“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.

“Selena.”

He said my name like he was testing it on his tongue, checking if it still meant anything.

I lifted my eyes to the rearview mirror and met his stare—flat, still, unreadable. My face didn’t move. Not a twitch. I gave him nothing.

But he didn’t need words.

He remembered.

I used to hum to the old chants under my breath. When the others rolled their eyes, I kept singing. Not loud—just enough. Reverent. Intimate. Like I was offering something. Like I believed it mattered.

I said those harmonics were older than any of us. That they carried the pulse of something not dead yet.

And now?

I sat in silence, arms folded, coat zipped to the throat. A passenger. A body. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak.

But silence has weight, and mine wasn’t gentle. It pressed into the car, made the air taste like metal.

Trixie’s fingers shifted on the steering wheel, subtle, but telling. His jaw moved, just once, like he was grinding back words he didn’t want to let loose.

Then his hand darted forward, sharp and certain, and killed the chant mid-breath.

The quiet that replaced it wasn’t relief. It was severance. Like snapping a cord you’ve been holding too tight.

Debbie didn’t notice. Or maybe she did, but she chose not to acknowledge it. She adjusted her seatbelt, patted the curve of her stomach like it might start a conversation.

“I was thinking Elara, if it’s a girl,” she said, all breathy enthusiasm. “Has a moon ring to it, right? Elara Jagger. Strong, but pretty.”

She laughed—light, practiced, just a bit too loud for the space. A laugh she’d used before. Probably with him.

Beside her, Trixie’s face didn’t flinch. Didn’t nod. Didn’t turn.

He wasn’t there with her.

Not really.

He stared ahead like the road was gone and he was still driving.

But his eyes found me again, briefly, in the mirror. A glance that didn’t ask anything outright. Just lingered, as if staring long enough might draw out a response I didn’t have to give.

I looked back at him, expression blank.

No hatred. No warmth. Just silence.

Because whatever thread used to bind us—it had thinned.

The wolf in me no longer responded to his voice.

Outside, the gravel slowed under the tires. The forest peeled back to reveal the outpost. Fog pressed against the windows, thick and damp, like breath on glass. Somewhere above, unseen, the mountain loomed—quiet, sharp, waiting.

Two guards stepped forward, dressed in slate-black armor, hands behind their backs. They didn’t speak. Just nodded once to Trixie and opened the reinforced steel door. It slid aside with a dull grind, the weight of it vibrating faintly through the car floor.

Inside, the air changed.

Everything was clinical. Sharp. Cold.

White lights buzzed softly overhead, and the walls were painted that sterile shade of not-white, the kind that made your skin itch if you looked too long. You could smell the burn of silver in the air—thick, biting, like it wanted to crawl into your lungs.

Dr. Hemlock appeared without ceremony, gliding from the corridor like something exhaled by the building itself. Tall, pale, sharp-edged in a way that made you think of scalpels. His gloves still steamed from whatever sterilization bath he’d dipped them in. The scent that clung to him wasn’t just disinfectant—it was processed death.

“Alpha Trixie,” he greeted, nodding without warmth. “We’ve run five trials this week. Tissue sample batch 29-B is showing faster-than-expected cellular regrowth. She’s still yielding. Remarkably.”

He didn’t look at Trixie when he said it. He looked at me.

I didn’t meet his stare.

Trixie did.

His expression didn’t shift, but something behind it did. His voice came out quiet, even.

“Results only.”

Hemlock didn’t push. He adjusted his clipboard, spine rigid, tone clipped.

“There’s a problem. The anomaly in her blood—the regenerative curve—is unraveling. We’re past the peak. Every minute we wait, we lose viability. At this rate… there’ll be nothing left to study. No recovery window.”

He paused. Glanced again at me, more careful this time.

“We’re reaching the end.”