Chapter 5

When I came to, I was still on the floor, curled in a corner like a trash bag.

The room door was shut tight. Two wolf guards stood outside.

They were guarding me.

Guarding “the suspect” who’d tried to poison Luna.

Outside, low voices drifted in—Abbott, and another calm, controlled voice. It sounded like the pack’s investigator, Beta Basil, famous for his strict devotion to law.

“…Abbott, even if the herb was in her room, it doesn’t fully prove she meant to harm Roberta.” Basil’s voice carried disapproval. “She’s badly hurt herself. How would she obtain Moon-Sacrifice Herb? It doesn’t add up.”

“The herb is proof.” Abbott snapped, irritated at having his authority questioned. “She knew Roberta was ‘pregnant’! She’s mad with jealousy! I know her too well!”

I closed my eyes. My nails dug into my palm.

“For years—her self-important following, her careful attempts to get close… she’s had a pathetic obsession with me for a long time. Someone who won’t stop until she gets what she wants—what’s strange about her doing something like this?”

Every word was an ice-dipped needle, stabbing into the softest place in me—into what I’d once cherished most.

So all my secret joy, my clumsy trying-to-please, my all-in devotion—were only, to him, a “pathetic obsession,” a “won’t stop until she gets what she wants.”

He stomped every bit of my sincerity into mud, then labeled it the motive of a crime.

Basil seemed to sigh, lowering his voice, still even.

“I maintain that condemning her on this basis is overly emotional.”

Silence outside for a moment.

Then Abbott spoke again, lower now, with the tone of someone confirming something to himself.

“…Maybe, Basil. Maybe I am being emotional.”

He paused. “Because… I think I might truly be in love with Roberta.”

My breathing stopped.

“Since the engagement, her scent…” His tone grew certain. “It makes me want to move closer—to protect her.”

“You know this: a wolf protects the one he loves. It’s instinct carved into the bones.”

Protect. Love. Instinct.

Coming from his mouth, those words were foreign—describing another woman.

“Even though she insists she’s fine and refuses special checks, giving resources to other injured…”

Abbott’s voice even carried a faint, almost gentle exasperation. “I’ve started hoping we could have a child that belongs to us.”

A child.

His child with Roberta.

The false chip they meant to use to force me away—now, when it came out of his mouth, it carried a real expectation he didn’t even fully notice himself.

Maybe when you repeat a lie a thousand times, even the liar begins to believe it. Or maybe he’d already poured real feeling into the fake script.

And I was only an obstacle to be erased. A prop that had gone in the way.

Basil didn’t argue again. Perhaps he understood: once an Alpha’s heart tilts completely, logic is useless.

Footsteps receded.

The room fell dead silent. Only my heartbeat remained, heavy and slow in the emptiness.

I fumbled for the old phone tucked in the bedside cabinet. The cold light of the screen lit my wrecked face.

【The plan has changed. I’m hurt.】

The reply came almost instantly.

【How bad? How are you now?】

My mother had been waiting.

I stared at her words. Abbott’s icy eyes flashed before me—the moment his hands closed around my throat; the softening warmth in his voice when he spoke of Roberta; the “won’t stop until she gets what she wants” he’d stamped on me like a verdict.

My finger hovered over the glass.

Then, slowly, letter by letter, I typed:

【Better than I’ve ever been.】

Sent.

Almost at once, the door opened. A guard stepped in.

He looked down at me, still slumped on the floor, expression blank, and announced coldly:

“Savvy. On suspicion of using forbidden toxic herbs to harm the future Luna and heir, by Alpha’s order, you will be formally expelled from the territory tomorrow—exiled to the border stone hut. Without permission, you will never return.”

He paused. “Your personal belongings have already been packed and sent to the hut.”

I listened, calm. I didn’t even look at him. I only nodded to show I’d heard.

Better than I’ve ever been.

Yes. When disillusion becomes reality, when pain reaches its limit, when the last tether is severed without mercy—

After your heart dies, what’s left is a hollow kind of ease.