Chapter 4

My dead hope flickered, a tiny, treacherous flame.

“You dropped this.” Bryce walked over, holding out my small leather ID pouch—the one holding my bloodline sigil. He handed it to my mother. His eyes never left mine.

“Thank you, Enforcer,” my mother gushed, her voice too high.

I fought against the bonds, the silver wires searing my wrists. “Br—!”

Lysander’s large hand clamped over my mouth again, muffling my cry. “Shh, mate. Almost there. The Healer will help you.”

He practically threw me into the back seat of the SUV. My mother climbed in after me, pinching and slapping my arms. “One more sound, and I’ll dose you with enough wolfsbane to make you wish you were never born.”

Lysander drove like a demon, ignoring traffic signals, his Alpha aura pushing other cars aside. We screeched to a halt at the private pack infirmary’s rear entrance.

I was dragged through sterile halls into a cold, bright operating room. The smell of antiseptic and fear was overwhelming.

I tried to struggle, to run, but my wolf was subdued by fear and the lingering silver.

My mother didn’t bother with persuasion. She jabbed a syringe into my neck. “Just a mild sedative. To calm you. This is for family. For your sister.”

The world softened at the edges, but the curse of my stronger wolf metabolism meant full unconsciousness didn’t come. I was trapped in a hazy, pain-sensitive hell.

“Secure her to the table. I’ll perform the extraction myself.”

Lysander and my father heaved me onto the cold steel. They used more silver-weave straps on my wrists and ankles, pulling them taut. I felt the skin break.

“This is wrong! You can’t do this!” My voice sounded slurred, weak.

My mother looked down at me as she scrubbed her hands. “I gave you life. I decide what’s necessary to preserve my family.”

My father glared. “After everything we’ve done for you, this is your repayment? Saving your sister is ‘wrong’? You’re no daughter of mine.”

Lysander tightened the strap on my right wrist until I cried out. “Just get on with it.”

My mother shoved a bonded-mate surgical consent form at him. He scrawled his signature without reading a word.

I looked at them—my mate, my parents—and felt a cold so profound it swallowed the last of my warmth.

“Lysander, you might want to wait outside. This will be… messy,” my mother said, picking up a scalpel.

“No.” His voice was stone. “I need to see it. I need to see Elara’s cure taken safely.”

Elara’s cure. Not ‘our pup’. Not ‘your son’. A cure. A commodity.

The last thread of anything I felt for him snapped.

There was no anesthesiologist. This was an illegal procedure. My mother leaned over, the scalpel glinting.

Then she cut.

A white-hot, tearing agony. My back arched off the table against the straps. A raw, guttural scream tore from my throat. I felt it. Every layer. Skin, muscle, everything parting under the blade.

The room echoed with my screams.

No one wiped my brow. No one offered a word of comfort. Their faces were turned toward the work, toward the prize being excavated from my body.

“You will… pay for this,” I rasped, each word a struggle.

Lysander opened his mouth to retort.

My mother let out a triumphant cry. “Got it! The pup is—”

Her voice cut off.

A horrible, silent pause filled the room.

Then, a whisper of pure dread. “The pup…it’s not breathing!”