The Omega Moms in Pack Panicked When I Cut Off Free Treatment

Our pack’s pups were born with weakened wolf spirits. I paid for their treatment out of my own pocket, only for their mothers to drag me online.They accused me of using the free wolf treatment I provided for their pups to test serums on children from the contaminated zone, making poor families' pups bear the risk for Alpha pups. What they didn't know was that the pack was badly contaminated. Without treatment, those pups would die. To save their wolves, I brought in the best healers and used the best medication and treatment protocols. Care cost more than eight thousand dollars per pup every month, all of it out of my own pocket. Now the entire internet was accusing me of experimenting on pups and doing the Alpha elite's dirty work. So I made up my mind and sent a pack-wide announcement: "In response to the mothers' request for autonomy over their children's treatment, Moonbridge will suspend the free wolf treatment program, effective immediately." "Starting today, eligible wolf moms will receive a monthly childcare subsidy of two hundred dollars." The moment the announcement went out, every one of them lost it. Now they were all crowded outside my office, begging me not to stop. Chapter 1 My administrative director, Diane, sent me the photos while I was reviewing test results for the next group of pups. "Viola, look. Ollie finally ate today." In the photo, Ollie and a few other children lay sprawled on the playroom floor, piecing together a little wolf from wooden blocks. Color had finally returned to his face, and his right eye no longer turned gray when his wolf destabilized. I zoomed in and stared at the photo for a long time. Ollie's wolf was missing a leg, lopsided and wobbly, just like the one on my desk. The one on my desk was Leo's. My son had made it for me when he was six. The old residential district in northern Moonbridge had suffered chemical contamination. Pups born there had far weaker wolves than children elsewhere. If they became infected, their wolves would go dormant for good before they turned eighteen. Leo had been one of the worst cases. I consulted every doctor I could find, but in the end, I still lost him when he was seven. Three years later, I took over the Moonbridge Medical Center and enrolled every contaminated pup from the old district in a free treatment program. I never wanted another mother to hold a child growing colder in her arms and hear a doctor say, "It's too late." Four months into the program, all twenty-seven pups' wolf health scores were improving. Ollie was recovering the fastest. I had just filed the photo in the treatment records when a notification from X popped up on my phone. The headline read: "Our Children Are Not the Moonbridge Alpha's Lab Rats." I frowned, assuming it was another pack stirring up trouble. Then I looked more closely and realized the post was from Keira! Ollie's own mother. She had posted three photos from Ollie's treatment. In the first, the boy was curled up on a hospital bed with an IV line in the back of his hand. The second was a post-treatment fever log. The third showed several fading needle marks on his arm. But Ollie's treatment that day had been a success. His wolf health score had jumped from twenty-seven to sixty-three. She didn't mention that. She didn't mention that the fever was a normal response as his wolf healed, and that it broke within two hours. In her post, she had reinvented herself as a crusader for justice: "A treatment that supposedly costs eight thousand dollars a month, and it's only free for our children? Why?" "Because we're all Omegas! Our children have weaker wolves, their parents can't afford anything, and no powerful Alpha is going to hold anyone accountable for us. That makes our kids the perfect test subjects for new serums." Beneath the post was a blurry shipping invoice. Northridge Alpha... Stabilization Serum, twelve vials. Keira had circled the line in red. "Our children get their blood drawn again and again, while pack leaders' children get the finished product." "This so-called free treatment is nothing but making poor kids take the risks for rich ones." I recognized the invoice immediately. It was a routine stabilizer order from Northridge Hospital, purchased from an entirely different pharmaceutical company. It had nothing to do with our treatment program. But the image had been cropped to remove the manufacturer's name, leaving only "Alpha" and "Stabilization Serum." The comments section had exploded. "I knew there was no such thing as free treatment." "Poor kids can't even get sick without serving the upper ranks." "She's an Alpha herself. Of course she'd be in on it with other packs." "Find out where those children's blood was sold!" Someone had even dug up my son Leo's death. Keira wrote in a follow-up post: "A woman who couldn't even save her own child, and now she's drawing blood from other