Jana POV:

The operating room was cold. It smelled of antiseptic and steel. It was a smell that promised nothing but oblivion.

I lay on the narrow table. They had stripped me of my clothes and covered me with a thin blue sheet. Above me, the surgical lights were like giant, unblinking eyes.

"Heart rate is erratic," a nurse said, looking at the monitor.

Dr. Hermine Sanchez walked in. She was the Pack Healer, a woman known for her stern face and 'Magical Sight'. She could see illnesses that machines missed. 'But today, she looked flustered, dragged in from her home on a Sunday.'

'"Where are the pre-op scans?" Dr. Sanchez demanded, snapping on her gloves. "I haven't seen the donor's chart. I need to check her aura compatibility."

'"There's no time!" Axel burst into the room. He was wearing a surgical gown over his suit, disregarding protocol. "Kyleigh's heart stopped twice in the hallway. Her personal physician sent over the files yesterday-they said Jana is a perfect match. Two healthy kidneys. Just do it!"

'Dr. Sanchez hesitated, her eyes narrowing as she looked at me. "She looks septic, Alpha. Look at her skin color. I need five minutes to-"

'"You don't have five seconds!" Axel slammed his hand on the metal tray. "That is an order, Healer Sanchez. Save your Luna, or get out of my pack!"

'Dr. Sanchez clenched her jaw. She was bound by the Alpha's order. She couldn't refuse, and she couldn't delay.'

'"Fine," she spat. "Anesthesia?"

'"Administered," the nurse said nervously. "But... she's burning through it. Her metabolism is spiking."

'Dr. Sanchez looked at me with pity. She didn't see the poison yet-the adrenaline and the chaotic energy in the room were masking my aura. She just saw a dying girl.'

"Jana," she said softly. "We have to use silver scalpels. It's the only thing that cuts wolf skin. Because of your... 'resistance'... the anesthesia won't work fully. 'We can't wait for it to take effect.'"

"I know," I whispered. "I will feel it."

"I'm sorry," she said. And she meant it.

Axel walked up to the table. He looked down at me. For a second, his hand hovered over my hand, as if he wanted to hold it. But then he pulled back, clenching his fist.

"I deposited two million dollars into an account for you," he said. His voice was stiff. "When you wake up, you can go anywhere. Paris. Tokyo. You always wanted to travel."

I looked at him. He remembered. He remembered that silly dream I told him when we were teenagers, sitting on the roof watching the stars.

"You can't buy a life, Axel," I said. My voice was calm now. The fear was gone. Only exhaustion remained.

"It's not payment," he snapped. "It's... care."

"Care," I repeated. I let out a dry, rattling laugh. "Goodbye, Axel."

He flinched. "It's not goodbye. You're just giving a kidney. Stop being dramatic."

He turned his back on me. He walked to the observation window where Kyleigh was being prepped in the next room. He put his hand on the glass, looking at her with longing.

"Start," he ordered.

Dr. Sanchez sighed. She picked up the scalpel. The blade was made of pure silver. Even the sight of it made my skin crawl.

"Count backward from ten, Jana," she said.

"Ten," I said.

The blade touched my skin.

It wasn't just a cut. It was fire. It was liquid lightning pouring into my body. The silver reacted with my wolf blood, searing the edges of the wound instantly.

"Nine."

I gritted my teeth. I would not scream. I would not give them the satisfaction.

"Eight."

The pain dug deeper. They were cutting through muscle now. I felt the retractors pulling my ribs apart. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes, hot and fast.

"Seven."

My heart monitor began to beep faster. 'Beep-beep-beep-beep.'

"Six."

I looked at the ceiling. I imagined the moon. I imagined running through a forest of snow, free, strong, loved.

"Five."

The pressure changed. They were clamping the artery. My breath hitched.

"Four."

The darkness was creeping in at the edges of my vision. It was a soft, welcoming velvet darkness.

"Three."

I saw a flash of white light. A wolf. A magnificent white wolf stood at the foot of the table. She looked at me and bowed her head.

'Come,' she seemed to say. 'It is time to rest.'

"Two."

The monitor changed its tone. The frantic beeping slowed down.

"One."

I didn't say zero.

The pain stopped. The cold stopped. The sound of Axel's voice shouting something in the distance faded away.

The line on the monitor went flat. A long, continuous tone filled the room.

I closed my eyes, and I let go.

Jana POV:

The cold of the operating table seeped through the thin gown, a deep, invasive chill that felt like it was settling in my bones. I was floating, detached, watching the scene from somewhere above my own body. The bright, sterile lights of the operating room were a distant sun.

Dr. Sanchez stood over me, his face a mask of concentration beneath his surgical cap. The scalpel in his hand gleamed. I felt no fear, only a profound weariness. He made the first incision, a clean, red line blooming across my abdomen. It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt anymore.

The monitors beside the table kept a steady, rhythmic beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. The sound of a life that was no longer mine.

"Doctor," a young nurse's voice was a nervous whisper. "Her pressure is dropping faster than anticipated."

"It's the anesthesia," Dr. Sanchez snapped, his voice tight with a stress I could feel even from my detached state. The Alpha's orders weighed on him. "Monitor it. Do your job."

The beeping of the monitor hitched, a single, sharp alarm that cut through the room's tension. My heart, the one still beating in the body below, had faltered.

From a speaker on the wall, Axel's voice crackled, distorted and impatient. "What was that? Sanchez, report."

