They put me in the dungeon before midnight.

Not the South Wing. Not a guarded guest room. A cell beneath the keep where water ran down the walls and silver had been worked into the bars to weaken hostile wolves.

The metal did nothing to me.

I had no wolf to suppress.

That did not make the cold easier to bear.

I sat on the narrow cot with both hands over my belly, listening to footsteps move overhead. Sometime before dawn, a guard pushed a cup of water through the slot in the bars. There was no food. When I asked for the pack physician, he stared at my stomach and told me the healer was busy with Lady Serena.

"I'm pregnant," I said.

"I know."

"Then bring someone. I've been having contractions."

His gaze flicked toward the stairwell. "Orders are that no one enters until the Alpha comes."

I almost asked whether Ronan knew about those orders. I stopped myself. I was tired of building excuses for him before he even arrived.

The baby had been restless since Serena collapsed. Every few minutes, a hard tightening pulled across my abdomen.

"Easy," I whispered. "Stay with me."

The child answered with a small kick.

At dawn, Ronan came alone.

He stopped outside the bars.

I looked at the dried blood on his cuff.

Serena's blood.

"Is she alive?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Then you already have proof I didn't use a lethal dose."

"That isn't proof of anything."

I almost smiled at how badly that hurt.

"Did you come to question me or say goodbye?"

His hand closed around one of the bars. "The healer says the poison came from the wine bottle at your end of the table. Garrick has six witnesses who saw you pass it."

"Everyone passed it."

"I know."

"Do you? Because I have yet to hear you say you believe me."

Ronan looked down.

"The Council is demanding judgment before sundown."

"And what are you demanding?"

His silence filled the cell.

Then he unlocked the door.

"Come with me."

Two guards waited in the corridor.

I backed away. "Where?"

"The old moon chamber."

My pulse stumbled.

"No."

"Elara, listen to me."

"You brought the ritual parchment."

He did not deny it.

I stared at the man I had loved since I was nineteen.

"You are actually going to sever me."

"It is temporary."

A laugh tore out of me. "A mate bond is not a title you suspend for an investigation."

"The Elders will not accept confinement alone."

"Then tell them no. You're the Alpha."

His eyes flashed. "And if I turn the Council against me before the border treaty is signed, Blackthorn fractures."

"So I am the easier sacrifice."

"That is not what this is."

"Then what is it?"

He stepped into the cell. His voice dropped so the guards could not hear.

"I spent the night going through the serving records," he said. "The kitchen staff swear the bottle was sealed when it left storage. Serena's healer insists the symptoms match concentrated wolfsbane, but the residue in her cup is weaker than it should be. Something about this is wrong."

Hope moved before I could stop it. "Then stop this. Give me one day. Search her rooms. Question her maid."

"I asked for a delay. Garrick refused."

"You are still speaking as if he outranks you."

Ronan's eyes hardened with shame.

"It is the only way I can keep you alive long enough to prove what happened."

I searched his face for something I could trust.

"Say you believe me."

His mouth opened.

Footsteps approached.

Elder Garrick appeared at the end of the corridor with four council guards and a priest carrying a silver ceremonial blade.

Ronan's expression closed.

And I knew I had lost him before the knife ever touched me.

The old moon chamber lay beneath the Council Hall. They strapped my wrists to a stone altar carved with pack runes. When I fought, two guards pinned my shoulders.

"She is eight months pregnant," Ronan snapped. "Loosen the restraints."

"Then she should stop struggling," Garrick said.

I twisted my head toward Ronan. "Get me off this table."

He stood beside the altar, white-faced, the Severing decree in his hand.

"Please," I said.

I had promised myself I would never beg these people.

I begged him anyway.

"Ronan, don't do this."

His fingers shook around the pen.

Garrick leaned close to him and said something too low for me to hear.

Ronan went still.

His gaze dropped to my stomach.

Then he signed.

The scratch of the pen across parchment was almost gentle.

