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The first shovel of dirt hit my coffin while I was still breathing inside it. I'm not speaking in metaphor. I mean I was lying in a satin-lined casket, eyes wide open, lungs working, listening to my husband deliver my eulogy six feet above my head. "Vivian was the love of my life," Damien said, his voice breaking at exactly the right moment. I could hear the fake tremor. Three years of marriage taught me what his real grief sounded like — and this wasn't it. My name is Vivian Cross. Two hours ago, I was alive in a hospital bed, paralyzed from a sedative my husband's mistress slipped into my IV. Conscious. Aware. Completely unable to move a single muscle. They declared me dead at 9:42 a.m. I felt the doctor — bought, obviously — press two fingers to my throat, pause for show, and announce there was no pulse. I screamed inside my own skull. Nothing came out. Now here I was. Buried. Another shovel. The thud of soil landing on lacquered wood, dull and final. "She left everything to me," Damien continued above. "Her shares. Her trust. Everything." That was the part that mattered. That was the only part that ever mattered to him. Because what Damien didn't know — what nobody at that funeral knew — was that the paralytic was already wearing off. I could move my fingers now. My toes. My lips parted, and a thin breath of stale air slid into the dark. And what Damien really didn't know was something far worse for him. I wasn't Vivian Cross, the quiet, dutiful wife he married for her family's failing company. That was the costume. Three years ago, I walked into his life as a nobody on purpose. I let him believe I was small, breakable, easy to discard. I let him underestimate me down to the bone. Because the company he was so desperate to steal from my "dead" body? I already owned the holding company that owned his. My fingers curled into fists in the dark. I heard a woman laugh above the grave. Celeste. His mistress. The one who poisoned me. "Can we hurry this up?" she murmured to Damien, not even bothering to lower her voice. "I want to celebrate." He chuckled. Actually chuckled, over my coffin. And in that black, airless box, with three feet of dirt already piling onto the lid, I smiled. Because I had exactly forty minutes of oxygen. And I had planted one thing in this casket before the funeral that not a single one of them checked. My fingers found it now, tucked into the silk lining beside my hip. A phone. Fully charged.

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The pregnancy test was still warm in my hand when I heard them through the bedroom door. "She's just a surrogate, Marlee." My husband's voice—low, tender, the way he used to speak to me before our wedding became a transaction. "Once she delivers the heir, I'll file the annulment. You and I can finally stop pretending." "But she's so clingy, Dominic." A woman's laugh, soft and poisonous. "She actually thinks you love her." My fingers closed around the plastic stick so hard it cracked. Two pink lines. Positive. I'd been trying to tell him for three days. The door was slightly ajar. Through the gap, I could see them on our bed—our bed—Dominic's hand tangled in Marlee Ashford's copper hair, his lips brushing her temple with a gentleness that made my stomach heave. Not because of the morning sickness. Because he'd never once touched me like that. My wolf stirred inside me—weak, suppressed, barely a whisper. She'd been fading since the day I married Dominic Cross, Alpha of the Ironveil Pack, in a contract ceremony that smelled like old paper and obligation. No mating mark. No bond. Just a signature and a promise that I'd carry his bloodline heir in exchange for my dying mother's medical treatment. The treatment had been paid for. My mother had died anyway, three months ago. And now I was pregnant with his child, standing outside his bedroom, listening to him plan my disposal. I should have walked away. Should have gone downstairs, packed my bag, disappeared into the night like the nobody he'd always treated me as. That's what the old Ivy would have done—the orphan, the packless wolf, the girl who'd learned to survive by making herself small. Instead, I pushed the door open. Dominic's head snapped toward me. For one fraction of a second, something flickered across his face—guilt, maybe, or just annoyance at being caught. Then his expression hardened into the cold, aristocratic mask I knew so well. "Ivy." He didn't move away from Marlee. Didn't even have the decency to pretend. "How long have you been standing there?" "Long enough." My voice came out steadier than I expected. I held up the pregnancy test. "I came to tell you something." His eyes dropped to the test. I watched his pupils dilate—wolf instinct, recognizing his offspring before his human brain could process the information. "Is that—" "Positive." I set it on the dresser with a click. "Congratulations, Alpha Cross. Your contract is fulfilled." Marlee sat up in the bed, the sheet pooling around her waist, and I noticed she wasn't even trying to cover herself. She looked at me with an expression of such calculated pity that my wolf—dormant, dying, barely there—growled for the first time in months. "Oh, Ivy," Marlee sighed. "This must be so hard for you." "Get out," Dominic said to me. Not to her. To me. "We'll discuss this in the morning." "No." The word surprised all three of us. "We'll discuss it now. Specifically, we'll discuss paragraph fourteen of our contract—the clause that guarantees me full custody rights and a settlement upon confirmed pregnancy." Dominic's jaw tightened. "You're not in a position to make demands." "I'm in exactly that position." I pressed two fingers to my wrist—an old habit, counting my own pulse to stay grounded. "I'm carrying your heir. And according to Lycan contract law, that makes me the most powerful person in this room." The silence that followed was delicious. Then Marlee whispered something in Dominic's ear, and the look on his face changed to something that made my blood run cold. "Actually," he said slowly, "there's been an amendment to the contract." "What amendment?" He reached into the nightstand drawer and pulled out a document I'd never seen before. "The one," he said, "that removes your custody rights entirely."

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