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A Mate's Revenge
NovelShort
Hoàn thành
He called her “mate.” The Moon called her chosen. But power twisted everything. Selena trusted Trixie—until his hands delivered her to the altar like a hunted beast, fooled by lies whispered fr...
Chương (7)
第1章
Recovering from another death escapades, my breath hitched in frustration and pain as the low inaudible voices from our vehicle was becoming clear enough.
I’ve lost count of how many times my mate has offered me to the rogue wolves in the pack. They would stab me multiple times, and on several occasions they would tie me to a bicycle and drag my body around just to please him and his mate. His damned mistress.
To be precise, this is the ninety-nineth time.
That’s how many deaths I’ve clawed my way back from—each time to the sound of his voice, colder than the winter moon, telling someone to "deal with it."
The most recent one was when he didn’t hesitate to shove me straight into the path of a rampaging rogue in its beast form. Just to shield her—his radiant Debbie—from a splash of blood.
"She’s sensitive," he growled, not even glancing at my crumpled body. "Debbie can’t stomach the scent of carnage right now."
Someone lifted my limp form and tossed it into the bed of a rusted pickup like I was just another piece of trash from the battlefield.
“Make sure she doesn’t bleed out here,” Trixie added, wiping his hands on a silk handkerchief. “I don’t want the stench fouling the ride.”
I didn’t fight. My bones cracked with every breath. I curled into the shadows, listening to the low murmur of voices, muffled by metal and dust.
“She always comes back,” someone scoffed. “Bet she’ll mutter ‘sorry’ again when she does. Ninety-nine times now, yeah?” I could easily recognize the voice. It belonged to Tisha, Debbie's evil sister.
Another voice, amused. “I’ll put fifty million on it.” That voice belonged to Chelsea, Debbie's best friend.
"That snitch..." I muttered in my quivering voice. I remember when I caught her and Trixie having sex together while Debbie was at the hospital. Foolish Debbie. I don't want to talk about how trashy they are. I let out a scoff.
They didn’t know it was remaining one last time. Death number one hundred would sever the bond. The Moon Goddess herself would let me go. I wouldn’t return for him again.
No more love. No more pain. No more begging to be seen.
When my lungs filled with air again, it wasn’t relief I felt—it was fury.
The bed of the truck reeked of rust and rot. Dried blood clung to my ribs like old paint.
From the cab came the sound of heaving. Debbie’s nausea was always louder than it needed to be.
The engine screeched to a halt. Gravel bit into the tires.
A door slammed. Trixie’s boots crunched toward me. He stared down like I was something he’d rather step over than acknowledge.
“You’re alive.”
The tone in his voice was more serious to make it a question. He was making a complaint.
“Get out. Debbie’s going pale from the smell.”
I didn’t argue. I pushed off the bed, my fingers slipping in the congealed mess beneath me.
My shirt—what was left of it—was already soaked. Still, I wiped the blood from the rusted metal as best I could. Debbie hated filth. Once, she refused to wear shoes after they touched a patch of dirt.
Trixie had forced me to crawl ahead of her, skin to stone, to keep her steps clean.
As I finished, his voice came again, low and almost… placating.
“Behave. Once Debbie delivers the heir, maybe I’ll—”
She gagged again.
And he forgot I existed. He turned, rushing back to her side, one hand shielding her swollen belly, the other brushing her hair back as though the world revolved around her morning sickness.
He barked into his comm: “Send another ride. Ten minutes.”
He was breathless—anxious, even. The last time I saw that kind of panic in his eyes was the first time I died for him.
A fight had broken out in the forest during full moon training. He’d been dragged into the lake by a feral shifter. I dove in, claws first, dragging him to the shore.
My lungs gave out. My heart followed.
He had screamed for help then. Promised anything.
“I’d trade places with her! Just bring her back!”
But that was then. Before the pattern became a rhythm.
Three deaths. Then ten. Then ninety-nine.
By the hundredth, he didn’t flinch anymore. I was just another object in his orbit, used to keep Debbie smiling.
