Isabela POV:

The drive back to the Oneal territory was silent, but it was a silence charged with violence.

Kason drove with white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Dalia was sobbing quietly in the passenger seat, her ego bruised, but I barely heard her. I was still vibrating. My skin still tingled where Hadley had touched me. The scent of pine and storm still clung to my senses, overpowering the stale air of the car.

He was my Mate. The Supreme Alpha was my Fated Mate.

When we arrived at the Pack House, Kason didn't let me go to the basement.

"Get inside," he ordered, grabbing my arm the moment I stepped out of the car. His grip was bruising.

He dragged me past the main hall, ignoring the curious looks of the pack members, and shoved me toward his private apartment on the top floor.

"Kason, stop! You're hurting me!" I cried out, trying to pry his fingers off.

He threw the door open and hurled me inside. I stumbled, catching myself on the edge of his mahogany desk. The room smelled overwhelmingly of him-cedar and aggression.

He slammed the door and locked it. When he turned to face me, his eyes were glowing a sickly yellow. He was losing control. His wolf was near the surface, feral and confused.

"You smell like him," Kason hissed. He stalked toward me, sniffing the air. "Why do you smell like Hadley Payne?"

"He helped me," I said, backing away until my back hit the wall. "He was just being a gentleman. Something you've forgotten how to be."

Slap.

The sound cracked through the room. My head snapped to the side. My cheek burned, tears springing to my eyes instantly. He had never hit me. Not once in ten years.

"Don't you dare lecture me!" Kason roared. "I smelled the way the air changed! I saw the way he looked at you! Did you seduce him? Is that your plan? To climb the ladder by spreading your legs for a higher Alpha?"

"You're crazy," I whispered, holding my cheek. "You rejected me, Kason. You chose Dalia. You don't get to be jealous."

"I am not jealous!" he screamed, but the lie was palpable in the air. "You are mine! You are Oneal property! You don't get to have another Alpha's scent on you!"

He lunged at me. He didn't strike me this time; he grabbed me, burying his face in my neck, right over my scent gland. He was trying to rub his scent onto me, to mask Hadley's mark. It was a violation. His teeth scraped against my sensitive skin.

"Stay," he used the Alpha Command.

My body froze. My muscles locked up against my will. I couldn't move my arms to push him away. I was a statue, forced to endure his aggressive claiming.

No! my wolf screamed. Fight him! He is not our Alpha! He is not our Mate!

The command was strong, but my wolf was desperate. And somewhere, deep down, the bond I had felt with Hadley gave me a sliver of strength. The connection to a Supreme Alpha trumped the command of a regular Alpha.

My hand twitched.

Kason was distracted, growling against my neck, his hand fumbling with the zipper of my dress. He intended to mark me. If he bit me now, against my will, it would cause a rejected bond-a pain worse than death.

My fingers curled around the heavy silver base of the desk lamp next to me.

Silver.

To a wolf, silver burned like acid. It weakened us, sapped our strength.

With a scream of effort that tore at my throat, I broke through the paralysis of the Command. I swung the lamp.

CRACK.

The heavy silver base connected with the side of Kason's head.

He didn't just stumble; he howled. The silver seared his skin upon contact. He fell back, clutching his temple, blood trickling through his fingers. The smell of burnt flesh filled the room.

"You..." he gasped, his eyes rolling back. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

I dropped the lamp. My hand, which had touched the silver, was blistering, red and angry. The pain was blinding.

I slid down the wall, curling into a ball in the corner of the room. The adrenaline crashed. The proximity to the silver lamp, combined with the trauma of the Alpha Command and the physical assault, was too much for my weak Omega body.

Black spots danced in my vision.

Hadley, I thought, the name a prayer, before the darkness took me.

Isabela POV:

I woke up to something hard hitting my chest.

I gasped, jerking awake. I was still on the floor of Kason's room. The morning sun sliced through the curtains, illuminating the dust motes in the air. Kason was sitting on the edge of his bed, holding an ice pack to the side of his head. The wound from the silver lamp was healing, but slowly. It looked angry and red.

