Chapter 2

A violent bang slammed against the narrow daylight grate above the shaft.

"God! Look down there!"

Two low-ranking wolves on patrol threw themselves against the ground glass. They saw me, covered in blood.

A second later, the main exhaust pipe above the vault blew completely open under massive pressure. A huge wave of toxic silver mist surged downward.

The blast hit the ventilation shaft. The sturdy shutters screeched under the unbearable strain and cracked open with a jagged tear.

Silver mist spilled out. Both guards jumped back in shock.

"Someone's down there! It's a liquid silver leak!"

A guard's voice broke into a terrified scream outside.

I pushed my bloody hands through the opening. The cold wind hit my ruined flesh, and the pain went straight to the bone. The toxic mist crawled under my collar. My pants were soaked in black blood.

"Luna! Give me your hand!"

The patrol captain dropped to one knee in the wet grass. He reached halfway into the opening, stretching toward me.

A few omegas and guards rushed over. One took off his jacket to beat back the rising fumes. Several hands reached down together, covered in dirt and cold sweat.

"Hold on! We're pulling you up!"

The silver mist rolled along the grass like white smoke.

None of these men had gas masks. The sharp poison hit their throats. They coughed hard, their faces turning bright red, but the veins on their arms bulged. Not a single one stepped back.

They were just low-ranking workers and patrolmen.

Declan never gave them a second look. Yet right now, they risked having their lungs burned out just to give me and my unborn pup a fighting chance.

Meanwhile, my Alpha mate stood by the harbor. This was the same man who swore a blood oath at the sacred altar to put my life before his own. He gave all his warmth and care to another woman in the ocean breeze.

What a sick joke.

A thick blast of white fumes burst from the pipe, hitting my arm dead on.

The poison tore through my flesh. Black spots filled my eyes. The taste of burned blood flooded my throat.

The guards saw it happen. One of them pulled out his radio, hitting the emergency override, and screamed into the open comms:

"Is dispatch completely blind?! The silver leak in the vault is real! The Luna is dying down here!"

"Where the hell is everyone?! Do you want her dead?!"

Inside the command center, Chloe froze.

Red lights flooded the control board. Level-two silver alerts covered every screen. Even the vault's self-destruct alarm wailed in the background.

The system was not glitching. The leak was real.

Ten minutes ago, she sneered at me.

Declan told her he handled the whole defense plan and the vault was safe. She believed her powerful brother. She thought this was just another cheap trick to get his attention.

Now, dozens of furious screams from the guards flooded the pack channel.

Chloe started shaking. Her nails dug deep into her palms. She panicked and dialed the district patrol on the other side of the bay.

"Send a unit... the manor vault... no, send the hazmat team!"

"Miss Chloe, evening traffic has the bridge completely blocked. The team won't get there for at least forty minutes!"

Forty minutes.

She looked at my trembling silhouette on the screen. Her face turned ghost white.

I couldn't hear the chaos on the radio. The light before my eyes faded fast.

The metal ladder gave out, snapping instantly under the corrosive silver.

My fingers slipped from the guard's grip. Pure weightlessness dragged me straight toward the abyss.

In that single second of falling, the memories I buried deep inside rushed back like knives.

It happened like this in my past life too, while I carried his child.

Talia would call him, crying. "Declan, my wolf is hurting. I can't take this..."

Declan would grab his coat right away.

I held his sleeve with my swollen belly, begging him to stay, begging him to look at our baby.

He only sighed. He touched my cheek with gentle patience. "Gwen, be the bigger person. Talia took nerve damage years ago. Any stress breaks her. Don't fight with a sick woman."

Then, he stayed out all night.

The next morning, Talia sent a photo from his phone.

On the night of my birthday, he put a priceless diamond necklace around Talia's neck. The two of them were locked in each other's arms in a penthouse suite.

I endured that scene more times than I could count.

Until I lost the pup. Until I died too.

"Pull! Get the Luna up!"

At the very last second, a guard locked his fingers around my wrist, stopping my fall.

The captain's raw shout exploded in my ear, pulling my scattered mind back to reality.

Rough hands covered in mud and sweat clamped down hard. They dragged me through the narrow ground window, right through the rushing silver mist.

They pulled me onto the lawn. I crashed onto the cold dirt.

The violent pull crushed my stomach. The silver poison tore through my veins at the same time. Agony exploded in my lower abdomen, tearing me apart from the inside.

I knew right then. The pup was gone again.

The pain went past tears. My soul was completely numb.

In the blinding pain, the days and nights of being tormented by those two rushed violently through my mind.

In my past life, their closeness broke my wolf's core. It drove me into severe trauma and depression.

I spent night after night awake, drowning in nightmares. Every time I woke up in panic, I reached beside me. His side of the bed was always freezing cold. I tried to reach him through the mind-link. He blocked me every single time.

A few times, I tried calling his video line. Talia always answered in seconds.

She would brag in her sweet, soft voice. "Declan is sleeping so deeply. Do you want to see him?" Then she turned the camera to Declan, holding her close in his sleep.

Declan always had an excuse. He said he worried Talia might lose control from her episodes, and nobody could take the blame if she died. But he never explained why they had to sleep in the same bed, wrapped in each other's arms.

He shattered my hope over and over. Then he fed me empty promises.

When I finally stood before him with a medical report of severe depression, he only frowned. "Stop it, Gwen. Stop faking it. Don't think paying a doctor for a paper makes you depressed. I know you're upset. I'll spend more time with you, alright?"

He never kept that promise either.

Not until the fire took my life. Not until he dug through the ashes and found that yellowed paper, along with every bottle of pills I never took because I wanted our pup to grow healthy. That was the moment he lost his mind.

Now, we were both reborn. He had all his memories, yet he still ran straight to her without a second thought.

His so-called love was a fake, disgusting joke.