A breeze sliced through the clearing. I stepped down from the truck, every bone aching.
“Hey.” His voice, sharp and familiar, sliced through the air behind me. “Forgot something?”
I didn’t look back.
“...Sorry.”
My voice was flat. Mechanical. He always made me say it.
Sorry for bleeding.
Sorry for breathing.
Sorry for being.
I started to walk.
Too obedient this time, I suppose. He sounded almost pleased.
“Truck’s filthy. Clean it. We’ll wait for the new ride.”
They stepped out together. Trixie kept his arm around her, shielding her like she was a crown jewel. His eyes were full of her—never once flicking toward me.
I remembered once being the one he protected.
Three moons after I conceived, my wolf pup barked at Debbie. She shrieked. Claimed trauma.
Trixie snapped his fingers. Two trained hounds were released. They didn’t stop until I couldn’t stand. Until the child inside me was nothing but a memory.
Afterward, he knelt by Debbie’s side and said, “There’ll be other children. But if I don’t punish her, she’ll never learn.”
I never conceived again. The healers said the damage was... final.
But maybe that was freedom.
I limped behind them, my steps barely audible under their laughter. The front gates opened.
The housekeeper—Mrs. Smith—stood in my way. Her eyes flicked over me, her face tightening.
“The young master said… Miss Debbie’s scent is too refined. She can’t bear the smell of blood. You know how she gets.”
I nodded. I didn’t plead.
Mrs. Smith turned on the hose.
Ice-cold water slammed into me. I hit the stone tiles, arms wrapped around my gut, barely breathing.
Ten minutes. Maybe more.
When the torrent finally stopped, I crawled inside.
Past the doors I once opened freely.
Past the rooms I once called mine.
Dripping, invisible, broken.
I found the downstairs bathroom, shut the door, and peeled off what was left of me.
Then I sat beneath the sink, knees to chest, heart to silence.
第2章
There was only one left.
The final shift. The last breath. The edge of the line.
Debbie’s voice slithered through the silence like smoke. “He’s done ninety-nine. That kind of survival? You can't breed that—it’s forged. Maybe if our pup had even half that spine…”
Trixie didn’t look at her. His eyes were on the fire, jaw clenched so tightly it could snap. “There’s a den near the lowlands,” he muttered, voice hoarse. “They don’t train halfbloods. They dismantle them. Tear out instincts and rewire the brain. Like machines.”
Debbie hummed, almost delighted. “Is that what makes them… obedient?”
He didn’t answer.
She tilted her head. “We could take him there.”
His voice dropped, edged with steel. “Not now.”
The stillness returned, but something about it felt wrong—like standing in the eye of a storm, knowing the rest is just waiting to hit.
Then she giggled, as if none of it mattered. “Do you think this peach is safe?” she asked brightly, lifting the fruit with an elegance that masked her cruelty.
I had just stepped in.
I froze.
She moved toward me like a predator cloaked in grace. “Selena, darling,” she purred, extending the peach, “be a dear and try it for me. Just one bite.”
I didn’t reach for it. Not yet.
Trixie’s eyes flicked toward me. Then the fruit. Then my lips.
He remembered.
He should’ve stopped her.
But he didn’t.
So I did what I always did. I took the poison.
My fingers curled around the velvet skin of the fruit. I bit down.
The sweetness was a lie. The taste was violence.
Juice spilled down my chin, sticky and warm. It clung to me like guilt. My body began to revolt, every nerve screaming—but I didn’t stop.
Let it be over.
Let me go.
Then he moved.
Faster than breath, Trixie crossed the room and seized me by the back of the neck. The pain made stars explode behind my eyes as the fruit fell from my lips.
His palm struck my face.
Hard.
The room tilted. My head rang.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he barked. His voice cracked—too loud, too human. “Do you want to die? Is that it?”
I didn’t speak.
I swallowed what was left.
His hand trembled against my skin.
Then something shifted. His grip loosened. His touch changed.
