CHAPTER 2: THE BASTARD HIT ME

BRIENNA’S POV “Ah… Alpha… deeper…” The wet, vulgar sound of flesh slapping against flesh bled through the thin walls of the Willowcrest pack house all night long. Listening to your husband knot his secretary in your own matrimonial bed was a venomous kind of torture. It tasted like poison and demanded blood. My wolf, Daiya, clawed frantically at the inside. Though she was useless compared to most—too weak to force a full shift, too small to offer any real physical protection—she had never failed to share her absolute, visceral distaste for Adam. She swore he wasn’t our true mate, though Adam claimed we were. Suffocating in the cramped guest room, I stepped out into the dark hallway to suppress the murderous instinct boiling in my veins. Tonight was Adam’s coronation. I wore the Luna’s crown. I refused to let a scheming concubine make me lose face. Down the eastern staircase, two giddy voices drifted up from the landing. “You two were so loud. She absolutely heard you,” Mara, Adam’s new assistant, gossiped. Fiora let out a mocking laugh. “Oh, who cares? What can a barren hen like her do? You saw her face yesterday. Adam finds her utterly repulsive, but she still stands there swallowing his lies like a dim-witted, desperate pet.” “The Alpha does have a wicked tongue,” Mara giggled. “Oh, I know exactly what that tongue can do,” Fiora purred. “He spent an hour between my thighs last night, begging to give me his knot. He is starving for a real woman. Unlike that dried-up, useless husk he is forced to call a wife.” “Shameless,” I stated, stepping out of the shadows. My voice cut clean through both of them. Mara turned paler than a corpse, but Fiora held her ground with absolute arrogance. She waved a dismissive hand. “Leave us, Mara.” Mara scurried down the stairs, leaving me alone with the parasite destroying my life. Fiora shed her weeping, innocent mask completely. Long gone was the damsel in distress. She looked me up and down with vicious contempt. “Ah. I see the snake has finally shed its skin,” I observed with a light, pitying smile. “How bold. But a swollen belly gives you zero authority to forget your place, Fiora. I am still your Luna. Bark my name again, and I will personally drag you out into the freezing rain by your scalp.” Fiora tilted her head and laughed right in my face. “It’s genuinely embarrassing how little self-awareness you have, Bree. Clinging to that Luna crown when the entire pack is laughing at you. Adam told me your weak little wolf is useless for his heirs. He said he has to hold his breath just to stomach touching you. But don’t worry… I’ve been keeping him very, very warm. I’ll make sure he leaves you a nice cardboard box when he finally throws you out.” The slap was blinding retribution. Crack! My palm struck her cheek with the explosive force of a whip, snapping Fiora’s head to the side. I froze, the sting in my palm instantly replaced by a wave of cold horror. What had I done? I had no excuse to strike a pregnant woman, no matter what she said. The instinct to apologise rushed to my lips. But Fiora remained perfectly calm. She slowly turned her head back to face me. Her eyes were the most vicious things I had ever seen. For a split second, they were murderously alive—feral and dark in a way that absolutely did not belong to a low-ranking Omega. She was something far worse. Then her lips curved. She smiled at me. A triumphant, blood-chilling smile. In a blink, Fiora threw her own body backwards off the top of the marble staircase. My stomach dropped. Fiora tumbled down the jagged stone steps in a series of bone-crunching thuds. Hitting the bottom landing, she paused for one single heartbeat, then unleashed a bloodcurdling scream. “HELP! OH GODDESS, SAVE ME! THE LUNA HAS GONE MAD! SHE IS MURDERING MY BABY!” Doors flew open. Pack members flooded the hallway, gasping at the sight of Fiora sprawled on the floor, sobbing hysterically and clutching her stomach. Oh, that bloody snake! The crowd parted as Adam stormed through. He saw Fiora weeping at the bottom of the stairs, then locked eyes with me at the top. He looked at me not as a husband looking at his wife, but as an avenging knight looking at a sworn enemy. Adam blurred up the stairs. His fist slammed into my jaw with brutal force. My body flew backwards, cracking against the sharp marble edges of the staircase on the way down. My ribs splintered on the bottom landing. I gasped