Kaelen POV

Five years. It had been five years since I tore apart the bond—the connection between us—in that cold, sterile medical bay.

I stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Steele Group's top-floor office, gazing down at the illuminated city below. My scent filled the air—the crisp chill of winter pine, the sharp ozone before a storm—heavy with the suffocating weight of my rage. Deep in my consciousness, my wolf, Draegan, paced restlessly, a dark mass of eternal fury and grief.

"Still nothing, Alpha." Silas's voice crackled through the phone speaker.

My jaw tightened, the ache radiating to my teeth. "It's been five years, Silas. A woman and a child don't just vanish into thin air."

Five years. It had been five years since she'd fled the Black Moon Pack with that infant—my daughter. Draegan let out a low whine deep in my consciousness, and I crushed it down.

"Keep looking," I snarled, my Alpha aura cracking the glass surface of my desk. "Turn over every stone. Otherwise, I will pay you a visit myself." I slammed the phone down, ending the call.

I couldn't think about that child. That nameless baby girl I'd abandoned. If I admitted what I'd done to her—to them—I would shatter completely.

But I needed her mother.

My son, Liam, heir to the Black Moon Pack, was dying from a mysterious, bloodline-specific toxin. The healers were helpless. He needed a sibling's bone marrow to survive. And the only Omega who could give me another child was the one who'd fled with my daughter.

I took the private elevator down to the Pack Infirmary. The moment the doors opened, the stinging scent of bleach hit me, brutally yanking me back to the day I'd destroyed my own life.

Before I even reached Liam's room, two discordant scents assaulted my senses—my mother Elara's sharp, imperious presence, and Cassondra's suffocating, synthetic floral perfume.

"I am not a babysitter for a dying pup!" Cassondra's shrill voice echoed down the corridor. "He needs to set a date for the bonding ceremony, Elara! I will not wait forever."

"Mind your tone, girl," my mother Elara snapped, her voice laced with icy coldness. "That pup is a future Alpha."

I walked past them, my face as expressionless as stone. I had no patience for their petty squabbles.

"Kae!" Cassondra reached out and grabbed my arm.

The nickname drove into my chest like a silver blade. *Hers.* Only Seraphina had been allowed to call me that. Draegan roared, a savage, bloodthirsty sound, demanding retribution for the insult.

I spun around, my hand clamping around Cassondra's wrist like a steel trap. My Alpha command pressed down on her, her eyes widening with sudden fear.

"Never call me that," I growled, my voice low as a deadly whisper. "If you cannot accept the reality of this arrangement, or your duty to bear a healthy heir, then return to your father's pack. I don't care."

I pushed her away, ignoring her shocked gasp, and pushed open the heavy door to Liam's room.

The rhythmic beeping of the monitors was a countdown to my son's death. Liam lay there, his five-year-old body pale and fragile, so small amidst the tangle of tubes and wires.

The Pack Doctor stood by the bed, his head bowed in frustration. "Alpha. His vitality is declining rapidly. If we cannot find a sibling donor... he will not survive the next full moon."

Only thirty days until the next full moon.

"What about growth-acceleration magic?" I asked, my gaze not leaving my son. "Can the time from conception to bone-marrow maturity be compressed into thirty days?"

The doctor hesitated, pushing up his glasses. "Theoretically... there is an ancient ritual. A covenant with the Moon Goddess. If both parents are powerful wolves and willing to sacrifice part of their life force... the embryo's growth can be drastically catalyzed. But the toll on the mother would be immense, and could even—"

"Enough," I cut him off. I didn't need to hear the risks. I needed a solution.

A sibling. A donor.

A suffocating silence choked the room. Creating a life only to harvest it to save another—it was a sickening desecration of the Moon Goddess's will.

"This is all your fault!" Draegan raged, tearing at my sanity. "We had a daughter! You threw her out to die!"

I ruthlessly shoved the thought of that nameless baby girl into the darkest depths of my consciousness. I couldn't think about her. If I acknowledged what I'd done to my own flesh and blood, I would shatter completely. I needed a solution. I needed a donor.

