The Alpha's Blood Seal.

Authority to sign all documents on his behalf.

Dominic Ashford — the wolf so meticulous, so obsessively controlled, that he reviewed every critical blood oath accord with his own eyes before granting approval.

And he had given that power to her.

As if to prove it, Serena reached into her bag and produced an exquisite crimson seal, carved from moonstone and pulsing faintly with the residual essence of Dominic's own blood.

She didn't even glance at the contents.

She flipped straight to the last page.

The seal came down with a sharp, decisive crack.

"There. Signed."

She shoved the documents back into my hands, her tone dripping with the casual condescension of someone tossing scraps to a stray. "I've heard all about it from Dominic. You two are nothing but an arranged mating — a political bond. So stay in your place. These little accords for dens and trinkets? Bring them directly to me from now on. Stop bothering him with every small thing. He doesn't want to see you."

I looked down at the fresh crimson imprint on the page.

That mark — the symbol of his identity, his bloodline authority, the most sacred instrument of an Alpha's power. Any document bearing it became irrevocable under Moon Goddess law.

And now it sat on this page like a vast, bloody joke.

My lips parted. I wanted to tell her.

This wasn't an accord for purchasing a den.

This was a Bond Severance Accord.

But before the words could form —

A piercing alarm shrieked through the building, the shrill wail of fire wards activating all at once.

"Fire! Run!"

Someone's scream cut through the crowd.

In the next heartbeat, chaos erupted.

Every wolf in the hall surged toward the exits in a frenzied stampede. Serena and I had been standing deep inside the venue, and the crush of bodies closed around us like a vice, pressing from every side.

An instant later, we were both knocked to the ground.

"Ahhh!"

"Don't step on me!"

Countless feet trampled over us. Pain detonated through my body like lightning strikes, one after another. I felt my ribs compressing, my bones grinding as if they were being crushed inch by inch. I clawed at the floor, desperate to rise, but I couldn't move. The weight of the stampede pinned me flat, and my wolf — already weakened from years of silver exposure and malnourishment — could barely stir beneath my skin, let alone lend me the strength to shift or fight free.

"Dominic, save me!"

Serena's voice was raw, ragged with sobs, tearing through the noise like a wounded animal's cry.

And then — the next second — I heard his voice.

Laced with a panic I had never once heard from him in five years.

"Baby!"

I saw him fight his way back through the fleeing crowd, his massive frame cutting through the stampede like a predator moving against the current.

I shoved at the bodies pressing down on me, and somewhere in the wreckage of my chest, a pitiful, desperate spark of hope flickered to life. He was coming back. He was coming back for —

But the next second, I saw everything clearly.

He charged forward, and his gaze locked onto Serena with the precision of a wolf tracking its sole prey. Without a heartbeat of hesitation, he bent down, scooped her into his arms, and cradled her against his chest. His body curled around hers — shielding her, protecting her — and he turned and sprinted toward the exit.

From start to finish, he did not look at me once.

"Dominic! Dominic!"

I screamed his name with every shred of breath left in my lungs.

But my voice drowned beneath the shrieking alarms and the thunder of panicked wolves. The sound was swallowed whole, as if I had never made it at all.

Did he hear me?

Perhaps he did.

But he didn't turn back.

Just as I was certain I would be trampled to death on that floor — my ribs cracking, my wolf whimpering and fading into silence inside me — that familiar silhouette appeared again in the smoke-hazed doorway.

He came back.

Something surged in my chest. A guttering flame in the ashes of my heart, desperate and pathetic and alive.

He came back for me after all.

But the next second, I understood exactly how foolish I was.

He rushed to my side, but his eyes never found mine. Not once. He simply bent down and plucked something from beside my hand — a delicate bracelet that must have fallen from Serena's wrist during the chaos. His fingers closed around it, knuckles white, and he turned to leave without a single word.

From the doorway, Serena's voice carried back to me — tearful one moment, then bright with laughter the next: "Oh, thank the Moon Goddess, you found it! That's my favorite bracelet — if it had been crushed I would have cried all day!"

He strode back to her side, and his voice carried the easy relief of something precious recovered, wrapped in that familiar, indulgent warmth he reserved only for her: "Well, I couldn't let my baby cry. That's why I went back for it."

"You're so good to me."

She rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

So that was why.

He came back for a bracelet.

In his heart, I — his bonded mate of five years, the Luna who bore his mark on her shoulder — was worth less than a piece of her jewelry.

The last thread holding me together snapped.

My wolf let out a single, broken keen deep inside my skull, and then she went silent. Completely, terrifyingly silent — the way a wolf goes quiet only when it has given up.

My vision darkened.

I lost all consciousness.

When I woke again, it was on a healer's table.

