Kaelen von Hellberg POV:
Her scream was swallowed by the roar of the rotors.
I watched her on the monitor, a small, kneeling figure on the concrete pad, growing smaller with every foot we climbed. The sound was cut off, but the image was burned behind my eyes. Betrayal. A raw, primal agony that had nothing to do with her unknown past and everything to do with me.
The logical part of my mind, the part that ran a corporate empire and a pack of over five hundred wolves, catalogued the decision as sound. Necessary. She was a rogue, a vulnerability. She had a power I couldn't quantify and an effect on me I wouldn't tolerate. Leaving her at a neutral facility, well-funded and secure, was the only rational choice.
Then the pain hit.
It wasn't the lingering fire of the wolfsbane in my gut. This was new. A sharp, physical tearing in the center of my chest, as if a thread that had been woven into my sternum had just been violently ripped out. I instinctively pressed a hand to the spot, my fingers digging into the fine wool of my suit jacket. The numbers on the financial report glowing on my tablet blurred into meaningless streaks of light.
"Sir?" Harlan's voice was low, carefully neutral. He sat opposite me, a boulder of a man whose loyalty was as solid as his frame. His eyes, however, were not neutral. They were fixed on my hand, then flicked to my face.
"The matter is concluded," I said. My voice was tight. The helicopter banked, and for a moment, the facility was gone from the monitor's view. The pain in my chest sharpened, stealing my breath.
Harlan didn't push. He just looked down at his phone, which had buzzed silently. He read the screen, his heavy brow furrowing. "Director Holt reports she's refusing to move from the landing pad. Refusing to eat." He paused. "He says she's… heartbroken."
"She'll adapt," I said, the words tasting like ash. I forced my gaze away from him, to the dark curve of the window. My own reflection stared back. Not the Alpha. Not the CEO. Just a man with hollowed-out eyes and a haunted expression I didn't recognize. The wolfsbane had done its work, hollowing me out, leaving an empty vessel. But this—this was different. This was a wound.
I flinched away from the image, my jaw tightening until my teeth ached. And in the sudden, echoing silence of my mind, a new voice stirred. It wasn't a thought. It was a feeling, a presence I had suppressed for decades, now given shape by the void. A low, guttural snarl that was not my own.
*Coward.*
The helicopter leveled out, the steady thrum of the rotors a monotonous drone against the screaming inside my skull. The pain in my chest pulsed in time with it.
Harlan's phone buzzed again. He glanced down, and this time his face was grim. He looked up, his gaze meeting mine with an unwelcome weight.
"Sir. She's accusing you of abandoning her." He hesitated, as if weighing the insubordination of his next words. "She's calling you a monster."
The word struck me like a physical blow. Monster. It was the thing my father had been. The thing I had spent my entire life vowing never to become. I had built an empire on control, on a rigid, unyielding discipline meant to starve the beast inside me. And in my most controlled, most rational act, I had earned the one name I never wanted.
The tablet slipped from my grasp, clattering to the floor. The carefully constructed walls of logic crumbled into dust. The pain in my chest was no longer a tear; it was a chasm.
"Land," I bit out, the single word a gunshot in the cabin.
Harlan stared. "Sir? We're halfway back to—"
"Land. Now."
I stormed past him as soon as the skids touched down in a grassy clearing miles from anywhere. The air was cold, smelling of damp earth and pine. I didn't care. I needed out. I needed silence. But there was no silence. The voice was louder now.
My study was supposed to be a sanctuary. All dark wood, old leather, and the oppressive silence of wealth. It smelled of me, of my control. But tonight, the silence was an accusation. Her scent was still here, a ghost of wildflowers and rain clinging to the air, a phantom limb I could still feel.
I poured a whiskey, the amber liquid sloshing in the heavy crystal tumbler. My hand was not steady.
I was setting a lost bird free, I told myself. Protecting her from this. From me.
*Liar,* the wolf snarled in my head. The voice was clearer now, a savage counterpoint to my own thoughts. *You found a lost bird and broke its wings so it couldn't fly away from you. Then you got scared of what it made you feel, so you threw it out of the nest.*
I paced the priceless Aubusson rug, the one she had sat on, looking up at me with those wide, trusting eyes. The whiskey burned my throat but did nothing to quiet the voice.
*You're a coward, afraid of a slip of a girl. Afraid of a bond you were born for.*
I stopped in front of the large, gilt-edged mirror over the mantelpiece. My reflection sneered back at me, the expression a perfect echo of the contempt in my wolf's voice. I looked haunted. Broken.
I fled my own gaze, striding into the adjoining dressing room. A mundane ritual. Change out of the suit, the armor. Re-establish control. The room was a vast, silent space of cedar and steel. My suits hung in perfect, lifeless rows.
And then I saw it.
On the valet stand, where it must have been left by the staff, was a t-shirt. A simple, soft grey t-shirt she had worn. Folded neatly, as if waiting. An oversight. A mistake.
A relic.
My hand froze in the act of unbuttoning my cuff. The rational man, the Alpha, knew he should turn away. Call for it to be removed. Burned.
I did not turn away.
I crossed the room in two strides. My fingers trembled as I reached out and snatched the soft cotton. It was still cool from the air in the room, but the moment I brought it to my face, her scent flooded my senses. Not a ghost this time. It was real. Rain. Wildflowers. And something else, something that was uniquely, maddeningly *her*.
It was the scent of home. The scent of *mine*.
Logic shattered. Control evaporated. The wolfsbane was a dam, and this scent was the flood that smashed it to pieces. The beast inside me, starved and poisoned and caged, broke free with a deafening, possessive roar that consumed every thought in my head.
*MINE.*
The sound was so powerful it was a physical force, shaking me to my core. My knuckles were bone-white as my hand crushed the soft fabric. The scent of her was the only thing in the world, the only thing that mattered. And that single, guttural word echoed in the sudden, absolute silence of my mind.
*Mine*.
