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.

Isabela POV:

The world came back in a haze of white ceilings and the steady beep-beep-beep of a monitor.

I blinked, my eyelids feeling heavy as lead. The sharp agony in my stomach was gone, replaced by a dull, throbbing ache and the tightness of bandages.

"You're awake."

I turned my head. Kason was sitting in the armchair next to the bed. He looked terrible. His shirt was rumpled, his eyes bloodshot. He was holding a cup of coffee that had long gone cold.

"Kason," I rasped. My throat felt like sandpaper.

He stood up quickly, pouring a glass of water from a pitcher on the bedside table. He held the straw to my lips. His hand was trembling.

"Drink," he said softly. Not a command. A plea.

I drank. The water was cool and soothing.

"It wasn't a baby," he said, setting the glass down. He didn't look at me. He looked at his hands. "It was your appendix. Dr. Evans fixed it."

"I know," I whispered. "I told you."

"I..." He stopped, his jaw working. Alphas didn't apologize. It wasn't in their nature. "I moved you to a VIP suite. You will stay here until you are healed. No basement."

"Thank you, Alpha," I said, closing my eyes. The title felt like a wall between us.

Three days later, I was discharged. But instead of taking me back to the Pack House, the car turned toward the city center.

"Where are we going?" I asked, looking out the window. I was wearing a soft cashmere sweater Kason had brought me. It smelled of the store, not of him.

"The Annual Pack Charity Auction," Kason said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. "You need fresh air. And... people have been talking. They need to see that the Oneal Pack takes care of its own."

Of course. It was about appearances. The rumors from the hospital must have spread.

We arrived at the grand hotel ballroom. It was filled with the elite of the werewolf world-Alphas, Betas, wealthy business partners. The air was thick with the scents of expensive cologne and power.

Dalia wasn't there. Kason had said she was "indisposed," though I suspected he had ordered her to stay away to avoid a scene.

"Stay close to me," Kason murmured, placing a hand on the small of my back. His touch burned, but not in the way Hadley's did. This was a brand of possession, not a spark of connection.

I nodded, my hand drifting to my neck. I wasn't wearing the Moonstone pendant. Dalia had that. Instead, I wore a simple string of freshwater pearls. They were my mother's, the only jewelry I had managed to hide from the "cleaning" of my room.

We sat at the front table. The auction began. Vintage wines, antique swords, vacations in the Alps. I stared blankly ahead, my mind miles away. In New York. With Hadley.

"And now," the auctioneer announced, "Lot 45. A rare, hand-carved wolf's tooth necklace. Donated by Alpha Kason Oneal."

My head snapped up.

A spotlight hit the glass case on stage. Inside, resting on black velvet, was a necklace made of a real timber wolf's tooth, bound in silver wire.

Kason had given that to me when I was sixteen. He had told me he found it in a souvenir shop. I had cherished it, wearing it under my shirt every day until Dalia came back and he demanded I stop wearing "trash."

"I didn't know you donated this," I said, my voice hollow.

"It was just clutter," Kason said, swirling his wine. "Dalia said it looked primitive."

"It was my favorite," I said quietly. "You told me it was a symbol of strength."

"I lied," he said, though his eyes didn't meet mine. "It was just a trinket."

"Bidding starts at five thousand dollars!" the auctioneer shouted.

"Six thousand!" a Beta from a neighboring pack called out.

"Seven thousand!"

I watched the numbers climb. That necklace represented the lie of my childhood. Kason had given it to me, taken it back, and was now selling it.

"It has no soul," I whispered, more to myself than him. "Just like this pack."

Kason froze. He looked at me, really looked at me. He saw the emptiness in my eyes. The adoration that used to be there was gone, replaced by a terrifying indifference.

Panic flashed across his face.

"Ten thousand!" Kason shouted, raising his paddle.

The room went silent. The auctioneer blinked. "Alpha Oneal? You are... bidding on your own item?"

"Twenty thousand!" Kason barked, his voice laced with Alpha power. "I am buying it back."

"Kason, stop," I said, embarrassed as heads turned. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters!" he hissed, turning to me. His eyes were wild. "It's yours. I gave it to you. Nobody else touches what is yours."

"Sold! To Alpha Oneal for twenty thousand dollars!"

He slumped back in his chair, breathing hard. He looked at me, expecting gratitude. Expecting the old Isabela to cry and thank him.

I just looked at the stage.

"You wasted your money, Kason," I said softly. "I don't wear collars anymore."