The bucket in Greyson’s hand sloshed as he approached, the liquid inside dark and viscous. It didn't smell like water. It smelled like burning sulfur and death. My breath hitched in my throat, a ragged sound in the damp silence of the dungeon cell.

"Greyson, please," I whispered, my voice cracked from screaming. The silver chains bit into my wrists, holding me upright against the cold stone wall. "You don't have to do this. Just look at me. Look at your mate."

He stopped just out of reach. His eyes were a storm of conflict—gold flashing against the brown, his wolf fighting the man. But then he looked at the bandage on his forearm, a phantom injury from where Francesca had cut herself, and the gold vanished. The man won. The lie won.

"My mate wouldn't try to kill my brother's pup," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. It was terrifyingly calm. "You are a sickness, Helena. A rot in this pack. And rot must be burned out."

He lifted the bucket.

"No!" I screamed, thrashing against the chains. "Greyson, it's Wolfsbane! You'll kill her! You'll kill Selene!"

He didn't hesitate. With a grunt of exertion, he threw the liquid.

Time seemed to stretch and warp. I saw the dark wave coming, saw the droplets catching the torchlight like black diamonds. Then, it hit.

It wasn't like fire. Fire is hot; fire consumes. This was cold. It was a liquid freeze that sank instantly through my skin, bypassing muscle and bone to attack the very essence of my soul. It felt like acid eating through my veins.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The pain was too absolute. It seized every nerve ending, turning my body into a single, vibrating wire of agony. My skin blistered instantly, the Wolfsbane reacting violently with my healing bloodline. Steam rose from my arms, my chest, my face.

But the physical pain was nothing compared to what happened inside.

*Helena!* Selene roared in my mind, a sound of pure terror.

I felt her thrashing within me, clawing at the walls of my consciousness as the poison flooded our bond. It was suffocating her. The Wolfsbane was designed to suppress a wolf, but in this concentration, poured directly onto a shifter... it was an execution.

*Fight it, Selene!* I begged, though I couldn't form the words. *Stay with me!*

*I... cannot...* Her voice grew faint, distorted like a radio losing signal. *It burns... the link... it's breaking...*

And then, the worst sound I have ever heard echoed through my skull. It wasn't a roar or a growl. It was a whimper. A high, broken sound of a dying animal.

Then silence.

Absolute, crushing silence.

The connection that had been there since I was sixteen, the comforting presence that was always in the back of my mind, was gone. It was like going blind and deaf all at once. I was hollowed out. Empty.

My knees gave way. If not for the chains, I would have collapsed into the puddle of poison. As it was, I hung there, limp, my head lolling forward. Darkness clawed at the edges of my vision. The last thing I saw before the blackness took me was Greyson dropping the bucket, his hands shaking violently.

***

While I floated in the void, miles away, a different kind of darkness was spreading.

Francesca stood at the northern border of the Silver Moon territory. The wind whipped her hair around her face, carrying the scent of pine and impending rain. She didn't look like a grieving widow now. She looked like a predator.

She checked her watch. 3:00 AM. The witching hour.

She pulled a small, jagged stone from her pocket—a rune stone, carved with symbols that made the eyes ache to look at. She pressed it against the invisible barrier of the pack's wards. The magical shield shimmered, a translucent dome of energy that protected the families sleeping in the valley below.

"Open," she whispered, her voice laced with power that didn't belong to a wolf.

The stone pulsed red. The wards groaned, a low vibration that only the most sensitive wolves would feel in their teeth. Then, with a sound like tearing fabric, a hole opened in the barrier. It wasn't big, just enough for a signal to pass through.

Francesca pulled a flare gun from her coat. She didn't aim it at the sky. She aimed it into the dense woods beyond the territory line, pulling the trigger. A streak of green light shot into the trees.

"Come and get them," she smirked, tossing the rune stone into the underbrush. "Dinner is served."

***

I woke up to the sound of dripping water.

