Sera's POV
The laughing is what breaks me first.
Not the sound of it — the happiness in it. The way it floats right through our bedroom door like nothing in the world is wrong. Like I'm not standing two feet away with shaking hands and a secret that changed everything three days ago.
I press my fingers flat against the door. My heart is doing something strange — beating too hard and too slow at the same time, like it already knows what my brain is still refusing to accept.
It's nothing, I tell myself. Cole laughs with people all the time. He's friendly. That's one of the things you love about him.
Loved.
Past tense. I don't know why that word comes out past tense. Not yet.
The small white stick in my coat pocket feels like it weighs fifty pounds. I found out three days ago, alone in the pack clinic bathroom, staring at two pink lines while the world spun sideways. Three days I've been carrying this. Three days of practicing what to say. Cole, I'm pregnant. Cole, we're going to have a baby. Cole, everything is about to change.
I thought tonight was the right night. Full moon. He'd be in a good mood.
I push the door open.
The laughing stops.
For one strange second, the three of us just freeze. Me in the doorway. Cole sitting up in our bed. And Lysa — my stepsister, Lysa, with her dark hair loose and her eyes going wide — scrambling to pull the sheet up.
My brain does a funny thing. It goes completely quiet.
Like every thought in my head just... falls to the floor.
And then the pregnancy test slips out of my pocket. I don't even feel it go. One second it's there, the next it hits the floor between my feet with a small plastic clatter, and all three of us look down at it at the exact same time.
Nobody moves.
Nobody breathes.
The two pink lines face up.
Cole is the first one to speak. He doesn't say my name. He doesn't say I'm sorry. He doesn't even look ashamed. He just looks at me with that face I used to think was the most handsome face in the world, and he says —
"You were never enough, Sera."
Four years.
Four years I cooked his meals and stood by his side at pack events and defended him when people said he was cold, when people said he only cared about becoming Beta heir. Four years I believed that underneath all that ambition, he loved me. That I was the one thing that was just his. Not the position. Not the power. Me.
Four years — and that is what he says.
I pick up the test. My hands aren't shaking anymore. That scares me more than anything else. I look at Lysa. She can't hold my eyes. She looks at the wall.
Good. She should.
"How long?" My voice comes out like someone else's. Flat. Quiet.
Cole shrugs. Shrugs. "Does it matter?"
"How long, Cole."
Lysa makes a small sound. "Sera, I—"
"Don't." I don't even look at her. "Don't you dare."
Cole stands up. He's taller than me. He's always used that, the way he fills a room. He steps toward me slowly, like he's deciding something, and I realize with cold clarity that he isn't trying to apologize. He isn't panicking. He is calculating.
"You need to leave," he says.
"This is my room."
"This is pack property. And you're going to make this very difficult, aren't you." It isn't a question. "You're going to cause a scene. You're going to run your mouth to the Alpha, try to make me look bad—"
"I'm pregnant, Cole."
The word lands.
Lysa makes a sharp sound behind him. Cole's jaw tightens. For the first time, something moves behind his eyes — not guilt, not love, not even basic human decency. Just cold, fast thinking. The same look he gets during pack negotiations.
"No you're not," he says.
I stare at him. "What?"
"You're not pregnant." He says it again, firmer, like if he says it enough times it becomes true. "And if you tell anyone you are — if you try to use that to create problems for me — I will make sure the whole pack knows what you did."
My stomach drops. "What I did?"
"The Alpha's hunting records went missing last month. Sensitive pack information, gone." He tilts his head. "You had access. You were seen near the archive room. It would be very easy for that story to get very messy for you."
I can't breathe.
He's framing me. He's already built the trap. He's standing here, in our bedroom, with my stepsister in our sheets, and he has already figured out how to destroy me before I even opened my mouth.
Four years. And he had this ready.
"Get out of this room," Cole says softly. "Go sleep somewhere else tonight. Tomorrow, we'll handle this quietly. You'll leave the pack voluntarily. I'll make sure you get safe passage—"
"And if I don't?"
His smile is the most frightening thing I've ever seen on a human face.
"Then tomorrow morning, I report the missing records. And I tell the Alpha you threatened Lysa when you found out she was carrying my child." He pauses. "A rogue female with a grudge and a false pregnancy claim is a lot easier to deal with than a loyal Beta heir with a growing family. You know how this pack works, Sera."
I do.
That's the worst part. I do know how this pack works.
I walk out of the room. I don't run. I don't cry. I walk down the hall with the pregnancy test pressed so tight in my fist that the plastic digs into my palm, and I keep walking until I hit the cold night air outside and my legs finally — finally — stop holding me up.
I sink to my knees on the grass.
And that's when I feel it.
Something I've never felt before. A low, hot pulse in my chest — in the part of me where my wolf lives. It doesn't feel like grief. It doesn't feel like fear.
It feels like something waking up.
Something old. Something that has been sleeping for a very long time, coiled deep inside me like a secret I didn't know I was keeping.
My wolf lifts her head in the dark.
And for the first time in my life —
She snarls.