footage from the backup server Adrian had forgotten I still controlled.

The broken frame.

The ruined moonweave.

The glass.

The blood.

The dog’s teeth tearing into my skin.

His face when he almost remembered.

I uploaded everything.

Gift Three.