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.

Jaimen POV:

My desk was covered in paper. Spreadsheets, bank transfers, withdrawal slips.

Marcus stood by the door, silent as a statue. He knew better than to speak. The air in the office was so thick with my pheromones-aggression, confusion, fear-that the glass of water on my desk was vibrating.

I traced the line on the ledger with my finger.

*Date: October 14th. Three years ago.* The day of the extraction. The day of the rejection.

There was a withdrawal. A large one. Fifty thousand dollars, transferred to an offshore account.

"Who authorized this?" I asked, my voice deadly calm.

Marcus stepped forward. "The signature is yours, Alpha."

"I didn't sign this." I stared at the scrawl. It looked like mine, but slightly off. A forgery. A good one, but a forgery.

"Trace the recipient," I ordered.

"We already did, sir." Marcus placed a tablet on the desk. "It went to a shell company. *But we cross-referenced the routing number. It belongs to a known associate of the Blackwood Coven."*

*"The Blackwood Coven," I whispered. "That's Ivanna's mother's circle."*

*"There's more, Alpha." Marcus signaled to the guards outside. "We found one of the Rogues. He was trying to pawn a familiar ring in the border town."*

*Two guards dragged in a filthy, scarred man. He smelled of old blood and fear. On his finger was Christeen's class ring.*

*I was across the room in a second, slamming the Rogue against the wall. My forearm pressed against his windpipe.*

*"Where did you get that?" I snarled.*

*"Found it!" the Rogue choked out. "I just found it!"*

*"Liar!" I tightened my grip. "Who paid you? Who paid you to hunt her?"*

*The Rogue's eyes darted around the room. "The witch! The old witch paid us! She said the Alpha wanted the trash taken out!"*

*My blood ran cold. "What witch?"*

*"Magda!" he screamed. "Magda Blackwood! She was there! She and her daughter watched!"*

*I dropped him. He scrambled back, coughing.*

*"Her daughter?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.*

*"The pretty one," the Rogue sneered, sensing he might live if he talked. "Blonde hair. Smelled like roses. She told us to make it slow. Said she wanted to hear the Omega beg."*

*I stood there. Frozen.*

The woman I had protected. The woman I had sacrificed my true mate for. The woman whose son I had killed my own daughter to save.

She had orchestrated it all.

*Dr. Aris, the new pack doctor, stepped into the room tentatively. He held a plastic bag containing a jagged piece of metal.*

*"Alpha," Dr. Aris said softly. "I finished the examination of the remains. I found this embedded in the ribcage. It's not a bullet. It's a fragment of a ceremonial dagger. The alloy is specific to the Blackwood family."*

*The evidence was overwhelming. The money. The witness. The weapon.*

A scream built in my chest, a primal, animalistic sound of pure agony.

I fell to my knees, clutching my head. My wolf was howling, tearing at the inside of my skull.

*MATE! MATE! MATE!*

I had killed her. I had handed her over to the butchers.

"Alpha?" Marcus asked, terrified.

I looked up. My vision was red. My canines extended, cutting into my lip.

"Where is she?" I snarled. The human part of me was gone. There was only the monster left.

"Ivanna is in the nursery," Marcus whispered.

I stood up. The floorboards cracked under my feet.

"Seal the exits," I commanded. "No one leaves. Tonight, the Blood Moon runs red."