There was only one left.

The final shift. The last breath. The edge of the line.

Debbie’s voice slithered through the silence like smoke. “He’s done ninety-nine. That kind of survival? You can't breed that—it’s forged. Maybe if our pup had even half that spine…”

Trixie didn’t look at her. His eyes were on the fire, jaw clenched so tightly it could snap. “There’s a den near the lowlands,” he muttered, voice hoarse. “They don’t train halfbloods. They dismantle them. Tear out instincts and rewire the brain. Like machines.”

Debbie hummed, almost delighted. “Is that what makes them… obedient?”

He didn’t answer.

She tilted her head. “We could take him there.”

His voice dropped, edged with steel. “Not now.”

The stillness returned, but something about it felt wrong—like standing in the eye of a storm, knowing the rest is just waiting to hit.

Then she giggled, as if none of it mattered. “Do you think this peach is safe?” she asked brightly, lifting the fruit with an elegance that masked her cruelty.

I had just stepped in.

I froze.

She moved toward me like a predator cloaked in grace. “Selena, darling,” she purred, extending the peach, “be a dear and try it for me. Just one bite.”

I didn’t reach for it. Not yet.

Trixie’s eyes flicked toward me. Then the fruit. Then my lips.

He remembered.

He should’ve stopped her.

But he didn’t.

So I did what I always did. I took the poison.

My fingers curled around the velvet skin of the fruit. I bit down.

The sweetness was a lie. The taste was violence.

Juice spilled down my chin, sticky and warm. It clung to me like guilt. My body began to revolt, every nerve screaming—but I didn’t stop.

Let it be over.

Let me go.

Then he moved.

Faster than breath, Trixie crossed the room and seized me by the back of the neck. The pain made stars explode behind my eyes as the fruit fell from my lips.

His palm struck my face.

Hard.

The room tilted. My head rang.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he barked. His voice cracked—too loud, too human. “Do you want to die? Is that it?”

I didn’t speak.

I swallowed what was left.

His hand trembled against my skin.

Then something shifted. His grip loosened. His touch changed.

He cupped my face as though I might break. “Spit it out,” he whispered. “Please. Don’t make me watch this.”

But it was already happening.

My chest seized.

Air became knives.

I fell to the ground, fingers clawing at wood. My body convulsed. My vision blurred.

Behind me, Debbie made a gagging sound that was too practiced, too convenient.

Trixie spun. “She’s reacting again—Debbie!”

“I didn’t know it was that bad,” Debbie whimpered, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. “It just… smells off.”

The housekeeper rushed in, skidding to a halt at the doorway.

“Oh goddess—she’s seizing again!” he gasped. “Should I call the Pack Healer?”

Trixie hesitated.

That heartbeat of doubt cracked something in me.

Then he swept Debbie into his arms like she was the one dying.

“She can’t be around this. Take care of her first. Lock Selena in the washroom. I don’t want her scent in the nursery.”

He didn’t look at me when he said it.

“Do it,” he snapped at the housekeeper. “Now.”

But I didn’t wait.

I dragged myself upright. My legs were shaking. I staggered into the guest bath, locked the door, and collapsed against the wall.

Outside, the house fell into muffled murmurs and shifting feet.

“She just wants attention,” Trixie said eventually, his voice barely audible through the door. “She’s acting out.”

No. I wasn’t acting. I was vanishing.

When I came to, hours had passed. The quiet was thick enough to choke on.

I was still alive.

Of course I was.

The dose had been too light. Again.

I turned my head. The nightstand glowed under the lamplight. A pill bottle stood beside a folded note.

Take these when you wake. I’ll be back soon.

No name. But I knew that handwriting. It used to cover my walls, years ago.

You looked cold today. Stay inside.

Don't run during your cycle. Let me pace you.

You're strong. Don’t let them convince you otherwise.

The notes disappeared long before the person did.

I exhaled slowly, eyes burning.

