The panic came three days after the ceremony.
I was lying on the stone floor of the Omega quarters when it started. Not sleeping — I had not slept since the night Oliver walked past me in the corridor — but still, eyes closed, counting my breaths the way I used to count my steps through rogue territory. In. Out. Three counts each. A rhythm I could hold onto.
Then the bond opened.
It was not like before. Before, the bond had been a door I could close if I needed to. A channel I controlled. Now it was a wound that would not seal, and what poured through it was Oliver's presence — not his voice, not his thoughts, but the shape of him. His satisfaction. His ease. The particular texture of his attention when it was fixed on someone who was not me.
Blaire.
I felt her laughter through his chest. I felt his hand on her waist. I felt the way his wolf settled under her touch, content, like a beast finally fed.
My lungs locked.
I tried to pull air and got nothing. My ribs would not expand. My throat closed around a scream I could not make. The bond kept transmitting — his indifference arriving in my body as cold weight, pressing down on my sternum, and I was fourteen again, pinned under a rogue's claws, unable to move, unable to breathe, waiting for the killing blow.
I rolled onto my side. My hands scrabbled against the stone. The silver cuffs burned where they touched my wrists but I did not care. I needed air. I needed him out of my head. I needed —
A sound tore out of me. High. Broken. A cry I had not made since childhood.
Upstairs, through the bond, I felt Oliver pause.
For one heartbeat I thought he would come. The boy from the rogue fringes, the one who used to check my breathing in the dark, would remember what this sound meant and he would come.
He did not come.
Instead, his voice arrived through the bond — not spoken aloud, but transmitted directly into my skull the way an Alpha can when the mate mark is live.
*Enough.*
It was not a request. It was a command, spoken in the Alpha tone that makes a wolf's body obey before their mind can refuse.
My voice died.
Mid-cry, mid-breath, it simply stopped. My mouth was open but no sound came out. My lungs pulled air but my throat would not shape it into noise. I tried again. Nothing. The command had reached into my body and taken my voice like a hand closing around my windpipe.
I lay on the stone floor, shaking, unable to scream, and understood.
The mate bond was not a promise. It was a leash. And Oliver knew exactly how to pull it.
I do not know how long I lay there. Long enough for my legs to stop shaking. Long enough for the bond to go quiet again, Oliver's attention drifting away from me like I was a problem he had already solved.
Then something else stirred.
Deep in my chest, in the place I had felt the vibration three nights ago, the wolf moved.
Not a stir this time. A snarl.
It cracked against the inside of my ribs like a fist slamming into a locked door. My back arched off the floor. The silver cuff on my wrist flared hot — not the slow burn of prolonged contact but a sudden, vicious heat, like the metal had touched live current.
I gasped. My hand jerked against the restraint. The cuff sparked where the wolf's energy met the silver, a brief flash of white light that left an afterimage on my closed eyelids.
Outside the door, I heard the guards shift.
"Did you see that?" one of them muttered.
"See what?"
"The light. Under the door."
A pause. Then: "You're seeing things. It's just the torch."
I pressed my palm flat to the stone floor and breathed through my nose. Slow. Controlled. The wolf was still snarling, pacing behind my ribs, furious in a way I had never felt before. Not frightened. Not desperate. Furious.
I filed the information away.
Something inside me was not as weak as Oliver believed.
---
Blaire came on the fifth day.
I heard her heels on the stone steps before I saw her. Deliberate. Unhurried. The guards unlocked the door without question. She stepped into the cell carrying a tray — bread, water, a bowl of stew that smelled like the pack-house kitchen — and set it on the floor near my feet.
She was wearing one of my dresses. I recognized the cut. I had commissioned it two months ago for a treaty meeting with the Northridge Alpha. It fit her perfectly.
She crouched in front of me, smoothing the skirt over her knees, and tilted her head so the Luna mark on her neck caught the torchlight.
"You should eat," she said. Her voice was pleasant. Reasonable. "You look terrible."
I did not answer. I could not. The Alpha command was still live.
She smiled. "I've been reorganizing your systems. You did good work, Maisy. Really. The alliances, the healer rotations, the treaty schedules — all very thorough. It made my transition so much easier." She reached out and brushed a strand of hair off my face. I flinched. She let her hand linger. "You spent seven years building this house for me. I should thank you."
I stared at her.
She stood, brushing invisible dust off the dress — my dress — and walked to the door. She paused at the threshold and looked back.
"Oliver asked me to check on you," she said. "He worries. Isn't that sweet?"
The door closed.
I waited until her footsteps faded. Then I turned my attention to the guards.
Two of them. They rotated every six hours. The one on the left — younger, a Delta named Marcus — always checked the lock twice. The one on the right leaned against the wall and dozed during the midnight shift.
I memorized the pattern.
---
Edna Harrow came on the seventh night.
I did not hear her approach. One moment the corridor was empty, the next she was slipping through the door during the shift change, a small leather bag clutched in her gnarled hands.
She knelt beside me without speaking. Her fingers — steady, practiced — pressed against my wrist, then my throat, then the hollow below my ribs. She leaned close and inhaled, scenting me the way healers do when they need information the body will not speak aloud.
Her eyes went very still.
"How far along?" she whispered.
I held up three fingers.
She nodded. She reached into the leather bag and pulled out a cloth bundle — herbs, bandages, a small glass vial that smelled like wolfsbane antidote. She pressed it all into my shackled hands.
"There is a drainage gap in the east wall," she said. Her voice was barely audible. "Two feet above the floor. It leads to the old root cellar. From there, the forest."
I stared at her.
She cupped my face in both hands. Her palms were warm. "You are not weak, child. You never were."
Then she was gone, the door closing behind her with a soft click.
I sat in the dark, the cloth bundle heavy in my lap, and pressed my fingertips to my wrist.
One. Two. Three.
Deep in my chest, the wolf stirred.
Waiting.