Elena POV:
Marcus didn't give up. He ran through the empty corridors, kicking open doors until he found a lone doctor in the archives room.
The doctor, a balding man named Dr. Evans, looked up in shock.
"You can't bring her here!" Dr. Evans hissed. "The Alpha gave strict orders. No resources for the Rogue."
"She is dying!" Marcus roared, slamming me onto a gurney. "Look at her!"
Dr. Evans looked at my arm. The black veins were spreading up to my shoulder. He paled.
"Silver poisoning. Stage four." He checked the fetal monitor on the wall. "No heartbeat."
The world stopped.
"Check... again," I rasped, grabbing his lab coat with my bloody hand.
"I'm sorry," Dr. Evans said, his voice shaking. "There is no fetal heartbeat."
A scream built in my throat, but I didn't have the breath to release it. My baby. My little wolf. Gone.
"Save the mother," Marcus commanded. "Put her in the Genesis Pod."
The Genesis Pod was a piece of advanced medical technology reserved only for high-ranking wolves. It accelerated healing by ten thousand percent.
"I need authorization," Dr. Evans said, his hand hovering over the Mind-Link button on the wall. "Alpha Damien..."
*Don't ask him,* I wanted to shout. *He wants me dead.*
But Dr. Evans pressed the button.
"Alpha, the Rogue is in critical condition. The fetus is... deceased. I need permission to use the Genesis Pod to save her life."
The speaker on the wall crackled.
We could hear sounds in the background. Cheers. Laughter. The cry of a newborn baby.
Damien's voice came through, sounding breathless and elated.
"I have a son! A healthy boy!"
"Alpha?" Dr. Evans prompted. "The Rogue?"
"Stop bothering me with her drama," Damien snapped. "She's a wolf. She'll heal. Save the power for Victoria's recovery. She's exhausted."
Click.
He hung up.
He chose Victoria's fatigue over my life. He celebrated a bastard child while his true son lay dead in my womb.
Marcus looked at the floor, ashamed. Dr. Evans looked at the blank monitor.
I lay there, feeling the cold embrace of death.
But more painful than the death was the sound coming through the thin walls. The VIP delivery suite was right next door.
I could hear Damien cooing.
"You did so well, my love. He's perfect. He will be the strongest Alpha."
My heart shattered.
Not metaphorically. I felt the physical snap of the Mate Bond.
Usually, the bond only breaks if one partner rejects the other or dies. My wolf, broken by grief and the silver poison, let out one last, mournful howl inside my head.
*Goodbye, Elena.*
Then, she vanished.
The silence that followed was absolute. I was alone. No wolf. No baby. No mate.
I stared at the ceiling tiles. A single tear of blood rolled down my cheek.
I had one card left to play.
I moved my tongue to the back of my mouth. There was a false molar there, implanted when I ran away from home five years ago.
I bit down hard. *Crunch.*
A tiny signal was released. It would bounce off a satellite and hit a receiver in the Sterling Family estate, thousands of miles away. *My father had portals primed for this exact frequency. He would be here in minutes.*
It was a distress signal. Code Red. The "I am dying" signal.
My vision tunneled. The beep of my own heart monitor slowed down.
*Beep... beep......... beep..................*
"She's crashing!" Dr. Evans yelled. "Get the defibrillator!"
"It's no use," I thought as the darkness swallowed me. "Let me go."
The last thing I heard was the laughter from the next room, and the long, continuous tone of my own flatline.
