POV Blake
The family crypt smells like death and disappointment—fitting, since that's basically the Bishop family brand.
I'm on my knees beside Amelia's body, her diary clutched in my shaking hands, reading her suicide note for the tenth time like the words might change.
"You were supposed to be the strong one…" I whisper to her still form. She looks peaceful, which pisses me off. "You were supposed to survive this family. Not me. I'm the spare parts, remember?"
She's wearing the dress Mom picked for her burial—not the wedding dress, thank fuck, but this simple white thing that makes her look younger. Innocent.
Like she didn't just rage-quit life and leave me holding the bag.
The crypt door slams open hard enough to wake the dead. Well, all the dead except Amelia.
My pulse spikes. I freeze for half a breath, then shove the journal behind the base of her coffin.
Dust clouds bloom around it as I step back, trying to look like I hadn’t just been confessing secrets to a corpse. Father’s shoes echo against the floor, and I swear each step drills deeper into my spine.
"Stop the melodramatics." He storms in, his Alpha authority filling the space like toxic gas. "Amelia's dead, but her mission lives on."
He grabs my wrist, yanking me to my feet. His grip is brutal, designed to bruise, to remind me exactly where I rank in the food chain. Bottom feeder, party of one.
Mother glides in behind him, her calculating eyes already three steps ahead.
"You're taking her place."
I actually laugh. It comes out hysterical, unhinged.
"Are you fucking insane? I can't— I'm not—" I gesture wildly at myself. "I'm the defective twin, remember? The genetic typo? The family shame?"
"Exactly." Father's voice shifts, goes soft in that way that makes my skin crawl. "Which is why this is perfect."
Wait, what?
He releases my wrist, circling me like I'm a particularly interesting science experiment.
"Think about it, Blake. This is your chance to prove you're not the failure we thought you were."
"Amelia couldn't face a simple marriage," Mom cuts in, her words dripping honey-coated poison. "She was given every advantage. Power, training, our complete support… and she chose weakness."
She touches my face, gentle as a snake.
"But you? You've survived twenty years of nothing. No gifts, no power, no support. And yet here you stand."
"Barely standing," I mutter, but something sick and desperate is unfurling in my chest.
"Amelia was born with gifts," Mom continues, "but you'll earn your worth through cunning and determination. If you succeed where she was too weak to even try, you'll prove you're the stronger twin."
The words hit exactly where she aims them.
Right in the gaping wound of my self-worth.
Father moves closer, manufacturing warmth like a space heater with an agenda.
"Marry Matthias Henderson. Come back with Bloodmoon pack secrets, and you'll finally be worthy of our bloodline. You'll have proved that power isn't everything—that will matters more than genetics."
"You'll lead this pack someday," Mom adds, painting impossible futures with her voice. "The powerful she-wolf you were always meant to be. Not despite your lack of shifting, but because of what you accomplished without it."
I know what this is.
Twenty years of psychological abuse has given me a PhD in manipulation tactics. They're playing me like a fucking violin, hitting every note of my desperate need for approval.
"This is bullshit," I say, but my voice lacks conviction. "You're just using me because your favorite, real daughter—"
"Our real daughter is standing right here," Father says firmly. "And she's about to prove she's worth ten of her sister."
The worst part? Some pathetic, broken part of me wants to believe him.
Wants to believe that maybe, finally, I could be something more than the family's greatest disappointment.
"People will notice—" I tried one last protest.
"Two months of grief," Mom says smoothly. "We'll say we need time to mourn before the wedding. Time enough to train you, perfect the act."
"And if I fail?"
The temperature drops ten degrees. Father’s manufactured warmth evaporates like it never existed.
"Then you'll prove what we always suspected," he says simply. "That you're nothing but a waste of our bloodline."
But Mom, ever the strategist, softens the blow: "But you won't fail. Because unlike Amelia, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. That makes you dangerous. That makes you perfect."
I look down at Amelia's peaceful face one last time.
She escaped this. Choose death over being their weapon.
But me? I'm still here, still breathing, still pathetically hoping that maybe this time I'll be enough.
"I'll do it…" I whisper.
My parents smile like predators who've just cornered their prey. Which, let's be honest, is exactly what happened.
"Excellent." Mom's already moving into planning mode. "We'll start your training immediately. Voice modulation, mannerisms, everything Amelia knew about Matthias and his pack."
"You'll be perfect," Father adds, and for one poisonous second, I let myself believe he means it.
"What about her body?" I ask, nodding toward Amelia.
"She'll be buried under your name," Mom says without missing a beat. "Blake Bishop died in a tragic accident. Amelia lives on to complete her duty."
The casual cruelty of it steals my breath. Even in death, I'm being erased.
But what else is new?
I take one last look at my sister—the strong one, the perfect one, the one who broke first, the one who loved me above all—and make a silent promise.
I'll play their game. I'll be their weapon. I'll fool the entire Bloodmoon pack and bring back their secrets.
And then, when I finally have their approval, their love, their recognition?
I'll make them choke on it.