When Aria Sterling woke, the first thing she heard was the sound of dripping.

It was close—faint, steady drops striking against a metal tray.

She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt impossibly heavy. Sharp, stabbing pain ripped through her abdomen, tearing the breath straight from her lungs. Instinctively, she reached down toward her swollen belly, only to find her wrists strapped down tight.

"Don't move."

Delilah Winters' voice drifted from beside the bed.

Aria forced her eyes open. Above her stretched a sterile white ceiling, and standing at her bedside was Delilah. She was dressed in an elegant, pale gown, her hair swept up into an intricate style. Resting against the hollow of her throat was the silver pendant marking the pack's Luna.

That pendant should have belonged to Aria.

Until today, everyone had believed it would.

"Delilah..." Aria's throat burned with dryness. "Why am I here?"

Delilah offered no reply. She glanced down at the instruments neatly arranged on the metal tray, a flicker of impatience crossing her face.

A cold dread settled in Aria's chest.

She was days away from her due date, but on her way home the previous night, someone had ambushed her. When consciousness finally returned, she was here.

"Where is my baby?" Aria asked.

Delilah finally turned her gaze toward her, the corner of her lips curving into a thin smirk.

"You're still in the mood to ask about the child?"

A wave of violent cramping seized Aria's stomach. She drew a shallow, ragged breath, desperate to summon her wolf spirit, but her veins felt flooded with ice water. Shivers racked her entire body. Far from answering her call, her wolf spirit shrank away, trembling and frail in the deepest corners of her consciousness.

"I want to see Kieran Price," Aria said.

In this pack, only Kieran held the authority to stop this procedure. She needed the Alpha who could command these doctors to stand down.

Delilah smoothed down the lace at her cuffs.

"Kieran won't see you."

"Why?"

"Because he already knows what you've done."

Aria's heart contracted painfully.

She knew exactly what Delilah meant. For months, Delilah had been whispering poison into Kieran's ear—claiming Aria had been sneaking around with wolves from other packs, that she carried unfamiliar scents, that the child inside her wasn't Kieran's at all.

Aria had explained herself countless times.

She had never betrayed Kieran. She had never let another man touch her. Yet Kieran had never truly believed her.

"She says you betrayed me."

Kieran's voice cut through the room from the doorway.

Aria turned her head and saw him step inside.

His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot, and his dark coat still clung with damp rain. Yet he made no move to come to her bedside. Instead, he stood several paces away, staring down at her as if examining a criminal on trial.

Aria wanted to laugh, but she had no strength left.

"And you believe her?"

Kieran's throat tightened. He parted his lips to speak, but Delilah cut in before he could.

"I didn't force him to believe anything. The proof is right here."

She picked up a phone from the side table and angled the screen toward Kieran. The display showed several photographs—Aria standing exceptionally close to a man. The images were blurry, but staged with enough ambiguity to invite the worst conclusions.

Aria recognized him immediately.

He was a physician she had met while attending medical training in a neighboring pack. In the photos, he had merely been helping her carry heavy reference binders, yet Delilah had twisted the stolen snapshots into proof of an illicit affair.

"Those photos don't prove anything," Aria said, fixing her gaze on Kieran. "You know where that was. You know why I was there."

"Then why didn't you tell me?"

Kieran finally took a few steps closer. His voice dropped low, thick with both fury and unease.

"I did tell you," Aria said. "You just refused to listen."

"You left the pack territory constantly during your pregnancy."

"Because your mother ordered me to attend that medical training!"

"That man touched you."

"He was helping me carry files!"

Aria's voice broke on a shudder of pain. Even now, a sliver of desperate hope lingered in her chest. She wanted him to trust her, just this once, before their child entered the world.

Yet Kieran's eyes held nothing but doubt.

"You said you loved me," Kieran said.

"I do love you."

"Then why was I the last to know?"

Aria stared at him, stunned into silence.

In that instant, she finally understood. Kieran didn't care about the truth. He only wanted to convince himself that everything was Aria's fault. As long as he pinned the blame on her, he would never have to confront his own cowardice.

"Because you never bothered to ask me," Aria said quietly. "You only asked Delilah, and you took her word for everything."

Delilah's eyes turned sharp and cold.

