The sound of boots on tile cut through the chaos.
I was still on the floor, hands pressed to my stomach, when Callan burst through the infirmary doors. His Alpha presence filled the room instantly, that commanding energy that made everyone straighten, made the air itself feel heavier.
He looked at me. For one heartbeat, our eyes met.
Then Mackenzie wailed, "The baby—" and his head snapped toward her.
I watched him cross the room. Watched him kneel beside her where she sat clutching her self-inflicted shoulder wound, blood smeared dramatically across her warrior's uniform. Watched him cup her face with both hands, his expression twisted with something that looked almost like fear.
"Is the pup—" he started.
"I don't know," she sobbed, leaning into his touch. "She attacked me, Callan. She went crazy. Her and that—that thing she calls a brother."
The Omega healer beside me pressed a towel between my legs, her hands shaking. The fabric turned red almost instantly. She made a small, frightened sound in her throat.
Callan still hadn't looked at me again.
"Get Dr. Warren," he ordered one of the Delta warriors. Then his eyes—cold, gray, empty—finally found mine. "Aria. You're confined to your quarters until we sort this out. You endangered the pack's future."
I tried to speak. Tried to tell him. But my voice came out as nothing more than a whisper. "Callan—"
"That's an order." His Alpha Voice slammed down, and even through the haze of pain, my body responded. Tried to obey. Tried to stand.
I couldn't. My legs wouldn't hold me.
The Omega healer looked up at him, her face pale. "Alpha, she needs—"
"Take her to her room," he said. "Now."
Two guards hauled me up by my arms. My feet dragged across the blood-slicked floor as they carried me out, and the last thing I saw was Callan cradling Mackenzie against his chest, whispering something into her hair.
He never once asked if I was hurt.
---
They locked me in.
I heard the bolt slide home from the outside, heard their footsteps retreat down the hallway. Then silence. Just me and the four walls of the room I'd been sleeping in for the past year, the room that wasn't really mine, in the house that had never felt like home.
I made it to the bathroom before I collapsed.
The fever came fast. One moment I was shivering on the cold tile, the next I was burning, my skin too hot, my head pounding. I crawled into the shower and turned the water on cold, but it didn't help. Nothing helped.
I'd lost a baby I hadn't known I was carrying.
I'd lost it because of stress. Because of Mackenzie's lies and Callan's cruelty and my own powerlessness.
I pressed my forehead against the shower wall and let the water run over me until I couldn't tell what was water and what were tears.
Sometime after midnight, the delirium took me.
---
I was standing in a forest I didn't recognize.
The trees were massive, ancient things with silver bark that gleamed in the moonlight. The ground beneath my bare feet was soft with moss, and the air smelled like winter—clean and sharp and impossibly cold.
I wasn't alone.
She stood twenty feet away, watching me with eyes that glowed violet in the darkness. A wolf. Massive. Easily twice the size of any pack wolf I'd ever seen, with fur so white it seemed to absorb the moonlight and reflect it back brighter.
I should have been afraid.
I wasn't.
"You," I whispered.
The White Wolf took a step forward. Then another. Her movements were fluid, predatory, nothing submissive or gentle about her. When she was close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from her body, she lowered her head and looked directly into my eyes.
*You called me,* a voice said. Not out loud. Inside my head. Inside my chest. *You finally called me.*
"I didn't—"
*You did.* She circled me slowly, her tail brushing against my legs. *When you had nothing left. When they took everything. When you finally stopped begging and started wanting blood.*
My hands were shaking. "I don't know how—"
*You know.* She stopped in front of me again, and this time when she looked at me, I saw myself reflected in those violet eyes. Saw what I could become. What I would become. *I am not the wolf they wanted for you. I am not gentle. I am not forgiving. I am vengeance, Aria. And I have been waiting.*
She pressed her massive head against my chest, right over my heart.
And I felt it. The bond snapping into place. The power flooding through me like ice water in my veins, sharp and clean and utterly merciless.
When I opened my eyes, I was back in the shower, the water long since gone cold.
But I wasn't alone anymore.
---
I was still sitting there, feeling the new presence coiled inside me like a sleeping serpent, when I heard the scream.
Kaizen.
I was on my feet and at the door before I consciously decided to move. I slammed my shoulder against it, but the bolt held. Slammed again. Again.
"KAIZEN!"
Footsteps in the hallway. Voices. Then Mackenzie's laugh, high and brittle.
"Take him to the dungeons," she said. "The Luna needs to learn what happens when she threatens the Alpha's heir."
"No!" I threw myself against the door hard enough that pain exploded through my shoulder. "NO! He'll die without the springs! He'll—"
But they were already gone.
I sank to my knees, pressing my hands flat against the door, and felt the White Wolf stir inside me.
*Let me out,* she whispered. *Let me show them what we are.*
Not yet, I thought. Not yet.
But soon.
