Chapter 9
The healers worked for five long hours in the Moonlit Infirmary,
When they emerged, Vivian all but leapt forward, her eyes wild.
“well? Tell me! is that cripple finally dead?”
The healer froze. In all his years serving the packs, he had never heard such words from a mother’s mouth.
ii
“He lives,” he answered. “But the wolf–blood in his mind is shattered. He will never rise, never shift. He will need care for the rest of his life.”
Vivian’s face twisted. For a heartbeat she looked almost relieved, but when she realized Ethan had survived, her fury returned tenfold. She glared at the healer as though he had betrayed her by saving him.
By dawn, the truth was everywhere.
Nathan’s recordings spread like wildfire through the Pack Net. Within a single day his following grew to over a hundred thousand. His clips of Vivian’s beatings, her curses, her shrieks–they trended across both the human internet and the wolves‘ private channels, pinned to the top of the feeds for three straight days.
The comments seethed with rage:
“She’s no mother, she’s a monster.”
“This isn’t discipline. It’s attempted slaughter of her own pups.”
“If the Wardens won’t act, the pack will. Track them. Expose them.
**1 know where Edward works. Men like him should be gelded and cast out
I scrolled lazily through the feed, the comers of my mouth curling.
Two days later, the fury spilled into the streets. A crowd cornered Edward outside his pack office. Fists rained down until blood covered his face. His Alpha employer, humiliated before the cameras, declared his expulsion on the spot.
A disgraced wolf, dismissed from his post, marked with shame he fled back to his ancestral den.
Across the lane, for once, silence.
A few nights later, as I left for work masked and hooded, I crossed paths with Vivian. Wide–brimmed hat, dack veil, eyes darting with paranoia. She scurried down the street like prey.
I followed.
She slipped into a cosmetic surgery clinic–the very one where I worked.
From the monitors, I watched her consultation unfold.
“I want a new face,” she hissed. “Change me so no wolf will ever recognize me again.”
It was no surprise. Without disguise she couldn’t even buy food. At taverns, wolves dumped broth on her. At the market, vendors pelted her with rotten eggs. Strangers left animal carcasses and dung at her door.
She was unraveling-
“Miss, such a procedure requires-“the consultant began, but her comm rang, and she straightened at the voice on the other end.
“Yes, Director… understood.”
The order had come from me. I wanted to see just how far Vivian would fall
The plan was drawn, the cost laid bare.
Chapter
“Two hundred and eighty thousand.”
Vivian’s cry split the room. “What?”
“Of course, if you only wished for minor adjustments, a single eye procedure would
“No!” she snapped. “I need a whole new face. I must become someone else.”
Her desperation reeked through the walls.
“Can you arrange installments? A loan?”
The consultant’s silence was answer enough.
I smiled in the shadows.
By the time I returned home, a loan card–stamped with a red wolf sigil of the pack’s shadow–brokers–was already waiting in my pocket.
Vivian was running from her shame. I would make sure she ran straight into her own ruin.