people's children every day. Is she really saving lives, or is she using our kids to line her pockets?" That sentence made my wolf bristle. My nails pushed through my fingertips and scraped a white line across my phone case. She knew exactly how my son died! The first time she brought Ollie in, his wolf was so weak it was barely detectable. Keira had knelt in my office, clutching my legs and sobbing, saying she would do anything if I could just keep Ollie alive until he was old enough to awaken. I hadn't made her wait for approval, and I hadn't charged her a cent. Now she was jabbing at my deepest wound to sell her lies. Chapter 2 My assistant, Paige, knocked on the door without warning. "Viola, Keira's here. She brought seven of the mothers from the program." Before she could finish, the office door swung open. Keira walked in first. She pulled Ollie to her side and rolled up his sleeve, showing everyone the needle marks. Ollie had no idea what was going on. He just reached for me. "Aunt Viola." Keira yanked him back. "Don't call her that." The boy stumbled, and fear flashed through his eyes. I stood up instinctively, but Keira stepped in front of him. "What, you want to check his wolf again?" She held up her phone, the camera pointed straight at me. "Everyone's watching. You'd better explain why you draw his blood at every single treatment." "To calibrate the serum dosage." "Then why do Alpha pups in other packs already have the finished serum?" "That batch of serum didn't come from Moonbridge. The full purchase order has the manufacturer's name on it. You cropped it out on purpose." Keira let out a short laugh. "Ordinary mothers don't understand your paperwork. All we know is that every time our kids come home, they're feverish, exhausted, and covered in needle marks." The mothers behind her nodded along. One of them even held her daughter's follow-up report in front of the camera, crying that her child had already had her blood drawn six times. Of those six times, three were because she had called in the middle of the night, insisting the doctor run extra tests immediately because her child had a fever. I didn't call her out in front of everyone. I just asked Keira, "What is it you actually want?" That was exactly what she had been waiting to hear. "Shut down your treatment, give us back your illegal profits. Eight thousand dollars a month, minimum!" "We'll pick our own hospital and our own doctor. And even if we don't spend it all, that money is what our kids deserve as compensation." "The treatment costs aren't compensation, and they aren't a salary. They're a benefit I provide to the pack." "The money never passed through our hands, so of course you can call it whatever you want." Keira patted Ollie's shoulder. "I'd rather take him to an independent clinic than let him keep being a test subject here." Ollie looked up at her and said quietly, "But Dr. Noah said I can move to the next phase next week." Her hand tightened abruptly on his shoulder. "Adults are talking. Don't interrupt." Ollie winced and hunched his shoulders. His eyes found mine, full of silent pleading. I held back the anger surging through my wolf and didn't release any Alpha pressure. She was already livestreaming. The moment I made any mother in that room feel even a hint of dominance, she could prove I was using my rank to silence them. "Whether to continue treatment is the guardian's decision," I said. "But the funds can't be converted to cash. If you stop the treatment, you're giving up the support I've been paying for out of my own pocket." The smile faded from Keira's face. "Out of your own pocket?" "Yes." She clearly hadn't prepared for that. She quickly raised her phone again. "Don't try to scare us with that. Eight thousand a month per pup, and you're paying for twenty-seven families out of the goodness of your heart? You're really that generous?" At the back of the group, Lydia finally looked up. When her daughter Mia suffered her first wolf collapse, I was the one who called Noah to free up a bed, and I stayed with Lydia in the emergency room until dawn. That night, she held my hand and said I had saved Mia's life. Now she held my gaze for one second, then looked away. Keira leaned closer to my desk. "Viola, just because you treated Ollie doesn't mean you get to decide what he has to endure." She pulled up the rising repost count. "Alpha pups get the serum, our children get the needle marks. A hundred thousand people believe that now." "Tomorrow, I'll make sure all of Moonbridge knows exactly what you've been doing to these children." She turned and pulled Ollie toward the door. The boy kept looking back with every step, still calling my name even as the door closed behind him. Lydia followed them out. Not a single mother stayed. Chapter 3 The next day, the post was all anyone at the medical center could talk about. When I passed the parents' lounge, Keira was surrounded by over a dozen