He cupped my face as though I might break. “Spit it out,” he whispered. “Please. Don’t make me watch this.”
But it was already happening.
My chest seized.
Air became knives.
I fell to the ground, fingers clawing at wood. My body convulsed. My vision blurred.
Behind me, Debbie made a gagging sound that was too practiced, too convenient.
Trixie spun. “She’s reacting again—Debbie!”
“I didn’t know it was that bad,” Debbie whimpered, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. “It just… smells off.”
The housekeeper rushed in, skidding to a halt at the doorway.
“Oh goddess—she’s seizing again!” he gasped. “Should I call the Pack Healer?”
Trixie hesitated.
That heartbeat of doubt cracked something in me.
Then he swept Debbie into his arms like she was the one dying.
“She can’t be around this. Take care of her first. Lock Selena in the washroom. I don’t want her scent in the nursery.”
He didn’t look at me when he said it.
“Do it,” he snapped at the housekeeper. “Now.”
But I didn’t wait.
I dragged myself upright. My legs were shaking. I staggered into the guest bath, locked the door, and collapsed against the wall.
Outside, the house fell into muffled murmurs and shifting feet.
“She just wants attention,” Trixie said eventually, his voice barely audible through the door. “She’s acting out.”
No. I wasn’t acting. I was vanishing.
When I came to, hours had passed. The quiet was thick enough to choke on.
I was still alive.
Of course I was.
The dose had been too light. Again.
I turned my head. The nightstand glowed under the lamplight. A pill bottle stood beside a folded note.
Take these when you wake. I’ll be back soon.
No name. But I knew that handwriting. It used to cover my walls, years ago.
You looked cold today. Stay inside.
Don't run during your cycle. Let me pace you.
You're strong. Don’t let them convince you otherwise.
The notes disappeared long before the person did.
I exhaled slowly, eyes burning.
And that was the sound he heard when he walked in.
“You mad it didn’t work?” Trixie asked, voice like frost.
I didn’t lift my head.
He moved closer, boots thudding against the floor like falling judgment. “Did you even take your meds?”
I gestured. The bottle was still full.
His jaw clenched.
He stared at me like I was some puzzle he once knew how to solve—but forgot the pieces to.
I picked up the bottle and dumped the contents into my palm.
Then I held them out to him.
“You want me quiet? Numb? Gone?” I said, my voice raw. “You can do it. You can finish what they started.”
His eyes locked with mine.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t move.
But I saw the flicker—the one thing he didn’t want me to see.
Fear.
Not for me.
Of me.
He took the pills from my hand. One by one.
Then he turned away again.
He always turned away.
And I—
I just kept waiting for someone to stay.
第3章
“That’s enough. Hand them over. I’ll take them myself.”
My voice was level—too level. Like the eye of a storm right before it swallows everything.
Trixie stilled. His shoulders squared, nostrils flaring as if scenting something off in my tone.
“Selena, don’t be stupid.” His growl trembled at the edges. “You don’t know what those will do to you.”
The bottle of wolfsbane capsules dangled between my fingers. Then, with a sudden roar, he slapped them from my hand. They hit the floor with a hard clatter, pills scattering like bones.
“You want to die?” His voice cracked, primal and shaking. “Fine. Then die. But not like this. Not in front of me.”
He went quiet after that, panting, fists clenched at his sides like he was holding back from shifting. Trixie wasn’t the kind to shout. Not usually. But his eyes—those cold, glacial things—were flooded with heat.
He tugged off his jacket, tossed it over the chair, and turned from me with a sharp flick of his wrist. “Enough of your theatrics.”
“You’re not dying,” he muttered, voice lowering to a dangerous pitch. “We’ve tested every bloodline theory. Every moon cycle. Still nothing. The Pack down north has a lab. They’re willing to study what’s inside you. If they can extract even a fragment of your regenerative strain… maybe it’ll help the pup growing in Debbie.”
There. He’d said it.
I didn’t flinch. Just rolled up my sleeve, offering my arm like a gift to the gods.
