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."

The lead enforcer regarded me without expression, his wolf utterly still behind those flat, pale eyes.

"Miss Silvercrest, don't make this difficult for us. Your friends' bloodlines are respectable enough, but in the eyes of the Supreme Alpha, they're nothing. One word from Alpha Ashford and their packs lose every hunting ground they hold. Their families would be finished before the next full moon. I need to bring him something to show this matter is settled."

My entire body felt as though it had plunged through ice into black water.

Fury and helplessness crashed over me in equal measure, threatening to drag me under. My wolf whimpered deep inside my chest, pressing herself flat against the floor of my mind.

For the first time, I truly hated the choice I had made.

I was the one who had entered the mating bond with him.

And I was the one who had dragged this humiliation down onto my friends.

I drew a slow, shaking breath and forced the storm of emotions beneath the surface.

"Fine."

"I'll give you what you need."

I seized the decorative iron rod mounted on the wall beside me.

Under the shocked stares of everyone in the room.

I brought it down with all my strength onto my own left wrist.

The sharp, brittle crack split the air like a gunshot.

Agony devoured me instantly, a white-hot wave that roared up my arm and swallowed my vision. My wolf shrieked inside my skull, clawing desperately, trying to push healing into bones that had already shattered. My hand dropped, limp and useless, dangling at an angle no wrist should bend.

"Vivienne!"

They rushed forward to catch me.

My face had gone ashen. Cold sweat poured down my temples and the back of my neck. But I locked my knees, forced myself upright, and fixed my gaze on the enforcer. My voice came out raw, barely above a whisper, but steady.

"Now. Is that enough to report back?"

"That blow was on their behalf."

Something shifted behind the enforcer's eyes. A flicker, quickly smothered. His nostrils flared once, catching the copper scent of internal bleeding beneath my skin.

He said nothing.

After a silence that lasted several heartbeats, he turned and walked away. His pack enforcers followed without a word, their boots fading down the corridor.

"Have you lost your mind?" My friends' voices shook so badly the words nearly broke apart. "We would have fought them! All of us, together!"

I shook my head.

Even speaking had become an ordeal. Each word cost me something.

"You can't win against them…"

"It's all right… the bones can be set again…"

They were frantic, their wolves pressing distress into every gesture as they braced me on either side and guided me toward the door, intent on getting me to the Healing Hall.

We had barely stepped outside the entrance of the den-bar.

Raised voices erupted from above, sharp and desperate.

I looked up on instinct.

Serena stood at the edge of the second-floor balcony, her body swaying, teetering against the railing as if the slightest breeze would tip her over.

"Don't come any closer! I haven't forgiven you! One more step and I'll jump!"

She was sobbing, her voice cracking on every word.

He stood several paces away from her.

That man who was always in absolute control, whose composure never wavered, whose Alpha aura could flatten an entire room into silence. In that moment, his face held something I had never seen before.

Panic.

"Serena, don't be reckless. Come back inside. Just step down from there, and whatever you want me to do, I'll do it."

"Truly? Anything at all?"

"Anything. Even if it costs me my life."

I stood below, listening.

The words drifted down like ash.

All I felt was the absurdity of it. And a cold so deep my wolf curled into herself and went silent.

How much did he love her, exactly, to say something like that without hesitation? To offer his life as though it were nothing?

Then.

She seemed to calm, persuaded by his desperation. She began to inch carefully back from the edge.

The next instant.

Her foot slipped.

"Ah!"

She fell straight from the second floor.

And directly below her.

Was me.

The full force of her body slammed into mine like a boulder hurled from a cliff.

Darkness exploded behind my eyes. I was driven into the ground, my already-shattered wrist crushed beneath our combined weight, my spine striking stone. I became nothing but a cushion of flesh and breaking bones.

The agony swallowed everything. My wolf howled once, a long, thin sound, and then I felt her go limp inside me, retreating somewhere I couldn't reach.

He came tearing down from above.

Like a man possessed. Like a wolf who had lost all reason.

But the first person he gathered into his arms.

Was her.

"Serena, are you hurt? Don't be afraid. I'm taking you to the Healing Hall right now."

His voice trembled. His hands shook as they cradled her.

He lifted her.

He carried her to the waiting vehicle and was gone, tires shrieking against the cobblestones as the car vanished into the night.

From start to finish.

He never once looked at me.

My friends stared after the disappearing taillights, their bodies vibrating with rage so intense I could smell it, hot metal and ozone pouring off their skin.

But in the end.

All they could do was get me to the Healing Hall first.

When I woke again, the room smelled of antiseptic herbs and moonstone dust.

Only a healer's attendant sat beside the bed.

"Miss Silvercrest, you're awake. It's fortunate your friends brought you in when they did…" She paused, adjusting the silver-threaded bandage around my wrist. "They received an urgent summons from their packs and had to leave. They asked that you contact them as soon as you woke."

"No need."

My voice came out dry and cracked, scraped hollow.

"They're busy. Don't trouble them."

The attendant looked at me, her eyes brimming with quiet sympathy.

"But you need someone to look after you…"

"I can manage on my own."