Jaimen POV:

Three years.

It had been three years since the hospital. Three years since the silence settled over my life like a heavy, suffocating blanket.

I stood in my office, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the sprawling territory of the Blood Moon Pack. It was raining again. It always seemed to rain when my mood darkened, my Alpha pheromones affecting the very atmosphere around us.

"Alpha?"

I turned. My Gamma, Marcus, stood at the door. He looked pale, sweating.

"What is it?" I snapped. My temper had been short lately. The pack walked on eggshells around me. They whispered that I was unstable, that the lack of a mate was driving me mad.

They were wrong. I didn't need a mate. Especially not a weak, pathetic Omega like Christeen.

"It's Timothy, sir," Marcus said, his voice trembling. "He... he collapsed during training."

A growl ripped from my throat. I pushed past Marcus, striding down the hallway. The walls seemed to close in on me.

Timothy was six now. He should have been shifting. He should have been showing signs of his Alpha heritage. Instead, he was frail. The infusion of essence three years ago had bought him time, but it hadn't fixed him. *Dr. Evans had retired shortly after the procedure, bought a private island, and vanished. The new head doctor, Dr. Aris, seemed perpetually confused by the boy's physiology.*

I entered his room. Ivanna was there, weeping loudly.

"Oh, Jaimen! My poor baby!" she wailed, rushing to clutch my arm. Her scent, usually heavy with rose perfume, was sour with fear. "He needs more essence. The doctor says his levels are critically low."

I looked at the boy. He was pale, shivering. *Around his neck sat a heavy obsidian amulet Ivanna insisted he wear for 'protection against evil spirits.' It smelled faintly of sulfur, masking the boy's natural scent entirely.*

"We don't have a donor," I said, my voice grinding like stones. "The last one..."

I stopped. The memory of Lily's small, lifeless hand flashed in my mind. I pushed it away. She was a runt. It was a necessary sacrifice.

"Christeen," Ivanna whispered. "She has the same blood markers as Lily did. If we find her... she could save him."

Christeen.

The name caused a phantom pain in my chest, right where the mate bond used to be. It was a dull, aching void that never went away. I told myself it was just the annoyance of an unfinished task.

"She ran away," I growled, pacing the room. "She severed the bond out of spite and fled to the Rogue lands. She's probably whoring herself out to some Rogue King by now."

"We have to find her, Jaimen," Ivanna pleaded. "Use the Mind-Link. Force her to answer. You are her Alpha. She cannot ignore a direct command forever."

I clenched my fists. I had tried. For three years, on sleepless nights, I had reached out into the mental void.

*Christeen.*

Nothing. Just static. A cold, empty silence that felt like standing on the edge of a grave.

"Gamma!" I barked.

Marcus appeared instantly.

"Send out the trackers. Expand the search radius to the neighboring territories. Put a bounty on her head. I want Christeen Hahn found. Alive."

"Yes, Alpha."

As they left, I stayed in the room. The air felt unnaturally cold. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I spun around. "Who's there?"

The room was empty. But for a second, just a split second, I smelled something.

Wildflowers and rain. Christeen's scent.

But it was wrong. It didn't smell warm and alive. It smelled like frozen earth and ozone.

"You can't hide from me, Christeen," I whispered to the empty air, my voice dripping with a mix of hatred and desperation. "When I find you, I will make you pay for abandoning your pack."

The lights flickered. A cold draft swept through the sealed room, extinguishing the candles on the mantle.

I shivered. It felt like someone had just walked through my soul with icy feet.

Jaimen POV:

The waiting was the worst part. My wolf paced inside my mind, scratching at the walls of my consciousness. He was agitated, howling at nothing.

*She is near,* my wolf growled. *But she is... wrong.*

"Shut up," I muttered, rubbing my temples.

The door to my office burst open. It was Marcus again. But this time, he didn't look nervous. He looked terrified. His face was the color of ash. He fell to his knees as soon as he entered, baring his neck in submission.

"Alpha," he choked out.

"Did you find her?" I demanded, standing up. My chair scraped loudly against the floor. "Where is she? Is she in the dungeons?"

Ivanna, who had been lounging on the sofa filing her nails, sat up, her eyes gleaming. "Did you bring the bitch back?"

Marcus didn't answer Ivanna. He couldn't take his eyes off the floor.

"Speak!" I used the Alpha Voice. It cracked like a whip in the room.

"We... we tracked her scent, Alpha," Marcus stammered. "It led us to the Dead Lands. The Rogue territory near the old sulfur mines."

"And?"

"We found... we found traces of her."

"Stop speaking in riddles!" I slammed my hand on the desk, cracking the mahogany. "Bring her in!"

Marcus reached into his jacket pocket. His hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped the object. He placed a plastic evidence bag on my desk.

Inside was a necklace. A cheap, silver locket.

I froze. I knew that locket. I had given it to Christeen when we were teenagers, before I became Alpha, before I let power and Ivanna poison my mind.

"She... she dropped it?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.

"No, Alpha," Marcus whispered. Tears were leaking from his eyes now. "We found it... on the body."

The world stopped. The silence in the room was deafening.

"Body?" Ivanna asked, her voice shrill. "What do you mean, body? She can't be dead! Timothy needs her!"

I couldn't hear Ivanna. I could only hear the rushing of blood in my ears.

"You're lying," I said. It was a low growl. "She faked it. She put the necklace on a corpse to throw us off. She is hiding!"

"Alpha..." Marcus pulled out a file folder. It was stamped with the seal of the Werewolf Council's forensic unit. "We found skeletal remains. They were in a ditch, buried under three years of muck. The... the dental records match. The DNA matches."