“Take it,” I said softly. “Take all of it if you want. Maybe you’ll finally be rid of me that way.”
Something inside him faltered. But his duty to Debbie—and to the unborn heir she carried—won out.
He called in the Pack healer.
The needle wasn’t silver, but it might as well have been. It burrowed deep, draining not just blood but memory. I watched it fill, red and thick with my DNA. The very thing they wanted. The very thing I hated.
I didn’t tell them the truth.
That I was dying, yes—but not from some disease. I was nearing my hundredth death. The last in a long chain of silent sacrifices that no one remembered, not even the wolf who had once howled my name under moonlight.
Once that final death arrived, I’d be gone—not just from this pack, but from the tether that bound me to this world.
Truly gone.
Trixie’s phone buzzed. Without a glance in my direction, he picked up.
“Tomorrow. I’ll drive her to the lab myself.”
The healer hesitated. “Alpha, she should rest. Her vitals are... thinning.”
“She won’t die.” Trixie’s voice was arctic.
The healer swallowed whatever protest he had. But Trixie didn’t come the next day. Or the one after.
Instead, the shared Pack account pinged with transactions.
Maternity coats. Fur-lined boots. A winter bassinet.
A memory slammed into me like a blow.
We were once on northern patrol—before the mating bond between him and Debbie. A blizzard hit, sudden and brutal. Debbie had tracked him up there, frostbitten and weeping. Trixie wrapped her in his coat. Then—without a word—ripped mine off too and draped it over her.
“She followed me,” he snapped when I opened my mouth. “And you left her out there. You heartless mutt.”
They left me behind that night.
My wolf nearly froze solid before dawn.
I came back only to find them already mated.
I blinked, coming back to the present.
I ordered them custom-matched arctic gloves.
Then I severed my link to the Pack’s joint account.
Later, Trixie sent a single message.
I didn’t reply.
Not long after, I heard heavy footsteps outside my den door. A familiar knock. Authoritative. Impatient.
“Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
I rose silently. My limbs creaked like winter branches.
Debbie stood behind him, belly swollen, smile painted sweet as rot.
“Selena,” she purred. “It must be exhausting, donating so much of yourself for our pup. But if the lab finds nothing... we may need more. Maybe even open you up. Gently, of course.”
“For the child,” she added with a wink.
“I understand,” I said, utterly still.
Trixie’s jaw ticked. “That’s enough, Debbie.”
She laughed like she didn’t hear him. But I saw the flicker in her eyes—the momentary panic.
The three of us rode in silence.
Trixie turned on music. Something soft and old. It didn’t matter.
The silence drowned it out.
第4章
Debbie scoffed, but it wasn’t casual. Her scoff, it landed on me heavy and sharp, like broken glass being swept across tile.
“Are we really doing this again?” Her voice grated in the stillness, coated in mockery. “You know I hate that sound. It’s like something’s dying in slow motion.”
Her hand flicked toward the dashboard, but Trixie slapped it away—without looking.
The sound persisted. Low and throaty. The Wolf Elders' chant, ancient and unyielding, spilled from the speakers like smoke creeping under a locked door. It wasn’t music. It was memory. It was blood.
It unsettled her, but moved me. Because I knew what it was, what it meant to Trixie.
Outside, rain stitched the world shut. Fat droplets dragged their way down the glass in crooked, hesitant lines. The forest on either side of the road blurred into a smear of shadows. No moon. No wind. Just the hum of tires pulling us farther away from everything we knew—and toward something neither of us dared name.
Inside, the silence curdled.
Trixie gripped the wheel like it was the last thing anchoring him to himself. His fingers were stiff, bloodless. The muscles in his jaw twitched once—then again.
He hadn’t spoken since we left the city.
But now—now, he moved.
Just his eyes.
They slid to the rearview mirror. Slowly. He didn’t check the road. Or even cared to blink.
He looked for me. Searching frantically through the rearview mirror.
No, at me.
His gaze caught mine—heavy, unreadable. Like he was weighing something he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud.
