His Defiant Omega: The Cursed King's Second Chance

Alyssa POV:

I held my three-year-old daughter Hope against my chest, so tight I thought my arms would break. Her small body shook, pressed with me behind the trunk of an oak so wide two men couldn't wrap it.

The forest reeked of Rogue wolves. Their eyes, dozens of them, glowed gold in the twilight like a ring of fire closing in.

"Mommy," Hope whispered, her golden curls matted with mud, "is Daddy coming to save us?"

Darrion. My fiancé. The Alpha of the Lott Pack. A spark of warmth caught in the ice of my chest.

"He'll come," I told her, and I believed it with every scarred inch of my heart. "Daddy always comes."

Footsteps. Darrion's tall frame broke through the ring of Rogues. The relief hit me so hard I almost sobbed.

Then I saw who walked beside him.

Corliss. My stepsister. In a white dress so spotless it was a slap against the mud and blood of the woods. A smile played on her red lips.

The alarm that shrieked through me was animal, primal. Wrong. This is all wrong.

Darrion raised one hand. The Rogues-the ones I thought were our enemy-bowed their heads and parted like a sea, clearing a path straight to me.

He walked toward me. His eyes, once soft with adoration, were now two chips of ice. He looked at me the way a man looks at a stain he's about to scrub out.

"Alyssa," he said. Flat. "Give me the child."

The world tilted sideways. "Darrion, what-these wolves-you brought them?"

Corliss slid up beside him, winding her arm through his, pressing against him with an intimacy that made my stomach turn. "Oh, my dear sister," she cooed. "Still so naive."

My brain shorted out. Them. Together. My fiancé and my sister.

Hope began to cry, her tiny fists twisting in my dress. "Mommy, I'm scared..."

Corliss looked down at Hope and her face twisted with a jealousy so poisonous it was almost a physical thing. "Shut up, you little mongrel."

And then Darrion said the words that ended my world.

"I've had enough of you, Alyssa. Your weak Omega blood was never fit to be my Luna."

My whole life cracked down the middle. "And this child," he went on, "she isn't even mine. Did you truly think I never knew about your little indiscretion?"

Hope... wasn't his? Then that night... who...

Corliss leaned in, savoring it. "We checked. You were drugged that night, you have no idea whose bed you were in. Darrion only claimed the brat to save the Lott Pack's face-swallowing his disgust the whole time."

I clutched Hope. The ground spun. My entire life was a stage built by the two people I trusted most, and I had played the fool on it for years.

"Why?" The scream tore out of me. "My parents-the Alpha and Luna of the Clay Pack-they'll tear you apart for this!"

Darrion and Corliss traded a look of pure mockery. "Them?" Corliss said. "They have their own problems tonight. We led you here precisely to draw their guards away."

A Rogue pressed a dagger into Darrion's hand. It glinted with a sickly white light.

Silver. Fatal to our kind.

Darrion stalked toward me. "Once you're dead, the Clay Pack falls into chaos. And then... everything becomes mine."

I scrabbled backward until my spine slammed the oak. Nowhere left to run.

I looked down at Hope's terrified blue eyes-my eyes. No. I could not let her die.

I shoved her behind me, shielding her with my own body. "Please, Darrion! Let her go! She's only a child!"

His eyes held nothing. He lunged. The silver blade buried itself in my stomach.

Pain, blinding white, ripped through me. My life force drained like sand through fingers, but I refused to fall. I kept my eyes locked on his.

Then a second hiss sliced the air behind me. An arrow. Not aimed at me.

Aimed at Hope.

I couldn't even turn. I heard a tiny, choked gasp-and her little body went limp in my arms.

I looked down. The shaft stood out of her chest, the fletching a cruel splash of color against her little dress. Blood soaked through, warm, and then cold.

At the edge of the clearing, Corliss lowered a bow, her face a grotesque mask of victory.

Time stopped. My soul ripped into a million pieces as I held my daughter's cooling body.

I lifted my face to the moon and spent my last breath on a curse.

"I, Alyssa Clay, swear upon the moon! If I am given another life, I will hunt you down-Darrion Lott, Corliss Ramsey! I will tear you to shreds and make sure your souls never, ever find peace!"

Enraged, Darrion wrenched the dagger from my stomach and drove it into my heart.

Darkness swallowed me. And in the last flicker of consciousness, I heard it-a sigh, ancient and sorrowful, a woman's voice from the void itself.

"Poor child. I will give you another chance. Use it well."