"I'm sorry, Seraphina. I was wrong. I wouldn't dare dream of mating with Theron anymore. I'll take the pup and go far away. Please, I'm begging you, just stop hurting us, okay?"

"What are you doing? Putting on another act?"

The pain in my abdomen was getting worse. A dark premonition crept through me, and deep in my chest, my wolf stirred from her long silence. Not in anger. In fear. She pressed against my ribs from the inside, whimpering low, her body curling around something she was trying to protect. Terrified that something was actually happening to my pup, I moved toward the door to find a healer, but it swung open before I could reach it.

A crowd stood in the doorway. At the front was Theron.

The moment he saw Corvina and the pup on the floor, the infant screaming in raw, bloodcurdling wails that cut through the room like a blade across bone, the color drained from his face. His Alpha aura surged outward in a violent pulse, thick enough to press against the walls, and the wolves behind him flinched back a step. He dropped the bowl of bone broth in his hands without a second thought and rushed over to scoop the pup up.

"What happened? We were gone ten minutes. What the hell happened?"

"Theron..."

Corvina lifted her face. The handprints across her cheek were vivid and unmistakable.

She was trembling, tears streaming down her face. The cloying sweetness of her scent, that honeysuckle and warm vanilla, thickened in the air until it was almost suffocating, wrapping around every wolf in the room like a snare. "It's my fault. I never should have come to you for help. If I weren't so afraid my pup would grow up without a pack, I'd never have degraded myself like this! Ms. Silvercrest, if you didn't want me and Theron to register the bond and place the pup under his bloodline, then why did you pretend to agree and then turn around and try to force us out? Hitting me was one thing, but throwing a newborn pup on the floor?"

Her shrill sobs and accusations sent a chill through the room.

Everyone turned to look at me. "Seraphina, you..."

"Seraphina!"

Theron walked toward me with the pup in his arms and struck me across the face.

The blow sent my vision black. I nearly passed out.

My wolf howled. Not outward, not in any way anyone else could hear. The sound was inside me, reverberating through my bones, through the hollow place where the mate bond lived. It was a sound I had never heard her make before. Not rage. Something worse. Something that had no name, a keening that started in the marrow and didn't stop.

I was already unsteady on my feet. My body crumpled and I hit the floor.

The stone was cold beneath my palms. The impact jarred through my knees, my wrists, my belly. The pain in my abdomen sharpened into something bright and terrible. I pressed both hands against my stomach, hard, while cold sweat beaded across my forehead and rolled down my temples. Inside me, my wolf had gone completely still. Not calm. The kind of still that comes before something breaks apart.

"I thought you were actually being generous when you agreed to the severing! How can you be this two-faced? The pup is so small. He isn't even a day old, and you threw him on the ground! You're going to be a mother yourself. Aren't you afraid your own pup will pay for what you've done?"

My cheek burned. I turned my head slowly and saw the hatred carved into his face. I could barely process what I'd just heard.

For the sake of Corvina's pup, he had cursed ours.

The mate bond between us, that fraying thread I had held onto for five years, pulsed once. Weak. Sickly. Like a heartbeat trying to keep going when the body around it had already given up. My wolf pressed her nose against it from the inside, and I felt her recoil. His end of the bond tasted like ash. Like scorched iron gone cold.

"Yeah, Seraphina, how could you do that? She just gave birth. You shouldn't have hit her!"

"No wonder Theron says he's more comfortable with Corvina. Seraphina's temper is way too much."

They all talked over each other, a chorus of noise that split my skull open. My breathing turned shallow and ragged. Their voices blurred into a single wall of sound, and beneath it, I could hear my own pulse. Too fast. Too thin. My wolf was pacing now, frantic circles in the dark, her claws scraping against something inside me that felt like it was coming apart.

"Enough! All of you, shut up! 'Seraphina' and 'Corvina'? Do none of you have any sense of right and wrong? This isn't the dark ages. An Alpha doesn't get to keep a mate and a mistress! Theron broke the bond. That's on him! And even if I did hit Corvina, she had it coming!"

My outburst stunned the room into silence. For one breath, the Alpha aura that had been pressing down on everyone wavered. Theron's eyes narrowed.

"Theron was only kind to me and the pup because of my late mate!" Corvina sobbed, crawling to Theron's legs. The scent of vanilla and honeysuckle surged again, so thick it coated the back of my throat. "The pup fell from a height. I don't even know if he'll survive. Theron, please, don't waste any more time. Call a healer!"

"Don't be scared. I won't let anything happen to him."

Theron turned to leave with the pup in his arms.

And in that moment, I felt something warm and wet sliding down between my legs.

The sensation froze me with terror.

My wolf went silent. Completely, utterly silent. As if she had stopped breathing. As if she already knew.

I looked down. A shock of red was spreading beneath me.

"Theron, my pup... our pup!"

The words tore out of me, raw and broken, and I reached for the bond. Reached for it with everything I had left. Pulled at it like a rope in the dark, desperate for him to feel what I was feeling, desperate for his wolf to hear mine.

He didn't turn around. He didn't even slow down.

"Seraphina, I've never been more disappointed in you. Get yourself home. I'll be staying at the Healing Hall with Corvina and the pup for the next few days. And you'd better pray her pup is all right. Because if he's not, I won't let you off."

Every last one of them followed him out the door.

The room emptied. The silence that filled it was absolute. Not peaceful. The kind of silence that exists inside a wound.