I didn’t speak either.
I didn’t need to.
I could feel it rising in him—the thing he was swallowing. It pressed against the silence like it might split open and spill across the leather seats.
Debbie sighed loudly, pulling her coat tighter around her swollen belly. “You know, Trixie,” she said, not bothering to hide her irritation, “we’re supposed to be celebrating. The baby’s almost here. And you’re dragging us into the middle of nowhere listening to this… cursed muttering?”
Still, he didn’t answer.
He was staring straight through me now, and yet I could feel his focus like heat pressed against skin.
He remembered.
He remembered that I used to hum along with those chants when I thought no one was listening. That I used to whisper the Old Tongue in my sleep, as if some part of me refused to forget where I came from. That once, long ago, I believed in what those songs meant.
Now I was silent. Still.
A passenger in the backseat of a car that used to feel like home.
The chant deepened. The voices on the track grew thicker, woven with something not human. Not anymore.
Debbie shifted, uncomfortable. “God, it’s like being buried alive in sound. Can you turn it off already?”
And still—he didn’t respond.
But this time, he did move.
His hand jerked forward and twisted the dial. Not just turning the chant off—but cutting it. Killing it.
The silence that followed was worse.
Dead. Thick. Final.
Debbie started talking again. Something about names. Colors for the nursery. The healer's predictions. Her voice bounced around the cabin like wind in a tomb, completely unaware of the grief crawling its way into the space between Trixie and me.
He stared at the road, but I saw it.
The twitch of his eyelid.
The muscle shifting in his jaw.
The betrayal.
Because she didn’t know what the chant meant.
But I did.
And so did he.
第5章
“Selena.”
He said my name like he was testing it on his tongue, checking if it still meant anything.
I lifted my eyes to the rearview mirror and met his stare—flat, still, unreadable. My face didn’t move. Not a twitch. I gave him nothing.
But he didn’t need words.
He remembered.
I used to hum to the old chants under my breath. When the others rolled their eyes, I kept singing. Not loud—just enough. Reverent. Intimate. Like I was offering something. Like I believed it mattered.
I said those harmonics were older than any of us. That they carried the pulse of something not dead yet.
And now?
I sat in silence, arms folded, coat zipped to the throat. A passenger. A body. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak.
But silence has weight, and mine wasn’t gentle. It pressed into the car, made the air taste like metal.
Trixie’s fingers shifted on the steering wheel, subtle, but telling. His jaw moved, just once, like he was grinding back words he didn’t want to let loose.
Then his hand darted forward, sharp and certain, and killed the chant mid-breath.
The quiet that replaced it wasn’t relief. It was severance. Like snapping a cord you’ve been holding too tight.
Debbie didn’t notice. Or maybe she did, but she chose not to acknowledge it. She adjusted her seatbelt, patted the curve of her stomach like it might start a conversation.
“I was thinking Elara, if it’s a girl,” she said, all breathy enthusiasm. “Has a moon ring to it, right? Elara Jagger. Strong, but pretty.”
She laughed—light, practiced, just a bit too loud for the space. A laugh she’d used before. Probably with him.
Beside her, Trixie’s face didn’t flinch. Didn’t nod. Didn’t turn.
He wasn’t there with her.
Not really.
He stared ahead like the road was gone and he was still driving.
But his eyes found me again, briefly, in the mirror. A glance that didn’t ask anything outright. Just lingered, as if staring long enough might draw out a response I didn’t have to give.
I looked back at him, expression blank.
No hatred. No warmth. Just silence.
Because whatever thread used to bind us—it had thinned.
The wolf in me no longer responded to his voice.
Outside, the gravel slowed under the tires. The forest peeled back to reveal the outpost. Fog pressed against the windows, thick and damp, like breath on glass. Somewhere above, unseen, the mountain loomed—quiet, sharp, waiting.
Two guards stepped forward, dressed in slate-black armor, hands behind their backs. They didn’t speak. Just nodded once to Trixie and opened the reinforced steel door. It slid aside with a dull grind, the weight of it vibrating faintly through the car floor.