for air, choking on my own blood, but Adam was already towering over me. He drove his heavy combat boot directly into my stomach. “Jealous, barren b***h!” Adam roared, delivering another kick to my spine. “Adam, wait!” I choked out, spitting blood onto the tiles. “I didn’t push her! She threw herself—” “Shut up!” he bellowed, his boot connecting with my ribs. “You vicious trash! You dare harm the mother of my heir?!” I curled into a tight ball on the floor, throwing my arms over my head to survive the Alpha’s wrath as the brutal kicks continued to rain down on me. “Adam… I am bleeding,” Fiora whimpered, executing the fragile victim act flawlessly. “Oh Goddess… my belly hurts so much…” Adam halted his assault instantly. He dropped to his knees, scooping Fiora into his protective embrace. Fiora buried her face in his chest, but first, she peeked over his shoulder, shooting me one final smirk. He carried her toward the pack clinic, abandoning his injured wife in a pool of her own blood. Dead silence filled the hallway. Dozens of pack members remained glued to the walls, watching their Luna bleed. Every single one of them chose the concubine. Something inside my chest finally shattered. Daiya howled in pure agony, and though my wolf was weak, she pushed her meagre energy outward, desperately trying to dull the throbbing of my injuries. But the bruised flesh was nothing compared to the catastrophic ruin in my heart. In that moment of absolute abandonment, my heart turned to dead ashes. The Luna of Willowcrest ceased to exist. The foolish, loyal wife died on that cold marble floor. I dragged my broken body up. My cheek throbbed, the swelling already hot and purple. I grabbed the silver Luna’s tiara on my head and hurled it onto the blood-stained tiles. I stumbled toward the front doors. A maid intercepted me, her eyes wide with panic. “Luna, stop! The Alpha’s coronation feast begins in a few hours! You hold the vendor contracts, the security details, the caterer passwords—the entire banquet will collapse into a laughingstock without you!” I wiped the blood from my mouth and glared into her terrified eyes. “Tell the Alpha he can feed his guests dirt. I quit.” I shoved past her, marching straight out into the freezing storm. The torrential rain soaked my clothes, stinging the bruise blooming across my face. I snatched my keys from the valet and threw myself into the driver’s seat. Slamming my foot on the gas, I tore out of the estate. I drove blind into the deluge, crying, bleeding, and suffocating on my own raging agony. ‘The Luna has gone mad!’ ‘Touching you sickens him.’ ‘You jealous, barren b***h!’ He hit me. Adam Rivera actually dared to strike me. This so-called Alpha was nothing but a fumbling i***t when I found him. I was the one who taught him how to rule. I devoured military strategies to teach him how to win his wars, spoon-fed him pack history so he wouldn’t look like a fool before his peers, and personally knotted the very silk ties around his neck. And my reward for playing the virtuous, loyal wife? A cold guestroom. A shattered jaw. My own blood on the marble. Fine. If he wishes to embrace a venomous snake, let him choke on her poison. A raw, agonising scream ripped from my throat. “DAMN YOU, ADAM!” CRASH! The steering wheel jerked in my grip. Metal crunched and glass exploded across the dashboard as the airbags deployed. My car slammed into a wall of parked steel and came to a dead halt. I sat there gasping for breath as thick smoke poured from the hood. I pushed my dented door open and stumbled out into the pouring rain, clutching my ribs. That is when I saw what I had hit. Pinned under the tyres of my ruined car were three custom Harleys, pulverised into scrap metal. Oh, no. No, no, no. Fucking great. Just brilliant. Lose your mate, lose your home, and now get violently murdered by whoever owns these. What an absolutely spectacular way to end the night. I dragged a shaking hand through my wet hair, looking up past the wreckage. Towering wrought-iron compound gates loomed in front of me, bearing an insignia I did not recognize. The gates groaned open. My wolf went completely, terrifyingly still. Three men strode out into the rain. They moved with the unhurried dominance of apex predators stalking fresh prey. I stood bleeding, destitute, and alone in the middle of nowhere. Watching the three lethal giants emerge from the dark, I realised my night was about to get infinitely worse.