Gavin POV

"Just sign the damn papers, Alpha Blackwood."

Her hollow words hung in the freezing air. My inner wolf thrashed against my ribs, howling in absolute, bleeding terror. But my Alpha ego—the arrogant shield that ruled the Blackwood Pack—refused to yield.

*She’s bluffing,* I convinced myself. This was a Thorne Pack political play, a calculated extortion disguised as grief.

"Fifty million in offshore assets," I countered, my voice dropping into a cold, business-like sneer. "Take the money, Elara. Stop this pathetic tantrum."

She didn't blink. She looked at me as if I were a rotting corpse. "The Pack treaty strictly forbids land or asset division upon a severed bond. I don't want your money, Gavin. I want my soul back."

I snatched the heavy fountain pen and slashed my name across the bottom line, expecting her to finally crack, to beg for my forgiveness. But as I shoved the papers back, my blood ran cold. Her signature was already there. Perfect. Unwavering.

"That ambush took more than my pup," she murmured, her eyes dead. "And I am going to find out exactly who pulled the strings."

Before I could process the threat, a sharp, frantic spike of energy pierced my skull.

*Gavin! The news—what is happening?!*

Piper Holloway’s mind-link felt like a parasite in my brain. I gritted my teeth and marched up the grand staircase, desperate to distance myself and hide my mental conversation.

*Did you leak the hotel recording, Piper?* I snarled through the link.

Her panicked, stuttering denials only cemented my disgust. She was a foolish, vain liability. I glanced over the banister. Elara stood in the foyer, watching my silent, furious retreat. She couldn't hear Piper, but the absolute contempt in her eyes told me she knew exactly who I was talking to.

The next morning, the Sunstone Clearing was suffocatingly cold. The ancient white stones felt like an executioner's block. Elara stood before the Pack Elders, her bags already packed.

My wolf was clawing at my throat, begging me to submit to her, but the Alpha could not show weakness before his Pack.

"I, Gavin Blackwood, accept your rejection," I choked out.

The agony was instantaneous. It felt as though a silver blade had been dragged down my spine, violently ripping my soul in half. I stumbled, gasping for air as the Mate-bond withered into ash. Elara’s shoulders trembled for a fraction of a second, but her face remained a mask of ice.

"Leave my territory," I growled, my voice ragged with pain.

"Gladly," she whispered. "I left a parting gift for you on the dining table."

I didn't watch her walk away. A sickening, primal dread propelled me back to the manor. I burst into the cavernous dining hall. Resting on the mahogany table, right where the Rejection papers had been, was a single folded letter and a photograph of a blood-stained receipt pulled from a dead Rogue.

My hands shook violently as I unfolded the parchment.

*The Rogues who killed your heir were paid in Holloway Pack gold.*

The words hit me like a physical blow. The receipt confirmed it. I hadn't just broken my mate's heart. I had climbed into bed with the murderer of my own child.

The paper slipped from my numb fingers, fluttering to the floor.

"ELARA, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" I roared.

Gavin POV

The parchment fluttered to the floor, light as a feather, yet it carried the weight of a guillotine.

A sound tore from my throat—not human, not even a wolf’s howl, but the raw, bleeding shriek of a shattered soul. The Alpha power inside me, usually a tightly coiled spring of control, violently snapped.

I grabbed the edge of the massive mahogany dining table. With a surge of monstrous strength, I flipped it. Crystal shattered, silver clattered, and the heavy wood splintered against the stone floor. But it wasn't enough. My inner wolf was thrashing, demanding blood, demanding her.

I stormed into the grand foyer, a wounded beast seeking a target. My claws elongated, turning obsidian black as I slashed at the century-old tapestries, shredding the Blackwood crest into unrecognizable ribbons. The air grew thick and suffocating with my distressed, destructive pheromones.

Just as my sanity was about to be entirely swallowed by my wolf's inferno, a mind-link pierced my skull. It wasn't a pack member. It was an Alpha's frequency, cold and dripping with absolute hatred.

"Blackwood." Alpha Thorne's voice echoed in my mind. "My daughter's body was found at the border river. Your patrol wolves saw the Rogues drag her into the water. I will have your blood for this."

The link snapped shut.

My knees hit the cold marble. The void where my Mate-bond used to be screamed in agony. I frantically mind-linked my Gamma. Status report!

"Alpha..." Gamma Jaren's voice trembled. "The Thorn Pack warriors found her first. They're claiming we orchestrated the attack. The body... it's too damaged for scent identification, but the silver necklace you gave her—"

I cut the link. Piper's doing. That silver necklace with Aidan's initial was planted evidence.

"EVERYONE IN THE FOYER! NOW!" I roared, my Alpha command shaking the chandelier above.

The manor staff scrambled into the ruined hall within seconds. Their terrified scents curdled the air.

"Who delivered her Rejection papers?" I snarled, pacing before them. "Who helped her escape after I ordered her confined to the west wing?"

The staff whimpered against the walls until a calm figure stepped forward.

Bastian. The butler who'd served three generations of Blackwoods.