He had thrown a small cardboard box at me.

I looked down. It was a box of emergency contraceptives.

"Take them," Kason said. His voice was raspy, but he wasn't looking at me. His gaze was fixed on the wall, his jaw tight as if he were holding back a scream. There was a tremor in his hand that he quickly hid by gripping the ice pack tighter.

"What?" I croaked, my throat dry.

"For last night," he said, standing up. He winced slightly. "I don't remember much after you... attacked me. But you smell like sex and fear. I won't have a bastard child complicating my life."

I stared at him in horror. Nothing had happened. I had knocked him out. But I saw a flicker of something in his eyes-not just cruelty, but a desperate need to rewrite the narrative. If he convinced himself we had slept together, then in his twisted mind, I still belonged to him.

"Nothing happened, Kason," I said, my voice trembling. "I hit you. You passed out."

"Don't lie," he sneered, but the words lacked his usual fire. He rubbed his chest, as if his wolf were clawing at him from the inside. "Just take the pills. I don't want you breeding."

He turned away abruptly, marching to the bathroom. Before he slammed the door, I heard a ragged intake of breath, like a drowning man surfacing for air.

I left the pills on the floor. I grabbed my shoes and ran.

Two days passed. I stayed in the basement, barricading the door with old furniture. I only went out when I knew Kason was away on pack business.

The Mating Ceremony-my wedding to Hadley, though Kason didn't know that part-was in less than two weeks. I just had to survive until then.

I spent the afternoon at the pawn shop in the human town, selling the few gold earrings I had left. I needed cash for a taxi to the airport when the time came.

That evening, there was a mandatory pack party to celebrate the upcoming full moon. As an Omega, I was required to serve drinks.

I was carrying a tray of champagne through the crowded hall when it hit me.

A sharp, twisting pain in my abdomen. It felt like someone had shoved a hot poker into my stomach. I doubled over, dropping the tray. Glass shattered. Champagne sprayed everywhere.

"Clumsy bitch!" someone shouted.

I fell to my knees, clutching my stomach. It was Rejection Sickness. My body was physically rejecting the Oneal Pack, rejecting Kason's leadership, and craving the bond with Hadley. The distance from my True Mate was making me physically ill.

The crowd parted. Kason walked through. He looked down at me, annoyed.

Then, he stopped. He sniffed the air.

When a she-wolf is pregnant, her scent changes. It becomes sweeter, milky. But when a wolf is sick from rejection, the scent sours and becomes chaotic.

To an untrained, arrogant nose like Kason's, the biological shift was confusing. He smelled a change in my hormones. He smelled the nausea.

His eyes went wide. He looked at my stomach.

"You..." He pointed a shaking finger at me. "You're pregnant."

"No," I gasped, sweat pouring down my face. "It's... it's not..."

"I told you to take the pills!" Kason roared. The music stopped. The whole pack was watching. "You tried to trap me! You think carrying a pup will make me leave Dalia?"

Dalia pushed through the crowd. "She's pregnant? With whose baby? Probably some Rogue she met in the woods!"

"It's yours, isn't it?" Kason grabbed my arm, hauling me up. I screamed in pain. "You want to use a child to steal the Luna title!"

"I'm not pregnant!" I cried, tears streaming down my face. "I'm sick! Let me go!"

"We're going to the Pack Doctor," Kason snarled, dragging me toward the exit. "And we are getting rid of it. Tonight."

"No! Kason, please!" I begged, digging my heels into the floor.

He didn't listen. He threw me over his shoulder like a sack of grain and marched out of the hall, leaving a trail of shattered glass and rumors behind him. He was driving me to the clinic, convinced he was solving a problem, unaware he was about to shatter the last fragile remnant of our history.

Kason POV:

The engine of my SUV roared, matching the turmoil inside my chest. I gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather creaked in protest. Beside me, in the passenger seat, Isabela was curled into a tight ball, her hands clutching her stomach, her face pale and slick with sweat.

