I had just completed the mate-bonding ceremony with Caden Voss, the future Alpha, the most coveted male in the pack, when my adopted sister Rena drove her car straight into me. The impact shattered my ovaries. The pack’s finest healer, my own mother, Dr. Elena Ashton, said both were beyond saving. They had to be fully removed. Caden’s howl of anguish shook the hospital walls. “It doesn’t matter! I just need my mate alive!” Mom and my brother Eli stood red-eyed, gripping my hands. “Easy now. Close your eyes. We have the best healers, the strongest herbs. Sleep, and the pain will pass.” In my most broken moment, I was grateful that everyone I loved was by my side. Then the anesthesia began to pull me under, and through the gap in the door, I heard them talking in the hall. Mom’s voice carried a thin edge of excitement. “Mara is healthy. Compatible blood type, right age. While we have her under, we take her heart and transplant it into Rena.” Dad, the pack’s Beta, agreed without a pause. “I’ve already had the security footage of Rena’s car deleted. Mara won’t ever know.” Eli’s voice, smooth and clinical. “I’ll synthesize a compound. Even with a damaged heart, Mara won’t suffer visibly.” A moment of silence. Then Caden’s voice — and the relief in it turned my blood to ice. “Rena loves to run, loves to travel. She needs a strong heart. As for Mara… we’ll make it up to her someday. I’ll go sign the surgical consent forms now.” I felt myself falling — not into sleep, but into a void with no floor. My heart ached as though the blade had already found it. 【System Alert: Host — your Cannon Fodder task has been completed. Heartbreak index has reached 100%. Do you wish to return to your original world immediately?】 I laughed. And then I wept. Their love — every tender look, every careful touch — I didn’t want any of it anymore. … I fought to roll off the surgical table. A nurse shoved a breathing tube down my throat and flooded my veins with sedative. As consciousness collapsed, I glimpsed Rena being wheeled in through the doors. Mom raised her scalpel and murmured to the nurses with calm precision. “Don’t bother stabilizing Mara’s ovaries damage. Extract the heart first. Rena’s transplant takes priority.” I felt the blade part my chest layer by layer, and in the last seconds before the dark swallowed me whole, Mom’s voice drifted in, soft and tender. “Hold on a little longer, baby girl. When you wake up, you’ll be able to run again. Run as far as you want.” She was talking to Rena. … When awareness flickered back, I confirmed everything with the system at once. 【Only if the host body dies: automatic return to the original world. Your congenital heart defect will be fully healed. One hundred million in bounty will be deposited to your linked account. Confirmed.】 How laughable. I had been so relieved that even after years lost to a rival pack’s captivity, I hadn’t lost my family’s love. That Caden had searched for me, proposed the moment I returned. And all along, they only kept me breathing because they needed my heart. I pulled the oxygen tube from my throat without a second’s hesitation. Breathing became agony. My face darkened to violet. The monitors screamed red. But I was smiling. Better to die than stay and look at them. Mom burst through the door with a team behind her, howling my name. She performed CPR with her bare hands and forced the tube back in. When I was stable, she glared at me with bloodshot eyes. “Mara! Why would you — it’s only your ovaries. You can still live a full life. You can’t—” I pressed a hand to the wound in my chest and rasped: “Is it really only my ovaries?” Caden fell to his knees, slapping his own face over and over. “Honey — blame me. When the car came, I didn’t shield you. I let you get hurt. The driver’s already in custody, I swear I’ll—” “You found a heart donor for Rena already, didn’t you?” he added, turning to Mom. “She’s going to be all right?” Dad’s voice was hollow. “We’ve contacted every pack healer in the country. We’ll find you a new heart soon, Mara. I promise.” Eli touched my shoulder gently. “I’m going back to the lab right now. I’ll engineer something custom. You’ll breathe just like anyone else.” How laughable. Three sentences to smooth over Rena running me down, destroying my body, and stealing my heart. I curved my lips into something that was almost a smile. “Where’s Rena? I want to speak with her myself. I saw her face when they brought her in.” Mom’s brow knotted. “How dare you accuse your sister. She was with me in the healer’s ward when you were hit — she nearly had a heart episode just from the shock of hearing you’d been injured. We found her a donor just in time.” “You found a donor at the exact same moment my heart failed,” I said. “What a coincidence.” The room went very still. “Mara…” Mom started. I was too tired. I pulled the blanket over my head. When I surfaced, only Caden remained, watching me with an expression I used to believe was love. I smiled at him. “Go check on Rena. Come back and tell me how she’s doing.” He left without hesitating. Alone at last, I exhaled slowly and reached for my phone with trembling hands. The system had promised to grant me one wish in exchange for completing its KPIs. Before they’d wheeled me into the OR, I’d spent that wish on two recordings. I watched them now, rigid, replaying every second of how they’d planned to hollow me out. Every word my mother had spoken while cutting into my chest. Every degree of warmth drained from my body. I was suddenly very glad I hadn’t died. Because leaving this easily would be far too generous to them.