I turned back to the corridor. Cassondra was rubbing her wrist, glaring at the floor, while my mother stood rigidly.

I looked at the woman for whom I felt nothing—nothing but the function of a vessel to save my son.

"Prepare the bonding ceremony," I said, my voice devoid of all emotion. "It's time."

Until I find Seraphina, Cassondra can serve as a temporary vessel.

Draegan growled his approval deep in my consciousness.

Thirty days. I had thirty days to obtain a healthy newborn—no matter the cost.

Kaelen POV

Hours after condemning myself to a loveless union, I stood before the floor-length mirror in my private suite, adjusting the cuffs of my custom tailored suit. I looked like the powerful Alpha of the Black Moon Pack, but inside I felt like a hollowed out corpse.

Traitor! My inner wolf Draegan roared, his claws tearing at the edges of my consciousness. You commit a greater sin to atone for a mistake!

I gripped the edge of the mahogany vanity, my knuckles whitening. Before I could force Draegan into submission, the door clicked open. Cassondra swept into the room, her lavish gown rustling. Her suffocating, artificially floral perfume assaulted my senses, a pathetic attempt to mask her painfully mediocre wolf scent.

"The florist says winter roses will be perfect for the ceremony," she gushed, her eyes gleaming greedily as she admired my reflection. "Everyone at the gala tonight will know I am your future Luna."

My jaw tightened. I felt nothing at her joy. It disgusted me.

Alpha, the car is ready, an elder's voice echoed in my mind through the mind-link.

"We are leaving," I interrupted Cassondra, my voice like a cold blade. Without waiting for her response, I strode out of the room, leaving her to chase my shadow.

The ride to the Moon's Embrace Charity Gala in the armored SUV was suffocatingly tense. I kept my eyes closed, focusing on the rhythmic hum of the tires to block out Draegan's restless pacing in my mind.

"I cannot believe this year's guest list," my sister Vanessa sneered from the seat across from me. She swirled a glass of sparkling water, her lips twisting into a malicious smirk. "Imagine if that filthy Omega were still here. She would not even be worthy of shining shoes tonight. I bet she is cowering in some rogue infested slum right now, clutching that little bastard."

The words "Omega" and "bastard" drove into my chest like silver daggers.

My eyes snapped open. The temperature inside the SUV plummeted as my Alpha aura expanded violently, crushing the oxygen in the enclosed space. Vanessa gasped, her glass trembling as she shrank back against the leather seat, her eyes widening with sudden terror.

I did not defend Seraphina. My pride and the lies I had swallowed would not allow it. But the deadly promise in my gaze forced Vanessa to shut her mouth. I turned my head to stare out the tinted window, my stomach churning with a nauseating mixture of guilt, primal possessiveness, and a twisted anticipation of seeing Seraphina crumble, just to prove I had not destroyed my soul for nothing.

When we arrived at the gala, the paparazzi's flash bulbs blinded us. Cassondra immediately hooked her arm through mine, strategically angling her wrist to flaunt the heavy moonstone bracelet, the traditional symbol of my Pack's future Luna. She whispered trivial gossip in my ear, but I tuned her out completely.

She was a silent accessory. My senses stretched wide, cutting through the expensive champagne and the thick scents of high society wolves. But I had not come here tonight seeking an ally. My son Liam had less than a month left. The Silverwood Pack possessed an ancient healing secret, my last hope. Dominic Rhodes was the man I needed to convince. I wanted nothing else.

My thoughts drifted briefly to the surname. Rhodes. A common name, not uncommon in this circle. I had no reason to connect it to the Omega I had rejected five years ago. She was just an orphan with no family background, a pawn my mother had forced into the ceremony. I had never bothered to learn her full name. Seraphina was just Seraphina, an insignificant Omega, nothing more.

I shook off the thought and stepped into the magnificent Golden Ball. Crystal chandeliers cast warm starlight over the sea of elites. I endured another twenty minutes of Cassondra's clinginess until the Master of Ceremonies approached the grand microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Alpha of the Silverwood Pack, Sir Dominic Rhodes!"

