Chapter 7

The roar of the cave-in was followed by a silence so absolute it felt physical.

I was on my back, my lungs burning with pulverized stone and dust. My goggles had been ripped away in the blast, and for a terrifying second, I thought I had gone blind. There was no blue light, no thermal feed—just an oppressive, heavy void.

"Elias?" I coughed, the sound echoing weakly against close walls.

No answer. Only the distant, muffled groan of settling rock. The tunnel had been severed. Elias was on the other side of a hundred tons of New York bedrock, and I was... somewhere else.

"Elara."

The voice was close. Too close. I felt a hand—calloused, warm, and trembling—brush against my cheek. I flapped my arms instinctively, my fingers hitting a hard, muscular chest.

"Don't move," Julian whispered. His voice was strained, vibrating with the effort of holding something back. "The ceiling is unstable. If you shift too much, the rest of this shelf comes down on us."

"Where’s my briefcase?" I rasped, my hands searching the dirt. "My dampener... I need to reset the field."

"Forget the tech, Elara. It’s smashed. I heard the glass break when you hit the floor."

My heart stopped. The "Zero-Scent" was gone. Without the briefcase or the goggles, I was raw. I was exposed. And in the pitch black, I could feel Julian’s wolf finally, truly realizing I was there.

The air in the small pocket of space began to change. It grew hot, thick with the scent of pine and the sharp, electric tang of a dominant Alpha in distress. Now that my dampener was dead, my own essence was leaking into the air like a spilled perfume—mint and rain, mixing with the copper scent of the blood on my forehead.

"Get back," I said, my voice shaking. I tried to scoot away, but my back hit a jagged wall of stone. We were trapped in a space no larger than a coffin.

"I can't," Julian groaned. I heard the sound of fabric tearing as he shifted, trying to find leverage. "Elara, look at me."

"I can't see you, Julian! It’s black!"

"Look with your heart then," he breathed. Suddenly, a spark flickered. Julian had pulled a small, emergency flare from his boot. He cracked it, and the small space was flooded with an aggressive, flickering red light.

He was hovering over me, his arms braced against the stone on either side of my head. His face was a mask of dirt and sweat, his amber eyes glowing so brightly they looked like gold coins. But it was his neck that caught my eye—the mark of the Alpha was pulsing, a dark, rhythmic throb beneath his skin.

"The bond," he whispered, his eyes fixed on my throat. "It’s not gone."

"It is," I lied, my breath hitching as his chest brushed against mine. "You rejected me. You killed it."

"Then why can I hear your heart beating in time with mine?" He lowered his head, his nose grazing the sensitive skin of my neck. I should have pushed him away. I should have used the knife in my belt. But my body was traitorous. After five years of absolute silence, the feeling of his Alpha heat was like a drug.

"You’re just... sensing the proximity," I managed to say, though my hands had found their way to his shoulders, gripping the torn fabric of his shirt.

"No. It’s more than that." Julian pulled back just enough to look me in the eye. "When you dropped the dampener earlier... something shifted. My wolf didn't just find you; it recognized you. Elara, an Omega rejection is supposed to be final. But you didn't just survive. You evolved. Your 'Silent' gene... it didn't kill the bond. It hid it. It masked it from the Council, from the Pack... even from me."

The realization hit me harder than the cave-in. If the bond wasn't broken, then legally, I was still the Luna of the Blackwood Pack. Every contract I’d signed, every stock I’d bought—it could all be contested if the Lycan Council found out I was still tied to the Alpha.

"No," I whispered, panic rising in my throat. "I won't be your Luna. I won't be a puppet for your pack."

"I don't want a puppet," Julian said, his voice dropping to a low, husky growl. He leaned in, his lips a breath away from mine. "I want the woman who had the guts to bankrupt me. I want the ghost who haunted my dreams for five years."

The flare sputtered, the red light dancing wildly against the walls. In that flickering moment, the corporate rivalry felt like a different world. There was only the heat, the dust, and the undeniable pull of a fate that refused to die.

"Julian," I warned, but it sounded like an invitation.

"Let me in, Elara," he murmured. "Just for a second. Stop being the CEO. Stop being the 'Ghost.' Just be mine."

He closed the gap. The kiss wasn't soft; it was a collision. It tasted of salt, dust, and five years of repressed agony. It was the sound of a 200-chapter story finding its true pulse.

But as my hands slid into his hair, a rhythmic thumping came from the other side of the rocks.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

Morse code.

I pulled away, my lips bruised, my mind spinning. "Elias," I gasped.

Julian let out a frustrated growl, resting his forehead against mine. "He has the worst timing of any rogue I’ve ever met."

"He’s saving our lives, Julian," I said, my professional mask sliding back into place, even as my heart screamed at the loss of his heat. "If he’s tapping, it means the Order is still up there. They’re listening for us."

Julian took a deep breath, the amber in his eyes slowly receding. He looked at the rocks, then back at me. The vulnerability was gone, replaced by the cold, calculating Alpha who had built a billion-dollar empire.

"We have to get out," he said, his voice now flat and business-like. "But Elara? When we get to the surface, the war doesn't stop. If Isabella finds out about this... if she finds out you're still mated to me... she won't just try to kill you. She’ll burn the city down to hide what she’s done."

"Then we’d better make sure she doesn't find out," I said, reaching for a piece of jagged stone to tap back to Elias. "From this moment on, we are enemies in public. The bond stays in the dark, Julian. Do you understand?"

Julian looked at the dying flare, his face unreadable. "I understand. But remember, Elara... the dark is where the real predators play."