The car smelled of her distress-a sour, chaotic scent that clogged my throat. It smelled like sickness. It smelled like guilt. But mostly, to my furious mind, it smelled like betrayal.

"Stop crying," I growled, swerving around a slow-moving sedan. "Tears won't change the fact that you tried to trap me."

"It hurts," she whimpered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the engine. "Kason, please... my wolf... she's fading."

"Your wolf is weak because you carry a rogue's spawn," I snapped, though a flicker of doubt pricked at my conscience. Her scent didn't have the milky sweetness of a normal pregnancy. It was sharp. Acrid. Like something rotting.

I pulled up to the Pack Clinic, screeching to a halt in the emergency bay. I didn't wait for an orderly. I got out, walked around, and yanked the passenger door open.

Isabela fell out, too weak to stand. I caught her before she hit the pavement, scooping her into my arms. She was terrifyingly light. Had she always been this thin?

"Help!" I roared, using my Alpha voice. The sound shattered the quiet night, commanding attention. "I need a doctor! Now!"

Two nurses rushed out with a gurney. I placed Isabela on it, my hands sticky with her cold sweat. As they wheeled her through the double doors, she reached out, his fingers brushing my sleeve.

"Kason..." she whispered, her eyes unfocused. "Don't let them... hurt me."

I stood there as the doors swung shut, cutting off her voice.

I paced the waiting room. The antiseptic smell of the hospital grated on my nerves. I needed to shift. I needed to run. My wolf was pacing inside my mind, agitated, scratching at the walls of my consciousness.

She is hurt, my wolf growled. Our mate is hurt.

She is not our mate, I snapped back mentally. Dalia is our mate. Isabela is just... a responsibility.

I walked toward the water cooler down the hall, needing to cool the fire in my blood. As I passed the nurses' station, voices drifted out from the break room. They were hushed, but my Alpha hearing picked them up clearly.

"Did you see her?" one nurse whispered. "Skin and bones. And the bruises on her arm... they look like finger marks."

"That was Alpha Kason who brought her in," another voice replied, dripping with disdain. "The 'Honorable' Alpha. Treating a pack member like that? It's disgraceful."

"I heard he keeps her in the basement," the first nurse said. "Like a prisoner. No wonder her wolf is fading. A wolf without a pack's love dies. He's killing her slowly."

I froze. My reflection in the hallway window stared back at me-haggard, angry, a monster.

He's killing her.

The words echoed in my head. I wanted to storm in there and silence them with an Alpha Command, but my feet wouldn't move. Shame, cold and heavy, settled in my gut.

The door to the examination room opened. Dr. Evans, the Pack Doctor, stepped out. He was an old wolf, gray-haired and stoic. He had delivered me. He had treated my father. He feared no one, not even an Alpha.

He walked up to me, pulling off his latex gloves with a snap. His expression was thunderous.

"Is it done?" I asked, my voice tight. "Did you remove the... problem?"

Dr. Evans stared at me for a long moment. Then, he stepped closer, invading my personal space in a way that would get any other wolf challenged.

"There is no baby, Alpha," he said, his voice low and dangerous.

My knees nearly buckled. "What?"

"It is acute appendicitis," Dr. Evans hissed. "It has ruptured. Poison is leaking into her body. If you had brought her ten minutes later, she would be dead."

The air left my lungs. Not pregnant. Dying.

"But... the scent," I stammered. "She smelled wrong."

"She smells of decay because her body is shutting down!" Dr. Evans shouted, losing his composure. "And do you know why her healing ability didn't stop it? Because she has no strength left. Her wolf is dormant, Kason. Crushed by stress. Crushed by you."

He poked a finger into my chest. "You are the Alpha. Your job is to protect. Instead, I am going in there to perform emergency surgery on a girl whose spirit is so broken she might not wake up."

He turned on his heel and marched back into the operating room.

I stood alone in the hallway. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

Not pregnant, my wolf whined, a sound of pure misery. We hurt her.

I slid down the wall, putting my head in my hands. I felt a strange, phantom pain in my chest, as if a thread connecting me to something vital had just been pulled taut, threatening to snap.