My body felt heavy, impossibly heavy, like my bones had been replaced with lead. I tried to take a deep breath, but my ribs screamed in protest. Every inch of my skin felt raw, tight, and hot.

*Selene?* I called out internally, a reflex.

Nothing. Just the echo of my own thoughts in a vast, empty cavern.

A sob caught in my throat. She was gone. He had killed her.

Footsteps approached the cell. Heavy, erratic footsteps. I didn't have the strength to lift my head, but I smelled him. Greyson. But beneath his scent of cedar and rain, there was something else—sour, acrid fear.

The cell door creaked open.

"Helena?"

His voice was a whisper. He stepped into the torchlight, and for the first time in three years, he looked at me. Really looked at me.

He saw the blisters covering my arms. He saw the way I hung from the chains, broken. And then, his hand flew to his chest, right over his heart.

He gasped, staggering back as if he'd been struck. "It... it hurts."

The bond. Even through the Wolfsbane, even through the lies, the mate bond was a fundamental law of nature. He was feeling my pain. He was feeling the echo of the emptiness where Selene used to be.

"Why does it hurt?" he choked out, his eyes wide and bewildered. He reached a hand toward me, his fingers trembling. "I... I shouldn't feel this. You're a traitor."

For a second, the fog in his eyes cleared. He looked at his own hands, then at the empty bucket in the corner, horror dawning on his face. "What have I done?"

He took a step toward me, reaching for the keys on his belt. "Helena, I—"

"Greyson!"

Francesca appeared in the doorway, breathless, her eyes wide with fake panic. She didn't look at me. She grabbed Greyson's arm, her nails digging into his bicep.

"Don't listen to her magic!" she shrieked. "She's trying to bewitch you again! Remember the baby, Greyson! Remember the blood on the library floor!"

Greyson froze. He looked at me, then at Francesca. The conflict raged in his eyes, a war between the truth of his soul and the poison in his ear.

"She killed him," Francesca sobbed, burying her face in his chest. "She killed your brother's baby."

The clarity vanished from Greyson's face, replaced by a wall of ice. He dropped his hand from his chest, his jaw tightening until a muscle feathered in his cheek. He stepped back, away from me, away from the truth.

"You're right," he muttered, his voice hollow. He turned his back on me, leaving me in the dark. "Let her rot."

The silence didn't last long. It was shattered by a sound that made the very stones of the dungeon vibrate—the wail of the perimeter sirens. It was a high, piercing scream that meant only one thing: invasion.

Above me, the floorboards thundered with the stampede of paws and boots. I could hear the snarling, the tearing of wood, and the screams of the pack I had once called family. Greyson froze in the doorway, his head snapping up toward the noise. For a split second, his eyes met mine again. There was panic there, raw and unmasked. He looked at the chains biting into my blistered wrists, then at the stairs leading up to the battle.

"Greyson!" Francesca shrieked, tugging at his arm. "The Rogues! They're here for the baby! You have to protect us!"

He didn't look back at me. He didn't unlock the cuffs. He didn't even say sorry. He turned and ran, his Alpha instincts overriding everything else, leaving his mate chained in the dark while monsters stormed the gates.

"No..." I croaked, my voice a dry rasp. "Don't leave me."

But he was gone. The heavy iron door slammed shut, but he didn't lock it. He didn't have time.

I was alone. Defenseless. And I couldn't feel Selene.

The emptiness inside me was worse than the burning on my skin. I reached for her, mentally clawing at the dark void where my wolf used to be, but there was only silence. The Wolfsbane had done its job. I was human. Just a fragile, broken human in a war zone.

The sounds of battle grew closer. I heard a crash right outside the dungeon door, followed by the wet thud of a body hitting the floor. The handle turned slowly.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. *Please be a guard,* I prayed. *Please be someone who remembers I healed their pup's fever last winter.*

The door swung open.

