Eloise POV:

The morning sun felt like a lie. It was bright and cheerful, completely at odds with the darkness brewing on my doorstep.

Alphons had left early for a council meeting—something about rogue movements on the northern border.

"I'm leaving two of my elite Delta guards at the gate," Alphons had said, kissing my forehead. "Do not open the door for anyone but me. I'll be back by noon to move your things."

I was packing a box of books when the doorbell rang.

I checked the security feed. It was Jaidyn.

She stood there, not in a wheelchair, not looking pale. She was wearing a tight red dress, checking her reflection in my window. She looked perfectly, infuriatingly healthy.

Rage, hot and sudden, flared in my chest.

I opened the door, confused as to why the Deltas hadn't stopped her. Maybe they were patrolling the perimeter?

"You made a miraculous recovery," I said, leaning against the frame.

Jaidyn jumped, then composed herself. A sickly sweet smile plastered onto her face. "Oh, Eloise. You know how it is. The healers gave me a boost. But I'm still so fragile."

"Cut the act, Jaidyn," I snapped. "Holden isn't here."

Her smile dropped. Her eyes, usually wide and innocent, narrowed into slits.

"You think you've won, don't you?" she hissed. "Because you ran crying to the big, bad King?"

"I think I dodged a bullet," I corrected. "You can have Holden. He's weak. You deserve each other."

"I don't want Holden," she laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "I want the title. I want the power. And you... you're just a beta bitch standing in my way."

She stepped forward, invading my personal space. She smelled wrong. Underneath the expensive perfume, there was that scent again—rot. But it wasn't sickness. It was corruption.

"Get off my porch," I warned.

"Make me."

I reached out to shove her back. My fingers barely grazed her shoulder.

"Ahhh!" Jaidyn threw herself backward.

It was a performance worthy of an Oscar. She flew off the porch steps and landed in the grass, screaming as if I had poured acid on her.

"Help! She's killing me!"

"Jaidyn!"

Holden burst from the bushes.

"Where are the guards?" I shouted, backing up.

Two men in black tactical gear emerged from the tree line. Mercenaries. One of them wiped a bloody knife on his pant leg. They had ambushed Alphons' men.

He didn't hesitate. He didn't ask questions. He charged at me, his eyes flashing red.

"Kneel!" he roared.

This time, he put everything he had into the Alpha Command.

I wasn't a wolf yet. I didn't have a rank. The command hit me like a physical blow to the stomach. My legs locked up. I couldn't breathe. I slumped against the doorframe, paralyzed.

"You vicious monster!" Holden screamed, spitting in my face. "She came here to apologize, and you attack her?"

"She... faked..." I gasped, fighting the invisible weight crushing my lungs.

"Save it!" Holden signaled to the mercenaries. "Grab her."

"Holden, you can't," I wheezed. "Alphons..."

"Alphons isn't here!" Holden grabbed my hair, yanking my head back. "And by the time he finds you, you'll be begging for forgiveness."

He pulled something from his pocket. A collar.

It gleamed with a dull, menacing luster. Silver.

Pure silver is poison to us. It burns the skin and cuts off the wolf from the human host. It blocks the Mind-Link.

"No," I whispered.

He snapped it around my neck.

The pain was instantaneous. It felt like a ring of fire searing into my flesh. I screamed, but the sound died in my throat as my energy was sucked away. My connection to the world, to the pack, to Alphons, vanished.

Static. Just static and pain.

They dragged me to a van. As they shoved me inside, I saw Jaidyn standing up. She brushed the grass off her dress, smirking at me. She blew Holden a kiss as he climbed in beside me.

"Where are we going?" I managed to rasp, the silver burning my vocal cords.

"Somewhere quiet," Holden said, looking at me with cold, dead eyes. "Somewhere you can think about what you've done to my family."

The van sped away.

I tried to reach out with my mind. Alphons! Alphons, help me!

Nothing. The silver collar acted like a Faraday cage for the soul. I was alone.

We drove for hours. When the van finally stopped, the air smelled damp and metallic.

They dragged me down a flight of stone stairs. A dungeon. This was the old Callahan estate, abandoned years ago.

Holden threw me into a cell. The bars were coated in silver dust.

"Rot here for a while," he spat. "Maybe when you're humble, we'll talk."

He slammed the gate shut. The lock clicked.

I lay on the cold stone floor, the collar eating into my neck. I closed my eyes, fighting the darkness threatening to swallow me.

I had to survive. I had to hold on.

Because when my King found out about this... the world would burn.

Eloise POV:

Time lost its meaning in the dark. It could have been hours; it could have been days. The only constant was the burning ring of silver around my neck and the gnawing hunger in my belly.