And that was the sound he heard when he walked in.

“You mad it didn’t work?” Trixie asked, voice like frost.

I didn’t lift my head.

He moved closer, boots thudding against the floor like falling judgment. “Did you even take your meds?”

I gestured. The bottle was still full.

His jaw clenched.

He stared at me like I was some puzzle he once knew how to solve—but forgot the pieces to.

I picked up the bottle and dumped the contents into my palm.

Then I held them out to him.

“You want me quiet? Numb? Gone?” I said, my voice raw. “You can do it. You can finish what they started.”

His eyes locked with mine.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t move.

But I saw the flicker—the one thing he didn’t want me to see.

Fear.

Not for me.

Of me.

He took the pills from my hand. One by one.

Then he turned away again.

He always turned away.

And I—

I just kept waiting for someone to stay.

“That’s enough. Hand them over. I’ll take them myself.”

My voice was level—too level. Like the eye of a storm right before it swallows everything.

Trixie stilled. His shoulders squared, nostrils flaring as if scenting something off in my tone.

“Selena, don’t be stupid.” His growl trembled at the edges. “You don’t know what those will do to you.”

The bottle of wolfsbane capsules dangled between my fingers. Then, with a sudden roar, he slapped them from my hand. They hit the floor with a hard clatter, pills scattering like bones.

“You want to die?” His voice cracked, primal and shaking. “Fine. Then die. But not like this. Not in front of me.”

He went quiet after that, panting, fists clenched at his sides like he was holding back from shifting. Trixie wasn’t the kind to shout. Not usually. But his eyes—those cold, glacial things—were flooded with heat.

He tugged off his jacket, tossed it over the chair, and turned from me with a sharp flick of his wrist. “Enough of your theatrics.”

“You’re not dying,” he muttered, voice lowering to a dangerous pitch. “We’ve tested every bloodline theory. Every moon cycle. Still nothing. The Pack down north has a lab. They’re willing to study what’s inside you. If they can extract even a fragment of your regenerative strain… maybe it’ll help the pup growing in Debbie.”

There. He’d said it.

I didn’t flinch. Just rolled up my sleeve, offering my arm like a gift to the gods.

“Take it,” I said softly. “Take all of it if you want. Maybe you’ll finally be rid of me that way.”

Something inside him faltered. But his duty to Debbie—and to the unborn heir she carried—won out.

He called in the Pack healer.

The needle wasn’t silver, but it might as well have been. It burrowed deep, draining not just blood but memory. I watched it fill, red and thick with my DNA. The very thing they wanted. The very thing I hated.

I didn’t tell them the truth.

That I was dying, yes—but not from some disease. I was nearing my hundredth death. The last in a long chain of silent sacrifices that no one remembered, not even the wolf who had once howled my name under moonlight.

Once that final death arrived, I’d be gone—not just from this pack, but from the tether that bound me to this world.

Truly gone.

Trixie’s phone buzzed. Without a glance in my direction, he picked up.

“Tomorrow. I’ll drive her to the lab myself.”

The healer hesitated. “Alpha, she should rest. Her vitals are... thinning.”

“She won’t die.” Trixie’s voice was arctic.

The healer swallowed whatever protest he had. But Trixie didn’t come the next day. Or the one after.

Instead, the shared Pack account pinged with transactions.

Maternity coats. Fur-lined boots. A winter bassinet.

A memory slammed into me like a blow.

We were once on northern patrol—before the mating bond between him and Debbie. A blizzard hit, sudden and brutal. Debbie had tracked him up there, frostbitten and weeping. Trixie wrapped her in his coat. Then—without a word—ripped mine off too and draped it over her.

“She followed me,” he snapped when I opened my mouth. “And you left her out there. You heartless mutt.”

They left me behind that night.

My wolf nearly froze solid before dawn.

I came back only to find them already mated.

I blinked, coming back to the present.

I ordered them custom-matched arctic gloves.

