The Healer’s den was cold. The air smelled of sulfur, bitter roots, and my own burnt skin.
Every breath pulled at my cracked ribs, but I forced my hand to stay steady. I took a piece of clinic stationery and a ballpoint pen. In neat, precise cursive, I wrote down a message for Beta Marcus’s office.
*Patient requires immediate administration of Aconitum pulchellum. High-altitude root stock. Must be harvested live above eight thousand feet.*
It was a real herb with a real Latin designation. But it didn't heal wolfsbane burns. It was an obscure mountain flower that only grew in the jagged peaks three territories to the east.
A round trip took ten hours by truck.
I gave the note to the young apprentice sweeping the floor. "Give this to Marcus," I rasped, my throat raw. "Tell him it is the only thing that will stop the poison."
Twenty minutes later, the compound echoed with the roar of Jace’s heavy SUV engine. Through the open window, I heard him barking orders to Marcus.
"I’ll be back before nightfall," Jace said, his voice clipped. "Keep her locked in the den."
A flicker of guilt. That was all it was. Not love, not remorse. Just an Alpha trying to clean up a messy stain so he wouldn't look monstrous to his council.
I waited. One hour. Two hours.
I felt the exact moment his SUV crossed the third territorial border. The faint, greasy pressure of his mind-link in my head frayed, snapped, and dissolved into dead static.
He was out of range.
I stood up. The wolfsbane burns across my arms and chest throbbed like acid, but I didn't stop. I walked out the back door of the infirmary and cut across the empty courtyard.
The pack house was silent. The warriors were off on morning drills. I took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the agonizing fire in my ribs, and slipped inside the Alpha suite.
The room smelled of cedar and Angelina’s cheap vanilla perfume. My stomach turned.
I walked straight to the king-sized bed. The black silk sheets were neatly made.
With steady hands, I pulled the folded ultrasound from my coat. It was smeared with dark, dried blood—the blood of the six-week-old pup his command had killed. I set it directly in the center of Jace’s pillow.
Beside it, I placed the jagged, broken pieces of his silver mating pendant.
They sat together under the pale morning light. Clean. Centered. Undeniable.
I didn't leave a note. The blood said everything.
I turned and walked out, closing the heavy oak door behind me for the last time.
Behind the rusted grain silos, the engine of Soren’s old flatbed truck rumbled with a low, steady growl. Soren stood by the rear bumper, watching the tree line.
When he saw me, he didn't say a word. He didn't ask about the blood on my clothes or the black burns crawling up my neck. He simply pulled back the heavy, greasy canvas tarp in the truck bed.
I climbed in and lay flat against the corrugated metal. The canvas dropped over me, plunging my world into dusty, dark suffocating heat. The tailgate slammed shut.
The truck lurched forward. We hit the gravel road, tires spitting rocks as Soren drove toward the border.
Forty minutes later, the truck slowed to a crawl and stopped.
The tarp peeled back. Cold mountain wind rushed over my face.
Standing in the dirt beside the truck was a tall, broad-shouldered man with iron-gray hair and knuckles scarred from a lifetime of combat.
Retired Alpha West. My father.
He looked down at me. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscles jumped under his skin. His eyes tracked the black wolfsbane veins on my arms, then dropped to the dried blood around my waist. He didn't cry. He didn't pull me into an embrace. He had fought enough wars to know that grief had to wait until you were safe.
He picked up a heavy plastic jug from the weeds.
The pungent, acidic stench of concentrated wolfsbane wash filled the air. My skin prickled in terror, but I held still.
My father poured the chemical compound across the truck bed, over the tires, and onto the patch of dirt where the exhaust was idling. He splashed it over the canvas, soaking the heavy fabric until the sharp, bitter poison drowned out every trace of my scent.
He was burning my trail from the earth. And by doing it, he was burning his own ability to ever track me again.
He pulled the canvas back over my head.
Through the stiff fabric, I felt the heavy weight of his palm press flat against my shoulder. He held it there for three long, silent seconds. A father’s goodbye.
Then his hand lifted. "Go, Soren," his rough voice commanded.
The truck surged forward, crossing the border line and vanishing onto the asphalt highway.
Night had fallen completely by the time the shockwave hit.
We were miles away, deep in neutral mountain passes, when a violent psychic rupture tore through the pack frequency. Even across territories, the sheer agony of it slammed into my skull like a sledgehammer.
Jace was back.
He had walked into his room. He had found the pillow.
Through the dying, severed embers of the Ironclad link, a sound exploded into the minds of every living wolf in the territory.
It was Jace’s wolf.
The creature didn't growl. It let out a single, earth-shattering howl—a raw, broken wail of absolute devastation that ripped across the sky. It sounded like an animal being disemboweled alive.
Then, abruptly, the link went dead.
Not quiet. Not resting.
Silent.
The beast inside Jace had fallen into a deep, frozen coma, crushed by the weight of what its human half had done.
Seconds later, Jace’s voice bled through the open pack channel one last time. It was hoarse, hollow, and completely stripped of its commanding Alpha thunder.
*"Get out,"* he breathed, his voice cracking with useless, venomous rage. *"Angelina... get out of my house."*
I pulled the canvas tighter around my bruised shoulders.
I closed my eyes, turned my back to the south, and didn't look back.