The blinding white light of the Healing Hall's examination lamps seared through my eyelids, so harsh I could barely force my eyes open. The sterile scent of medicinal herbs and antiseptic wolfsbane-neutralizer hung thick in the air.

The pack healer's voice reached me through the fog: "Luna Ashford, you're awake. You've sustained extensive soft tissue damage across your body. There are suspected fractures along your ribs, and the trampling caused internal bleeding in your abdomen. We need to operate immediately."

The attending healer was already preparing to inject the sedative into my arm.

Then a deafening crash split the air.

The door to the healing chamber was kicked open with enough force to crack the frame.

Several enforcers in black stormed inside and ripped the needle from my hand without a word.

"What do you think you're doing? This patient needs surgery now!" The healer's voice rose in fury, stepping forward to block them.

They didn't even acknowledge him.

Rough hands seized me and dragged me off the table. My body screamed with agony at every point of contact, pain so intense it turned everything numb, as if my nerve endings had simply surrendered. My wolf didn't even stir. She lay curled in the farthest corner of my mind, utterly still, utterly broken.

"Let go of me… where are you taking me…"

My voice was so weak it barely carried past my own lips.

No one answered.

The enforcers dragged me through the corridors of the Healing Hall, my feet scraping against the stone floor. I could feel the blood seeping through my clothes, leaving a dark trail behind me.

Then they threw me onto the cold floor of the private healing ward.

I lifted my head.

And saw him.

Dominic sat at the edge of the healing cot, carefully tilting a cup of water to Serena's lips. His movements were tender, almost reverent. The scent of jasmine and honeyed musk clung to her — that sickly-sweet perfume she always wore, now filling the entire room until it choked me.

She had a few scratches. A faint bruise on her arm. She looked slightly shaken, nothing more.

And I was drenched in my own blood.

He looked at me. Those steel-grey eyes swept over my broken body, and not a single flicker of emotion crossed his face.

Cold. Like I was a stranger. Like I was nothing.

"Serena wants osmanthus cakes," he said, his tone flat and detached. "I recall you make the best ones. Go prepare a batch now."

I thought I had misheard him.

I was covered in blood. My insides were torn apart. My wolf was barely conscious, whimpering somewhere deep in the shattered recesses of my mind.

And he wanted me to bake osmanthus cakes.

Because she said she wanted some.

Every ounce of grief, every swallowed injustice, every year of pain and despair and silent endurance — it all erupted at once. The dam inside me didn't just crack. It shattered.

I clawed my way upright, my voice so raw it sounded like something tearing apart from within.

"Dominic Ashford, you have gone too far!"

"When I was being trampled half to death at the Grand Pack Exchange, where were you? You only had eyes for her!"

"Now I'm bleeding internally and I need a healer's intervention, and you drag me here because she said one sentence!"

"All these years — what have I ever been to you?"

"I am your bonded mate! Your Luna by sacred rite! Is this how you treat the wolf bound to you before the Moon Goddess?"

I screamed until my throat gave out. Tears mixed with blood, streaming down my face in a wretched mess. My wolf howled inside me — a broken, keening sound that rattled through my bones. I could feel her thrashing weakly, trying to rise, trying to make him feel even a fraction of the agony pouring through us.

But he showed nothing.

Not a flicker. Not a flinch. Not even the decency of anger.

It was Serena who reacted. She wrinkled her nose in his arms and pressed her hands over her ears with a look of distaste. "So loud. My head is pounding now."

He immediately pulled her closer, one large hand cupping gently over her ear, his voice dropping to a murmur of pure warmth. "Shh, it's all right. I'm here."

Then he raised his head and looked at me.

The warmth vanished. His eyes turned to ice, and the weight of his Alpha aura pressed down on me like a physical force — suffocating, crushing, deliberate. My wolf whimpered and went still.

"You've said all that, and you still refuse to go."

I stared at him.

Something inside my chest died. Not all at once. Piece by piece, like embers going dark.

He seemed to lose patience entirely. His voice dropped to something frigid and final.

"Since she won't go willingly, lock her in the silver-lined cold cell. When she's ready to do as she's told, let her out."

The enforcers seized me immediately.

They didn't care about my struggling. They didn't flinch at my cries.

They dragged me away.

The door of the cold cell slammed shut behind me with a sound like a coffin lid closing.

The cold hit me instantly — not ordinary cold, but the bone-deep, marrow-freezing cold of a chamber lined with silver. The metal hummed in the walls, a low vibration that seeped into my skin and silenced my wolf completely. She didn't whimper. She didn't howl. She simply went dark, as though the silver had snuffed her out like a candle flame.

