Chapter 8

I carried the thick stack of evidence and walked into the Alpha's Study that same night.

Alpha King Damien had just finished going through his documents. He sounded tired.

"This late — is this about the Pack Dungeons?"

I laid out everything on the table in front of him. The signed statements. The jewelry Vivienne had given Vera. The Pack gate records. The witness statements. One by one.

"Alpha King. I've confirmed it. The plot against the Alpha Heir ceremony was planned entirely by Luna Vivienne from the start. My mother was only her instrument."

Damien turned through the evidence page by page. His expression darkened steadily.

"Excellent. Very well done."

He brought his fist down on the desk. The documents scattered.

"I honored her as the daughter of a founding family. I made her Luna. I gave her every privilege. And she dared to scheme against my heir. Against my Pack."

Damien drew a slow breath and gave the order to the door.

"Effective immediately, Luna Vivienne is confined to her hall. No visitors. No messages out of the Pack Grounds. Anyone who disobeys is put to death."

"Yes, Alpha King!"

Flynn took the Pack Enforcers and moved immediately toward Vivienne's Hall. The entire Pack Grounds went on edge overnight.

By the next morning, the Pack's senior council was in an uproar.

Vivienne's family, the Harrington Pack, sent message after message insisting Vivienne had been framed. Every council member with Harrington ties added their voices, demanding a full investigation, arguing the Alpha King couldn't act on the word of a woman with loose lips.

Confined to her hall, Vivienne learned her family was fighting for her. The panic she'd been feeling settled slightly.

But watching the guards thinning out around her, watching the hall doors watched more closely than ever, she finally understood: as long as Serena and the Alpha Heir were alive, she would never recover.

Cornered, she went completely over the edge.

She bribed one of the guards and smuggled a message to her last remaining loyal attendant, instructing her to poison the Alpha Heir's food. If the Alpha Heir died, Serena would have no standing, and Damien would have to consider the Harrington Pack's influence and spare her.

But she didn't know: from the moment I had seen through her scheme, every detail of the Alpha Heir's food, clothing, and care had been handled personally by Calla and Wren. Every meal was tested with poison-detection herbs before the child touched it. Two of Damien's own guards stood at the child's side at all times, and no stranger was allowed near.

Vivienne's attendant had barely mixed powdered poison into the Alpha Heir's grain porridge before guards stationed nearby tackled her to the ground. They had her hands and the evidence before she could resist.

I held the Alpha Heir, who had just woken from sleep, and sat in the main room of the Eastern Wing as they dragged the attendant in.

"Tell me who sent you."

The attendant clenched her jaw and refused.

I gave the order quietly.

"Take her to the Pack Dungeons. The head official will question her. Don't stop until she talks."

At the words Pack Dungeons, the attendant's face drained white. She dropped to the floor immediately, shaking like she couldn't stop, and told everything.

Not just that Vivienne had ordered her to poison the Alpha Heir — she confessed far more.

"Please spare me, Serena! Not just this! Two years ago, the miscarriages of those two She-Wolves — that was all Vivienne! She used a specific herb in their food to cause it! And more — the Alpha King's years of not having heirs — Vivienne has been putting a suppressant in his regular drink for years. She was afraid another She-Wolf would give him a child and take her position!"

I went still.

No wonder. The Alpha King had held power for over a decade. Three children had died in infancy. No She-Wolf in the Pack had conceived since. It hadn't been fate. It had been deliberate.

I took the attendant with me and went straight to the Alpha's Study.

Damien listened to the attendant confess everything in person. He looked at the half-empty pouch of poison on the desk. He shook so hard he vomited blood.

"That witch. I was blind."

He covered his chest and screamed toward the door.

"Immediately — Pack Enforcers surround the Harrington Pack Grounds! Search everyone! Every person who supported Vivienne, everyone who helped her scheme against the Alpha Heir, everyone who helped her harm Pack She-Wolves — arrest them all. Not one escapes!"

In one night, the territory turned upside down.

The Harrington Pack Grounds were seized. The men of the family were all put into custody. The women were stripped of status and reduced to servants. Every council member with ties to Vivienne lost their position. The Harrington Pack, which had stood solid for generations, collapsed in a single night.