Chapter 2
I jumped.
The wind roared in my ears as I held the two pups tightly against my back. My hands burned from gripping the ropes, and my knees went weak, but I didn’t stop.
“Don’t be scared,” I whispered. “Big sister’s here.”
They weren’t mine. Luna and Liam–Alpha Emery’s children with some vanished she–wolf–were never my blood. But ever since they started calling me “Omega Caroline sis, and sometimes even “Mama” I had stopped correcting them.
And now, as fire swallowed the nursery, I couldn’t let them die. I wouldn’t.
“Fire! The nursery’s burning!”
hapter 2
+ 5 Points
“There are still pups inside!”
“Wait for Alpha’s orders!”
I heard the patrol’s shouting before I passed out. I had carried the pups through the smoke, past the flames, and crashed through the fifth–floor window. I hit the ground with them wrapped on my back.
No one caught me. No one ran forward. I remembered hearing one guard mutter, “She’s not worth risking our lives.”
I woke up on a medical slab, my hands bandaged in thick wraps. My whole body ached, but all I cared about-
“Luna… Liam…”
“They’re alive.” The healer didn’t even look at me. “Barely. They’re being treated in the room next door.”
I blinked through the haze. “Where’s Alpha
Chapter 2
Emery? Did he come?”
+ 5 Points
“He knows,” the healer said simply. “He’s with Beta Sasha. She was very shaken by the fire.”
I stared at my charred hands.
Beta Sasha was scared?
I nearly died.
Luna stirred in the night. Her small fingers reached for me, even in her sleep, and her voice was weak and slurred.
“Mama… don’t go…”
My heart broke. I swallowed the lump in my throat and took her hand in mine.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “I won’t go.”
Alpha Emery came the next afternoon. He wore his full Alpha robes, clean and
+5 Points
composed, as if the fire never happened.
“You’re awake,” he said, stepping inside with a bowl of soup.
I sat up quickly. “Where were you?”
He frowned. “You shouldn’t move so fast.”
“Luna called me ‘Mama.”” I looked up at him.
He blinked once. “She’s attached to you. That’s natural.”
I asked quietly, “Why didn’t you come see us sooner?”
“I did,” he said smoothly. “But you were unconscious. And I had to manage the tribe. Beta Sasha…”
“Was scared. Yes, I heard.”
He paused for a moment, then walked closer and set the bowl on my lap.
Chapter
“Eat. You need strength.”
+ 5 Points
My fingers trembled. He noticed and gently took the spoon to feed me himself.
“You’re still in pain?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Omega Caroline,” he said softly, “do you really think I’d let you die?”
I lowered my gaze. “No. I know you care.”
“Good.” He smiled again. “You’re my Oathmate. You’ll always have my protection.”
I didn’t ask him what he meant by “container”
I didn’t tell him I’d heard every word from that night.
Because I knew… he still didn’t want me to know.
And I–Omega Caroline, the obedient Omega–still wasn’t brave enough to stop pretending.
I sometimes wonder if I’d died in that fall, maybe everything would’ve ended neatly.
But I didn’t.
And now I had to keep playing along.
For Luna and Liam. For the mark that may not have been made with blood, but had been seared into something deeper.
They weren’t mine.
But when Luna reached out in her sleep and called me “Mama“…
I knew I was more their mother than anyone else ever had been.