I stayed on the floor. The cold seeped through my clothes, through my skin, into the place where my wolf had been pacing only moments ago. She wasn't pacing anymore. She lay curled at the bottom of me, nose tucked against her tail, and she would not lift her head. The blood kept spreading, warm against the cold stone, and I pressed my hands harder against my stomach as if I could hold everything inside me together by force.

The bond stretched thin toward the door Theron had walked through. I could still feel him at the far end of it. Moving away. His wolf hadn't even flinched.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

But not a single person noticed the blood pooling beneath me.

I lay on the cold stone floor of the Healing Hall, screaming in agony. My wolf thrashed inside me, weak and frantic, clawing at something she couldn't hold on to. No one answered. The corridor stretched empty in both directions, and the sound of my voice came back to me off the walls like something already dead.

"Help... please, save my pup..."

My mother had told me I could keep the child and take her to the Silvercrest ancestral lands. Leave the mate, keep the pup. Those words had been carved into my mind for weeks.

I'd already decided to keep this child.

So why was this happening?

My wolf let out a sound I'd never heard from her before. Low. Broken. Like something tearing at the root. The edges of my vision darkened, and the scent of my own blood filled my nose, sharp and wrong, copper and moonflower twisted together into something that smelled like ending.

As consciousness slipped away, I saw a healer's apprentice passing by the open door. She froze, then rushed in.

"What happened? Someone help! Miss, don't be scared. Why are you here alone? Where's your mate? Do you remember his contact sigil? I'll reach him for you!"

"I... don't have a mate..."

Then everything went black.

My pup was gone.

Four moon cycles along. Just barely formed.

The healer said it would have been a girl.

I stayed in the Healing Hall for three days. My wolf did not speak to me once during that time. She lay curled at the very bottom of my consciousness, utterly still, and I could not tell if she was grieving or if something in her had simply stopped.

In those three days, Theron didn't reach out to me once.

But I saw his announcement on the spirit network.

Blessed with a pup.

Four words. Accompanied by a captured image of a woman and child sleeping, taken from behind. The woman's hair fanned across a pillow. The pup was swaddled in Ironmaw colors.

The comments were flooded with congratulations. Pack members, allied Alphas, wolves I'd personally brokered alliances with on Theron's behalf, all falling over themselves to celebrate.

I stared at that image. The tears came anyway.

They slid down my face and hit the linen sheets without sound. My wolf stirred, barely, like something shifting in deep water. Then went still again.

Some things are simply cruel.

But I was grateful, at least, that I'd found out before it was too late. I could still walk away.

The day I was discharged, a young healer helped me gather my things.

"Ms. Silvercrest, how come no one's visited you these past few days? Are you sure you'll be okay returning to the den alone?"

"I'm fine. Thank you all for taking care of me. I'm feeling much better."

I managed a smile and walked out of the room. My body ached in places I couldn't name. My wolf moved with me like a shadow that had lost its shape, present but formless, refusing to settle.

I hadn't gone more than a few steps when I heard the healers whispering behind me.

"Poor thing. A lost pup, and not a single soul by her side. Where's her mate?"

"She said she doesn't have one. Probably lost him. A broken bond, maybe. Life really isn't fair, is it? You know the she-wolf in the next chamber? Her mate adores her. He's at her bedside every single day, holding the pup. You can tell he's absolutely smitten."

"Oh, I know. That chamber's been a revolving door of visitors. And they're all striking wolves, too. How come I never get that kind of luck?"

They didn't know.

The devoted mate they were gushing about was mine.

I walked to Corvina's door. The scent hit me before I reached the threshold. Honeysuckle and warm vanilla layered over something cloying, something that made my stomach clench. And beneath it, tangled through it like a stain, scorched iron and dry cedar bark. Theron's scent. Woven so deeply into hers that I couldn't separate them.

Sure enough, Theron was lying beside her, asleep. His arm was draped across the bedding. His jaw was slack, his breathing even. He looked peaceful in a way I had never once seen him look beside me.

Corvina had her communicator out, leaning against his chest, capturing image after image. Her lips curved as she angled the screen, adjusting the light.

Theron rolled over and pulled her into his arms, his voice low and groggy. "I thought you said you were tired. Go back to sleep."

"I'm not tired."

She looked up at him, then undid the laces of her sleeping gown and climbed on top of him.

"I want you. Give it to me."

His throat worked as his eyes traced her body.

"You just had a pup. Rest. Don't start something."

"I don't care. I want you."

She leaned down and kissed him.

He pushed at her a few times, halfheartedly. Within seconds, they were tangled together. Her scent thickened in the air, that sweet chemical sweetness flooding the small chamber until it was all I could taste on the back of my tongue.

The sight made my stomach turn.

I spun around and ran. Down the corridor, past the healer's station, through the Healing Hall entrance and out into the cold air. I grabbed the old rowan tree by the gate and threw up until there was nothing left. My body shook. My wolf shook. Something inside me had come loose and I did not know how to put it back.

I never imagined the man I'd loved all these years could be this person.

The moment I got home, I went straight for my documents. The mating dissolution papers. The territorial release forms. Everything I would need.

I was going to the Pack Council.

When my parents had returned to the Silvercrest ancestral lands, I'd stayed behind for Theron. I had muted my bloodline, suppressed my wolf, poured every resource of my heritage into building his pack from nothing, and I had done it because I believed the bond between us was real.

Now it was time to go.