Sienna's POV

I woke up because I couldn't breathe right. My throat was already stinging, and it took me a second to place why. Bleach. Something under it too, sharper, metallic in a way that made my stomach turn before my mind caught up.

My eyelids were stuck together. I had to work to pull them open, and even then the room came in blurry at first, a bulb buzzing somewhere above me.

I tried to move my arm and metal caught metal. A restraint at my wrist, pinning me down. My pulse hammered against the cuff, harder the longer I lay there.

My wolf had stopped whimpering. She was pacing now, slow and mean, a snarl building low in my throat before I'd even turned my head to see what was on the tray beside me.

Lucas stood against the far wall. He wasn't looking at my face. His eyes stayed on my feet, like that was as high as he could manage.

"Oh, look," Ivy's voice came from somewhere to my left, too warm to be real. "The vessel is finally awake."

She stepped up beside him in a silk robe that didn't belong in a room like this one. She put her hand on his face and kissed him, and she kept her eyes open the whole time, watching me watch her do it.

He didn't pull away. When she stepped back, he looked at me, and there was nothing behind it at all.

"Mother, her heart rate is climbing," Ivy's voice had an eager edge now. "Let's not waste the moon. My son isn't going to be born weak because an Omega is hoarding the bloodline."

"Patience, Ivy," Morrigan stepped into the light in a white coat, carrying a tray of instruments the way someone carries something they've used before, without thinking about it.

Vessel.

The word sat in my chest and stayed there.

"Lucas," my voice barely made it out. "You marked me yesterday. You claimed me. Why are you doing this?"

"Stop it, Sienna," he turned his face toward the wall. His jaw tightened once, then went still again.

"You've always been fragile," flat, like he was reading it off a card someone handed him. "This is service."

"You're standing right there," I said, "while they're about to cut me open."

He didn't answer that.

"The moon's peaking," Ivy leaned in close, her face inches from mine.

"Ivy. Please," my voice cracked. "Let me go. I'll leave for the human cities. You'll never see me again."

She blinked, surprised for a second, like she hadn't expected me to actually ask. Then she laughed, low.

"You're stupid if you think this is about him," she dragged her tongue over the mark on my neck, the one he'd given me the day before with promises attached to it. "I want what she never gave me. A womb. A name. Blood that matters. You're the last thing in my way."

"Enough," Lucas moved. He came to stand by the bed, and for one second, stupid as it was, hope flared in my chest anyway.

"Lucas. Look at me," my voice was pleading and I hated that it was. "You told me I was your anchor."

"Sienna," he leaned in. His hand came up toward my hair, then stopped short of touching it, hovering there like he wasn't sure he had the right anymore. "I do love you." He swallowed. "My father is dying. This buys him time. The pack needs strength, and you're carrying it. Your blood is his future now."

I went limp against the table. There was nothing left to say to that.

He stepped back, turned away, and started muttering something under his breath. Pack words. The kind people repeat when they're trying not to think about what they're doing.

Nobody spoke after that.

Then the blade went in.

Pain cut across my stomach, cold and sharp, and my vision went white as the needle pushed deeper. Something pulled through me after that, a hollow, sickening drag, like being emptied out from somewhere I didn't know I had.

"It's working," Morrigan said.

I turned my eyes toward her hand. A glass vial. The liquid inside wasn't red. It was gold, and it moved on its own, and she stared at it the way someone stares at something they've wanted their whole life.

Then the sound in the room changed.

A roar tore out of my throat, something that didn't feel like mine. The bulb above me shrieked and blew apart, and the windows went with it, glass scattering out into the dark.

I couldn't see much after that. Just the tray hitting the floor, and Ivy screaming somewhere close by.

"Mother, it's burning through the glass!" she shouted.

Heat moved through me until I couldn't feel the table anymore, or the restraints, or anything at all except the gold leaving me, spreading out across the floor in a line that kept growing.

My heart stuttered once.

Then it stopped.

Then the dark came, and it didn't stop for a long time.

Lucas's POV

"What!" It tore out of me before I had any control over it. My wolf dropped back into the corner of my mind and went silent.

My knees hit the tile. Cold bit through my pants, sharp enough that I barely registered it.

"What is going on?" My voice came out rough. I put a hand against my own chest and felt something hollow sitting under my ribs that hadn't been there an hour ago.

I looked at Sienna, stretched out across the table. What was running down into the flask below her wasn't red. It caught the light wrong, thick and gold, pooling in a way blood never should.

"That is not blood." My voice didn't sound like mine. "Why is it gold?"

"The extraction is standard, Alpha." Morrigan's voice stayed level, but her hand gave her away. She reached under the velvet lining of her tray and palmed a second vial, smaller than the first, the liquid inside darker, closer to black at the center. Her fingers closed around it fast, like she hadn't meant for me to see.

I crossed to Ivy and gripped her arm hard enough to bunch the fabric in my fist.

"I do not know," she said, her shoulders folding inward.

"Morrigan!" I let go of Ivy. She stumbled back and caught a cart, metal rattling across the tile behind her.

I crossed to Sienna instead. I dropped down beside her and pressed my ear flat against her chest, holding my breath, waiting to hear something come back.

Nothing did.

Her scent was already going thin. That pull I'd known my whole life was fading into something closer to memory, orange and cedar losing ground to antiseptic in the air.

"Sienna." Her name wasn't enough for what was happening in that room. It was all I had, so I said it again.

Then the bond gave out. It wasn't pain. It was absence, sudden and complete, the way a limb disappears in one cut and you're left staring at the space where it used to be.

