The brass truck key burned cold against my thigh, tucked deep inside my pocket.
It was barely past dawn when the alarm horns blasted across the compound.
I pulled my coat tight and walked out into the courtyard. A crowd of warriors had already gathered near the infirmary steps. In the center of the ring stood Angelina, wrapped in a heavy thermal blanket. Her uniform jacket was torn open at the shoulder. Three shallow, bloody gouges ran down her left forearm.
To an untrained eye, it looked vicious. But I had spent years studying wound patterns in dusty Healer texts. The scratches were too clean, too straight, and clearly self-inflicted. Yet when the wind shifted, a rancid stench hit the air. Rotten pine needles and stale swamp water. Real rogue scent. She had taken rogue musk from the border traps and rubbed it directly into her raw skin.
"They caught me off guard by the northern perimeter," Angelina said, her voice trembling just enough to sound wounded. "Two of them. I managed to drive them off, but they shouldn't have been able to get through the fence."
Jace stood beside her, his jaw set in a hard, dangerous line. "How did they breach the wire?"
Angelina looked down, biting her lower lip. "The access gate behind the old wash houses was unlatched. It’s... it’s the side path only the Omegas use to haul scrap to the dump. Someone must have left it wide open."
She didn't say my name. She didn't have to. Every ranked wolf in the courtyard turned their heads toward me. My Omega shack sat less than fifty yards from that gate.
"Everlee," Jace’s voice cut through the cold air. "Inside. Now."
Ten minutes later, the entire pack filled the central hall.
The air was stifling, thick with tension and the sharp tang of aroused warrior pheromones. Jace stood on the raised platform beneath the pack banners. Angelina stood slightly behind him, holding her bandaged arm to her chest like a fragile trophy.
I stood on the cold stone floor below them, completely alone.
"Pack security was compromised this morning," Jace announced to the room. His voice was flat, hard as iron. "A decorated Gamma warrior was injured because protocol was ignored. Gross negligence puts every life in this territory at risk. We do not tolerate it."
He looked down at me from the dais. His dark eyes were cold, stripped of whatever warmth they had once held during our stolen years together.
"You will apologize to Angelina, Everlee. Right now. In front of the pack."
My throat locked instantly.
The selective mutism hit like a lead weight, clamping around my trachea. My lungs seized. For years, Jace had used that quiet paralysis against me, knowing how agonizing it was for me to force syllables past my lips in public.
I pressed the flat of my palm hard against my sternum. Right beneath my ribs, our six-week-old pup lived in secret. I forced air into my burning lungs.
"I am... sorry," I whispered. The words came out raspy and paper-thin, barely carrying past the third row of warriors. "For the... breach."
Angelina’s eyes gleamed with triumphant malice. She tilted her chin up, looking down at me like a queen receiving tribute from a beggar. She had ordered this humiliation, and Jace had served it to her on a silver platter.
Then, without warning, the floor beneath my boots seemed to tilt.
Deep inside the marrow of my bones, the ancient presence roared. It wasn't just a growl this time. It was a violent, suffocating explosion of power that hit my bloodstream like molten silver. My awakened wolf slammed violently against the barriers of my mind, tearing at the chains that had kept her dormant for twenty-four years.
*Rip her throat out,* the wolf snarled in my head, a voice so deep and commanding it shook my soul. *Tear them both to pieces.*
My knees buckled under the sheer force of it. Not from shame. Not from submission. My body was trembling because it was trying to contain a monster too large for its skin.
*No,* I begged silently, gripping my hands into white-knuckled fists until my fingernails dug blood from my palms. *Not yet. Hold on.*
I held my ground. I didn't fall. I forced my posture upright, locking my joints while my wolf slowly paced back into the shadows of my chest, growling low and deadly.
Jace didn't even notice the war happening inside my body. He didn't look at my face again. He simply dismissed my apology with a curt nod and stepped to the front edge of the platform.
"An apology is not enough to maintain order," Jace said, his voice dropping into a dark, terrifying register.
The temperature in the hall plummeted.
*"Hear me,"* Jace spoke, unleashing his full Alpha tone.
The supernatural command rolled over the crowd like a shockwave. Men and women dropped their eyes. The hair on my arms stood up as the magical weight settled into the room, heavy and suffocating.
*"From this second onward, Everlee West is stripped of pack protection. No member of the Ironclad Pack is permitted to offer her shelter, food, or medical aid. If she is attacked, you will not intervene. If she starves, you will not feed her. Anyone who offers her assistance will be tried for treason."*
The command sank into the flesh and bone of every wolf present, binding them to his will. In the back row, Soren Vale’s jaw tightened, his knuckles whitening against his utility belt, but the supernatural magic forced his head down like everyone else.
The air left my chest.
An Alpha command wasn't just a rule; it was an invisible, unbreakable cage. He hadn't just rejected me as his mate. He had painted a target on my back and locked me outside the gates while leaving me standing in the center of the wolves who hated me most.
I was still in Ironclad territory.
I was carrying his child.
And now, I was completely alone.