My wounds screamed. Every laceration, every bruise, every place where my body had been broken felt like it was being pierced by a thousand frozen needles. The silver prevented any healing. My blood, which should have been knitting itself back together, simply kept flowing. Slowly. Steadily.

The internal bleeding in my abdomen was getting worse. I could feel it — a heavy, spreading warmth beneath the cold, the terrible sensation of something vital leaking where it shouldn't.

I was dying.

I knew it with absolute clarity.

The cold and the despair swallowed me whole, dragging me down into a darkness that felt almost peaceful. My consciousness flickered like a guttering flame, dimming, dimming.

But at the very edge — at the moment when everything was about to go black forever — some wretched, animal instinct clawed its way to the surface. Survival. The most basic, most humiliating drive a wolf could possess. It crushed what remained of my dignity beneath its desperate weight.

I dragged myself across the frozen floor. Every inch was agony. My fingers were numb, my arms shaking so violently I could barely hold myself up. I reached the iron door and raised one trembling hand to beat against it.

My voice came out in broken fragments.

"I'll… do it… I'll make them…"

"Let me out…"

The door opened.

I was pulled out like a discarded rag and half-carried, half-dragged to the small kitchen in the Healing Hall.

My body wouldn't stop shaking. My fingers had no feeling left in them. I could barely grip the wooden spoon. But I stood at the counter, propped against it like a corpse held upright by sheer will, and I made those osmanthus cakes.

Every motion was mechanical. Muscle memory from years of being ordered to prepare ceremonial offerings for Serena — cakes, pastries, elaborate dishes she would take one bite of and push away. My hands knew the recipe even when my mind was dissolving.

I carried the tray into the healing ward.

Dominic glanced at the cakes.

Just once.

Then he spoke, his voice utterly indifferent.

"Take her to the healers for her procedure."

I was wheeled back into the treatment chamber. The pack healer's face was grim as she worked, murmuring incantations and pressing herb-soaked compresses against my abdomen. Then the sedative tincture entered my veins, slow and heavy.

My consciousness began to blur.

One last tear slipped from the corner of my eye and traced a warm line down my cold cheek.

Dominic Ashford.

From this moment forward.

We walk separate paths.

I will never love you again.

The days after the procedure stretched long and agonizing.

I lay alone in the healing cot, watching the herbal infusion drip steadily into my veins through a thin silver-free tube. The dull throb of my wounds came in waves, relentless and grinding. Each time the healer's attendant changed my dressings, it felt like a fresh round of torture.

The young Omega attendant was as gentle as she could be. But the pity in her eyes — the way she couldn't quite hide it — that hurt worse than anything she did to my wounds.

"Just bear with it a little longer. It's almost done."

Her voice was soft, meant to comfort.

After she left, I heard her speaking with another attendant just outside the door. Their voices were low, but my wolf hearing — even weakened as it was — caught every word.

"Poor thing… injuries that severe, and not a single packmate has come to see her. She had to authorize her own healing procedure."

"I know. Meanwhile, that Serena in the private ward down the hall barely had a scratch, and Alpha Ashford hasn't left her side. I heard he turned down three major alliance pacts worth billions in territory just to stay with her."

"Same pack, different fates."

Their words sank into me like fine needles, one by one, pricking into places that should have been too numb to feel anything.

But they were right. I had no feeling left.

I closed my eyes and turned my face toward the window, letting the pale moonlight fall across my skin. I pretended I hadn't heard a thing.

The day I left the Healing Hall, the sky hung low and grey.

I finished the discharge papers, and the moment I stepped through the front doors, I spotted several sleek vehicles idling at the entrance.

"Vivienne, over here!"

It was them.

My pack of childhood friends. The wolves I had grown up alongside, run with under countless moons, shared my first howls with before any of us ever shifted.

Seeing their grinning faces, something thawed inside the frozen wasteland of my chest. My wolf, who had been curled in silence for days, lifted her head and let out a soft, tentative whimper of recognition.

That night, they took me to the moonlit lounge we always frequented. A place tucked between territories where wolves of different packs could gather without formality. They said it was a celebration of my liberation. My escape from suffering.

"Good riddance. That kind of Alpha doesn't deserve you, never did!"

"Our Vivienne has the looks, the figure, the Silvercrest bloodline. Now that the bond is severed, unmated wolves will be lining up from here to the Continental Packs!"

"Tomorrow I'm introducing you to a few young Alphas I know. Every single one of them a hundred times better than him, I guarantee it."

They talked over each other, teasing, laughing, their warmth wrapping around me like a communal howl.

I drank the honeyed mead and couldn't help but smile.

It had been so long since I'd felt this lightness.

They were right. Why had I spent five years tearing myself apart for a wolf who never loved me?

I stood and excused myself to the washroom.