It wasn't a guard. The man standing there was covered in filth, his clothes ragged, his eyes wild with the madness that consumed Rogues who had been away from a pack for too long. He smiled, revealing yellowed, sharpened teeth. In his hand, a serrated hunting knife glinted in the torchlight.

"Well, well," he rasped, stepping into the cell. The stench of rot rolled off him in waves. "Francesca said you'd be here. Said you were the loose end."

I pressed myself against the cold stone wall, the chains rattling. "She sent you?"

"She pays well," he chuckled, testing the edge of the blade with his thumb. "And she wants you dead before the Royals get here. Something about a cure?"

He lunged.

I screamed, squeezing my eyes shut, bracing for the bite of the steel.

*BOOM!*

The entire dungeon shook as if hit by a meteor. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling. I opened my eyes just in time to see the stone roof above the cell explode inward.

A massive shadow dropped from the hole, landing directly on top of the Rogue with a bone-shattering crunch. It was a wolf—but not like any wolf I had ever seen. It was enormous, easily twice the size of an average Alpha, with fur as black as a starless night.

The Rogue didn't even have time to scream. The black wolf’s jaws snapped around his neck, tearing it away with a spray of crimson that splattered across the dungeon floor. The Rogue's body went limp instantly, the knife clattering uselessly to the stone.

The black wolf turned its massive head toward me. Its eyes were a piercing, intelligent amber. It shifted, bones cracking and reforming, until a man stood in its place. He was huge, radiating power that made the air feel thick. He wore a tactical vest emblazoned with a crest I knew well—the Royal Guard.

"Secure the perimeter!" he roared, his voice booming like thunder.

Suddenly, the dungeon was swarming. Men in black tactical gear dropped through the hole in the ceiling and flooded through the door, weapons drawn. They moved with a precision that made the Silver Moon warriors look like children.

"Target located," the huge man said into his comms unit, his eyes scanning my injuries. His expression darkened when he saw the burns. "She's in bad shape. Wolfsbane poisoning. Severe trauma."

"Get the medic!" someone shouted.

"Clear the way!" came another voice, deeper and more commanding than the rest.

The black-clad soldiers parted instantly, bowing their heads.

A man descended the stone stairs. He didn't run. He didn't rush. He walked with the terrifying calm of a storm about to break. He wore a long charcoal coat, the collar turned up, but it was his aura that made me gasp. It rolled off him in waves of pure, unadulterated power—ancient, heavy, and undeniable. It was the aura of a King.

He stopped at the entrance of the cell. His eyes, the color of molten silver, swept over the scene. He looked at the dead Rogue, then at the chains, and finally, he looked at me.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. The stone walls groaned under the pressure of his fury. He didn't say a word. He walked straight to me, ignoring the Wolfsbane puddle that hissed against his boots.

"Your Majesty," the huge man—Marcus Kane, the Beta—started, "the chains are silver. We need the keys—"

"I don't need keys," the King growled. His voice was low, vibrating through my very bones.

He reached out, wrapping his bare hands around the thick iron shackles binding my wrists to the wall. Smoke rose from his skin as the silver burned him, but he didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. With a snarl of effort, he ripped the chains straight out of the stone wall.

Concrete dust exploded around us. I fell forward, my legs too weak to hold me, but I never hit the ground. Strong arms caught me, pulling me against a chest that smelled of expensive cologne, ozone, and safety.

"I have you," he whispered into my hair, his voice suddenly gentle, a stark contrast to the violence of his arrival. "I have you, Helena."

He lifted me effortlessly, cradling me against him as if I weighed nothing. I looked up at him through swollen eyes, trying to understand why the ruler of our entire species was holding me like I was precious.

"My wolf..." I sobbed, the grief hitting me again. "He killed her."

The King's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in his cheek. His silver eyes flashed with a terrifying promise of violence. He turned to Marcus, his voice projecting a command that made every wolf in the room drop to their knees.

"Burn this place to the ground if you have to," he ordered, his tone icy. "But find the Alpha responsible. And anyone who touches her again dies."