Isolde POV:

The smell of death cannot be faked.

As the blood continued to pool, thickening in the extreme cold, it permeated the seals of the glass cage. It drifted out into the ballroom. It was copper, salt, and the sweet, rotting scent of a bond snapping.

Austen smelled it.

His denial shattered. His nose twitched, his pupils dilated. He knew. That was his son's blood. That was his legacy washing away into the drains.

"Open it," Austen whispered. Then he screamed. "OPEN THE DOOR!"

He scrambled off the stage, rushing to the side of the glass cage where the control panel was. His hands were shaking so badly he dropped the magnetic key card.

"Give it to me!" Debra snatched the card from the floor.

I watched through the haze of my fading consciousness. My vision was tunneling, black vignette creeping in from the edges.

Debra jammed the card into the slot. But she didn't swipe it smoothly. I saw her wrist twist. A sharp, deliberate snap.

"Oh no!" Debra cried out, her eyes wide with fake terror. "The card! It snapped inside the reader!"

"What?" Austen shoved her aside, clawing at the slot. The piece of plastic was wedged deep inside.

"The manual override!" Austen yelled at the warriors. "Use the key!"

A warrior fumbled for a physical key on his belt and jammed it into the lock. He turned it.

Click.

Nothing happened.

"The mechanism is frozen!" the warrior shouted, panic rising in his voice. "The temperature is too low! The seals have fused shut!"

"Break the glass!" Austen roared, pounding his fists against the wall. "Break it!"

Three warriors rushed forward. They shifted into their partial forms, claws extending, muscles bulging. They slammed their bodies against the glass.

Thud. Thud.

The glass didn't crack. It was reinforced polycarbonate, designed to hold a raging Alpha. It was designed to be unbreakable.

"It won't break!" Marcus yelled. "We need the blowtorches! Get the maintenance crew!"

"She's dying!" Austen pressed his face against the glass. His eyes were wild, tears finally streaming down his face. "Izzy! Izzy, wake up! Don't you dare die on me! Open the door from the inside! There's a latch!"

I heard him. He sounded like he was underwater.

Open the latch...

I moved my head slightly. I saw the emergency latch on the floor. It was encased in a block of red ice-my frozen blood.

I dragged my hand across the floor. My fingers were stiff, blue claws. I dug my nails into the ice surrounding the latch, scratching, tearing. I poured every ounce of my remaining will into that movement.

But my strength was gone. The Wolfsbane had done its work. My hand slipped from the latch.

"She's doing this on purpose!" Debra screamed, pointing at my motionless body. "She locked it from the inside! She wants to frame us! She wants to die just to make you look bad, Austen!"

"Shut up!" Austen backhanded Debra, sending her sprawling. But then he turned back to me, his face twisting into that familiar, pathetic mix of blame and fear.

"Izzy, stop this!" he shouted, banging on the glass. "You're weak! You've always been weak! Get up and open the door!"

I looked at him one last time.

I summoned the last spark of energy in my dying brain. I pushed it through the Mind-Link, bypassing his walls because death clears all barriers.

My father... I projected the words into his skull, cold and heavy as a tombstone. ...will peel the skin from your bones.

Austen flinched as if I had slapped him.

The crowd behind him was in chaos. Some were fleeing, realizing the gravity of what had happened. Others, the sycophants, were shouting at me.

"Stop faking it!"

"Open the door, bitch!"

The darkness finally took the rest of my vision. The cold stopped hurting. It just became... nothing.

My heart gave one slow, sluggish beat.

Thump.

And then... silence.

The last thing I heard was the sound of the heavy ballroom doors exploding inward with the force of a bomb. And then, a roar. Not a man's roar.

A monster's roar.

Daddy.

Ezra POV:

The reinforced doors of the ballroom didn't just open; they disintegrated under the force of my entry.

I stepped through the dust and debris, my boots crunching on broken wood. Behind me, my Elite Warriors fanned out, their assault rifles raised, but they wouldn't need them.

I didn't need weapons. I was the weapon.

I released my Aura.

It wasn't a wave; it was a hammer. The sheer weight of my dominance, honed over sixty years of ruling the Royal Pack, crashed down on the room. It was the Alpha's Command-an absolute, crushing biological imperative that forces submission.

Every wolf in the room dropped.

Waiters, guests, traitors-they all fell to their knees, foreheads pressing against the floor, exposing their necks in a desperate bid to survive my rage. The air grew heavy, charged with static electricity, smelling of ozone and impending slaughter.

My eyes locked onto the glass cage in the center of the room.

My heart, usually a steady drum of war, skipped a beat.

Inside that frozen coffin lay my daughter, Isolde. She was curled in a fetal position, her skin blue, surrounded by red ice.

"Izzy," I growled, the sound tearing from my throat like a wounded animal.

I marched toward the cage. Austen Nolan, the man I had entrusted with my most precious treasure, was slumped against the glass, sobbing. He looked up at me, his eyes wide with terror, snot running down his face.

"D-Dad?" he stammered. "You... you're supposed to be..."

I didn't break stride. I grabbed him by the throat.

I didn't squeeze. Not yet. I just lifted him off the ground as if he weighed no more than a rag doll. His feet kicked helplessly in the air.

"I gave you a kingdom," I whispered, my voice low and lethal. "And you turned it into a slaughterhouse."

I threw him.

He flew across the room, smashing into a table of champagne flutes with a sickening crash of glass and bone.

I turned to the cage. The warriors were fumbling with blowtorches.

"Move," I commanded.

They scattered.

I dug my fingers into the seam of the reinforced steel door. The metal was cold, frozen shut, but my rage was hotter. I roared, my muscles swelling, the fabric of my suit tearing at the shoulders. With a screech of torturing metal that made the humans in the room cover their ears, I ripped the door off its hinges.

I tossed the heavy steel door aside like a piece of cardboard.

The smell hit me instantly.

Wolfsbane. Silver. And the sweet, copper scent of my grandchild's blood.

I fell to my knees beside her. The cold was biting, but I didn't feel it. I scooped her up. She was so light. Too light. Her skin felt like marble.

"Izzy," I whispered, brushing a strand of frozen hair from her face. "Daddy is here. Come back to me."

Her heart was a faint, fluttering bird in her chest.

Pack Doctors! Now! I roared through the Mind-Link, the mental shout powerful enough to give my warriors a headache.

A team of medics rushed in, swarming around us. They injected adrenaline and warming fluids directly into her veins.

"She's critical, Alpha," the head doctor said, his hands shaking. "The pup... the pup is..."

He didn't have to finish. I could smell the death.

I looked over my shoulder. Austen was trying to crawl away, dragging a broken leg.

"Secure him," I ordered my Elites. "And the woman. If they die before I give permission, I will kill you myself."

I looked back at my daughter. Her eyelids fluttered. Silver-flecked eyes met mine, unfocused and dim.

"Daddy?" she rasped, a sound so weak it broke me. "The baby... is he..."

I couldn't lie to her. Not now.

I pulled her into my chest, trying to share my body heat, trying to shield her from the hell she had just endured.

"I've got you, little wolf," I choked out, tears burning my eyes. "I've got you."

She screamed then. A weak, broken sound of realization that faded as she slipped back into the darkness.