Through tear-blurred vision and blinded with bright light, I saw them: Celeste and Jessica in matching silk nightgowns.
"Get away from her!" Celeste's shriek could have shattered glass. She launched herself at me, nails tearing four perfect lines down my face. "You monster! First Ava, now Mother?!"
Her fists found my ribs, my shoulders, my spine. Each blow is calculated for maximum damage.
"Why, sister? WHY? What did she ever do but love you?"
"I didn't…" Blood from the scratches mixed with tears, copper and salt flooding my mouth.
"Stop fighting her, Harper!" Jessica positioned herself perfectly at the garden entrance, voice carrying across the grounds. "Just like you were fighting with Elena earlier!"
"That's a lie!"
Weston materialized from shadow, his hands pulling Celeste against his chest where she collapsed into his arms. "Even that Mother was ashamed of you, Harper, I never thought... I never thought you'd actually kill her!"
"She had something in her hands!" Jessica's finger stabbed through moonlight. "I saw Harper coming from the house entrance—she was carrying something!"
Pack members flooded the garden on screams and fighting like wolves scenting blood.
They formed a circle around me where I knelt in my mother's corpse, face shredded by Celeste's attack, hands painted crimson. Looking exactly like the deranged killer they'd been primed to see.
"Dear Goddess…" Gamma James breathed. "She actually did it."
"Her own mother…" Patricia whispered loud enough for everyone to hear. "After her own daughter."
"Confine her until judgment." Weston's Alpha command vibrated with barely contained rage. "No one speaks to her. No one helps her."
Two enforcers grabbed my arms, hauling me up. Celeste lifted her tear-streaked face from Weston's chest, voice pitched to carry across the gathered crowd.
They dragged me to the basement, my knees scraping concrete steps, leaving blood trails like breadcrumbs. The metal door slammed with finality, plunging me into absolute darkness.
No water. No food. No light. Still wearing my mother's blood like a second skin that cracked when I moved.
Hours crawled past while doubt crept in like poison through veins.
Maybe they're right.
Every failure Weston had catalogued played on repeat. Useless Harper. Stupid Harper. "Why can't you just try harder?"
Ava would be alive if I'd watched her better.
The image of her floating in the lake, a yellow dress spreading like petals, haunted the darkness.
Mother would be alive if I'd been the daughter she wanted.
Her disappointment at every pack gathering, every whispered "Why can't you be more like Celeste?"
The world would be cleaner without me.
By dawn, I was hollow. Completely broken. When the door crashed open, sunlight hit like violence. Rough hands hauled me up the stairs, my legs refusing to hold weight.
They dragged me before the assembled pack—hundreds of faces twisted with rage, voices rising in waves of condemnation. The chains they'd wrapped around me cut into already-raw wrists.
I swayed, vision swimming, while the crowd bayed for blood like animals.
"Harper Evernight-Hayes stands accused!" Weston's voice boomed across the courtyard, each word a nail in my coffin. "First, the negligent death of our Alpha heir, three-year-old Ava Hayes. Second, the rage-fueled murder of Beta’s mate Elena Evernight, whose throat was torn out in cold blood by her firstborn daughter."
The crowd roared approval. Someone threw a rock that caught my shoulder.
"By pack law, the sentence for such crimes is death." Weston paused, savoring the moment like wine. "Celeste Evernight, who has lost both her beloved niece and her mother to her sister's madness, has requested the right to deliver justice herself."
The pack wept for my sister's burden as she approached with measured steps, each one perfectly choreographed.
She wore white again and the morning sun turned her into something holy while I knelt filthy and condemned. She positioned the blade against my throat with trembling hands that only I could see were rock-steady.
The metal was so cold as she leaned close enough that her breath warmed my ear.
"Finally." The whisper carried decades of concentrated hatred. "I've wanted this since we were children."
What? My mind reeled, but my body remained frozen.
Her grip on the blade never wavered as she continued, lips barely moving, voice dropping its honey coating entirely.
"You should know the truth before you die. You should know that every single moment of misery in your pathetic life—that was me."
Her breath hitched with fake tears even as her words dripped poison.
"Remember when you were thirteen and Father beat you for stealing my necklace? I put it under your pillow. When later the entire pack shunned you for spreading lies about the Gamma's son? I started those rumors, then blamed you."
My heart stuttered against ribs that suddenly felt too small. No. That's not—
"Every birthday party you weren't invited to, every friend who suddenly turned cold, every whispered conversation that stopped when you entered a room—I orchestrated it all."
Her voice turned almost conversational, as if discussing the weather.
"The drugs in your drinks at pack gatherings that made you seem drunk and unstable. The missing items that would appear in your room. Remember when you got that scholarship and it was mysteriously revoked? One forged email about your 'behavior patterns' was all it took."
Memories reshuffled like cards, each one taking on new, horrible meaning.
The isolation. The hatred. The constant feeling that I was nothing.
"Even Weston." She laughed softly. "Goddess, he was so easy to turn against you. A few tears about your 'cruelty,' some staged scenes where you seemed unhinged. That bruise on little Ava's arm that made him look at you with such disgust? I pinched her until she screamed bloody murder, then told him you did it."
Ava. My daughter's name on her lips made me want to vomit.
"And it was actually me he was fucking while your brat drowned, you know. And while he was inside me, I was thinking about her little face going under the water."
Her tone remained light, almost amused.
"I wish I'd been there myself instead of paying that human to hold her under. Twenty thousand dollars to drown a toddler—highway robbery, really. I wanted to watch those little eyes go dark myself."
Bile rose, burning my throat where the blade pressed harder.
"Mother figured it out yesterday. Stupid bitch threatened to tell Father. So she had to go. You showing up in the garden was just perfect timing."
The crowd couldn't hear her confession, couldn't see the monster wearing angel's clothing. They only saw their broken Harper—the child killer, the mother slayer, the family disgrace.
"You were never supposed to have anything. Not love, not respect, not even that Alpha's bastard growing inside you. Everything was always meant to be mine. And the best part? You'll die knowing no one will ever believe the truth. I'll name our firstborn Weston Ava in your honor."
She pulled back, tears streaming perfectly down her face as she raised the blade high for the crowd to witness.
"For my mother!" she cried to the crowd. "For little Ava!"
The pack's approval thundered as silver bit into my throat. Hot blood poured down my chest, my vision fracturing into shards of light and darkness. Celeste's triumphant smile filled my fading sight—the last truth I'd ever seen.
Then darkness devoured me whole. Nothing. Absolute silence.
Death was supposed to be—
I gasped awake. Air flooded my lungs—sweet, impossible, wrong. My eyes flew open to soft morning light filtering through curtains I knew.
Curtains that shouldn't exist. Curtains from a life already lived.
My hand flew to my throat. Smooth. Uncut. Whole.
The phone on my nightstand buzzed with a notification, its screen blazing the impossible: May 2nd, 2021. 7:23 AM
My blood turned to ice. Then fire. Then something else entirely.
Four years ago.