When I came back, the booth was empty.

Everyone was gone.

I froze, then caught the arm of a passing attendant. "Where are my friends?"

The attendant's expression turned uneasy. He gestured toward a private room at the far end of the corridor.

"A she-wolf came in, clearly drunk. She demanded the lounge bring out their most attractive male escorts. Looked around, wasn't satisfied with any of them. Then she spotted your friends and had her bodyguards drag them into that private room." He swallowed. "There were too many enforcers with her. We didn't dare intervene."

My stomach dropped like a stone.

Something was wrong.

My friends weren't ordinary wolves. They came from established bloodlines, every one of them. No one would dare manhandle them like that.

Unless...

A sickening premonition crashed over me, and my wolf surged to her feet, hackles rising.

I was practically running when I reached the door and shoved it open.

Just as I feared.

Serena.

She was heavily intoxicated, her scent sharp with too much wine and something reckless underneath. She had one of my friends by the wrist and was pulling his hand toward her body, pressing herself against him.

His face was tight with barely contained disgust, but he was holding himself back. Restraining himself because he knew exactly who she was and what her connection to the Ashford Pack meant.

"Serena, let him go!"

I crossed the room in three strides and wrenched them apart.

That was the moment the door was kicked open from the outside.

He was there.

Dominic Ashford.

His face was carved from ice, and the temperature in the room plummeted as his Alpha aura rolled outward like a physical force. The air thickened. My friends instinctively dropped their gazes, shoulders curling inward despite themselves.

He seized Serena's wrist, his voice low and tight with barely leashed fury. "Serena, what are you doing in a place like this?"

She yanked free of his grip, her eyes glazed and unfocused, and pointed a swaying finger at my friends.

"I came to order male escorts. Can't you see? I picked these ones. I want them to keep me company."

"Enough. You're not doing this." His tone dropped, cold and commanding. He reached for her again.

She shoved him away and burst into tears, her face crumpling with theatrical hurt.

"You can smile with other she-wolves! You spent hours alone in your den with that female alliance delegate. Why can't I have male company?"

His Beta Liaison stepped forward quickly. "Miss Holloway, that was a territory negotiation. There was nothing inappropriate about it."

"I don't care!"

She wasn't listening. She lurched toward my friend again, grabbing for his arm.

"You're allowed your she-wolves, so I get my males!"

I couldn't hold back any longer.

I stepped between them, planting myself like a wall.

"Enough! Whatever is between the two of you is your business. Stop harassing my friends."

Only then did his gaze land on me.

Those cold grey eyes swept over my face, then drifted past me to the wolves standing behind me. His nostrils flared slightly, taking in their scents, cataloguing them. His jaw tightened. The air pressure in the room intensified until it was hard to breathe, his aura flaring with something dark and possessive and utterly irrational.

"Vivienne." His voice was quiet. Dangerously quiet. "I warned you not to scheme against Serena. What is this? You weren't enough on your own, so you brought your friends to seduce her?"

I stood there, stunned into absolute stillness.

Seduce.

He said seduce.

My wolf snarled inside me, clawing against my ribs with outrage so fierce my vision blurred at the edges.

"Dominic Ashford, are you blind?" My voice came out raw, shaking with fury. "She is the one harassing my friends!"

He opened his mouth to say more.

But Serena, seeing that he hadn't immediately rushed to comfort her, grew even more furious. She spun on her heel and bolted for the door.

"Serena!" He was after her instantly, his entire demeanor shifting. The ice in his voice melted into something warm, anxious, desperate. "Alright, alright. I was wrong. I won't meet with any she-wolf alone again, not for any alliance, not for anything. Is that what you need? I promise."

He murmured to her, his tone so gentle it was almost a croon. The same wolf who had just looked at me like I was filth beneath his claws.

Then he paused.

He turned back.

His gaze found the enforcers stationed around the room.

And his voice went cold. Colder than silver. Colder than anything I had ever heard from him.

"Those males. Whichever hand touched Serena, break it."

He walked out without a backward glance.

The enforcers moved forward. Broad-shouldered wolves with dead eyes and clenched fists, already reaching for my friends.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Disbelief and rage collided inside me so violently that my wolf threw herself against the walls of my mind, and I felt my canines sharpen, felt the burn of claws threatening to break through my fingertips.

I threw myself in front of my friends, my body a shield, my voice trembling with cold fury but edged with absolute resolve.

"Try it. I dare you to try." My eyes swept across every enforcer in the room. "Open your eyes and look clearly. Did my friends lay a single hand on her first? It was Serena who harassed them. These wolves are my friends. Every one of them carries a recognized bloodline and standing in the inter-pack circles. Touch even one of them, and see what happens."