"Enough," she told the doctor. "Begin."

Aria began thrashing against her restraints.

"What are you doing?"

The doctor offered no answer. He simply reached for the silver instruments on the tray.

A glint of polished silver caught her eye, and the grim reality finally crashed over her. This was no ordinary medical ward. The binding cuffs on her wrists, the faint hum of suppressed magic in the air, and Kieran's silent compliance—it had all been orchestrated.

"Kieran!" she screamed with every ounce of strength she had left. "Tell them to stop!"

Kieran's expression shattered in an instant.

"Delilah, you said this was only to verify the child's bloodline, that she wouldn't be harmed. You never said anything about silver blades!"

Delilah frowned, stepping closer to him. "Don't fall for her act. She's only trying to soften your heart! If she didn't betray you, what is she so afraid of?"

The doctor stepped up to the edge of the bed. The scent of silver drifted into Aria's nostrils, and her internal wolf spirit let out an agonizing, terrified shriek. Her vision blurred at the edges, yet her white-knuckled fingers still clawed desperately at the sheets.

"Kieran... please."

It was the last time she would ever plead with him.

Not for his love, but for her life.

Kieran stared down at her, his foot shifting forward half a step. But Delilah stepped smoothly between him and the bed.

"If you go to her now, you're walking straight into her trap. Do you really want to raise another man's bastard and let it call you father?"

Kieran froze.

Those words struck straight through his weakest vulnerability.

He terrified himself with the thought of being played for a fool, of being an Alpha whose mate made a mockery of him while he remained blind in the dark.

And so, he stayed where he was.

The silver blade came down.

Agony instantly consumed every shred of her consciousness. Aria opened her mouth, but only broken, ragged gasps tore past her lips. She felt the searing rip through her flesh, felt the life violently torn from within her, and felt her wolf spirit withering beneath the suffocating sting of silver poison.

Faintly, she heard Delilah's voice: "Give me the child."

Then, a fragile, muffled cry echoed in the room.

It lasted only a few seconds.

Aria couldn't see the infant's face. All she caught was a blurred glimpse of a tiny form wrapped in bloodstained cloth.

Kieran snapped his head up.

His eyes locked onto the baby in the doctor's arms.

"Wait."

The doctor froze.

The fury on Kieran's face vanished, instantly replaced by sheer horror. The scent radiating from the newborn washed over him—a bloodline carrying his exact, unmistakable scent.

"That's my child."

Delilah's face drained of color.

"What did you say?"

"That's my child," Kieran repeated, his voice beginning to tremble violently. "You told me she betrayed me. You said this child wasn't mine."

Delilah took an involuntary step back.

"I... I must have misjudged..."

"Misjudged?"

Kieran's aura erupted without warning, the sudden pressure rattling the glass windows throughout the room. The doctor collapsed to his knees, the infant slipping from his grip before an attendant lunged forward to catch the child.

"You lied to me."

Delilah opened her mouth to explain, but Kieran seemed completely deaf to her voice. He stumbled blindly toward the bedside, staring down at Aria's pale, bloodless face.

"I didn't know," he stammered. "Aria, I swear I didn't know. I was blinded by her lies..."

Aria looked up at him.

Once, she had believed that as long as Kieran chose to trust her, she could endure any hardship. But now, she understood that some wounds could never be erased by a hollow excuse of ignorance.

"You knew," she whispered, her voice barely carrying across the air. "You simply chose not to believe me."

Kieran reached out, his hand trembling as if to touch her, but he froze in midair.

Aria's breath grew lighter and fainter. She could feel her spirit slipping away from her body. As the physical pain receded into numbness, an uncanny clarity washed over her mind.

"If there is a next time..." she said, her dying gaze fixed on his eyes, "I will never love you again."

Kieran shook his head frantically.

"There won't be a next time. You aren't going to die! Please, Aria, don't leave me!"

Yet he could not hold her back.

In her final glance, Aria saw only Kieran on his knees, clutching the child's bundle, and Delilah frozen in pale panic.

Silver moonlight filtered through the high window as her consciousness sank into absolute darkness.

This time, she forgave no one.

The Wolf’s Shifted Fate — Chapter 9 Raven Awakens

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