The silver was doing its job. It was suppressing my healing, making me feel human and frail. My skin was pale, clammy with a fever sweat. Yet, in the deepest recesses of my mind, beyond the static of the collar, I felt a strange, rhythmic pulsing. Like a distant drumbeat.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor.

"Wakey, wakey, Princess."

Jaidyn stood on the other side of the bars. She held a tray of food—a burger that smelled divine to my starving senses.

She placed it on the floor, just out of my reach.

"You look terrible," she said cheerfully.

I pushed myself up to a sitting position, leaning against the damp wall. "And you look... like a cheap fake."

Her smile twitched. "You still have a mouth on you. I thought the silver would have broken you by now."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "You have him. You won."

"I haven't won until you're gone," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "You think I don't know? The Bowers bloodline. The rumors of the White Wolf."

My heart skipped a beat. "That's a myth."

"Is it?" She tilted her head. "Holden is an idiot. He thinks you're just a beta. But I can smell it on you. That latent power. It's disgusting. It's too pure."

She stepped closer to the bars.

"Watch this," she said.

Her eyes shifted. Not to the amber of a normal wolf, but to a murky, sickly yellow. Her hand contorted. Bones cracked and reshaped.

Fur sprouted. Claws elongated.

She shifted her hand into a wolf's paw.

I gasped. "You... you can shift. You told everyone your wolf was dying! You told Holden you couldn't transform!"

"I lied," she grinned, shifting her hand back to human form. "Men are so easy to manipulate when you play the victim. Holden thinks I'm a fragile flower. He'd do anything to protect me."

"He's going to find out," I said.

"Who's going to tell him? You?" She laughed. "You're never leaving this cell, Eloise."

She reached through the bars, grabbing my hair. She yanked my face against the cold silver metal.

I cried out as the silver burned my cheek. But as the metal seared my skin, the distant drumbeat in my head grew louder. A flash of white light, visible only to me, sparked behind my eyelids.

"I'm going to take everything from you," she hissed. "Your status. Your life. And maybe, once you're dead, I'll go comfort that King of yours."

Fury, hot and white, exploded in my chest.

I wasn't a warrior. I wasn't an Alpha. But I was done being a punching bag.

My hand found a loose piece of rusted iron on the floor, a remnant of some old shackle.

I didn't think. I swung.

The jagged metal sliced across her forearm.

"Aaaagh!" Jaidyn shrieked, letting go of my hair and stumbling back. Blood, dark and red, welled up on her arm.

"You bitch!" she screamed.

Heavy boots pounded down the stairs.

"Jaidyn!"

Holden appeared. He took in the scene: Jaidyn clutching her bleeding arm, me holding a bloody piece of iron, panting like a wild animal.

"She attacked me!" Jaidyn wailed, tears instantly springing to her eyes. "I brought her food, and she tried to kill me!"

Holden looked at me. His face contorted with a rage that was terrifying to behold.

"I warned you," he growled.

He unlocked the cell door.

"Holden, look at her arm!" I shouted, backing away. "She healed! Look how fast it's clotting! She's not sick!"

But he wasn't listening. He was blind to everything but her tears.

He stormed into the cell. He grabbed me by the throat, lifting me off my feet.

"You hurt my mate," he snarled.

"She's... lying..." I choked, clawing at his hands.

He threw me against the wall. My head cracked against the stone. Stars exploded in my vision.

"You want to act like a rogue?" Holden yelled. "Then I'll treat you like one."

He turned to the guard outside. "Crank up the voltage on the collar."

"Sir, that could kill her," the guard hesitated.

"Do it!"

The guard pressed a button on a remote.

CRACK.

Electricity surged through the silver collar. It wasn't just pain; it was like being dipped in lava. Every nerve ending in my body caught fire. My muscles seized.

I fell to the floor, convulsing. I couldn't scream. My jaw was locked.

Through the haze of agony, the white spark returned. It wasn't just a flicker this time. It was a cold, soothing presence wrapping around my heart, keeping it beating when the electricity tried to stop it.

I focused on Jaidyn's smirk. I held onto it.

I will not die, I promised myself as the darkness crept in. I will live. And I will make you pay.

Eloise POV:

I woke up being dragged.

My feet scraped against rough concrete. My body felt heavy, like it was filled with lead. The burns on my neck throbbed in rhythm with my heartbeat.

"Careful with her," Holden’s voice floated from somewhere above me. "We need the veins intact."

"She's weak, Alpha," a new voice said. It sounded greasy. "If we take too much, she'll go into shock."

