Chapter 003

Lucas’s POV

"What!" I gasped, staggering back as the sound ripped out of me before I could catch it.

Something inside me shifted, causing my wolf to collapse into the back of my mind with claws scrabbling before falling completely silent. I hit the floor with my knees taking the impact, my palms slapping the tile while the cold bit through the fabric of my pants.

"What is going on? Did the experiment fail?" I demanded, clutching my chest because the hollow under my ribs felt wrong and carved out. I stared at Sienna on the table, watching her blood drip into the flask in a steady, red stream where each drop hit with a soft, final tick.

I looked at the flask and then at Morrigan, my voice coming out rougher than I intended. "Answer me. Why is it red?"

"The extraction is standard, Alpha," Morrigan said, her voice smooth as silk even as her hand tremored while sliding a second vial, humming with gold light, beneath the velvet of her tray. Her fingers lingered on it protectively—one for the Council, one for the cure—leaving the words unspoken, living only in the way she curled her palm around the glass.

I turned to Ivy and gripped her arm, bunching the fabric of her sleeve under my fingers while her mouth opened and closed as she looked from Sienna to the floor.

"I... I do not know," she stammered, wilting under my grip with her shoulders caving.

"Morrigan, answer me. Is she dead?"

I released Ivy, who fell gasping with one hand catching the edge of a cart as the metal rattled. I marched toward Sienna’s still form because every instinct I had was screaming to protect, to claim, and to undo. I leaned down, brushing a stray lock of hair from her damp face before pressing my ear to her chest and holding my breath.

Silence met me, her scent vanishing as that familiar pull became a ghost in the clinical air, the orange and cedar that was always her thinning down to antiseptic and fear.

"Sienna?" I whispered, but the name felt too small for the room.

The bond snapped.

I crumbled under an absolute force that wasn't pain, but an absence like a limb gone in one cut. Something remained, however, a thin and burning thread carrying my regret like a disease, pulsing against my ribs in a sick, hot wave that forced a fierce, guttural roar from my throat. The sound bounced off the sterile walls and came back wrong.

I looked at Sienna’s body and then at Ivy’s mouth, seeing one as a problem and the other as a solution, though the thought made my stomach turn.

I pulled Ivy to me, driven by self-punishment rather than desire, but her mouth tasted of ash. I shoved her away, disgusted by my own need to feel anything, my hands shaking when they left her.

"Get the guard," I barked, my trembling voice echoing. “Wipe every phone in this facility, because if a single frame of this reaches the Council, I’ll have heads.”

"Alpha, please," Morrigan choked out, her composure cracking at the edges as she trembled. “Her pulse is thready, so she’ll survive if we move her before the elders ask questions.”

"Move her?" I grabbed Ivy by the wrist, her bones feeling small in my grip. “Have you gone mad? She’s a corpse in every way that matters.”

"Lucas," Ivy said, tears pooling without falling, sitting glassy in her eyes. “I thought I was your Luna.”

"I never asked for this, Ivy," I spat, pointing at Sienna's pale frame where her chest didn’t move. “She was supposed to survive, and the heir was supposed to be strong, not... this.” Morrigan had said extraction, not death, promising me—

"Mom," Ivy hissed through the mindlink, her eyes locked on the body without her lips moving. “If she’s not dead, it’s the curse.”

"I know what to do," Morrigan projected back, her voice calm in my head—too calm. “Lucas is still yours.”

Morrigan looked up with gentle concern, her mask back in place. “Alpha Lucas, the blood is extracted and she needs treatment now. Once she wakes, we take her inside and handle the Council.”

"Since it is done, it stays a secret," I snapped, my jaw aching from clenching.

I lifted my mate’s limp body from the bed with hands that shook with every step, finding that she weighed nothing—less than nothing—while the bond thread burned hotter with each breath I took.

"You’re empty now," Ivy whispered as we left, her voice barely there. “Let’s see how long the Millennium Wolf lasts without a pack.”

Three days later

Sienna’s POV

Sunlight clawed at my eyelids, hurting because it was too bright and too direct.

The scent was wrong, clinical, sharp, and cold with antiseptic and plastic, while measured footsteps paced in the hallway, waiting. I forced my eyes open, boxed in by sterile walls with no windows while high-end equipment blinked nearby.

"The pack house doctor," I gasped, my throat raw.

I was still here, remaining in the territory of the ones who carved me open. The needle, the extraction, and the dead look in Lucas’s eyes all came back in sharp-edged pieces.

I tried to stand, but the floor tilted, forcing me to catch myself on the bedframe as I gasped. The metal was cold enough to sting, making the silver in my veins feel like ice instead of fire or power—it felt like winter. I was alive, and that was all I knew while the rest remained a blank.

The door creaked open.

"You are awake. Thank the Goddess," the doctor said, his relief sounding real enough to make things worse.

I recognized him as Dr. Noah, Beta to my father, who had been "reassigned" here as punishment after my father died. His hair was grayer than I remembered, and his hands were steady—too steady.

"Stay still, Sienna," he urged, setting a tray down without touching me yet. “Your body is still recovering from the bond severing, and the threads are frayed, barely holding.” He hesitated, his eyes flicking to mine and widening. “And your eyes... Goddess, Sienna.”

"I know," I spat, swinging my legs off the bed while the hospital gown stuck to my skin. “Here to finish his work? Or did they send you because I didn't die quietly enough?”

Noah flinched, stopping as he picked up gauze. “I served your father for twenty years, and I—” His hands shook as he bandaged my wrist with careful fingers. “I couldn't stop them that night... but I won't let them touch you again, not while I’m breathing.”

"Words are cheap, Noah."

"Peace," he said, his voice catching as he avoided my eyes. “Sienna... your eyes... they have changed. They are silver, almost glowing.”

My heart skipped. Silver? I let out a dry, hollow laugh that scraped on the way out.

"Here," he whispered, handing me clothes and dark glasses. The fabric was soft and too normal. “Go to the mirror, because if Lucas sees this... he won't let you leave this room alive.”

I stumbled into the bathroom and locked the door, the click sounding loud and final. I pulled at the hospital gown, glancing at the mark on my shoulder where Lucas’s mark was already a graying scar, fading into nothing with flaking edges. Yet a thin, burning, and unwanted thread of the bond carried a faint pulse of his cloying regret, feeling like a slimy touch that made me want to scrape my own skin off just to be free of it.

I looked up, seeing that the woman in the mirror had silver eyes—not grey, and not blue, but silver like metal held to light. I looked again, thinking it was a trick of the fluorescent lights, but the hair was different.

I reached up, touching the strands falling over my shoulders, which were now the color of a winter moon—cold, bright, and not mine.

"My hair," I whispered. "It's silver."

Awe flickered before the horror rushed back in, because I looked like my mother, matching the pictures I wasn’t supposed to have that my father kept hidden. I looked like what they killed, leaving me to look at the water stain in the corner of the ceiling, wondering if the Moon Goddess was finally done with me, or if she was just getting started.