I turned immediately toward the grand staircase, squaring my posture.

Then my entire world stopped spinning.

The air vanished from my lungs. A scent pierced through the crowded ballroom, devastatingly familiar and intoxicating, the mixed fragrance of honeysuckle after rain and pure moonlight. It slammed into my chest, a violent electric shock that traveled straight to my marrow. My heart pounded against my ribs, and the open, bleeding void in my soul suddenly screamed for the only thing that could fill it.

*Mine! *Draegan roared, the sound deafening, nearly driving me to my knees.

Walking down the stairs was Seraphina, her hand elegantly resting on a man's arm.

She was not rotting in a slum. She had not crumbled. She was draped in a gown woven like silver thread, her dark curls cascading over her shoulders, her skin radiating an ethereal, untouchable power. She looked like a goddess.

My gaze shifted to the broad shouldered man beside her. His face was the exact match to the photograph Vanessa had thrown onto her lap five years ago. The deep scent of cedar and earth finally registered in my consciousness, the scent of Dominic Rhodes. The man I had believed she chose to betray me. The man I had traveled thousands of miles to beg from to save my son.

Rhodes.

Seraphina Rhodes.

The name finally detonated in my mind like a slap to the face.

I should have known. Five years ago, I had personally presided over the ceremony rejecting her. I had looked at that photograph with my own eyes. I had smelled that man's scent. Yet in the five years since, I had never connected the Alpha of the Silverwood Pack to the man in the photograph. I had never investigated his background. I had never cross checked his appearance. I had arrived desperate, blundering into tonight's gala like a blind man.

The Moon Goddess must be laughing at me, Draegan growled in my mind, his voice dripping with sarcasm. You rejected her with your own hands, and now you crawl to beg for her mate's help. And you were not even smart enough to see it coming.

And now she stood beside him, radiating a noble elegance that shattered every lie I had ever believed

Seraphina POV

Descending the grand staircase of the Golden Ball, I held my head high, mustering every ounce of aristocratic elegance I possessed. The ballroom was a sea of expensive champagne, dazzling crystal chandeliers, and the suffocatingly thick scents of elite wolves. My hand rested lightly on Dominic's arm, his steady cedar and earth scent offering a small comfort to the phantom ache in my chest.

Five years ago, I could have asked my brother for help. But I was too proud, too ashamed. I had been rejected by my fated mate, cast out as an Omega with a weak wolf. Dominic had warned me not to accept that ceremony. He said Kaelen was not worthy of me. I did not listen to him. When I was driven out of the Black Moon Pack with my newborn daughter, I chose to scrape by on the margins rather than return to him in defeat and hear him say, "I told you so."

Until three months ago, when I held my feverish daughter in my arms with only a few coins left in my pocket. Only then did I finally dial the number I had been too afraid to call. Dominic did not ask why I had waited five years. He simply came.

I knew he was here. I could feel his presence in the electric hum that filled the air, but I refused to search the crowd for Kaelen Steele. That man had taken my son Liam, simply because he was the "future Alpha heir," and thrown me and my daughter out like trash. What right did he have to stand here and look at me now?

When Dominic was briefly pulled into a political conversation by an elder, I slipped away toward the marble bar to get a glass of water. I just needed a minute to breathe.

But peace was a luxury I had never been allowed.

A familiar, malicious scent drifted into my nostrils. I turned around, facing the coming confrontation head-on. I was no longer the pushover Omega I had been five years ago.

Vanessa Steele stopped before me, a venomous, false smile plastered on her face. But there was a tightness at the corner of her eyes, a slight tremor in her fingers. She was afraid. That gave me a small, cold satisfaction.

"I cannot believe a banished Omega slut has the nerve to crawl back," she hissed, her voice dripping with pure poison, but pitched low, as if she did not want to attract too much attention.