During my recovery, they took turns sitting with me — one at a time, never long, always finding an excuse to rush away. I assumed they were simply busy. Pack Betas and Alpha heirs didn’t have idle hours. Then came the afternoon I needed the bathroom and no one was there. I dragged my IV stand down the hall alone. Through the glass of the VIP recovery suite, I stopped. Caden, who had just claimed an urgent pack council session, was feeding Rena a prawn dumpling with his fingers, laughing at something she’d said. My parents and Eli were all there, watching her with the soft, helpless adoration I used to think was reserved for me. Mom’s voice filtered through the glass, warmly scolding. “Rena, you can’t gorge yourself the moment you’re healed. Dumplings are too rich.” Rena tipped her head back like a contented cub. “I can’t help it. Dad makes them too well.” She pouted. “And all of you hovering around me is suffocating. How am I supposed to sneak snacks with four sets of eyes on me?” For three days, I’d been eating takeout congee I ordered myself. Rena had them there every hour, with Dad cooking her meals from scratch. I turned away stiffly and nearly walked into the nurses’ station. Through the partition, two nurses were whispering. “You know the patient in 302? The one everyone calls the real daughter? Dr. Ashton specifically told me to keep her on extra nutrition supplements — building her up like a reserve. If Rena has a serious rejection episode, they’ll need a full blood exchange from her.” I stood in the corridor for a long time, not moving. My heart — the damaged, borrowed thing still beating in my chest — felt like it was cracking open again. Why had it come to this? There was a time when Mom would panic if I so much as scraped my knee. She had driven herself into advanced healer certification just to take better care of me. Dad had built the Ashton name from nothing, so I’d never go without treatment. Eli had chosen pharmacology so my medicine wouldn’t taste bitter. They had even sheltered Caden’s family from a rival pack’s ambush — and that act of loyalty was how he and I first became entangled. All of Northveil Pack had known it: the Ashton heir was cherished beyond reason. And Caden Voss had loved me since we were young. Then I was stolen — held by a rival pack for seven years. When I came home, they held my hands and said, “Rena being here means nothing. We took her in to build good karma for you. You are still our only heart.” I believed them. I opened myself to Rena as a sister. But the warmth shifted slowly, then all at once. If Rena stumbled near me, Mom’s first question was whether I had pushed her. When Dad cooked, every dish was Rena’s favourite. Eli redirected his entire research toward a cure for Rena’s heart condition. And Caden, in arguments, once snapped at me to be more like Rena — gentler, sweeter, less difficult. Now they had carved my heart out to give it to her. And they planned to keep me alive as a walking blood reserve. The grief hit like claws raking through the chest. I wasn’t careful. I slipped. The fall cracked my surgical wounds open. I curled on the floor, gasping, and in a moment of pure instinct whimpered a single word into the tile. “Mom…” They came running — all four of them, the sound of their footsteps filling the hallway. Mom reached me first. She hauled me upright and fixed me with a furious stare. “Mara. I am so disappointed in you. You saw us with Rena, and now you’re throwing yourself on the floor for attention? You’re a grown wolf.”
Back at the Ashton estate, I was confined to a wheelchair under close watch. The pack healers had strict orders: I was not to harm myself again. Rena, meanwhile, was sprinting laps around the back courtyard in a pair of joggers, laughing as she went. Dad was out there too, passing her the ball, grinning the way I hadn’t seen him grin in years. Caden filmed her on his phone. Mom watched from the edge of the terrace with the look she used to reserve for me. I turned my wheelchair toward the garden path. “Ow!” Rena went down — a stumble, a sharp cry, grass-stained knees. All four of them surged to her side. Rena twisted and pointed at something on the ground near my chair. A small metal locking pin — fallen from the wheel assembly long before this moment. Her eyes filled. “Mara… I know you resent me for getting the transplant. I know you’re still in pain.” Her voice broke. “But I finally get to run. I finally get to feel what other wolves feel. How could you try to take that from me?” Mom crouched and examined Rena’s reddened shin with gentle hands. Dad looked at me with an expression like he’d bitten into something rotten. The vein at his temple pulsed. “Mara. We did not raise you to be this. What happened to you?” They looked at me the way wolves look at a rogue. Like I was something that needed to be dealt with. “I didn’t,” I said, my voice hollow. “That pin has been loose for days—” “Don’t make excuses.” Dad raised his hand. It swung toward my face. Caden caught his wrist. “Mara’s been through too much. Give her time.” Eli’s gaze cooled as it landed on me. “Fine. Rena’s been wanting to try that new private dining room downtown. We’ll celebrate her recovery.” He glanced back, expressionless. “You stay here and think about what you’ve done.” Caden hesitated. He looked at me, then at Rena — who grabbed his hand and swung it like a child, tilting her face up at him. “Come with us? You promised.” Caden patted my head. “Be good. I’ll bring back the seafood chowder you like.” I woke at 3 a.m. The bed beside mine was untouched. Caden had not come home. The whole estate was dark, except for one room — Rena’s. The door was slightly ajar. As I wheeled closer, a woman’s muffled, breathless voice bled through the gap. Caden’s voice came next, low and cracked with want. “You got the transplant. So when are you going to leave her? When?” “You’re the one I love. But Mara saved my life once — I can’t abandon her. And besides,” Rena’s voice softened, “if you have a rejection episode, we still need her blood.” “She can’t carry pups now. She can’t be a real mate. What does an Alpha heir need with a barren wolf?” I leaned against the cold wall outside that room for the rest of the night. Inside, they laughed. They whispered. They were tender with each other in a way I had believed was mine. When morning light came and the estate began to stir, I waited. I waited until all four of them passed through the hallway at the same moment. Then I threw open Rena’s door. In front of every witness, I ripped the sheets back and raised my phone.
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