"I did," he said, his voice stripped of deference.

I dismissed the others with a jerk of my chin. When the doors closed, I seized Bastian's collar. "You betrayed your Alpha."

He didn't flinch. "You betrayed your Mate first."

My grip tightened. "Watch your—"

"Moonflowers on your anniversary?" Bastian's eyes burned with contempt. "I picked them. The six-hour feast for your wolf? I cleaned the untouched plates. And when she begged to check on your pup at the clinic—" His voice broke. "You were too busy fucking Piper to notice her bleeding thighs."

Every word was a silver blade to the gut. I released him, stumbling back.

Bastian reached into his pocket. The silver pocket watch engraved with our crest gleamed in his palm. "I won't serve the monster who drove his Luna to suicide-by-Rogue."

The click of the watch hitting the table echoed like a gunshot.

As the oak doors thudded shut behind him, the truth detonated in my chest:

Elara hadn't been murdered.

She'd walked straight into those Rogues' claws.

And I'd handed her the map.

Gavin POV

The cold seeped into my bones, pulling me from a brief, nightmare-fueled unconsciousness. I opened my eyes to the sight of shattered crystal and splintered mahogany. I was still on the marble floor of the grand foyer, surrounded by the wreckage of my own making.

My head throbbed violently, but it was nothing compared to the gaping, bleeding void in my chest where my Mate-bond used to be. My inner wolf was pacing endlessly in my mind, letting out pathetic, agonizing whimpers for a female I had sworn I didn't love. The contradiction was tearing my sanity apart.

I pushed myself up, my muscles stiff. Out of pure, ingrained habit, I reached out through the mind-link. *“Bastian, get this place cleaned up.”*

Dead silence.

The reality crashed over me like a tidal wave. Bastian was gone. The man who had practically raised me had looked at me with utter disgust and walked away. I was completely, utterly alone.

I needed to do something. I needed to regain a fraction of control before the guilt swallowed me whole. I would give Elara a memorial fit for a true Luna. It was the only pathetic piece of atonement I could offer her.

Hours later, the air at the Memorial Clearing was thick with the scent of pine, damp earth, and profound grief. Hundreds of my pack members stood in a solemn circle around the massive, unhewn black granite stone.

I stepped forward, my hands trembling slightly as I placed a bouquet of pale moonflowers at the base of the stone—the very flowers Bastian had picked for her when I couldn't be bothered.

Before I could even step back, a cloying, sickeningly sweet scent invaded my senses.

Someone crashed into my back, wrapping their arms tightly around my waist. A loud, theatrical sob shattered the silence of the clearing. I looked down and saw a stark white dress—a color strictly reserved in our traditions for the grieving Mate of the deceased.

"Gavin! Oh, Goddess, how could this happen to us?" Piper Holloway wailed, burying her face in my spine, trying to cement our bond in front of the entire pack.

My inner wolf snarled, a visceral wave of pure disgust and bloodlust rolling through me. She was using my Mate's memorial as a stage.

I didn't just pull away; I violently tore myself from her grip and shoved her hard. Piper shrieked as she hit the dirt, her pristine white dress staining with mud.

She looked up at me, her eyes wide with fake tears, ready to spin another web of lies. I didn't give her the chance. I turned to face my pack, letting the raw, devastating power of my Alpha aura explode outward.

"I have only one Mate, one Luna, and her name is Elara Thorne!" I roared, my voice echoing through the trees, vibrating with endless remorse. I pointed a shaking, clawed finger at the woman on the ground. "This woman... is her murderer!"

Gasps rippled through the crowd. Piper’s face drained of color. "Gavin, no, you're confused—"

"Silence!" I snapped. I locked eyes with my Gamma, who was already stepping forward. "Gamma Jaren! Drag her out of my territory. If she ever sets foot here again, kill her on sight."

"You can't do this to me!" Piper screamed, thrashing wildly as Jaren and three Warriors grabbed her arms, hauling her up. "I am an Alpha's daughter!"

"You are nothing to me," I spat.

The pack watched in cold silence as she was dragged away, her curses fading into the distance. The spectacle was over, but the hollow ache in my chest only deepened.

As the crowd began to disperse, a heavy hand clamped onto my shoulder, spinning me around.

*Smack.*

The backhand caught me completely off guard, snapping my head to the side. The sharp sting of the slap radiated across my jaw. I didn't raise a hand to defend myself. I just looked into the furious, disappointed eyes of my father, Louis Blackwood.

"You let a snake into our home," the former Alpha snarled, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that commanded respect. "You let her murder your own blood, and shamed your Mate even in her death! Is this how a Blackwood Alpha acts?"

I swallowed hard, the metallic taste of blood on my tongue. I had no defense. Every word he spoke was a nail in my coffin. I had failed as a protector, as a Mate, and as an Alpha.

My father turned his back on me in disgust, walking away without another word.

Suffocating under the weight of my catastrophic failures, I turned away from the clearing. I dragged my heavy feet back toward the manor, back to the ruined grand foyer, knowing my display of weakness had already drawn the vultures out from the shadows.