Genevieve POV:
I woke up screaming.
Pain. Everywhere.
I wasn't in the Pack House. I was on cold, jagged rock. The air smelled of sulfur and old death.
A silver mine.
Meredith, Ignatz's mother, stood outside the iron bars of the cage I'd been thrown into. She held a handkerchief over her nose.
"Finally," she said. "Ignatz is too soft. Divorce isn't enough. You're a stain, Genevieve. And stains need to be scrubbed out."
"Where..." I coughed, tasting dust.
"The abandoned sector. No one comes here. The silver content in the rock is high enough to keep you weak, and the cold will do the rest."
She turned to leave. "Goodbye, dear. Do try to die quietly."
She left me in the dark.
Hours passed. The cold seeped into my marrow. But the silver... the silver was poison. It burned my skin, sapping my strength.
Then the cramps started.
"No," I whimpered, curling around my belly. "No, please. Stay with me."
It was a tearing agony. I felt warmth between my legs, and I knew. I knew it was over.
My pup was gone.
A scream tore from my throat-a sound so broken it shattered the silence of the mine. The grief was a physical blow, snapping the last thread of my control.
The seal didn't just crack. It detonated.
ENOUGH!
My wolf exploded into the driver's seat. White light flooded the cavern. My bones snapped and reformed, healing instantly. The silver burns vanished under a wave of regenerative power.
I stood up, but the iron door was heavy.
Kaleb POV:
I was mid-sentence in a Council meeting three hundred miles away when it hit me.
It felt like a shotgun blast to the chest. I doubled over, my chair clattering to the floor.
Mate.
Pain. Loss. Grief so deep it felt like drowning.
"Alpha Kaleb?" an Elder asked.
I looked up. My eyes were glowing a violent, radioactive violet.
"She's dying," I snarled.
I didn't wait for the jet. I shifted right there in the Council chambers-a massive, shadow-black wolf the size of a horse-and crashed through the window, sprinting north.
Hang on, I roared through the bond I had never dared to use. I am coming.