I stepped forward. The movement was so sudden that she instinctively took half a step back. "Why are you trembling, Vanessa?" My voice was eerily calm. "Is it because your brother nearly broke your neck last time, or because you finally realize that the woman standing before you now is no longer the Omega you used to bully?"

Her face flushed crimson. Anger overpowered her fear. She snatched a crystal goblet of red wine from a passing server's tray and hurled the liquid directly at me.

I did not dodge. The deep red liquid splashed violently against my silver woven gown, dripping down the bodice like fresh blood. The surrounding crowd gasped.

"Get out!" Vanessa shrieked, her voice cutting through the classical music and echoing through the air. "You do not belong here!"

But the moment the words left her mouth, a suffocating wave of winter pine and ozone swept through the room. Kaelen strode forward, but his gaze was not on Vanessa. It was fixed on me. Those obsidian eyes churned with something I could not name.

"Vanessa," Kaelen spoke, his voice low and dangerous. "Go to the car. Now."

Vanessa's face went pale. She opened her mouth, but Kaelen did not even look at her. His eyes never left mine. Vanessa bit her lip and turned to flee in disgrace as the crowd whispered among themselves.

I waited for Kaelen to speak. To mention Liam. Our son. The child he was supposed to be desperately trying to save.

But he just stood there looking at me.

Something cold settled in my chest. "You have nothing to say to me, Alpha?" My voice was calmer than I expected.

Kaelen's jaw tightened. I saw his throat bob as he swallowed, but he said nothing.

Then a low, floor-shaking growl rumbled from the side. Dominic appeared beside me, his powerful frame blocking my ruined gown from the crowd's view. His Alpha aura exploded outward, a heavy, suffocating pressure that forced nearby wolves to bow their heads.

"Kaelen Steele," Dominic's voice was like a winter blade. "You humiliated my sister five years ago. Tonight, your sister attacked her in public. You should be grateful I have not yet decided to treat this as an act of war against the Silverwood Pack."

Kaelen's gaze finally left my face and met Dominic's. The air crackled between the two Alphas.

"I have no intention of offending the Silverwood Pack," Kaelen said at last, his voice low and restrained. He turned to me, something flickering in his eyes before he suppressed it. "Seraphina. We need to talk."

Liam. Was he thinking about Liam? Or did he just want to talk about an "alliance"?

I looked at him, said nothing, then turned and took Dominic's arm. "Let's go."

Dominic gave me a reassuring nod and led me through the crowd, away from that man.

Twenty minutes later, the ruined silver gown lay discarded on the floor of a private dressing room. I stared at my pale reflection in the vanity mirror. Dominic leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, his face expressionless.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"He needs something from me," I said, my fingers smoothing the fabric of the备用礼服. "Otherwise, he would not have looked at me like that. He did not even look back when he threw me away five years ago."

"The Silverwood Pack's intelligence network is not just for show," Dominic said. "I can find out."

I thought of Liam. My son, whom I had not seen in five years. He had been kept by the man who threw me out like garbage. Would he even recognize me now? Did he even know I existed?

"Find out," I said, my voice steadier than I expected. "But before that, I need to see him. Not like just now, staring at each other across a crowd. I need to speak with him face to face."

Dominic frowned. "That is dangerous."

"I do not care." I stood up and smoothed my skirt. "He owes me an explanation. About Liam. About everything five years ago. I will not hide like a frightened mouse again before I get my answers."

Dominic was silent for a long moment, then finally nodded. "I will arrange guards."

"No," I said. "I am going alone."

His frown deepened. "Seraphina."

"I have been hiding for five years, brother." I looked at myself in the mirror. The pushover Omega who used to let herself be bullied was gone. "Now it is his turn to face me."

Dominic sighed but did not stop me. He knew that when I used that tone, no amount of persuasion would work.

I walked out of the dressing room, crossed the bustling Golden Ball without checking whether Kaelen was still there, and headed toward the corridor leading to the private terrace. It was quiet there. A good place to think. And a good place to wait for a man to come to me.

If he really wanted to "talk," he would come. If he did not, then I would know that he had never cared about me or our son.

He only cared about his own interests.