I wake to spinning walls and a skull that feels like it's cracking open from the inside. Everything tilts wrong. The ceiling swims. My mouth tastes like copper and something bitter.
"You're awake. Finally."
The voice pulls me toward focus. Rhys. He sits in a chair beside the bed, slumped forward with his elbows on his knees. His clothes are rumpled, shirt half-untucked. Dark circles shadow his eyes like bruises.
I try to sit up. My arms don't respond right. They move but slowly, like I'm underwater. Everything feels sluggish, disconnected.
"What did you do to me?" My voice comes out slurred, tongue thick.
"You're still sedated." He leans forward, studying my face. "The healer had to keep you under. You were violent. Thrashing. Screaming for him constantly. We couldn't risk you hurting yourself."
Fragments flash through my mind. Hands holding me down. Voices murmuring. A sharp sting in my arm. Darkness dragging me under again and again, no matter how hard I fought.
"How long?" I manage to ask.
"Three days since we brought you back." He rubs his face with both hands. "The healer miscalculated the dosage the first night. Too strong. You barely woke at all."
Three days. Three days of darkness while Kieran—
I lunge at him. Or try to. My body moves like I'm pushing through mud. Slow. Uncoordinated. Weak.
Rhys catches my wrists easily, pushing me back down. His weight pins me to the mattress, knees on either side of my hips. His face hovers inches from mine.
"Where is he?" I demand. "What did you do to him?"
"The rogue is dead, Ardena." His voice stays flat, emotionless. "My warriors made sure of it before they left Nightshade territory. He bled out in the dirt where he belongs."
The words hit like fists to my chest. One after another. Dead. Bled out. Gone.
"Liar!" I spit in his face.
Saliva hits his cheek, drips down toward his jaw. He doesn't flinch. Doesn't wipe it away. Just stares at me with those cold gray eyes while my spit slides down his skin.
"You've changed," he says quietly. "The Ardena I married would never have done that."
"The Ardena you married was a lie." I thrash beneath him, trying to buck him off. The sedatives make my movements weak and uncoordinated. "Let me go!"
He holds me down easily, his grip firm but not bruising. "He poisoned your mind. Filled it with stories about massacres and stolen bloodlines. Convinced you that everything you knew was false."
"It was false!"
"Was it?" He shifts his weight, pressing down harder when I try to twist free. "Or did a desperate rogue tell you exactly what you needed to hear to betray your pack? Your husband? Your people?"
I laugh, and the sound comes out bitter and ragged. "You want me to believe you? Then prove it. Show me evidence. Show me anything that proves I'm wrong."
He studies my face for a long moment. Then he releases my wrists slowly, carefully, like I'm a wild animal that might attack. He sits back, pulling a cloth from his pocket to finally wipe the spit from his face.
"Tomorrow." He stands, moving toward the door with deliberate steps. "I'll show the entire pack what happens when wolves fall for rogues' lies and manipulation. Everyone will see the truth."
"What does that mean?" I try to sit up again. My body cooperates slightly more now, though everything still moves wrong. "What are you planning?"
"Justice." He stops at the door, his hand on the frame. He doesn't turn around. "I'm certain someone inside Ironvale helped you escape that night. Someone gave you the keys. Someone looked the other way."
My blood goes cold.
"If you care about your friends at all," he continues, his voice dropping lower, "you'll cooperate tomorrow. You'll admit you were manipulated. You'll renounce the rogue's claims. You'll beg the pack for forgiveness."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I'll find whoever helped you." Now he looks back at me, and there's steel in his gaze. "And I'll execute them in your place. Slowly. Publicly. So everyone understands the cost of treason."
Isla. Sera. The faces flash through my mind. People I love. People who had nothing to do with my escape. People he could easily blame to isolate me completely.
"You wouldn't."
"Test me." He opens the door. "Get some rest, Luna. Tomorrow will be a long day."
The door closes. A lock clicks. Heavy and final.
I stare at the ceiling, waiting for grief to hit. Waiting to feel the crushing weight of loss, the emptiness of a severed mate bond.
But it doesn't come.
My wolf stirs deep inside, silent and withdrawn but present. And the mate bond—I reach for it carefully, like touching a bruise. It's there. Faint. Distant. But steady.
Kieran's alive.
He has to be. Because if he were dead, the bond would be gone. Severed. Empty. Instead, it pulls at my chest like a thread stretched too far but not broken.
Rhys is lying.
Relief floods through me so intensely my hands shake. I press my palms against my face, fighting tears. He's alive. Hurt, probably badly. Maybe unconscious. But alive.
I just have to survive long enough to find him again.
Tomorrow Rhys plans to parade me in front of the pack. To break me publicly. To force me to denounce everything I've learned, everyone I've become.
And he'll use my friends as leverage.
I curl onto my side, tucking my knees to my chest. The sedatives still drag at my mind, making thoughts slow and sticky. But underneath the fog, rage builds. Not grief. Not despair.
Pure, focused rage.
Rhys thinks he's won. He thinks he can control me with threats and drugs and locked doors.
He's wrong.
I close my eyes and reach for the mate bond, following that thin thread through the darkness. Wherever Kieran is, whatever condition he's in, he's alive.
And I'm going to get back to him.
No matter what it costs.