The priest pressed the silver blade against the old mate mark at the base of my neck.

My child kicked violently.

"He's scared," I gasped. "Ronan, please. If you won't stop this for me, stop it for him."

Ronan moved toward the altar. Two Elders blocked him. Garrick held up the signed decree like a shield.

"If the Alpha interrupts a severing after the first cut, the backlash can kill both mother and heir," the priest warned.

I did not know whether it was true. Neither did Ronan. That uncertainty was enough to trap him where he stood.

Pain exploded through me.

I screamed.

The mate bond did not break like a rope. It tore like living tissue. Every memory tied to Ronan seemed to rip loose at once—our first winter run, the vows in the moon garden, his hand over mine when we heard the baby's heartbeat.

Gone.

Not forgotten.

Worse.

Unreachable.

I felt Ronan stagger beside the altar.

"Stop," he rasped.

Garrick caught his arm. "The ritual has begun."

"She's bleeding too much."

"Complete it."

The priest drew the blade through the final rune.

Something inside me snapped.

The familiar warmth that had always told me where Ronan stood vanished.

I looked straight at him.

For the first time since we mated, he smelled like nothing.

Just winter air.

Just a stranger.

"Elara," he whispered.

A crushing contraction seized my abdomen.

I gasped and curled against the restraints.

Warm liquid spread beneath my hips.

The priest stepped back in alarm.

I looked down at the blood and clear fluid running over the edge of the stone altar.

"My water broke," I said.

Then another contraction hit, and the room dissolved into screaming.

I gave birth on a metal table in a windowless infirmary beneath the Council Hall.

There were no flowers. No family. No mate bond guiding Ronan toward me through the pain.

Only two nurses, a frightened healer, and Elder Garrick standing near the door as if he were supervising the delivery of an inconvenient package.

"Where is Ronan?" I demanded between contractions.

No one answered.

"Where is my husband?"

The older nurse tightened her grip on my knee. "Save your strength."

"He is not your concern anymore," Garrick said.

I wanted to throw something at him. I wanted my wolf to rise and tear his throat open.

I had no wolf.

So I pushed.

Pain ripped through my body until I could not tell where the severing wound ended and labor began. The baby was early. The healer kept muttering about fetal distress and a weakened maternal bond.

That phrase terrified me.

"Is my baby alive?"

"Push again," the healer ordered.

"Tell me."

"Elara, push now."

I screamed and bore down.

A baby's cry cut through the room.

Thin.

Furious.

Alive.

My whole body collapsed with relief.

"Let me see."

The younger nurse lifted the infant only long enough to wrap a blanket around a tiny, wet body.

I saw dark hair.

One clenched fist.

Nothing else.

"Bring my baby here."

The nurse looked toward Garrick.

That single glance chilled me more than the room.

"No," I said.

Garrick nodded once.

The nurse turned toward the door.

"No. Bring my child back."

I tried to sit up. The older nurse pushed me down.

"You are hemorrhaging."

"I don't care. Give me my baby!"

The infant cried again from the hallway.

I never heard that cry leave my nightmares.

"The Alpha's heir must be protected until the poisoning investigation is resolved," Garrick said.

"Protected from whom? Me?"

"From instability."

I stared at him, unable to understand the words.

"I just gave birth."

"And yesterday you stood accused of poisoning the woman chosen to advise this pack."

"Serena is a liar."

"Then pray the evidence proves it."

The door shut behind my child.

I screamed until my throat tore raw.

The healer tried to stop the bleeding while I fought him. I demanded the baby's weight, his breathing, anything. The younger nurse finally whispered that the child was small but strong, that his heart was steady, that he had gripped her finger before Garrick ordered him removed.

"Did he open his eyes?" I asked.

She nodded once.

"What color?"

Before she could answer, Garrick told her to leave.

That stolen almost-answer became the only picture I had of my son. I held onto it because there was nothing else.

Hours disappeared.

When I woke, I was back in the South Wing.

