Chapter 23 - Not Your Mistress. Alpha.

I passed him and Aunt Rose, pulled the OR doors with my shoulder, and gave my final order at every medical staff and pack doctor at sight.

“Keep everyone away from this room. If anyone interrupts my work, you deal with them.”

Inside the OR, I laid Jessica on the table, scorched and barely recognizable.

This was going to be brutal. Major trauma. Burns this deep meant grafts later, maybe months of reconstruction.

But right now none of that mattered. Keeping her alive was the only thing on the list.

I fired up the diagnostic equipment, but then a cough ripped through my chest.

A mouthful of blood hit the floor before I could stop it.

My knees buckled. I dropped down hard, gripping the edge of the table while the world spun.

Every wound on my body lit up like someone poured gasoline on them and struck a match. Blood seeping through every damn stitch.

I glanced down at the spreading pool under me and let out a bitter laugh.

Under the bright surgical lights, the red mole at the corner of my lips glowed. People used to call it a curse mark. Tonight it felt like a damn prophecy.

“Jessica,” I growled, licking the blood off my lip, my voice low and dark. “If I’d known you’d get under my skin like this, I would’ve let Johan die sweetly, even you begged.”

I leaned in, so close she could feel the heat of my breath against her ear.

“And now? I’m betting everything on you. So listen good, baby- if you die on me, I’ll storm the afterlife, tear the gates off their hinges, and drag your stubborn soul back into my arms. Do you hear me? Even death doesn’t get to take you from me.”

No sign of response form her.

I rose to my feet slow, and my eyes swept over her burned, raw scalp.

“Damn, sweetheart, you look like hell chewed you up and spit you back out. Still, I’ve never been into perfect.”

Opening a drawer, I grabbed a small unlabeled vial. One pill. My own formula. Something that pulled people back from the edge when everything else failed. I pressed it past her lips and forced her throat to swallow.

“If you have one breath left, this will drag you back,” I said. “If you have any hate left, any revenge left, then do not you dare give up now.”

Her finger twitched.

Barely a movement, but enough to make my chest loosen for the first time tonight. I smiled.

“If you survive this, you’ll be mine to protect now. That’s not a deal. That’s fate. Anyone who dares lay a finger on you will have to go through me-Alpha, Elder, or gods be damned.”

A single tear slid from the corner of her eye. The heart monitor spiked.

That was all I needed.

She wanted to live.

So I would make damn sure she did.

But I was running on fumes. My stamina was shot. My body was giving out.

My gaze drifted to a bottle on the shelf. It was my latest stimulant, the kind that sharpened focus and pumped strength into the body within minutes. The catch was the brutal side effects, and on someone this wrecked, it could tear me apart.

I hesitated for one breath.

Then I looked at her.

Decision made.

I ripped open my blood-soaked shirt, reveling the long scar on my chest.

“If I fail to save you, I will carve your ashes into this scar and hunt them down with my own hands.”

I grabbed the stimulant, swallowed it in one go.

The second it hit, my veins lit like someone wired me to lightning. Pain surged, but I rode it like a high.

No more waiting.

I grabbed my custom scalpel and began the operation.

Time disappeared. My hands moved like second nature. Precise. Fast. Ruthless.

Then she whispered a name.

“J-Johan…”

My hand trembled. The scalpel veered. For a split second it aimed straight for her heart, but I caught the blade between my fingers.

After everything I have done? After dragging her out of hell with my own damn hands, she still whisper that bastard’s name?

It wasn’t just a knife in my chest. It was a whole damn silver stake to the gut.

My hand lifted, almost going for her throat.

But I slammed it back into place.

“You owe me one hell of an explanation when you wake up, woman.”

Growling under my breath, I forced my mind back into the surgery.

Six damn hours passed when I finally stepped out of the OR.

Dad and Aunt Rose rushed toward me.

“Son!””

My vision warped. My limbs felt heavy. I staggered. Dad caught me before I hit the ground.

“Initiate Level One security,” I ordered to my Beta, who had rushed in with the others. “Protect her life at all costs. If I do not wake up, you follow her lead from here on out.”

I finally let myself drop.

But even as the darkness closed in, I still heard Aunt Rose shouting for the pack doctors.

And the last thing on my mind before everything slipped away was Jessica.

Jessica’s POV

Everything hurt. Like my bones had been cooked from the inside.

There were whispers too. It all blended together into noise that made my skull throb.

Where am I?

I could not pick out the scents clearly through the burned mess of my nose, but I knew it was not Vale Pack.

This place smelled sharper.

Panic curled weakly in my chest.

What happened to me?

The question barely formed before memories started to crawl back in pieces.

I did not remember getting out. I remembered thinking this is it. This is how I die. Like trash set on fire and left to burn.

So why am I still here?

A voice slipped through the haze, deep and rough, right against my ear.

‘If you die on me, I will storm the afterlife and drag your stubborn soul back.’

Who said that?

Think, Jessica. Start from the beginning.

I used to believe the Moon Goddess was fair.

That if you behaved, if you were kind, if you followed the rules, you would be rewarded.

That was how my father raised me. Say please. Say thank you. Keep your head down. Respect the pack. Respect your future Alpha. Respect your Luna. Respect everyone.

I grew up polite. Quiet. Careful. A good little Alpha’s girl holding her textbooks and bowing her head.

Even when I had found out he already had another daughter, I did not put any hate on him. I did not know how to blame him. I just tried to accept it and be the good girl he raised.

They smiled at him. They smiled at everyone else.

To me, they showed teeth.

The first time Suzette hit me, I thought it was an accident. She called it clumsiness. I believed her. The second time, I made an excuse for her. The third time, I knew exactly what it was.

She liked to hurt me where no one could see. Ribs. Stomach. Scalp, wrapped in her fingers while she whispered in my ear. You are nothing. I am the one who deserves everything. You are just the extra.

When Father died, there was no reason for her to hide it anymore.

The beatings got worse. The games got darker. Salt water in wounds. Silver laced into my clothes.

Until they moved me in the cage in the basement.

My stepmother turned her face away every time. Sometimes she smiled.

I used to think I would die in that house.

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