What remained was a single thread, still burning, carrying something back to me that felt like my own regret. It pulled a sound out of my throat that didn't belong in that room.

I looked at her body. Then at Ivy, her mouth still hanging open. Something in my gut turned over, sick and immediate.

I grabbed Ivy and pulled her against me. Not because I wanted her there. Because I needed to feel something, anything, and I didn't care what it cost. Her mouth tasted like ash.

I shoved her back almost as fast, disgusted with myself for needing that. My hands were still shaking when I let go of her.

"Get the guard." My voice wasn't steady and I hated that it wasn't. "Wipe every phone in this building. If one frame of this reaches the Council, I will have heads."

"Alpha, please." A crack showed through Morrigan's composure for the first time. "Her pulse is thready. She will survive, if we move her before the elders start asking questions."

"Move her." I closed my hand around Ivy's wrist and felt her bones small under my grip.

"Have you lost your mind? She is a corpse in every way that matters."

"Lucas." Tears sat glassy in Ivy's eyes, but nothing spilled over. "I thought I was your Luna."

"I never asked for this." I pointed at Sienna, at the chest that wasn't rising or falling anymore. "She was supposed to survive. The heir was supposed to come out strong. Morrigan told me about extraction. Not this."

A voice cut into my head, addressed only to me. Morrigan's, calm in a way that made it obvious she was already several steps ahead of the rest of us. Alpha Lucas. The blood is extracted. She needs treatment now. Once she wakes, we bring her inside and handle the Council.

I caught Ivy watching Morrigan a half second too long, some silent exchange passing between them that shut off before I could catch any of it. Whatever it was, neither of them offered it to me.

"It stays a secret." My jaw ached from how hard I'd been clenching it. "All of it."

I gathered Sienna's limp body up off the table. My hands were shaking with every step. She weighed almost nothing, less than nothing, and I carried her out without looking back at either of them.

"You'll learn what you are without a pack," Ivy said behind me, quiet. "Let's see how long that takes."

~~Sienna's POV~~

Light hit before I was ready for it, harsh and unfiltered, nothing like the dim room I remembered before. Underneath it sat a smell I recognized and hated just as fast, antiseptic, plastic, the particular cold of a room built for treating bodies instead of people.

Beyond the door, footsteps moved back and forth at an even pace. Someone pacing. Someone who already knew what they were waiting for.

Opening my eyes fully took more effort than it should have. Walls with no windows. Machines blinking somewhere off to the side. Everything scrubbed down to a shine that didn't feel like it belonged to anyone.

This was the pack house doctor's office. I hadn't left their territory. I was still trapped inside the same walls where they'd cut me open.

Pieces came back to me out of order, the needle first, then the extraction, then Lucas's face gone empty of everything, and I let each memory land before I let myself reach for the next one.

When I tried to push myself upright, the floor dropped sideways beneath me. My hand shot out and caught the bedframe just in time, metal biting cold enough to sting my palm.

Whatever silver now ran through my veins didn't feel like strength. It felt more like ice, creeping outward from somewhere deep behind my ribs.

One fact stood out clearly through the fog. I was still breathing. That much I could hold onto.

The door handle turned before it opened.

"You are awake. Thank the Goddess." There was real relief in his voice, and somehow that made everything worse.

Dr. Noah stood in the doorway, my father's old Beta, banished here after my father's exile as a kind of punishment. Gray had crept further into his hair since I'd last seen him, though his hands held steadier than I expected them to.

"Stay still," he said, lowering a tray onto the table without touching me. "Your body is still recovering. The bond threads are frayed, barely holding."

Something flickered across his face before he caught it, his eyes locking onto mine a beat too long.

"Your eyes, Sienna."

"I know." I swung my legs off the side of the bed, the thin gown clinging uncomfortably to my skin. "Here to finish his work? Or did they send you because I did not die quietly enough?"

He flinched at that. His hand reached for the gauze, then set it back down without using it.

"I served your father for twenty years." When he finally picked the gauze back up, his fingers trembled slightly as he wrapped my wrist. "I could not stop them that night. But I will not let them touch you again. Not while I am breathing."

"Words are cheap, Noah."

"Silver. Almost glowing." He kept his gaze fixed somewhere past my shoulder. "I've never seen anything like it."

A laugh scraped out of my throat, dry, nothing close to real in it.

"Here." He nudged a set of folded clothes and dark glasses toward me across the blanket. "Go to the mirror. If Lucas sees this, he will not let you leave this room alive."

I made my way to the bathroom on unsteady legs and locked the door behind me. The click of it landed loud in the small tiled space, and I stood there a second before I made myself move again.

I pulled the gown aside and looked down at my shoulder first. What used to be Lucas's mark had already gone the color of ash, flaking at the edges. Underneath my skin, the bond still pulsed faintly along a thin, burning thread connecting us, his regret bleeding through it uninvited.

Then I looked up into the mirror. Silver stared back at me. Not gray, not blue, but an actual metallic silver, catching the overhead light like polished steel.

I blinked hard, certain the fluorescents were playing some trick on my vision, but it wasn't only my eyes that had changed. My hair had shifted too, pale strands falling over my shoulders in a shade I'd never worn before.

"My hair." The words came out barely audible. "It is silver."

My hands went cold on the edge of the sink. I was looking at my mother's face, the one from the hidden photographs my father kept from me, images I was never supposed to find. I was looking at the exact thing they'd murdered her for being.

I stood there a long moment, staring at a water stain spreading across the ceiling's corner, holding perfectly still, turning over the same question again and again. Was the Moon Goddess finished with me? Or was this only where she was starting?