CHAPTER 003: THE BROKEN MATE BOND

Lucas's POV

"What!" It tore out of me before I had any control over it. My wolf dropped back into the corner of my mind and went silent.

My knees hit the tile. Cold bit through my pants, sharp enough that I barely registered it.

"What is going on?" My voice came out rough. I put a hand against my own chest and felt something hollow sitting under my ribs that hadn't been there an hour ago.

I looked at Sienna, stretched out across the table. What was running down into the flask below her wasn't red. It caught the light wrong, thick and gold, pooling in a way blood never should.

"That is not blood." My voice didn't sound like mine. "Why is it gold?"

"The extraction is standard, Alpha." Morrigan's voice stayed level, but her hand gave her away. She reached under the velvet lining of her tray and palmed a second vial, smaller than the first, the liquid inside darker, closer to black at the center. Her fingers closed around it fast, like she hadn't meant for me to see.

I crossed to Ivy and gripped her arm hard enough to bunch the fabric in my fist.

"I do not know," she said, her shoulders folding inward.

"Morrigan!" I let go of Ivy. She stumbled back and caught a cart, metal rattling across the tile behind her.

I crossed to Sienna instead. I dropped down beside her and pressed my ear flat against her chest, holding my breath, waiting to hear something come back.

Nothing did.

Her scent was already going thin. That pull I'd known my whole life was fading into something closer to memory, orange and cedar losing ground to antiseptic in the air.

"Sienna." Her name wasn't enough for what was happening in that room. It was all I had, so I said it again.

Then the bond gave out. It wasn't pain. It was absence, sudden and complete, the way a limb disappears in one cut and you're left staring at the space where it used to be.

What remained was a single thread, still burning, carrying something back to me that felt like my own regret. It pulled a sound out of my throat that didn't belong in that room.

I looked at her body. Then at Ivy, her mouth still hanging open. Something in my gut turned over, sick and immediate.

I grabbed Ivy and pulled her against me. Not because I wanted her there. Because I needed to feel something, anything, and I didn't care what it cost. Her mouth tasted like ash.

I shoved her back almost as fast, disgusted with myself for needing that. My hands were still shaking when I let go of her.

"Get the guard." My voice wasn't steady and I hated that it wasn't. "Wipe every phone in this building. If one frame of this reaches the Council, I will have heads."

"Alpha, please." A crack showed through Morrigan's composure for the first time. "Her pulse is thready. She will survive, if we move her before the elders start asking questions."

"Move her." I closed my hand around Ivy's wrist and felt her bones small under my grip.

"Have you lost your mind? She is a corpse in every way that matters."

"Lucas." Tears sat glassy in Ivy's eyes, but nothing spilled over. "I thought I was your Luna."

"I never asked for this." I pointed at Sienna, at the chest that wasn't rising or falling anymore. "She was supposed to survive. The heir was supposed to come out strong. Morrigan told me about extraction. Not this."

A voice cut into my head, addressed only to me. Morrigan's, calm in a way that made it obvious she was already several steps ahead of the rest of us. Alpha Lucas. The blood is extracted. She needs treatment now. Once she wakes, we bring her inside and handle the Council.

I caught Ivy watching Morrigan a half second too long, some silent exchange passing between them that shut off before I could catch any of it. Whatever it was, neither of them offered it to me.

"It stays a secret." My jaw ached from how hard I'd been clenching it. "All of it."

I gathered Sienna's limp body up off the table. My hands were shaking with every step. She weighed almost nothing, less than nothing, and I carried her out without looking back at either of them.

"You'll learn what you are without a pack," Ivy said behind me, quiet. "Let's see how long that takes."

~~Sienna's POV~~

Light hit before I was ready for it, harsh and unfiltered, nothing like the dim room I remembered before. Underneath it sat a smell I recognized and hated just as fast, antiseptic, plastic, the particular cold of a room built for treating bodies instead of people.

Beyond the door, footsteps moved back and forth at an even pace. Someone pacing. Someone who already knew what they were waiting for.

Opening my eyes fully took more effort than it should have. Walls with no windows. Machines blinking somewhere off to the side. Everything scrubbed down to a shine that didn't feel like it belonged to anyone.

This was the pack house doctor's office. I hadn't left their territory. I was still trapped inside the same walls where they'd cut me open.

Pieces came back to me out of order, the needle first, then the extraction, then Lucas's face gone empty of everything, and I let each memory land before I let myself reach for the next one.

When I tried to push myself upright, the floor dropped sideways beneath me. My hand shot out and caught the bedframe just in time, metal biting cold enough to sting my palm.

Whatever silver now ran through my veins didn't feel like strength. It felt more like ice, creeping outward from somewhere deep behind my ribs.

One fact stood out clearly through the fog. I was still breathing. That much I could hold onto.

The door handle turned before it opened.

"You are awake. Thank the Goddess." There was real relief in his voice, and somehow that made everything worse.

Dr. Noah stood in the doorway, my father's old Beta, banished here after my father's exile as a kind of punishment. Gray had crept further into his hair since I'd last seen him, though his hands held steadier than I expected them to.

"Stay still," he said, lowering a tray onto the table without touching me. "Your body is still recovering. The bond threads are frayed, barely holding."

Something flickered across his face before he caught it, his eyes locking onto mine a beat too long.

"Your eyes, Sienna."

"I know." I swung my legs off the side of the bed, the thin gown clinging uncomfortably to my skin. "Here to finish his work? Or did they send you because I did not die quietly enough?"

He flinched at that. His hand reached for the gauze, then set it back down without using it.

"I served your father for twenty years." When he finally picked the gauze back up, his fingers trembled slightly as he wrapped my wrist. "I could not stop them that night. But I will not let them touch you again. Not while I am breathing."

"Words are cheap, Noah."

"Silver. Almost glowing." He kept his gaze fixed somewhere past my shoulder. "I've never seen anything like it."

A laugh scraped out of my throat, dry, nothing close to real in it.

"Here." He nudged a set of folded clothes and dark glasses toward me across the blanket. "Go to the mirror. If Lucas sees this, he will not let you leave this room alive."

I made my way to the bathroom on unsteady legs and locked the door behind me. The click of it landed loud in the small tiled space, and I stood there a second before I made myself move again.

I pulled the gown aside and looked down at my shoulder first. What used to be Lucas's mark had already gone the color of ash, flaking at the edges. Underneath my skin, the bond still pulsed faintly along a thin, burning thread connecting us, his regret bleeding through it uninvited.

Then I looked up into the mirror. Silver stared back at me. Not gray, not blue, but an actual metallic silver, catching the overhead light like polished steel.

I blinked hard, certain the fluorescents were playing some trick on my vision, but it wasn't only my eyes that had changed. My hair had shifted too, pale strands falling over my shoulders in a shade I'd never worn before.

"My hair." The words came out barely audible. "It is silver."

My hands went cold on the edge of the sink. I was looking at my mother's face, the one from the hidden photographs my father kept from me, images I was never supposed to find. I was looking at the exact thing they'd murdered her for being.

I stood there a long moment, staring at a water stain spreading across the ceiling's corner, holding perfectly still, turning over the same question again and again. Was the Moon Goddess finished with me? Or was this only where she was starting?