Next, the back corridor outside the study. A mounted boar’s head fixed on the wall. Suzette’s whisper was sharp. “If she begs, ignore it. Tie her. Feed her enough to live. I want her quiet until I decide.”
Another cut. Jessica’s father, still Alpha then, stepped in laughing with his warriors. Lydia and Suzette snapped into smiles like masks. “How was the run?” Lydia asked, too bright. One more. The stair landing at night. Lydia to Suzette, hushed and quick. “Your father can’t know. He may adore you, but his heart is divided. Keep this secret. Make sure the staff keep it too. If they don’t, his fondness for you will vanish.”
Watching my own screen indict them felt like chewing glass.
I kept looking for a splice, a bad cut, any excuse to call it fake. There wasn’t one. My wolf paced, ears flat.
Now…
The sound in the hall changed.
“Monsters.”
“She’s a Luna and talks like that?”
“They caged a wolf and called it discipline.”
“Eighteen years under their roof and this is how they paid it back.”
A few wolves bristled outright. Claws pricked marble. The brass railings on the balcony rattled with the shift of weight. Suzette panicked. She grabbed my arm with both hands, tears spilling.
“Johan, please. Believe me. It isn’t what it looks like.”
I looked at the screen, then at Jessica’s back.
I had seen those marks up close, every ridge and rope of scar tissue. Healers had told me if mountain ash mixed with salt hit raw flesh, infection would have killed her without constant flushing.
That same treatment made the scars permanent.
I remembered wrapping bandages around Jessica’s back. And since Jessica never said how she got those wounds, so I thought it was from rogues.
Even I had found her inside the Halloway Pack ten years ago.
I chose that safe version because it kept my world orderly.
My fingers closed on Suzette’s wrist. Hard. “Tell me the truth. Did you do it?”
She shook her head, sobbing. “How could you even ask me that? Do you think I’m capable of something that cruel?”
I wanted to say no.
Ten years ago she gave up a soul-bone when I needed to repair a wound.
Without it, I would have died.
So I owed Suzette my life, at least a part of it.
That thought pulled me like a tide. I shifted, stepped in front of her out of habit, put myself between her and the crowd.
Then I faced Jessica.
I didn’t know what to do with the mess burning in my chest. Rage. Shame. Old vows. New facts.
The event was crumbling. Every camera was on us. Vale Pack’s name. LunaVale Pharmaceuticals. All of it could go to ash in minutes.
“You shouldn’t have come, Jessica,” I told her with a growl. “You’ve done enough damage. This is my launch and my Luna’s night. If you cannot respect your alpha, then respect your Luna. Leave. Now. Do not make me decide your punishment.”
Suzette stared at me, surprised that I spoke to Jessica like that in public. She pivoted, quick to press advantage. “You heard my mate,” she barked. “You are no longer welcome at LunaVale Pharmaceuticals. Get out.”
Jessica didn’t flinch. She soaked it in like rain on a dead field. Her eyes went distant for a breath. Whatever she saw in me died there. I felt it go.
The man I had been ten years ago, the one who wrapped wounds in silence and swore to shield her, wasn’t standing here anymore. Maybe he had been gone a long time.
I lifted a hand. “Warriors,” I called. “Escort her out.”
Before my men could move, the suited stranger spoke again without raising his voice. “Anyone lays a hand on her and the files go straight to the Lycanthrope Committee. All of them. You won’t like what comes next.”
My guards stalled and looked to me. The entire hall held its breath.
I felt my wolf rise, hot and angry.
My eyes flashed and the growl scraped my throat. “Who the hell are you to dictate terms in my territory? You come here to wreck my event, and you think you walk out whole? Or do you want to be punished with her?”
He didn’t even blink. “Just a citizen who knows your pack laws. Since you advertise truth and innovation tonight, let’s verify one more thing. Is your Luna the true Scentress of LunaSkin?”
A visiting alpha on the left gallery couldn’t hold it back. “What exactly are you implying? Are you saying Luna Suzette didn’t create the perfume?”
The man tilted his head toward me. “Only the Alpha of Vale Pack can answer that. Right, Johan?”
The room turned to stone.
Even the air seemed to wait. I knew where the cliff edge was now. If the crowd decided the scars mattered, I could still settle it quietly, pay compensation, bury it under lawyers and seals.
If they believed Suzette had lied about LunaSkin, there would be no burying anything. She would fall. My company would bleed. The alliances I built would ask questions I couldn’t afford.
I turned back to Jessica. “We’ve known each other ten years,” I said, keeping my voice even. “Don’t push this past the point of no return. You’ve made your point. I’ve heard you. Walk away now. If you go any further, you won’t like where this ends.”
Jessica’s POV
Johan’s face used to be a map I trusted.
Tonight it was all warning signs.
“I am not here to stir chaos, Alpha. I am the true Alchemist.”
The room rippled.
Wolves lifted their noses. Reporters leaned forward. I felt every stare like claws along my skin.
Suzette stepped from behind him. She jabbed a finger at me. “Shut up. You really think you can lie your way into my title? Johan knows who the Alchemist is. It is not you.”
Johan’s gaze drilled into me, and saw the fear underneath.
Fear of fallout. “Enough. Walk with me. Now.”
“Let go!”
Once, I would have melted at the thought of being claimed in public.
Tonight his grip felt like a leash. My wolf bared her teeth at the insult. She pressed at the back of my eyes, hot and reckless.
I held her down with breath and will.
But a hand caught Johan’s wrist.
The man in the black suit did not raise his voice. “She told you to release her. Try behaving like a gentleman.”
Johan hissed and let me go.
I stepped back until there was air between us.
The stranger did not release him right away, and for a heartbeat, I wondered if blood would answer.
“Name yourself,” Johan said. “Or I have you thrown out!”
“Try it,” the stranger replied. His eyes were winter blue with a quiet fire behind them, the kind that burns slow and lasts.
It was quite amusing to see two assertive wolves, but I was not here to waste the opening.
So I lifted my palm.
The moon mirrorstone bloomed into being like a drop of light. It fell to the marble with a bright click. A beam spread and painted the far wall with a moving memory.
A younger me smiled in the glow of Johan’s office windows.
In the scene, I handed him an old tablet with lines of formula scrawled in my own hand.
“Johan,” the recorded me said. “This is the LunaSkin line I built for you. It will lock your position at LunaVale. Read the ratios.”
He had pulled me into a hug then. Seeing it on the wall made my ribs ache. “Thank you,” his past voice answered. “This will take us higher.”
I watched my own laugh, too bright, too hopeful. “Can we call it LunaSkin? You loved that name when we were brainstorming. It fits.”
“LunaSkin,” he echoed in the video. “It is yours. One day the world will know it. When that day comes, I will give you a wedding no one can ignore. Moon drums, bonfires, a howl chorus under the full moon. All of it.”
In the projection, his eyes looked like devotion. I had believed them.
I had arranged my life around that belief like furniture in a room that never changed.
The footage shifted.
My lab at LunaVale filled the screen. Beakers, copper stills, cold coils running mist. I was a ghost moving through it all with my hair tied high and my hands stained with oils.
I worked from scent to structure. Night orchid absolute for the top, captured at the precise hour it opens.
Frost pine resin from the northern slopes for green bite.
A whisper of star amber to anchor heat.
Silver sage distilled under crescent moon for clarity.
Lunar salt in micro crystals to bind the notes, safe and clean, tempered by white tea to soothe the skin.
I signed each trial with a coded mark only I used.
Clip after clip showed Johan authorizing my batches, stamping the approvals, forwarding my specs to production. The camera caught his signature passing over my formulas more times than I could count.
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