My stomach was flat beneath the blankets. My neck burned where the mate mark had been cut open. Every muscle in my body ached with the empty shock of birth.

Ronan sat beside the fireplace.

He looked as if he had not slept.

I turned my head toward the cradle that should have been beside my bed.

There was none.

"Where is the baby?"

Ronan stood. "Stable. The healer says the lungs are stronger than expected."

"Boy or girl?"

His face changed.

My heart stopped.

"You don't know?"

"I know."

"Then tell me."

He came closer.

I pulled the blanket up as if it could protect me from him.

"Elara—"

"Do not say my name. Tell me where my child is."

"The Council moved the baby to the central nursery."

"And you allowed it."

"There are guards. A healer around the clock."

"Boy or girl, Ronan?"

His jaw clenched.

"A boy."

The words broke through me.

A son.

I had a son whose face I had never seen.

"Bring him to me."

"I can't. Not tonight."

"You are the Alpha."

"The Council is one vote away from open revolt. Garrick is arguing that the severing removed your legal claim to the heir until the inquiry is finished."

"My legal claim? I am his mother."

"I know."

"Then act like you know."

Ronan reached for me.

I flinched so he stopped.

For the first time, I noticed how empty the air was around him. No cedar, no winter pine, no pull beneath my ribs. The ritual had done exactly what Garrick promised.

It had made my mate a stranger.

"Get out," I whispered.

"Elara."

"Get out."

He left.

I lay awake listening for a baby's cry that never reached the South Wing. Milk soaked the front of the borrowed nightgown, a physical proof of a child I was forbidden to touch. No nurse came to help. No one brought a pump or warm compresses until I rang the bell so many times that an irritated maid finally appeared.

"The nursery has its own wet nurse," she said when I asked how my son was being fed.

I had to grip the bedframe to keep from striking her.

Near midnight, I heard voices carrying through the heating grate.

Two servants whispering outside.

Serena had been moved out of the infirmary. Serena had been given rooms beside the nursery. Serena had attended an emergency council session despite supposedly being too weak to stand.

I got out of bed.

The hallway swayed beneath my feet, but rage kept me upright.

I wore no shoes. I took the silver paper knife from Ronan's abandoned desk because I no longer trusted anyone in this house.

The Council Hall door stood partly open.

I stopped outside it.

Garrick's voice carried through the gap.

"The heir needs a recognized maternal figure."

Serena answered, soft and triumphant. "I will raise him as my own if the pack requires it."

My fingers tightened around the paper knife.

Then Ronan spoke.

"Elara remains confined to the South Wing until I finish the investigation. She is not to see the child without Council approval."

The world went silent.

The brass doorknob slipped from my numb hand.

The silver paper knife fell onto the hallway rug.

"Luna?"

Guard Miller stepped from the shadowed corridor, one hand resting on his radio. "You shouldn't be outside the Council Hall."

I looked at the closed door behind me.

My son was somewhere in the central nursery. Serena had rooms beside him. Ronan had just agreed that I could not see my own child without permission from men who had cut the mate bond out of my body hours before I gave birth.

Whatever had been holding me together simply stopped.

"I'm leaving," I said.

Miller frowned. "Alpha Ronan ordered you back to the South Wing."

"Then he can order the furniture around after I'm gone."

He reached for my arm. "Elara, please. You've just given birth."

I slapped his hand away.

"Don't touch me."

I turned and ran.

My bare feet struck the freezing stone as I crossed the northern corridor. Every step sent pain through my abdomen, but pain had become background noise. The keep doors opened before me, and the blizzard swallowed everything.

Wind tore through my thin white dress.

Snow reached my calves within minutes.

Behind me, an alarm began to howl.

"Stop her!" Miller shouted into his radio. "The Luna is heading north!"

Not the Luna.

Not a mate.

Barely a mother.

I kept moving.

The northern woods thinned around the forbidden zone. Trees leaned away from the Moon Rift as if even roots understood what lived below it.