He pushed the file toward me.

I stared at it. I didn't want to touch it. If I touched it, it became real.

"Read it," I commanded, my voice barely audible.

Marcus swallowed hard. He opened the file.

"Subject: Christeen Hahn. Estimated time of death: Three years ago. Cause of death: Blunt force trauma, multiple fractures, and... silver poisoning."

Three years ago.

The day I rejected her. The day Lily died.

"No," I said. I shook my head, backing away from the desk. "No. If she died, I would have known. The bond... I would have felt the mate bond snap completely."

"You did, Alpha," Marcus said softly. "You collapsed three years ago. You said... you said she severed it."

The memory hit me like a freight train. The pain. The vomiting. The emptiness. I had convinced myself she had done it out of spite. I had convinced myself she was alive, somewhere, hating me.

Because the alternative... the alternative was that I had sent my mate out to die.

"She's dead?" Ivanna screeched. "That useless bitch is dead? What about my son? What about the essence?"

For the first time in years, Ivanna's voice didn't sound like music to me. It sounded like screeching tires.

"Get out," I whispered.

"Jaimen, we need to find another way-"

"GET OUT!" I roared. The force of my voice shattered the windows. Glass rained down on the carpet.

Ivanna shrieked and ran. Marcus scrambled out backward.

I was alone.

I looked at the plastic bag. I reached out, my fingers trembling, and picked up the locket. It was cold. So cold.

And then I felt it again. That draft. That icy touch on the back of my neck.

I looked up at the ceiling, my eyes wild.

"Christeen?" I choked out.

There was no answer. But on the foggy glass of the broken window, a word appeared, traced by an invisible finger.

*MURDERER.*

Jaimen POV:

Denial is a powerful drug. Even with the forensic report sitting on my desk, my mind was running in frantic circles, looking for an escape route.

*She can't be dead,* I told myself as I paced the interrogation room. *This is a trick. A plot by the Council to destabilize my pack.*

But the word on the window... *Murderer*.

"Bring in Golda," I had ordered.

Golda was Christeen's mother. She was an Elder, once respected, now rotting in the pack's nursing home because I had forbidden anyone to visit her.

The heavy steel door creaked open. Two guards dragged the old woman in. She looked frail, her grey hair matted, her clothes hanging off her skeletal frame. But her eyes... her eyes were burning with a hatred that could scorch the earth.

They threw her into the chair. She didn't cower. She spat on the floor.

"You look terrible, Alpha," Golda croaked, a grim smile revealing her yellowed teeth. "Guilt does not wear well on you."

"Where is she?" I slammed my hands on the metal table, leaning into her face. "Where is Christeen hiding? Did you help her fake the DNA test?"

Golda laughed. It was a dry, rattling sound. "You are more blind than a newborn pup, Jaimen. You think she is hiding? You think my daughter, who loved this pack more than her own life, would abandon her home?"

"She abandoned me!" I roared. "She cut the bond!"

"You cut it!" Golda screamed back, finding a sudden reserve of strength. She lunged against her restraints. "You rejected her! You ripped her soul in half while she watched you murder her baby!"

"Lily was weak!" I shouted, the lie tasting like ash in my mouth. "I did what I had to do to save the heir!"

"The heir," Golda spat the word like a curse. "That abomination you call a son."

I grabbed the whip from the table. It was woven leather, soaked in Wolfsbane solution. Just touching the handle made my skin tingle uncomfortably. For a regular wolf, a strike would feel like liquid fire.

"Tell me the truth, old woman, or I will peel the skin from your back."

Golda leaned forward. She stared right into my eyes.

"The truth? You want the truth, Alpha?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The truth is that Christeen is here. Right now."

I froze. I looked around the room. Empty.

"She is screaming at you," Golda said, her eyes tracking something in the air behind me. "She is screaming, but you cannot hear her because you have no soul left to listen."

"Stop it!" I raised the whip.

"Strike me!" Golda challenged. "Send me to them. Send me to my daughter and my granddaughter. I would rather be with the dead than breathe the same air as you."

I brought the whip down.

*Crack.*

The leather bit into her shoulder. Smoke rose where the Wolfsbane touched her skin. Golda screamed, but she didn't beg.

"Where is she?" I struck her again.

"Dead!" Golda gasped.

"Liar!" *Crack.*

"She... died... alone!" *Crack.*

I was panting, my arm aching. Golda was slumped in the chair, bleeding, her breathing shallow.

"Ivanna..." Golda wheezed.

I paused, the whip raised. "What about Ivanna?"

*"Follow... the money," Golda rasped, blood bubbling at the corner of her lips. "Look at the day... my granddaughter died. Look at who got rich."*

I lowered the arm. *"What are you talking about?"*

Golda lifted her head. Blood ran down her chin. *"A witch's services... aren't cheap. And neither are mercenaries."*

*"Ivanna's mother is in exile," I argued, though my conviction was wavering. "She has no contact with the pack."*

*"Check the accounts, Jaimen," Golda whispered, her eyes sliding shut. "Check the withdrawals from three years ago. The truth is in the ledger."*

I stood there, the bloody whip in my hand, staring at the unconscious woman.

*Check the accounts.*

I turned and stormed out of the cell.

"Marcus!" I bellowed into the hallway. "Get the financial records from three years ago. Now!"

I needed to prove them wrong. I needed to prove that Ivanna was innocent, that Christeen was a traitor, and that I wasn't the villain in my own story.

But as I walked back to my office, the cold followed me. And for the first time, I realized the silence in my head wasn't just the absence of a mate.

It was the silence of a graveyard.