12. The Tether of Desire

My heart was a frantic bird against my ribs.

    “Bastien!” I screamed, my voice echoing through the empty halls. “He’s gone! They took him!”

    Bastien appeared from the shadows, his face pale. He held a small piece of white silk found on the floor—a handkerchief embroidered with the Monet crest, but soaked in a strange, violet liquid.

    “This isn’t just my father,” I whispered, the scent of the liquid hitting my heightened senses. “This is the Moretti family. The Italians.”

    “The Morettis have been trying to weaponize Alpha DNA for decades,” Bastien growled, his claws extending. “If they have Girard, and they have the research your father gathered… they won’t just kill him. They’ll use him to create an army of Judas Wolves.”

    “Where would they take him?” I asked, my mind racing. “The bank? The Monaco labs?”

    “The Monaco vault,” Bastien confirmed. “It’s the only place with a dampening field strong enough to keep an Alpha from shifting.”

    “Then we’re going to Monaco,” I said, grabbing my tactical gear.

    The transition from the rugged cliffs of Marseille to the glass and gold of Monaco felt like stepping into a different dimension. We moved like ghosts through the night. I was no longer the girl in the wedding dress; I was a hunter.

    We reached the Banque de Monaco at three in the morning. Using the codes I had memorized from my father’s ledger, I bypassed the exterior security. But as we descended into the vault level, the air grew thick with a green, shimmering gas.

    “Don’t breathe it in,” Bastien warned, but it was too late.

    The gas was a neuro-suppressant. I felt my connection to the pack, to the earth, and to Girard flicker and die. My knees hit the cold marble floor.

    The vault doors slid open, revealing a room filled with high-tech laboratory equipment. And there, in the center, suspended in a silver frame, was Girard.

    He was awake, but his eyes were dull, his body hooked up to a series of tubes that were draining a glowing, golden fluid from his veins. Standing over him was a man I recognized from the Syndicate galas—Dante Moretti.

    “Madame Roux,” Dante smiled, holding a syringe filled with the violet serum. “So glad you could join us. We were just about to start the final extraction. You see, the Alpha’s blood is powerful, but it requires a human catalyst to stabilize the gene. And you, my dear, are the perfect bridge.”

    He walked toward me, the needle glinting in the sterile light. “I’m going to make you watch as I turn your husband into the first of my new breed. And then, I’m going to see if a Luna’s heart tastes as sweet as they say.”

    I looked at Girard, desperate for a spark of the Apex, but he was silent, his head lolling to the side.

    “Girard!” I screamed, struggling against the guards who pinned me down.

    Dante leaned down, his lips brushing my ear. “He can’t hear you, Arielle. The dampening field is absolute. But don’t worry… you’ll be together again soon. In pieces.”

    He raised the needle, but as he did, the obsidian pendant at my neck began to glow with a blinding, white-hot light—a light that shouldn’t exist in a dampening field.

    The stone didn’t just glow; it shattered, and a voice—not Girard’s, but something much older—echoed in my brain.

    “The blood is the key, Arielle. Give it the spark.”

    I looked at the silver harpoon wound on my own hand, still weeping slightly. I didn’t think. I lunged forward, biting my own palm until the blood flowed, and slapped my hand against the silver frame holding Girard.

    The reaction was a physical explosion.

    The silver didn’t just burn; it conducted. My blood, charged with the Lien de Sang, hit the silver and created a circuit of pure, raw power. The dampening field screeched and died.

    Girard’s eyes snapped open. They weren’t amber. They were white lightning.

    “My turn,” he rasped, the silver chains beginning to melt as he surged forward, but as he did, a secondary alarm began to blare.

    “Self-destruct sequence initiated. Containment failure in Level 4.”

    Dante Moretti laughed, backing toward the emergency exit. “If I can’t have the Alpha, no one will. Enjoy the vacuum, Arielle!”

    The vault doors began to slam shut, and the air started to hiss out of the room. We were trapped in a steel tomb, and Girard was still chained to the frame.