mothers. "Alpha pups get the finished product, and our kids get the risks." The moment she finished, someone chimed in. "No wonder they draw so much blood every time." "We didn't get lucky with free treatment. We were picked for this." The more they talked, the more real it sounded. One mother rolled up her son's sleeve and photographed the needle marks. The boy's wolf had mostly recovered. He was crouching by a chair, playing with a toy. She didn't photograph the bright glow in his eyes. She zoomed the camera in on the bruise. When I walked past, the chatter stopped for a few seconds. Keira was the first to smile. "Relax, everyone. This is a modern medical center, not an Alpha's council chamber. She can't order us to shut up." A few others laughed along. I didn't stop. What they wanted was a public confrontation, ideally one that forced my wolf to the surface. I hadn't been back in my office long when Lydia walked in carrying a cup of coffee. She set the cup beside me, using the same familiar tone as always. "Viola, don't stoop to Keira's level. She's just worried about Ollie." I glanced at the coffee but didn't touch it. "Do you believe Mia was used as a test subject?" Lydia hesitated. "Of course I don't want to believe you'd do something like that." Not "don't believe." "Don't want to believe." She had left herself a way out. "When Mia had her first collapse, you signed every consent form in the emergency room yourself. You know better than anyone why her blood was drawn." Lydia gripped the handle of her cup. "But we're not doctors. Those reports are so complicated. Who knows where the blood ends up?" "Every blood sample has a serial number and a destruction record." "Then make it public." She finally looked up, her voice rising. "Just release everything, then give us the treatment funds going forward. Problem solved." "So you're not here to ask where Mia's blood went." I pushed the coffee back toward her. "You're here for the money too." Lydia's face flushed. "I just think the money would be safer in the mothers' hands. We could pick our own clinics instead of begging the Alpha's medical center to take our kids every time." "When did you ever have to beg for Mia's treatment?" She had no answer. I secured the hospital bed. I paid for the medication. When she was terrified in the middle of the night, I sat with her until dawn. Now all of that had become evidence of a different crime: because I had helped her, she was under my control. Paige pushed through the door, her face pale. "Northridge Hospital suspended next month's joint treatment. And two media outlets just showed up downstairs." She handed me the tablet. The number-one trending topic now read: #ContaminatedZoneOmegaPupsUsedAsAlphaTestSubjects# Several new anonymous posts had been pushed to the top. "My daughter runs a high fever after every treatment, and they say it's normal. Looking back, they were obviously testing dosages." "They draw blood every week but never let parents take the samples home. That blood was definitely sold." "One time my child was crying and refused to go into the treatment room, and the nurse just carried him away. Poor kids don't even get the right to say no." All the IP addresses traced back to the Moonbridge Medical Center. I recognized one of those stories. The child had refused to enter the treatment room because he was afraid of needles. The nurse had asked the mother's permission first. The mother had even rushed her from outside the door, telling her to hurry so she wouldn't be late for work. Now the mother had deleted herself from the story. All that remained was a child being carried away against his will and a cold-blooded medical center. Lydia was still standing by my desk. "See? Everyone's scared. Viola, why don't you just stop the treatment for now and hand out the money? You can deal with the rest after things blow over." I picked up the coffee, now cold, and poured it into the trash. "Get out." "I really am trying to help you." "Get out." She bit her lip and walked out, bumping against the doorframe as she turned. She didn't look back. My office was soon flooded with phone calls. Partner hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, media outlets, the Elder Council. One after another. The messages from strangers were even worse. "You profit off children. The Moon Goddess will punish you." "Just like Alphas to treat the contaminated zone like a dump." "You couldn't even save your own child, and you dare touch other people's kids?" That last one kept appearing. Keira knew that Leo would cut deeper than any question about the serum. She also knew that the moment she put "poor children" and "Alpha" in the same sentence, the truth would have to wait in line behind the outrage. I turned off my phone and dialed Diane on her direct line. "Notify all staff and parents. Nine a.m. tomorrow, the main conference hall." "There will be a final decision on the free treatment program."