Chapter 4

I'd underestimated how cruel people could be, and how far they'd go for Vivian.

Rather than hand over their shares, they resorted to extreme measures.

That night, Austin's most trusted bodyguard knocked me out with a heavy-duty stun gun.

When I woke up, I was locked in an isolated interrogation room in the pack's underground base.

Cold metal walls surrounded me. My wrists were cuffed behind me, and my ankles were shackled to the interrogation chair.

The door opened.

Austin, Carlos, and Leon walked in. Vivian wasn't with them.

Carlos held a mark-stripping blade, his eyes ice-cold.

"Wendy, there's another way to get us out of this mess."

Austin slapped a written confession down in front of me.

"All you have to do is admit that you took bribes from a competitor and deliberately planted a poison-pill clause in the contract. That's corporate espionage.

"The investors will invoke the liability waiver, the group won't have to pay a cent, and you'll take the fall for everything."

I glanced at the confession and scoffed.

"You want me to spend 40 years in prison and have my name ruined forever, just so you can keep your money and protect that illegitimate girl's position?"

"You owe this family!"

Leon stepped forward with my phone in his hand.

He played an audio file. My late father's voice filled the room.

"Wendy, no matter what happens, take care of your brother..."

It was the only recording my father had left me before he died.

Right in front of me, Leon permanently deleted the recording, then smashed my phone against the floor.

"You don't deserve to call yourself the daughter of the former head of this family! You're selfish to the core. If you don't sign, you're not walking out of here today!"

Something inside me snapped. I stared at the pieces of my phone on the floor, my heart burning as though someone had poured acid over it.

Carlos stepped behind me and pressed the blade to the mark on the back of my neck.

That was where we'd sealed our bond seven years ago.

"Wendy, you don't have to sign.

"If I cut your mate mark out right here and remove your spirit core, we can use biotechnology to forcibly extract your authorization key. That'll solve the problem just as well."

In modern werewolf medicine, forcibly removing a mate mark was like cutting into someone's spinal cord without anesthesia.

The pain was enough to drive even the strongest warrior mad.

"Carlos, if I'd spent these seven years raising a dog, at least it would wag its tail at me."

My eyes burned, but I fought back every tear.

"For Vivian, you're willing to put up with a little pain, right?"

Carlos didn't hesitate. He drove the blade in.

"Ahhh!"

Pain ripped through my skull. Blood poured down my neck and soaked the restraint chair.

My whole body convulsed. My nails screeched across the metal armrests until they snapped.

Pain. Unbearable pain.

Austin watched me being tortured, completely unmoved.

"You could've spared yourself all this if you'd just signed."

Then the mark came away, skin and flesh and all.

With the last of my strength, I looked at the shattered phone screen on the floor.

It read, "Countdown: zero days, zero hours, zero minutes."

Time was up.

I burst out laughing like a madwoman. My mouth was full of blood, and every laugh tore through me.

"What are you laughing at? You've lost your mind!"

Leon stumbled back a step, unnerved by my laughter.

"Carlos..."

Gasping for breath, I stared at his face as shock and doubt flickered across it.

"Do you really think it's my mark you just cut out?"

Carlos froze. Then, all at once, he went white and clutched his chest.

He coughed up a mouthful of black blood and collapsed to the floor in agony.

At the same moment, the interrogation room door blew open with a deafening boom!

A unit of heavily armed elite mercenaries stormed in, dozens of heavy weapons trained on the three men.

Surrounded by guards, a man in a suit stepped into the pool of blood.

It was Herman Kessler, the head of an international investment empire and the Alpha King who truly ruled the underworld.

Austin's legs went weak with fear.

"Your Majesty... what brings you to a place like this?"