I could see him in my mind's eye, pacing behind the observation glass like a caged predator.

"A minor reaction to the anesthetic, Alpha," Dr. Sanchez lied, his hands never ceasing their work. "It's under control."

He pushed aside layers of tissue, his gloved fingers probing deep into the cavity. Then he stopped. His brow furrowed above his mask. I saw the subtle shift in his posture, the sudden stillness of his hands. He felt it. The wrongness.

He was expecting to find a healthy, firm kidney. Instead, his fingers met only empty space and the rough, scarred texture of old connective tissue. A ghost of an organ.

A single bead of sweat broke free from his hairline and traced a path down his temple. He didn't believe it. He repositioned his hands, exploring from a different angle, his movements becoming more frantic, less precise. The result was the same. Nothing.

His fingers brushed against the internal wall, tracing the unmistakable line of a surgical scar, old and long-healed from the inside. A wound no one had ever seen.

And in that moment of his shocked stillness, the world stopped.

The rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor was replaced by a single, piercing, unbroken tone. A flatline.

Chaos erupted.

"She's in V-fib! Get the paddles!"

"Push one of epi!"

The speaker crackled to life again, Axel's voice no longer a command, but a roar. "SANCHEZ! WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?"

They pushed down on my chest, the rhythmic thud of their compressions a brutal, useless drumbeat. They shocked my body, making it arch violently off the table, but the long, damning note of the monitor never changed.

"We're losing her," the senior nurse said, her voice trembling with disbelief. "Doctor, it's not working… The pre-op report said she was in perfect health!"

The words "perfect health" seemed to break something in Dr. Sanchez. His head snapped up, his eyes wide with a horrifying realization. He looked from my lifeless body to the monitor, then back again. The perfect report, provided by the Alpha himself. The empty space where a kidney should be. The old scar.

The lie pieced itself together in his eyes.

He knew.

He stumbled back from the table, ignoring the frantic efforts of his team. He was a healer, a man sworn to preserve life, and he had just been made an executioner.

He ripped his mask from his face and staggered toward the intercom on the wall, his movements jerky, uncoordinated.

"Answer me!" Axel's voice boomed from the speaker, laced with a fury that promised death. "What is her status? Kyleigh is waiting for that kidney!"

Dr. Sanchez slammed his palm against the talk button, his whole body shaking. He closed his eyes, took a deep, ragged breath that sounded like a sob, and screamed a truth that would shatter their world.

"She doesn't have a right kidney, you fool!" he howled, his voice raw with grief and rage. "She only has one!"

Axel POV:

The doctor's words hit the reinforced glass of the observation room like a physical blow. For a second, I couldn't process them. They were just noise, meaningless and insane.

"That's impossible," I snarled into the intercom, my fist clenching. "I saw her medical report myself. It was flawless. She's lying again, trying to get out of it."

Even as I said it, a cold dread began to coil in my gut.

"Save the kidney she *does* have," I commanded, my voice dropping to a low growl. "Kyleigh needs it. I don't care what you have to do."

Inside the operating room, the frantic movements stopped. The nurses and doctors stepped back from the table, their shoulders slumped in defeat. A nurse I didn't know made a note on a chart and then, with a final, somber gesture, pulled a white sheet up over Jana's face.

The flatline tone was finally silenced. The silence was worse.

And then, something changed.

A scent.

It was faint at first, cutting through the sterile, antiseptic smell of the hospital. It slipped through the vents, under the door, a fragrance so pure and intoxicating it defied description. Rain on pine needles after a drought. The clean, crisp air of a mountain peak at dawn. It was the scent my wolf had been searching for, starving for, my entire life.

It was the scent of my Mate.

My wolf, the beast that had been restless and discontented for years, rose up within me with a roar of pure, unadulterated joy. *Mate! She is here! Our Mate!*

My human mind reeled, fighting it. *No. Impossible. Kyleigh is my mate.*

But my body didn't lie. Every cell, every nerve ending, vibrated in response to that scent. A profound sense of rightness, of coming home, washed over me, so powerful it buckled my knees. This was what I had been missing. This was the other half of my soul.

The scent was coming from the operating room.

From *her*.

Suddenly, I understood. The years of feeling… incomplete. The subtle, cloying sweetness of Kyleigh's perfume that pleased my senses but never, ever touched my soul. The drugs Kyleigh had her on, supposedly for anxiety. They weren't for anxiety. They were to mask this. To hide her from me.

Dr. Sanchez's frantic words echoed in my head. *She only has one!*

The scent of my true Mate, released only in death.

The two facts collided in my brain with the force of a supernova, obliterating everything I thought I knew. The truth was a physical agony. My wolf, recognizing that our Mate was found only to be lost in the same breath, let out a howl of such profound grief and rage that the lights in the hallway flickered. The Alpha power inside me surged, a tidal wave of pain looking for a release.

My mind was screaming *no*, but my body was already moving.

My fist shot out, connecting with the observation window. The reinforced glass, designed to stop a bullet, spiderwebbed under the force of my blow. I hit it again, and it shattered, exploding inward in a shower of glittering shards.

The Beta guards at the door flinched back, their eyes wide with terror at my uncontrolled display of power.

I ignored the blood streaming from my knuckles. I ignored their shouts. I launched myself through the broken window, landing in a crouch inside the operating room.

I had to see her. I had to breathe her in. I had to know for sure.

My wolf was screaming a single, desperate plea.

*Tell me it's not true.*