Inside, the air changed.
Everything was clinical. Sharp. Cold.
White lights buzzed softly overhead, and the walls were painted that sterile shade of not-white, the kind that made your skin itch if you looked too long. You could smell the burn of silver in the air—thick, biting, like it wanted to crawl into your lungs.
Dr. Hemlock appeared without ceremony, gliding from the corridor like something exhaled by the building itself. Tall, pale, sharp-edged in a way that made you think of scalpels. His gloves still steamed from whatever sterilization bath he’d dipped them in. The scent that clung to him wasn’t just disinfectant—it was processed death.
“Alpha Trixie,” he greeted, nodding without warmth. “We’ve run five trials this week. Tissue sample batch 29-B is showing faster-than-expected cellular regrowth. She’s still yielding. Remarkably.”
He didn’t look at Trixie when he said it. He looked at me.
I didn’t meet his stare.
Trixie did.
His expression didn’t shift, but something behind it did. His voice came out quiet, even.
“Results only.”
Hemlock didn’t push. He adjusted his clipboard, spine rigid, tone clipped.
“There’s a problem. The anomaly in her blood—the regenerative curve—is unraveling. We’re past the peak. Every minute we wait, we lose viability. At this rate… there’ll be nothing left to study. No recovery window.”
He paused. Glanced again at me, more careful this time.
“We’re reaching the end.”
第6章
Trixie didn’t speak right away.
His eyes tracked the corridor—not idly, not distractedly, but with intention. He was thinking. Calculating. Past the thick-glass partition and the reinforced steel doors waited something unspoken. Something classified. And dangerous. The inner lab breathed with machines, blinked with sensors, and hummed like something alive.
When he finally turned back to Debbie, the air seemed to shift.
"Wait here," he said.
No tenderness. Just a directive, clipped and final.
"Radiation levels spike past the second corridor."
He didn’t wait for her response. He was already walking, already gone. The door groaned open, mechanical and reluctant, before sealing him inside with a sound that seemed too close to a coffin lid.
Then Debbie moved.
Whatever softness she had been wearing—the fluttery concern, the careful gestures around her belly, the light cadence of her voice—shed off her like a snake peeling out of old skin. Her posture shifted in increments: first the tilt of her neck, then the arch of her spine. Her eyes lost their fog. She blinked once, slow. Intentional.
Her face no longer held a mask of warmth. She looked at me like a surgeon might look at a body on a slab.
"You look like hell," she said, the smile gone, her voice stripped down to its bones. "Must be hard, carrying the weight of miracles."
I didn’t answer. My stare stayed fixed on a point just beyond her shoulder, cold and focused, the only resistance I still owned.
She closed the distance between us.
"No comeback? No defiance today?" Her voice dripped condescension. "Thought so."
I could feel the heat of her breath now. It smelled sweet—artificial, rotted fruit sweetness, like something trying too hard to be alive. She tilted her head, mock-curious.
"They’re draining you like an old well, and you just keep giving. That has to be exhausting."
From her coat, she pulled a glass vial, opaque and black as ink. She turned it in her fingers, letting it catch the lab light.
"It doesn’t matter how many times you crawl back from the brink, Selena. Eventually, even gods run out."
I blinked slowly. She mistook it for fear.
"Want to make it interesting?" she whispered. "A wager. If he saves you, I disappear. If he saves me... you? You're erased. No resurrection. No echoes."
She leaned in until her lips nearly grazed my ear. "Spoiler alert: He won’t pick you."
Then she moved fast.
Grabbed my hand. Slammed it against her throat.
And in the same breath, she uncorked the vial and swallowed its contents whole.
Her body reacted instantly.
A strangled gasp cut through the air as she collapsed to the ground, her limbs seizing violently. Foam gathered at her lips, thick and white. Her back arched off the tile like she was being lifted by invisible strings.
My heart slammed into my ribs, legs frozen in place, mind blank with a sharp, animal panic.
Then I heard it.
