My Father and Mate Shared My Mother's Murderer

At my mother's funeral, my fiancé held my frail Omega servant tightly in his arms.

And my father—the Alpha of the Crescent pack—struck me across the face in front of everyone, all for the sake of the woman who had gotten my mother killed.

"Your mother brought this on herself. Lilith is just a poor, helpless girl!"

That was the moment I heard my faith in this family shatter.

Later, to force me to bow to Lilith, they smashed the one relic my mother had left behind, right in front of my eyes.

I looked at them and smiled coldly. Then I turned and stepped off the edge into the abyss.

On the altar of the Crescent pack, the funeral pyre burned high and fierce.

It was for my mother—the most revered Luna the Crescent pack had ever known.

Three days ago, while patrolling the outer edge of our territory, she'd been ambushed by a pack of rogue wolves.

There had been nothing left of her to bury. All they'd recovered was her robe, soaked through with blood.

I knelt before the flames, my eyes too dry to produce a single tear.

My blood felt frozen in my veins. An invisible fist had closed around my heart and refused to let go, squeezing until I could barely breathe.

Then, in the middle of that solemn silence, I heard footsteps. Light, hesitant, deliberately soft.

I turned my head, and my mind went white with shock.

My fiancé—Kyle, the future Alpha of the Crescent pack—was walking toward the altar.

And cradled protectively in his arms was a trembling woman in a low-cut white dress: Lilith.

Lilith was my Omega servant. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her whole body shaking like she might collapse from a single breeze.

That white dress—utterly inappropriate for a funeral—stood out like a wound against the sea of black mourning robes.

"Kyle, why did you bring her here?" I rose to my feet, my voice hoarse and shaking with fury I could barely contain. "This is my mother's funeral. What right does a lowly Omega have to stand on this ground?"

Kyle frowned, looking at me as though I were the one in the wrong.

"Ophelia, can you stop being so aggressive for once? Lilith fainted from grief when she heard the Luna had died. I only brought her to say goodbye."

"Grief?" I let out a bitter laugh, my eyes fixed on Lilith's delicate, pitiful face.

The day my mother died, Lilith had been assigned to lure the rogue wolves away from the outer perimeter.

But she'd abandoned her post. I'd checked the patrol logs myself—Lilith hadn't been anywhere near her station.

"Lilith. Tell me exactly where you were that day." I advanced on her, step by step, my dominance instinct flaring before I could stop it.

Lilith shrieked and buried herself deeper into Kyle's chest, tears streaming down her cheeks in thick, dramatic drops.

"Ophelia, I'm sorry—it was my fault. But please, don't put all the blame on me for the Luna's death…"

She sobbed, her voice dripping with a kind of self-righteous sorrow, and then she dropped the bomb.

"The Luna was... she wasn't herself that day. She insisted on going to the danger zone because—because she saw me with Alpha Derek.

"She was jealous of me. She wanted to drive me out of the territory, and that's how she wandered straight into the wolves' ambush.

"I swear I never wanted any of this—I just... I never thought it would end like this. She just... loved Alpha Derek too much to let it go."

The world went black at the edges. I nearly collapsed on the spot.

Derek. My father. The current Alpha of the Crescent pack.

What had Lilith just said? That my mother died because she'd caught her and my father together, and lost control of herself in her jealousy?

"You lying little—" I lost every shred of composure. My bones cracked and shifted, my nails lengthening into claws as instinct took over.

I lunged for Lilith, ready to tear the lies right out of her mouth.

"Ophelia, have you lost your mind?" Kyle roared, seizing my wrist and shoving me back with brutal force.

I stumbled and slammed against a cold stone pillar of the altar. Pain exploded through my spine.

Kyle shielded Lilith behind him, his eyes filled with disgust.

"Lilith is telling the truth! Your mother was old, bitter, and impossible to please. Derek needs a young, gentle Omega by his side to soothe him—what's wrong with that? Your mother chose to walk to her own death. You have no right to take it out on Lilith!"

I stared at this man I had loved for ten years, unable to comprehend the absurdity unfolding in front of me.

"Kyle, do you even hear yourself? She was my mother! She was going to be your Luna!" My voice cracked as I screamed the words.

Then a voice, cold and absolute, cut through the crowd behind me.

"Kyle is right."

The mourners parted. My father, Derek, walked forward in his sharp black suit, his expression carved from stone.

He didn't spare the pyre a single glance. He walked straight to Lilith and gently brushed a strand of hair from her face, his touch achingly tender.

Then he turned to me and raised his hand.

Crack.

The slap landed across my face with brutal force.

The blow sent me crashing to the ground. I tasted blood, thick and metallic, at the corner of my mouth.

"Your mother brought this on herself," Derek said, looking down at me, his tone as flat as if he were discussing the weather.

"She clung to the title of Luna for far too long, without an ounce of grace or generosity.

Lilith is just a poor girl who happens to give me the comfort I need. And your mother wanted her dead for it. Ophelia, drop that arrogant look off your face and apologize to her."

I pressed a hand to my throbbing cheek, sprawled on the cold stone, and looked up—at my father's merciless face, at the contempt in my fiancé's eyes, and at Lilith, hiding behind them both with the faintest, most satisfied smirk curling at the corner of her mouth.

My family. My beloved. Even the servant I had once shown mercy to. They had all been conspiring in secret, bound together by a filthy alliance of self-interest.

And my mother—my mother had become nothing more than a joke to them.

Even in death, they smeared her name with mud.

A suffocating fury swelled in my chest until I couldn't hold it in any longer. I started to laugh, tears mixing with blood as they dripped onto the stone beneath me.

"You want me to apologize to her?" I pushed myself up against the pillar, my eyes empty, my resolve absolute.

"Derek. Kyle. You disgust me more than any beast in these woods. My mother's body isn't even cold yet, and you're not afraid the Moon Goddess will curse you both for this?"