The pack members avoided my eyes as I walked across the dirt yard. Jace’s Alpha command was an invisible wall between me and the rest of the world. To them, I was already dead.
I found Soren behind the maintenance sheds, wiping motor grease from his hands with an old rag. The sun had dipped below the tree line, leaving the yard in cold, gray twilight.
He didn't turn around when I stopped two paces back, but his shoulders stiffened.
"It needs to be tomorrow night," I said.
My voice was raw, but steady. Soren paused. He slowly turned his head, his dark eyes taking in my posture—the complete lack of fear, the stillness of someone who had nothing left to lose. He didn't ask what had happened in the Great Hall. He simply glanced toward the heavy gate, then back at me.
"Tank is full," Soren murmured, turning back to the engine. "Parked by the silos. Keys are already under the driver's mat."
"Thank you."
I slipped away before anyone noticed us together.
In my tiny room in the Omega quarters, I worked fast. I didn’t pack clothes or blankets. I pulled my small canvas bag from beneath the cot. Into it went my Healer notes, bound in weathered leather, and the shattered pieces of Jace's silver pendant. Finally, I reached beneath my thin mattress and pulled out the ultrasound. The tiny black-and-white printout of our six-week-old pup. I slid it into the front pocket of my coat, right against my ribs.
I didn't take one last look around. There was nothing here I ever wanted to remember.
I planned to wait for the cover of dark the next night. But cruelty never keeps a schedule.
Just past two in the morning, the door to my room splintered open.
Thick hands grabbed my hair and the collar of my jacket before my feet could touch the floor. I opened my mouth, but the mutism seized my throat in an iron grip. Not a single sound escaped. The smell hit me immediately—sweat, cheap tobacco, and the distinct cedar-and-iron scent of Angelina’s three favorite Delta fighters.
They dragged me down the back alleys, out past the compound perimeter, and into the drafty dark of the abandoned grain warehouse.
They threw me onto the cracked concrete. Dust rose into the damp air.
"Gamma Angelina sends her regards," one of them sneered.
He didn't draw a blade. He pulled a heavy length of iron chain from his belt. The links were dull gray, coated in a greenish-black paste that hissed softly where it met the air.
Wolfsbane.
The first strike caught me across the shoulders.
Fire tore through my flesh. It wasn't normal pain; it was chemical, acidic venom that sank straight through my skin and into my veins. Black lines spiderwebbed outward from the wound, searing across my chest and climbing toward my neck.
My vision whited out. Inside me, my newly awakened wolf shrieked in absolute fury, throwing herself against the walls of my mind to protect our body. But the poison was too fast. It weighed her down like lead, drowning her roars in agony.
The second strike caught me low, wrapping across my ribs and stomach.
*Crack.*
The impact drove all the air from my lungs. But beneath the blinding burn of silver and wolfsbane, another feeling hit me. A terrible, hollow snap deep inside my womb.
A sudden, terrifying silence.
The tiny flicker of life—the fragile, humming warmth I had carried in secret for six weeks—simply vanished.
The heartbeat was gone.
My hands flew down, pressing flat against my lower abdomen. My fingers clawed at my bloody shirt, desperately searching for the pulse, the heat, anything.
Nothing. Just an empty, icy void.
The men laughed, tossing the stained chains onto the floor.
"She's done," one grunted, wiping his hands. "Let the cold finish her off. Jace won't care anyway."
Their heavy boots echoed against the concrete as they walked out into the night, leaving the warehouse door swinging open to the freezing wind.
I lay in the dark, curling around my empty belly. I didn't cry. Tears couldn't reach the place where they had killed my baby. I just stared at the dirt, breathing in short, shallow gasps while the black veins burned across my skin.
Hours later, boots crunched over the gravel outside.
A figure knelt beside me. It was the pack’s elder Healer. Her hands shook as she checked my pulse. Because of Jace's Alpha command, she wasn't allowed to offer me shelter or comfort. If she spoke a single kind word, the magic of the command would choke her.
Without a sound, she lifted me into her arms and carried my limp body through the predawn fog to the back room of the Healer's den.
She worked in complete, terrified silence. She spread a cold, numbing paste over the black wolfsbane burns on my chest and arms. She bandaged my cracked ribs. She didn't look at the blood soaking the waist of my jeans; she knew what had happened, and her jaw trembled with silent shame.
She placed a cup of water on the nightstand beside the cot, dimmed the lantern, and walked out, closing the door behind her.
I was alone again.
My canvas bag sat at the foot of the cot, intact. With shaking, blackened fingers, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the ultrasound. The edges were crumpled and stained with my own blood.
I pressed the paper against my chest, right over my shattered heart, until the pain stopped making my vision blur.
Then, I reached into my bag and pulled out my pen.
