Ava POV:

The standoff in the cell didn't last long. Harrison didn't give me a lawyer, and he certainly didn't give me combat.

Instead, he gave me a needle.

Two Enforcers held me down while the Pack doctor-a man who smelled of antiseptic and fear-jammed a syringe into my neck.

"It's a sedative," Harrison said, standing outside the bars, watching me slump to the floor. "You're unstable, Ava. You're a danger to yourself and the Pack. I'm sending you to the Northern Asylum. They specialize in... difficult Omegas."

"Harrison..." My tongue felt thick. The world was tilting. "She... killed... Mom..."

"Enough lies!" Harrison roared, slamming his hand against the bars. "Sleep."

Darkness swallowed me.

I woke up to the smell of salt and gasoline. The rhythmic thrum of an engine vibrated through the metal floor beneath my cheek.

I opened my eyes. I was on a boat. Not the luxury yacht from before, but a rusted fishing trawler.

I was alone in the cargo hold. My hands were zip-tied to a pipe.

I tried to focus. The drug was still heavy in my system, making my limbs feel like they belonged to someone else.

Breathe, I told myself. The White Wolf breathing technique. Purge the toxin.

My father had taught me. Inhale the light. Exhale the shadow.

I forced my lungs to expand. I visualized the sedative as a black sludge in my veins and pushed it out with every breath. Slowly, the fog in my brain began to lift.

The engine noise changed. It sputtered, then cut out completely.

Silence.

Then, heavy footsteps on the deck above.

"Is it done?" A voice asked. It sounded like one of the Enforcers.

"Timer is set. Ten minutes," another voice replied. "Boss said to make it look like a Rogue engine failure."

"Shame about the girl. She was pretty."

"Boss's orders. She knows too much."

A splash. Then the roar of a speedboat engine fading into the distance.

They left me.

Harrison didn't send me to an asylum. He sent me to die.

Panic flared, hot and bright. I yanked at the zip ties. Plastic dug into my wrists, but it held.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I could hear it. A bomb.

I looked around frantically. The hold was filled with old nets and barrels that smelled of diesel. Highly flammable.

"Dustin!" I tried to project my voice, but the bone-conduction link was one-way unless I had the transmitter, which they had likely taken.

I closed my eyes and reached for the only thing I had left. The ancient power in my blood.

Shift, I commanded my body. Damn you, shift!

My bones ached. My skin burned. But the wolf wouldn't come. The seal was too strong.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over the grate above me.

"Clear the deck! Breach team, go!"

The voice was deep, authoritative, and unfamiliar.

The grate was ripped off its hinges with a screech of metal. A figure dropped down.

He was massive. Clad in black tactical gear, his face covered by a mask, but his eyes...

They were a piercing, electric blue.

He moved with a speed that wasn't human. He saw me, saw the bomb strapped to the fuel tank, and saw the timer.

00:45.

"Civilian located," he barked into his headset. "Rig is hot. We have to move. Now!"

He pulled a knife-not silver, but black steel-and sliced through my zip ties in one motion.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

"I... drug..." I stumbled.

He didn't wait. He scooped me up, throwing me over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

He leaped.

He cleared the height of the cargo hold in a single bound, landing on the deck.

"Jump!" he roared to his team.

We hit the water just as the world turned white.

The shockwave slammed into us underwater, a giant hammer crushing my ribs. The heat seared the surface above us.

I tumbled through the dark, cold ocean, the air knocked from my lungs.

Strong arms tightened around me. The soldier. He was holding me, shielding me with his own body from the debris raining down.

We surfaced, gasping.

In the distance, the trawler was a fireball, sending a pillar of black smoke into the sky.

On the shore, far away, I saw a black SUV. A figure stood by it. Even from this distance, I knew the silhouette.

Harrison.

He was watching the fire.

I felt a sharp, agonizing snap in my chest. It felt like a guitar string being pulled until it broke.

The Mate Bond.

It didn't break because I died. It broke because in that moment, seeing him watch me burn, my soul finally, truly rejected him.

"He thinks you're dead," the soldier whispered, treading water beside me.

I looked at the burning ship, then at the man who saved me.

"Good," I said. "Let him mourn."

Harrison POV:

The explosion was deafening.

One moment, the boat was bobbing on the gray waves. The next, it was a flower of orange fire and twisted metal.

"No..." The word fell from my lips, quiet and useless.

I had told the Enforcers to take her to the safe house on the island. I told them to scare her. To make her understand she couldn't threaten the Pack.

I didn't order this.

"Ava!" I screamed.

The sound tore from my throat, raw and animalistic.

I didn't think. I didn't care about the Enforcers behind me or Brooke waiting in the car.

I sprinted toward the cliff edge and dove.

The water hit me like concrete. The cold was shocking, but the fire in my chest was worse.

I shifted mid-water, my clothes shredding as my wolf burst forth. I was a strong swimmer, powerful and fast. I kicked toward the wreckage.

Ava! Answer me! Ava!

The mind-link was silent. Just static.

I reached the burning debris. Oil slicked my fur. I dove under, my eyes stinging from the salt and fuel.

Nothing. Just sinking metal and darkness.

Then, it hit me.

The pain.

It started in my heart and radiated outward, shattering my ribs, snapping my spine. It was a physical blow that made me inhale water.

The Bond. The golden thread that had hummed in the back of my mind for six years... it snapped.

It withered and died, leaving a gaping, bleeding hole in my soul.

Gone.

My wolf howled underwater, a sound of pure, bubbling agony. Not because I loved her. But because I had lost something that belonged to me. A resource. A constant. A part of my soul I hadn't realized I needed until it was ripped away.

I thrashed, refusing to believe it. I dove again and again, until my lungs burned and my vision went black.

"Alpha! Alpha, we have to go!"

Hands grabbed my fur. My Enforcers. They had taken a boat out to get me.

They hauled me onto the deck, wet, shivering, and retching up seawater.

"She's gone, sir," the Beta said, his voice trembling. "The explosion... nothing could survive that."

I lay on the deck, staring at the smoke.

"Who?" I choked out. "Who rigged the boat?"

"It looks like Rogue tech, Alpha. Magnesium powder. It was an ambush."

Rogue tech.

I curled into a ball, the emptiness inside me expanding until it swallowed everything.

Six years. She washed my clothes. She managed my schedule. She warmed my bed. She endured my temper.

I never marked her. I never claimed her. I let everyone treat her like trash.

And now she was ash.

The boat docked. I stumbled onto the pier.

Brooke was there. She ran to me, her face a mask of concern.

"Oh, Harry! I saw the fire! Is she...?"

She reached for me. Her scent-vanilla and something cloying-hit me.

For the first time, it didn't smell like comfort. It smelled like a lie.

"Don't touch me," I snarled.

Brooke recoiled, looking hurt. "Harry? I'm just trying to comfort you. She was... troubled. Maybe this was the Goddess's will."

"The Goddess's will?" I turned on her, my eyes wild. "My Mate is dead!"

"She wasn't your Mate!" Brooke shrieked, her mask slipping for a fraction of a second. "I am your Mate! I am carrying your son!"

I looked at her stomach. My heir. The only thing I had left.

But looking at her, I felt nothing but cold revulsion.

I walked past her, toward the empty Pack House. The silence of the house hit me harder than the explosion.

I went to our bedroom. It smelled like bleach and burned rope.

I fell to the bed-the bed where I had tied her up just yesterday-and buried my face in her pillow. It still held a faint trace of her scent. Snowdrops and rain.

"Ava," I whispered into the darkness. "I'm sorry."

But the darkness didn't answer.