Harrison POV:
The explosion was deafening.
One moment, the boat was bobbing on the gray waves. The next, it was a flower of orange fire and twisted metal.
"No..." The word fell from my lips, quiet and useless.
I had told the Enforcers to take her to the safe house on the island. I told them to scare her. To make her understand she couldn't threaten the Pack.
I didn't order this.
"Ava!" I screamed.
The sound tore from my throat, raw and animalistic.
I didn't think. I didn't care about the Enforcers behind me or Brooke waiting in the car.
I sprinted toward the cliff edge and dove.
The water hit me like concrete. The cold was shocking, but the fire in my chest was worse.
I shifted mid-water, my clothes shredding as my wolf burst forth. I was a strong swimmer, powerful and fast. I kicked toward the wreckage.
Ava! Answer me! Ava!
The mind-link was silent. Just static.
I reached the burning debris. Oil slicked my fur. I dove under, my eyes stinging from the salt and fuel.
Nothing. Just sinking metal and darkness.
Then, it hit me.
The pain.
It started in my heart and radiated outward, shattering my ribs, snapping my spine. It was a physical blow that made me inhale water.
The Bond. The golden thread that had hummed in the back of my mind for six years... it snapped.
It withered and died, leaving a gaping, bleeding hole in my soul.
Gone.
My wolf howled underwater, a sound of pure, bubbling agony. Not because I loved her. But because I had lost something that belonged to me. A resource. A constant. A part of my soul I hadn't realized I needed until it was ripped away.
I thrashed, refusing to believe it. I dove again and again, until my lungs burned and my vision went black.
"Alpha! Alpha, we have to go!"
Hands grabbed my fur. My Enforcers. They had taken a boat out to get me.
They hauled me onto the deck, wet, shivering, and retching up seawater.
"She's gone, sir," the Beta said, his voice trembling. "The explosion... nothing could survive that."
I lay on the deck, staring at the smoke.
"Who?" I choked out. "Who rigged the boat?"
"It looks like Rogue tech, Alpha. Magnesium powder. It was an ambush."
Rogue tech.
I curled into a ball, the emptiness inside me expanding until it swallowed everything.
Six years. She washed my clothes. She managed my schedule. She warmed my bed. She endured my temper.
I never marked her. I never claimed her. I let everyone treat her like trash.
And now she was ash.
The boat docked. I stumbled onto the pier.
Brooke was there. She ran to me, her face a mask of concern.
"Oh, Harry! I saw the fire! Is she...?"
She reached for me. Her scent-vanilla and something cloying-hit me.
For the first time, it didn't smell like comfort. It smelled like a lie.
"Don't touch me," I snarled.
Brooke recoiled, looking hurt. "Harry? I'm just trying to comfort you. She was... troubled. Maybe this was the Goddess's will."
"The Goddess's will?" I turned on her, my eyes wild. "My Mate is dead!"
"She wasn't your Mate!" Brooke shrieked, her mask slipping for a fraction of a second. "I am your Mate! I am carrying your son!"
I looked at her stomach. My heir. The only thing I had left.
But looking at her, I felt nothing but cold revulsion.
I walked past her, toward the empty Pack House. The silence of the house hit me harder than the explosion.
I went to our bedroom. It smelled like bleach and burned rope.
I fell to the bed-the bed where I had tied her up just yesterday-and buried my face in her pillow. It still held a faint trace of her scent. Snowdrops and rain.
"Ava," I whispered into the darkness. "I'm sorry."
But the darkness didn't answer.
