Fae's POV:

The words settled over me with the weight of a death sentence.

I held onto consciousness by a thread, needing to see his face, needing to burn the image of the man who had thanked me for an alliance into my dying mind.

There was no grief in his eyes. No feigned sorrow for the cameras that weren't there. Only a cold, transactional finality.

A transaction. I wasn't his mate, his Luna. I was a contract, fulfilled and now terminated.

The words didn't just break my heart; they annihilated it.

He straightened up, his gaze flicking to Heidi. He gave her a subtle, almost imperceptible nod. It was a look of shared conspiracy, of a plan perfectly executed.

Heidi's face, still tear-streaked, bloomed with a triumphant smile. She moved to his side, and his arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her possessively against him. A public declaration, made to an audience of one dying woman.

They stood over me, the perfect couple, silhouetted against the sterile lights of my death chamber.

Something inside me broke free. A primal roar from my dying wolf, not of pain, but of pure, undiluted rage. It wasn't a plea for life, but a demand for vengeance.

A strange power, born of death and desperation, surged through my veins. It was the last, explosive gift of a she-wolf's spirit. My eyes, which could barely focus moments before, snapped open, locking onto them. A silver fire ignited in my pupils.

My lips, cracked and bloody, parted. I forced the words out, each one a shard of my shattered soul, clear and steady.

"I... curse you... with my soul..."

Their triumphant expressions faltered. A flicker of unease, of a primal fear they couldn't name, crossed their faces. They felt it-the chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

"...May you never know peace. May all you love be lost to you, and all you desire turn to ash in your hands!"

The final word left my lips on a sigh. The silver fire in my eyes extinguished. My head fell back against the cold floor.

I was dead.

The mate bond snapped. I felt it as a distant severing. From Colten's brief frown, I knew he felt it too, but it was a flicker of discomfort, not the soul-tearing agony it should have been. As if the bond had been a lie from the start.

Heidi shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as if a cold wind had swept through the room.

Colten recovered quickly. "Clean this up," he ordered her, his voice clipped and business-like. "Stick to the story. It was a Rogue attack."

Heidi nodded, her composure returning.

Colten gave my body one last, dismissive glance before turning and striding out of the room. He was going to rally his warriors, to play the part of the grieving, vengeful Alpha.

My spirit, a translucent shimmer in the air, watched it all.

I watched Heidi take the dagger and carve new wounds into my cooling flesh, creating the illusion of a struggle. I watched her overturn a table, smear blood on the walls.

My spirit followed Colten and watched him deliver a heart-wrenching, lie-filled speech to his pack, his voice breaking with false grief as he announced the death of his "beloved mate and unborn child." They howled in sorrow, their loyalty and sympathy completely misplaced.

Hate was a black hole, and it was consuming me. I would not accept this. I would not fade into nothingness while they built their lives on my bones.

Just as the darkness began to pull my consciousness apart, a single, pure beam of moonlight pierced through the window, through the very walls of the building. It bypassed the bloody scene and enveloped my spirit in a gentle, silver luminescence.

A voice, ancient and kind, echoed not in my ears, but in the very core of my being.

My child, this was not your fate.

A tremendous force seized me, pulling me from the room, from the pack, from time itself. The world dissolved into a swirling vortex of light and shadow.

The last image burned into my mind was of Colten and Heidi at my funeral, accepting condolences, their faces perfect masks of sorrow.

And then, everything went backward.