"Let go of me… where are you taking me…"
My voice was so weak it barely carried past my own lips.
No one answered.
The enforcers dragged me through the corridors of the Healing Hall, my feet scraping against the stone floor. I could feel the blood seeping through my clothes, leaving a dark trail behind me.
Then they threw me onto the cold floor of the private healing ward.
I lifted my head.
And saw him.
Dominic sat at the edge of the healing cot, carefully tilting a cup of water to Serena's lips. His movements were tender, almost reverent. The scent of jasmine and honeyed musk clung to her — that sickly-sweet perfume she always wore, now filling the entire room until it choked me.
She had a few scratches. A faint bruise on her arm. She looked slightly shaken, nothing more.
And I was drenched in my own blood.
He looked at me. Those steel-grey eyes swept over my broken body, and not a single flicker of emotion crossed his face.
Cold. Like I was a stranger. Like I was nothing.
"Serena wants osmanthus cakes," he said, his tone flat and detached. "I recall you make the best ones. Go prepare a batch now."
I thought I had misheard him.
I was covered in blood. My insides were torn apart. My wolf was barely conscious, whimpering somewhere deep in the shattered recesses of my mind.
And he wanted me to bake osmanthus cakes.
Because she said she wanted some.
Every ounce of grief, every swallowed injustice, every year of pain and despair and silent endurance — it all erupted at once. The dam inside me didn't just crack. It shattered.
I clawed my way upright, my voice so raw it sounded like something tearing apart from within.
"Dominic Ashford, you have gone too far!"
"When I was being trampled half to death at the Grand Pack Exchange, where were you? You only had eyes for her!"
"Now I'm bleeding internally and I need a healer's intervention, and you drag me here because she said one sentence!"
"All these years — what have I ever been to you?"
"I am your bonded mate! Your Luna by sacred rite! Is this how you treat the wolf bound to you before the Moon Goddess?"
I screamed until my throat gave out. Tears mixed with blood, streaming down my face in a wretched mess. My wolf howled inside me — a broken, keening sound that rattled through my bones. I could feel her thrashing weakly, trying to rise, trying to make him feel even a fraction of the agony pouring through us.
But he showed nothing.
Not a flicker. Not a flinch. Not even the decency of anger.
It was Serena who reacted. She wrinkled her nose in his arms and pressed her hands over her ears with a look of distaste. "So loud. My head is pounding now."
He immediately pulled her closer, one large hand cupping gently over her ear, his voice dropping to a murmur of pure warmth. "Shh, it's all right. I'm here."
Then he raised his head and looked at me.
The warmth vanished. His eyes turned to ice, and the weight of his Alpha aura pressed down on me like a physical force — suffocating, crushing, deliberate. My wolf whimpered and went still.
"You've said all that, and you still refuse to go."
I stared at him.
Something inside my chest died. Not all at once. Piece by piece, like embers going dark.
He seemed to lose patience entirely. His voice dropped to something frigid and final.
"Since she won't go willingly, lock her in the silver-lined cold cell. When she's ready to do as she's told, let her out."
The enforcers seized me immediately.
They didn't care about my struggling. They didn't flinch at my cries.
They dragged me away.
The door of the cold cell slammed shut behind me with a sound like a coffin lid closing.
The cold hit me instantly — not ordinary cold, but the bone-deep, marrow-freezing cold of a chamber lined with silver. The metal hummed in the walls, a low vibration that seeped into my skin and silenced my wolf completely. She didn't whimper. She didn't howl. She simply went dark, as though the silver had snuffed her out like a candle flame.
My wounds screamed. Every laceration, every bruise, every place where my body had been broken felt like it was being pierced by a thousand frozen needles. The silver prevented any healing. My blood, which should have been knitting itself back together, simply kept flowing. Slowly. Steadily.
The internal bleeding in my abdomen was getting worse. I could feel it — a heavy, spreading warmth beneath the cold, the terrible sensation of something vital leaking where it shouldn't.
I was dying.
I knew it with absolute clarity.
The cold and the despair swallowed me whole, dragging me down into a darkness that felt almost peaceful. My consciousness flickered like a guttering flame, dimming, dimming.
But at the very edge — at the moment when everything was about to go black forever — some wretched, animal instinct clawed its way to the surface. Survival. The most basic, most humiliating drive a wolf could possess. It crushed what remained of my dignity beneath its desperate weight.
I dragged myself across the frozen floor. Every inch was agony. My fingers were numb, my arms shaking so violently I could barely hold myself up. I reached the iron door and raised one trembling hand to beat against it.
My voice came out in broken fragments.
"I'll… do it… I'll make them…"
"Let me out…"
The door opened.
I was pulled out like a discarded rag and half-carried, half-dragged to the small kitchen in the Healing Hall.
My body wouldn't stop shaking. My fingers had no feeling left in them. I could barely grip the wooden spoon. But I stood at the counter, propped against it like a corpse held upright by sheer will, and I made those osmanthus cakes.
Every motion was mechanical. Muscle memory from years of being ordered to prepare ceremonial offerings for Serena — cakes, pastries, elaborate dishes she would take one bite of and push away. My hands knew the recipe even when my mind was dissolving.
I carried the tray into the healing ward.
Dominic glanced at the cakes.
Just once.
Then he spoke, his voice utterly indifferent.
"Take her to the healers for her procedure."
I was wheeled back into the treatment chamber. The pack healer's face was grim as she worked, murmuring incantations and pressing herb-soaked compresses against my abdomen. Then the sedative tincture entered my veins, slow and heavy.
My consciousness began to blur.
One last tear slipped from the corner of my eye and traced a warm line down my cold cheek.
Dominic Ashford.
From this moment forward.
We walk separate paths.
I will never love you again.
The days after the procedure stretched long and agonizing.
I lay alone in the healing cot, watching the herbal infusion drip steadily into my veins through a thin silver-free tube. The dull throb of my wounds came in waves, relentless and grinding. Each time the healer's attendant changed my dressings, it felt like a fresh round of torture.
The young Omega attendant was as gentle as she could be. But the pity in her eyes — the way she couldn't quite hide it — that hurt worse than anything she did to my wounds.
"Just bear with it a little longer. It's almost done."
Her voice was soft, meant to comfort.
After she left, I heard her speaking with another attendant just outside the door. Their voices were low, but my wolf hearing — even weakened as it was — caught every word.
"Poor thing… injuries that severe, and not a single packmate has come to see her. She had to authorize her own healing procedure."
"I know. Meanwhile, that Serena in the private ward down the hall barely had a scratch, and Alpha Ashford hasn't left her side. I heard he turned down three major alliance pacts worth billions in territory just to stay with her."
"Same pack, different fates."
Their words sank into me like fine needles, one by one, pricking into places that should have been too numb to feel anything.
But they were right. I had no feeling left.
I closed my eyes and turned my face toward the window, letting the pale moonlight fall across my skin. I pretended I hadn't heard a thing.