Trixie’s voice.
It wasn’t a shout. It wasn’t concern.
It was a command ripped from something deeper.
"Debbie?!"
The clang of boots hit the metal floor in a rhythm that was both furious and inevitable. He burst through the lab door, eyes scanning, not breathing, already seeing too much.
He dropped beside her, knees hitting the tile with a hollow thud. His hands, usually steady, trembled as they found her face.
"Debbie? Debbie! No, no, stay with me—"
Her eyes were rolling. Her chest convulsed. Her fingers clawed at her swollen stomach, smearing sweat and blood across the fabric.
He turned to me.
And something in him cracked open.
"What the hell did you do?!"
I couldn’t even form a sentence.
Dr. Hemlock stormed in behind him, took one look, and dropped his clipboard. It hit the floor like a gunshot.
"Alpha—the fetus is losing oxygen. We either harvest now or lose everything."
Trixie’s head snapped toward me. There was no time left in his face. Only decision.
"Then use her. Now."
Steel cuffs clamped around my wrists before I could even scream.
第7章
“No… no—don’t you dare—no.”
Trixie dropped. Not like a warrior collapsing in defeat. No, he sank like a man unraveling in real time, hitting the floor with none of the grace expected of an Alpha. His voice—what was left of it—splintered around her name.
He gathered Debbie’s face in both hands, his forehead pressed hard against hers, like he could will her back into her body. Like proximity could reverse poison.
“Debbie. Debbie, look at me,” he whispered. “Stay here. Don’t leave. Don’t—”
She twitched. Just once. Maybe it was recognition. Maybe it was just death flexing her fingers.
And then his head snapped toward me.
Something inside him snapped with it.
The grief burned off his skin in an instant, replaced by something far older. Wilder. What stood in his place now wasn’t a man—it was the core of something feral and barely restrained.
“You,” he said through his teeth. No title. No name. Just that one word, ripped clean of civility. “What the hell did you do?”
I opened my mouth, breath caught mid-throat, but nothing came. What could I even say?
He was already halfway to his feet, shoulders bunched like a storm winding itself tight. His hands trembled, and I didn’t know if it was grief or fury or both—but his wolf was there, just beneath the skin, panting to get out.
“Alpha!”
The sound cracked across the room—Dr. Hemlock, arriving like a scalpel drawn too late. His coat flared behind him, his face pale and slick with urgency as he took in the scene: Debbie convulsing, her mouth foaming, her fingers digging raw lines into the swell of her own belly.
“The fetus is losing oxygen,” Hemlock said, all breath and calculation. “Rapid drop. If we don’t extract immediately, we lose the subject. And her.”
Trixie didn’t turn right away.
He stood motionless, breathing once—twice. Then his jaw shifted. Something silent passed between his teeth.
When he did look at me, it wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t confusion.
It was something emptier. Something final.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t warn.
“Use her.”
Two words. Flat. Dry. Like the clink of a knife on steel.
I didn’t even feel the restraints snap in until I hit the slab. One second I was upright—the next, the cold bit into my wrists and ankles and shoved the breath out of my lungs. Steel bands groaned into place, the hiss of hydraulics sealing me into a position I couldn’t even fight.
My heart slammed against my ribs. “Trixie, don’t—please—listen to me, this isn’t—”
He didn’t look. Not once. Not a flicker.
He just turned his back and knelt beside her again, brushing the hair off Debbie’s clammy forehead like they were alone in the world.
His voice, when it came again, was quiet. Almost gentle.
“She’s the one carrying the pup,” Hemlock said, wiping down silver instruments. His hands didn’t shake. “But Selena is the original. She’s the last clean link to the regenerative line. If we lose her…”
“Take what you need,” Trixie murmured, still stroking Debbie’s cheek with a tenderness that made my skin crawl. “I want that pup breathing.”
Hemlock hesitated. His eyes shifted between us—between me and the man who had once stood in front of bullets for me.
“You mean…” the doctor said, glancing at the monitors. “All of it?”