I floated in darkness, drifting between consciousness and oblivion. Pain was my only anchor—my knees raw and bleeding, my wolf spirit curled into a tight, wounded ball within me. When I finally opened my eyes, the sterile white ceiling of the pack infirmary came into focus, its familiar water stain in the corner telling me exactly where I was.

I tried to move, but my body felt impossibly heavy. The forest. The ritual. The crawling. It all came back in painful flashes.

"Don't try to sit up yet," a gentle voice cautioned.

I turned my head slightly to see Mira, the pack's assistant healer, adjusting an IV drip beside my bed. Her kind eyes—the only ones in the pack that ever showed me genuine concern—were clouded with worry.

"How long?" I whispered, my throat raw as though I'd been screaming.

"Almost twenty-four hours," she answered, checking my pulse with cool fingers against my wrist. "You collapsed halfway through the forest. Two Delta wolves brought you back."

I closed my eyes, shame washing over me. I couldn't even complete the punishment ritual properly. "Marcus?"

Mira's hesitation told me everything before she spoke. "Alpha Marcus left for the Shadowmere territory last night. Victoria's Luna ceremony is today."

Of course it was. The final step in her ascension to power—a ceremony that should have been mine if the Moon Goddess's will had been honored. I reached instinctively for our mate bond, that fragile, damaged thread that had always connected us despite his rejections.

Nothing. Just emptiness where his presence should have been.

"He... he severed the link," I whispered, panic rising in my chest. Even broken and painful, that connection had been my lifeline. Without it...

"Temporarily," Mira assured me, though her eyes wouldn't meet mine. "He said the ceremony required his full attention."

A pack member hurried past my bed, deliberately averting his gaze. Then another. The message was clear—I was to be ignored, a fallen Omega who couldn't even complete a simple ritual of devotion.

I closed my eyes again, but it didn't stop the fragments from filtering through. Like radio static across a vast distance, echoes of joy and celebration leaked through the severed bond. Victoria's laughter. Congratulations. The clink of glasses. Marcus's pride radiating like a beacon.

"They're celebrating," I murmured, each word like swallowing glass.

Mira squeezed my hand but said nothing. What could she say? We both knew the truth.

The infirmary door swung open with a bang, and a young Delta wolf entered, carrying a sealed silver cup. His eyes darted nervously around the room before landing on me.

"From Alpha Marcus," he announced, loud enough for everyone to hear. "He commands the Omega to drink this tea immediately. It's being served at the Luna ceremony, and he wishes her to participate from afar."

The boy placed the cup on my bedside table and backed away quickly, as though proximity to me might contaminate him.

Mira reached for the cup, but I caught her wrist. "I'll do it."

Something was wrong. Lily, my wolf, stirred anxiously within me, pressing against my consciousness with a warning growl. But the compulsion of the mate bond—even damaged—was too strong to resist. Marcus had commanded, and my body responded before my mind could object.

With trembling hands, I lifted the cup to my lips. The liquid inside was dark and bitter, with an underlying sweetness that couldn't quite mask its true nature. One sip, and I knew.

Wolfsbane.

The cup clattered to the floor as fire erupted in my throat, spreading through my veins like molten metal. My back arched off the bed as convulsions seized my body.

"Emma!" Mira's panicked voice seemed to come from miles away. "It's wolfsbane! Someone help me!"

But no one moved. Through the haze of agony, I saw pack members turning away, filing out of the infirmary one by one.

"Marcus ordered no intervention," someone murmured as they left.

Lily's presence flickered within me like a candle in a storm, her spirit retreating deeper as the poison spread. I could feel her slipping away, our connection thinning.

"Don't you dare," Mira hissed, grabbing emergency supplies from a locked cabinet. "I don't care what Alpha Marcus commanded. I will not watch you die."

As darkness crept in from the edges of my vision, one crystal-clear thought cut through the pain: Marcus hadn't just rejected me again.

He was trying to kill me.