"Jaidyn needs it," Holden replied curtly. "Just do it."

I forced my eyes open.

We were in a room that looked like a clinic, but it was filthy. The tiles were stained brown. The light flickered with a buzzing sound.

They hoisted me onto a metal table.

Jaidyn lay on a pristine bed across the room. She was hooked up to an IV drip that was currently empty.

"What..." I tried to speak, but my throat was dry as sandpaper.

"Save your strength," the greasy doctor said. He was a Rogue, judging by the lack of a pack mark on his neck. He tied a rubber tourniquet around my arm.

"Holden," I rasped. "Don't."

Holden stood by Jaidyn’s side, holding her hand. He wouldn't look at me.

"Jaidyn's blood count is dropping," he recited, like a rehearsed script. "The injury you caused her destabilized her system. She needs a transfusion from a high-ranking female. You owe her this."

"She heals..." I whispered. "She heals... faster than me..."

"Liar," Holden spat.

The doctor shoved a thick needle into the crook of my elbow.

I flinched, a hiss of pain escaping my lips.

Dark red blood began to flow through the clear tube. I watched my life force draining away, moving across the room toward the woman who wanted to destroy me.

As the bag filled, the room began to spin. Cold crept up my extremities.

But deep inside, in the place where my wolf slept, something was happening.

Usually, the silver suppressed everything. But the loss of blood was triggering a survival mechanism. That ancient, dormant instinct I had felt in the cell was now roaring.

Thump-thump.

My heart beat slower, but harder. It felt less like biology and more like geology—tectonic plates shifting inside my soul.

Thump-thump.

It wasn't just my heart. It was a drumbeat. A call to war.

Across the room, Jaidyn sat up. She looked at the blood bag with hungry eyes.

"It looks rich," she said, licking her lips. "Maybe I'll take it all."

"Jaidyn, relax," Holden soothed her. "You'll get what you need."

He stepped out of the room to answer a phone call.

The moment the door clicked shut, Jaidyn hopped off the bed. She walked over to me, dragging her IV pole.

She leaned over my face.

"You know," she whispered, "your blood smells... powerful. Like winter."

She reached out and flicked the needle in my arm. Pain shot up my shoulder.

"Oops," she giggled. She pushed me hard.

I was too weak to resist. I rolled off the narrow table, crashing onto the dirty floor. The needle ripped out of my arm. Blood sprayed across the tiles.

My head hit the corner of a metal cabinet.

Blackness swarmed my vision. I couldn't move. I lay in a pool of my own blood, watching it spread.

Alphons...

I didn't think it. I felt it. I threw every ounce of my fading life force into that one name.

Alphons POV:

The council room was boring. Old men arguing about border taxes.

I was staring at my phone. Eloise hadn't replied to my messages for two days. I had assumed she needed space, that the trauma of the rejection was hitting her. My guards hadn't reported in, which was concerning, but signal jammers were common in the mountains. I was about to send a retrieval team.

But my wolf was pacing. Restless. Hunt. Find her.

Suddenly, a pain ripped through my chest.

It wasn't a heart attack. It was worse. It felt like a jagged hook had been sunk into my soul and yanked.

I stood up so fast my heavy oak chair flew backward and shattered against the wall.

The room went silent.

"Alpha King?" one of the elders asked, trembling.

"Silence!" I roared.

My vision went red. I felt it. The bond. It was screaming. It was fraying.

She is dying.

My mate. My Queen.

I didn't ask for permission. I didn't take the elevator.

I ran to the window and smashed through the glass, leaping from the third story. I landed in a crouch, the concrete cracking under my feet.

I shifted.

My clothes shredded as my Lycan form took over. I was bigger than a normal wolf, a monstrosity of black fur and muscle standing eight feet tall on hind legs.

I threw my head back and howled.

It was a command to every wolf in the city. FIND HER.

The scent hit me on the wind. Faint. Metallic. Blood. Her blood.

And beneath it, the stink of rogue filth and my brother's cowardly musk.

I ran. I tore through traffic, vaulting over cars. I was a blur of shadow and death.

I reached the derelict clinic in the rogue district. The door was locked.

I didn't open it. I ran through it.

Wood and metal exploded inward.

I smelled her before I saw her. The scent of snow and pine was drowning in the copper smell of blood.

I burst into the room.

There she was. Lying on the floor. Pale as a ghost. A pool of crimson expanding around her head.

A female stood over her, laughing.

My vision narrowed to a pinprick. The beast inside me took full control.

KILL.

I let out a roar that shook the foundation of the building, shattering every lightbulb in the hallway.

The King had arrived. And he brought hell with him.