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.”

Trixie didn’t speak right away.

His eyes tracked the corridor—not idly, not distractedly, but with intention. He was thinking. Calculating. Past the thick-glass partition and the reinforced steel doors waited something unspoken. Something classified. And dangerous. The inner lab breathed with machines, blinked with sensors, and hummed like something alive.

When he finally turned back to Debbie, the air seemed to shift.

"Wait here," he said.

No tenderness. Just a directive, clipped and final.

"Radiation levels spike past the second corridor."

He didn’t wait for her response. He was already walking, already gone. The door groaned open, mechanical and reluctant, before sealing him inside with a sound that seemed too close to a coffin lid.

Then Debbie moved.

Whatever softness she had been wearing—the fluttery concern, the careful gestures around her belly, the light cadence of her voice—shed off her like a snake peeling out of old skin. Her posture shifted in increments: first the tilt of her neck, then the arch of her spine. Her eyes lost their fog. She blinked once, slow. Intentional.

Her face no longer held a mask of warmth. She looked at me like a surgeon might look at a body on a slab.

"You look like hell," she said, the smile gone, her voice stripped down to its bones. "Must be hard, carrying the weight of miracles."

I didn’t answer. My stare stayed fixed on a point just beyond her shoulder, cold and focused, the only resistance I still owned.

She closed the distance between us.

"No comeback? No defiance today?" Her voice dripped condescension. "Thought so."

I could feel the heat of her breath now. It smelled sweet—artificial, rotted fruit sweetness, like something trying too hard to be alive. She tilted her head, mock-curious.

"They’re draining you like an old well, and you just keep giving. That has to be exhausting."

From her coat, she pulled a glass vial, opaque and black as ink. She turned it in her fingers, letting it catch the lab light.

"It doesn’t matter how many times you crawl back from the brink, Selena. Eventually, even gods run out."

I blinked slowly. She mistook it for fear.

"Want to make it interesting?" she whispered. "A wager. If he saves you, I disappear. If he saves me... you? You're erased. No resurrection. No echoes."

She leaned in until her lips nearly grazed my ear. "Spoiler alert: He won’t pick you."

Then she moved fast.

Grabbed my hand. Slammed it against her throat.

And in the same breath, she uncorked the vial and swallowed its contents whole.

Her body reacted instantly.

A strangled gasp cut through the air as she collapsed to the ground, her limbs seizing violently. Foam gathered at her lips, thick and white. Her back arched off the tile like she was being lifted by invisible strings.

My heart slammed into my ribs, legs frozen in place, mind blank with a sharp, animal panic.

Then I heard it.

Trixie’s voice.

It wasn’t a shout. It wasn’t concern.

It was a command ripped from something deeper.

"Debbie?!"

The clang of boots hit the metal floor in a rhythm that was both furious and inevitable. He burst through the lab door, eyes scanning, not breathing, already seeing too much.

He dropped beside her, knees hitting the tile with a hollow thud. His hands, usually steady, trembled as they found her face.

"Debbie? Debbie! No, no, stay with me—"

Her eyes were rolling. Her chest convulsed. Her fingers clawed at her swollen stomach, smearing sweat and blood across the fabric.

He turned to me.

And something in him cracked open.

"What the hell did you do?!"

I couldn’t even form a sentence.

Dr. Hemlock stormed in behind him, took one look, and dropped his clipboard. It hit the floor like a gunshot.

"Alpha—the fetus is losing oxygen. We either harvest now or lose everything."

Trixie’s head snapped toward me. There was no time left in his face. Only decision.

"Then use her. Now."

Steel cuffs clamped around my wrists before I could even scream.