Three days passed before Marcus returned to the pack house. I drifted in and out of consciousness, my body fighting the lingering effects of the wolfsbane while Mira secretly administered antidotes when no one was watching. Lily had retreated so deep within me that I could barely feel her presence—a whisper where there should have been a howl.

I was staring at the ceiling, counting the water stains for the hundredth time, when his scent hit me—pine and winter frost, the smell that once made my heart race with hope but now only triggered fear.

"Still alive, I see." Marcus's voice was flat as he entered the infirmary, his tall frame blocking the doorway. He didn't approach my bed, keeping a calculated distance as though I were contagious.

"Yes, Alpha," I whispered, my voice still raw from the poison. "I'm sorry to disappoint you."

His eyes narrowed at my unexpected defiance, but he chose to ignore it. "Victoria's condition has worsened since the ceremony. The healer says she's declining faster now."

Of course she was. The pattern was so transparent that only willful blindness could miss it. Every time I survived, Victoria mysteriously weakened.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I managed, the lie bitter on my tongue.

"Are you?" Marcus stepped closer, his golden eyes cold. "Because it seems that your very presence in this pack is poisoning her wolf. The timing is... suspicious."

My fingers clutched the thin blanket. "I've done nothing to harm her."

"Perhaps not intentionally." He placed his hands behind his back, assuming the stance he used when addressing disobedient pack members. "But the mate bond, even rejected, creates complications. Your wolf calls to mine, and it's affecting Victoria's connection to me."

The cruelty of his words stole my breath. After years of rejection, after the wolfsbane, he still found ways to twist the knife deeper.

"What would you have me do?" I asked, already knowing the answer wouldn't be mercy.

"You'll remain confined to this room. No contact with other pack members. No participation in pack activities." His voice hardened with each word. "If Victoria's condition improves with your isolation, we'll know the source of the problem."

Prison. He was sentencing me to solitary confinement for the crime of being his true mate.

"And if her condition doesn't improve?" I dared to ask.

Marcus's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Then we'll need to consider more permanent solutions."

He left without another word, the threat hanging in the air like a guillotine blade. The moment the door closed behind him, I curled into myself, silent tears streaming down my face. There would be no redemption, no eventual acceptance. Only a slow death by isolation or something much worse.

Hours later, as twilight settled over the pack house, voices drifted through the partially open window near my bed. I recognized Victoria's melodic tone immediately, followed by a deeper, unfamiliar male voice. Curiosity pulled me from the fog of despair, and I strained to listen.

"The wolfsbane wasn't strong enough," Victoria hissed, frustration evident in her voice. "Her wolf retreated but didn't break. We need something more permanent, Samuel."

"Patience, my love," the man—Samuel—replied. "The ritual requires precise timing. The next full moon will provide the power we need to sever their bond completely."

"And her wolf?" Victoria asked.

"Will be erased as if it never existed," Samuel assured her. "She'll be left empty, a shell without her spirit. No Alpha would keep such a broken thing in their pack."

Their footsteps faded as they moved away from the window, but their words remained, echoing in my mind with terrifying clarity. They weren't just trying to weaken me or drive me away—they planned to destroy my wolf entirely, to erase the very essence of who I was.

Lily stirred within me, a faint growl of defiance breaking through her retreat. For the first time in years, we were in perfect agreement: we would not wait to be destroyed.

When Mira came to check on me after midnight, I grabbed her wrist with what little strength I had left.

"Help me," I whispered, desperation making my voice shake. "They're going to kill my wolf. I need to disappear—to die, as far as they know."

Mira's eyes widened with understanding and fear. "Emma, what you're asking..."

"Please," I begged. "You're the only one who might help me. I'd rather be dead than live without Lily."

She glanced at the door, then back at me, indecision warring on her face before determination settled in her eyes.

"There might be a way," she said quietly. "But if we're caught..."

"We won't be," I promised, hope flickering to life within me for the first time in years. "Tell me what to do."

As Mira outlined her dangerous plan involving a deer carcass, matching scent oils, and a staged rogue attack, I realized that to truly live, Emma Sullivan would have to die.