Then I severed my link to the Pack’s joint account.

Later, Trixie sent a single message.

I didn’t reply.

Not long after, I heard heavy footsteps outside my den door. A familiar knock. Authoritative. Impatient.

“Get dressed. We’re leaving.”

I rose silently. My limbs creaked like winter branches.

Debbie stood behind him, belly swollen, smile painted sweet as rot.

“Selena,” she purred. “It must be exhausting, donating so much of yourself for our pup. But if the lab finds nothing... we may need more. Maybe even open you up. Gently, of course.”

“For the child,” she added with a wink.

“I understand,” I said, utterly still.

Trixie’s jaw ticked. “That’s enough, Debbie.”

She laughed like she didn’t hear him. But I saw the flicker in her eyes—the momentary panic.

The three of us rode in silence.

Trixie turned on music. Something soft and old. It didn’t matter.

The silence drowned it out.

Debbie scoffed, but it wasn’t casual. Her scoff, it landed on me heavy and sharp, like broken glass being swept across tile.

“Are we really doing this again?” Her voice grated in the stillness, coated in mockery. “You know I hate that sound. It’s like something’s dying in slow motion.”

Her hand flicked toward the dashboard, but Trixie slapped it away—without looking.

The sound persisted. Low and throaty. The Wolf Elders' chant, ancient and unyielding, spilled from the speakers like smoke creeping under a locked door. It wasn’t music. It was memory. It was blood.

It unsettled her, but moved me. Because I knew what it was, what it meant to Trixie.

Outside, rain stitched the world shut. Fat droplets dragged their way down the glass in crooked, hesitant lines. The forest on either side of the road blurred into a smear of shadows. No moon. No wind. Just the hum of tires pulling us farther away from everything we knew—and toward something neither of us dared name.

Inside, the silence curdled.

Trixie gripped the wheel like it was the last thing anchoring him to himself. His fingers were stiff, bloodless. The muscles in his jaw twitched once—then again.

He hadn’t spoken since we left the city.

But now—now, he moved.

Just his eyes.

They slid to the rearview mirror. Slowly. He didn’t check the road. Or even cared to blink.

He looked for me. Searching frantically through the rearview mirror.

No, at me.

His gaze caught mine—heavy, unreadable. Like he was weighing something he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud.

I didn’t speak either.

I didn’t need to.

I could feel it rising in him—the thing he was swallowing. It pressed against the silence like it might split open and spill across the leather seats.

Debbie sighed loudly, pulling her coat tighter around her swollen belly. “You know, Trixie,” she said, not bothering to hide her irritation, “we’re supposed to be celebrating. The baby’s almost here. And you’re dragging us into the middle of nowhere listening to this… cursed muttering?”

Still, he didn’t answer.

He was staring straight through me now, and yet I could feel his focus like heat pressed against skin.

He remembered.

He remembered that I used to hum along with those chants when I thought no one was listening. That I used to whisper the Old Tongue in my sleep, as if some part of me refused to forget where I came from. That once, long ago, I believed in what those songs meant.

Now I was silent. Still.

A passenger in the backseat of a car that used to feel like home.

The chant deepened. The voices on the track grew thicker, woven with something not human. Not anymore.

Debbie shifted, uncomfortable. “God, it’s like being buried alive in sound. Can you turn it off already?”

And still—he didn’t respond.

But this time, he did move.

His hand jerked forward and twisted the dial. Not just turning the chant off—but cutting it. Killing it.

The silence that followed was worse.

Dead. Thick. Final.

Debbie started talking again. Something about names. Colors for the nursery. The healer's predictions. Her voice bounced around the cabin like wind in a tomb, completely unaware of the grief crawling its way into the space between Trixie and me.

He stared at the road, but I saw it.

The twitch of his eyelid.

The muscle shifting in his jaw.

The betrayal.

Because she didn’t know what the chant meant.

But I did.

And so did he.