A young border scout burst from the tree line. Behind him, two more patrol wolves appeared between the pines, but neither dared come close. Even stripped of my title, I was still the mother of the Alpha's heir, and no one wanted to be the guard who dragged a bleeding woman through the snow.

"Elara! Wait!"

Toby blocked the path with both arms spread. "You can't go farther. The cliffs are unstable in this weather."

"Move."

"I can't let you pass."

He caught my wrist.

I ripped free so hard I nearly fell.

"Touch me again and I'll take you over the edge with me."

His eyes widened.

"The Alpha is coming."

"Good. He can watch."

I walked until the trees ended.

The Moon Rift opened beneath me, a vast black wound splitting the northern border. Mist churned far below, swallowing snow before it could fall out of sight. No one knew how deep the abyss went. Patrol wolves told stories about voices rising from the fog and ancient power sleeping under the mountain.

I felt none of it.

No fear.

No awe.

Only quiet.

I stopped inches from the ledge.

A siren screamed behind me.

Then came Ronan's voice.

"Elara!"

I turned.

He broke through the tree line with a dozen guards. Snow clung to his dark hair. His face was stripped of every controlled Alpha expression I had known.

He looked terrified.

"Stay where you are," he ordered.

I laughed.

"Still giving orders."

He lifted both hands. "Please. Just come away from the edge."

"Why? So Garrick can lock me back in the South Wing? So Serena can raise my son while I ask permission to look at him?"

"That is not what is going to happen."

"I heard you."

Ronan stopped.

The wind flattened his coat against his body.

"You heard part of a council meeting."

"I heard enough."

"No. You didn't." He took one careful step forward. "I found something in Serena's room after you left the hall. An empty vial hidden behind the wardrobe. It smells like the wolfsbane from her wine."

For one second, the revelation struck me cleanly.

Serena had framed me.

I had been right.

Then the feeling vanished.

"It doesn't matter."

Ronan stared at me. "Of course it matters."

"Not anymore."

"Elara, I know she lied. I know the evidence was planted. We can undo this."

"Undo what?" My voice rose over the wind. "The dungeon? The altar? The knife? The hours I begged you to believe me?"

His face tightened.

"I was trying to keep you alive."

"You were trying to keep the Council calm."

"They wanted you executed."

"And you chose the compromise that destroyed me instead."

He flinched.

I pressed a hand to my empty stomach.

"Where is my son?"

"Safe."

"With Serena?"

"Not anymore. I had her removed from the nursery the moment I found the vial."

"You should never have let her near him."

"I know."

"You should never have let them touch me."

"I know."

"You should have known me."

That silenced him.

Snow collected in my hair and melted against my neck, stinging the fresh severing wound.

Ronan took another step.

One of the guards behind him murmured that the cliff was cracking. Ronan threw out an arm without looking back, ordering every wolf to stay where they were. For once, the entire pack obeyed him immediately.

His attention never left my face.

"Come back with me. See our son. Hold him. I will arrest Garrick. I will strip Serena of every privilege she has. I will return your title."

"My title?"

I almost pitied him.

"You still think this is about a chair at your table."

"Then tell me what you want."

"Freedom."

His eyes flashed. "You can have anything else."

There it was.

Even now.

"You don't get to decide what I can have."

The wind eased for one strange second.

Ronan's voice broke. "Think about our son."

"I am."

"He needs you."

"Then perhaps you should have remembered that before you let them take him from my arms."

"Elara, don't."

I looked at the man I had once loved more than my own life.

The mate bond was gone. The scent was gone. The certainty was gone.

Only memory remained, and memory was not enough to make me stay.

I stepped backward.

My heel slid over empty air.

Ronan lunged.

"Elara, no!"

I smiled at him for the last time.

"Goodbye, Ronan."

His hand caught the edge of my sleeve.

The fabric tore.

For one heartbeat, his fingers scraped across mine. Then there was nothing beneath me.

And I fell into the black mist of the Moon Rift.