Chapter 3

Christian's POV

My leather boots squeaked aggressively against the polished white floor of the pack clinic. I marched from one wall to the other, my fists clenching so hard my knuckles turned a ghostly white. The sterile smell of bleach and copper filled my nose, making my stomach churn with a violent anxiety.

Right behind me, my Beta, Aiden, matched my exact pacing, his brow furrowed in intense concentration.

"Boss," Aiden whispered, his voice cracking slightly in the quiet corridor. "Should I go tell the pack council that you died?"

I stopped dead in my tracks, slowly turning my head to glare at him. My eyes narrowed into slits as I took in his completely serious expression.

"Why on earth would you tell them I am dead, Aiden? Are you stupid?" I asked, my voice dangerously low.

"Well, you’re not answering your phone," Aiden explained, tapping his chin with a finger. "And in my experience, only dead people or people on very long flights don't answer their phones."

He looked incredibly proud of his own logic, nodding his head slowly.

"We do not even have an airport in our territory, Aiden," I said, a vein in my temple throbbing violently.

"Exactly!" Aiden snapped his fingers, his eyes lighting up. "So that means you must be dead, which makes perfect sense."

I closed my eyes, taking a deep, slow breath to keep myself from ripping his head off right here. "If you do not shut your mouth or move from my sight this very second, I will make you dead."

Aiden raised his hands in surrender, stepping backward toward the exit. "Got it, Alpha. I'll just tell the elders that you are currently busy being a ghost or interested in the hallway."

He slipped out the double doors, leaving me alone in the silent, cold hallway. I rubbed my throbbing temples, my chest tightening with every second that passed. The girl inside that room held my entire future, and she was currently slipping through my fingers. The heavy wooden doors of the operating room finally swung open, and the head physician walked out.

His face was completely pale, and his hands trembled as he clutched a medical clipboard against his chest. He looked at me, swallowed hard, and bowed his head in a hasty, fearful salute.

"Tell me she is alive," I growled, taking a threatening step toward him.

"She is alive, Alpha Christian," the doctor stammered, his voice shaking like a leaf. "But... we have never seen anything like this."

My heart hammered against my ribs, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of my neck. "Speak to me clearly. What is wrong with her?"

The doctor looked down at his charts, his fingers twitching nervously. "Her wolf is completely gone. Her wolf essence was violently, brutally ripped out of her chest, she shouldn't have made it."

I felt the air leave my lungs, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth ached.

"She lost a catastrophic amount of blood from the chest wound," the doctor continued, his voice dropping to a whisper. "The trauma has left her completely paralyzed from the neck down."

My hands curled into tight fists, my fingernails biting deeply into my palms. "Is there no tonic? No ancient medicine or serum that can heal her body?"

The doctor slowly shook his head, his shoulders slumping in absolute defeat.

"Unless the Moon Goddess Herself decides to intervene, nothing in our world can cure her," he murmured. "Her wolf was born fragile, and it was only her rare essence that kept her body functioning."

My chest caved in at his words, a dark, suffocating weight settling over my soul. I pushed past him without another word, my boots heavy as I opened the door to her private room. Amelia lay on the white bed, looking incredibly small and frail beneath the heavy blankets. The steady, quiet beep of the heart monitor was the only sound cutting through the thick silence.

I walked over to the side of her bed, my legs feeling like lead weights. I sat down on the small wooden chair, gently reaching out to take her cold, limp hand in mine. Her fingers were completely lifeless, offering no resistance as I held them securely against my palm.

"I am so sorry," I whispered, my voice thick with a raw, agonizing emotion. "I am so sorry I did not reach you sooner."

I stared down at her serene, pale face, my eyes burning with a sudden, furious heat. "I swear to you, Amelia, I will make the Falmouth Pack burn to the ground for what they did to you."

My mind drifted back to months earlier, to the frozen, treacherous peaks of the Whispering Mountain. I had traveled there in absolute secret, desperate to find a cure for the agonizing chest pains that plagued me. Every single night, a searing pain would rip through my heart, leaving me gasping for air on my bedroom floor.

I believed it was a curse, a lingering piece of black magic left behind by the enemies who had slaughtered my family when I was still a kid then. Instead, the ancient, blind seer of the mountain had laughed when I demanded a cure. Her dry, rattling chuckle had echoed off the damp stone walls of her cavern.

"You are not cursed, Alpha Christian," the seer had rasped, pointing a bony, dirt-stained finger at my chest. "You are suffering a shared pain from the wolf you share a cosmic destiny with."

"That is impossible," I had snarled back, my anger flaring. "My fated mate and our twins died years ago in the great raid."

The seer had shook her head slowly, her sightless white eyes staring straight through my soul.

"The wolf who died in your youth was never meant to be your final anchor," she revealed calmly. "She would not have survived past that fateful year even without the attack, as her constitution was already fading."

She leaned closer, her breath smelling of bitter herbs and ancient dust. "You must bond with your heavenly mate for the suffering to stop, Alpha. You've to cherish and treat her like she's your other half to stop the pain or you wouldn't make it pass the full blood moon"

"And how do I find this savior?" I had demanded, desperate for any shred of hope to end my torment.

"You do not seek her," the seer had whispered, placing a cold, glowing blue stone into my palm. "When the time is right, she will come to you on her own two legs."

Yesterday, that ancient prophecy crashed into my reality with devastating force. I had been patrolling near the border when I found her half-dead body lying face down in the muddy ditch. The moment my arms wrapped around her, my wolf roared in sudden, fierce recognition. At that exact second, the seer's stone in my pocket had flared with a brilliant, blinding blue light.

Amelia was my heavenly mate, the one destined to heal my broken, cursed soul. Yet, she had walked to my border on her own two legs, only to collapse into my arms at the brink of death. I stared down at her now, watching the shallow, weak rise and fall of her chest. I had always hated her for covering up for Adrian over what happened to my mate and pups but after hearing what the seer said, I couldn't bring myself to blame anyone.

My chest burned with a dark, terrifying resolve, the beast inside me scratching violently to be let loose. They had taken her strength, her wolf, and her very ability to move her own body.

"They took everything from you," I murmured, bringing her cold knuckles to my lips. "But I will build you a throne out of their ashes."

I smoothed a stray lock of dark hair away from her forehead, careful not to touch the thick white bandages wrapping her head. The anger inside me was a living, breathing thing, demanding blood for every scratch on her skin. The door to the room suddenly burst open, bouncing violently off the wall with a loud bang.

Aiden stood in the doorway, his usual dumb grin completely gone, replaced by a pale, sweat-soaked face. His chest heaved as he clutched the doorframe, his eyes wide with absolute panic. I stood up instantly, my body shielding Amelia's bed as my wolf pushed to the surface.

 "What is it, Aiden?" I demanded, my voice booming with Alpha authority.

Aiden swallowed hard, pointing a shaking hand toward the hallway behind him.

"Alpha, a messenger from the Falmouth Pack just arrived at our main gate," Aiden gasped out, his voice trembling. "They brought a message from Alpha Adrian."

I took a step forward, my eyes flashing a dangerous, lethal gold. "What does that coward want?"

Aiden looked at me, his eyes filled with a raw, devastating fear I had never seen in him before.

"Adrian says he knows you took his trash," Aiden whispered, his hands shaking. "He said if we do not throw her body back over the border by sunset, he will execute our pack's captured children one by one.”