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“Hold him,” Candice orders. Hands grab my arms, forcing them behind my back. The pain is excruciating as the silver bites into my wrists. “The spine is the most effective injection point,” Candice says, releasing the pups and walking toward me. “Direct access to the central nervous system.” She circles behind me. I feel the cold press of the needle against the base of my skull.

“What are you doing to Daddy?” Darlene cries.

“Making him better,” Candice says sweetly. “Don’t worry, little ones. You’ll be next.”

The needle plunges into the base of my neck. Fire explodes through my body. Liquid silver and wolfsbane race through my nervous system, burning everything in its path. I scream, the sound tearing from my throat as my wolf howls in agony.

Mate! Pups! Need to… protect.

The connection to my wolf begins to fade. Like a light being dimmed, then dimmed again. The familiar presence that has been with me since childhood grows weaker, more distant.

No... Not… yet… They… need… me… protect.

But the poison doesn’t care about my wolf’s pleas. My wolf’s consciousness shrinks to a pinprick, then nothing. Just... silence. An emptiness where half my soul used to be. I collapse forward, barely catching myself on trembling arms. Every nerve ending screams. My vision blurs, darkening at the edges.

“Let. my. chil… dren. go.” The words come out slurred, barely recognizable as speech. Candice crouches before me, her face swimming in and out of focus. “Oh, Darian. You still don’t understand, do you? This was never about letting them go.” She stands, turning toward Darlene and Damian who cling to each other, terrified.

“It was about fulfilling the contract. Your whole family has to die.” She walks behind my pups and injects both of them with the silver and wolfsbane serum. They collapse slowly. “Da… ddy.” They say as they fall to the ground.

"NO!” My scream tears through the rogue camp, raw enough to make the trees tremble. But my body never moves.

2

Darian's POV

“Shut up,” Candice hisses, kneeling beside me. Her breath smells like mint and something metallic. “You’ll wake the whole forest.”

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out except a strangled sound. Every muscle in my body refuses to obey, locked in place by whatever poison she pumped into my spine. I can feel the silver working its way through my nervous system like liquid ice, freezing everything it touches. My fingers twitch against the ground, that’s all I can manage. A twitch.

But my eyes work. My eyes find my pups lying motionless in the dirt, their small bodies limp as discarded dolls.

“Da...mi...” The word comes out wrecked, barely recognizable. “Dar...len...”

“Quiet.” Candice presses her boot against my chest, pinning me. The pressure makes my ribs creak, but I can’t even flinch away from it. “They’re fine. Well...” She smiles. That smile. Sweet and practiced and utterly monstrous. “They’re technically still alive, for now. A sedative mixed with silver and wolfsbane will keep Alpha blooded pups unconscious until we get back to the rogue camp.”

My lungs seize. The relief that floods through me is so violent it almost hurts worse than the poison. Alive. Still alive.

“Aww,” Candice coos, reading my face. “See? Not so hopeless after all.”

Hands grab me under the armpits. Zeke and another warrior haul me upright, and my legs drag uselessly behind me, boots scraping twin furrows in the dirt. My head lolls forward, chin bouncing against my chest. Through the curtain of my hair, I watch Candice gather my pups like sacks of grain, one under each arm, their limbs dangling, heads lolling.

“Let’s go,” Zeke says. “Before the patrol rotation comes back.”

They drag me through the forest. Every root, every stone, every branch tears at my bare skin, but the silver has done its job too well. I feel it distantly, like the pain belongs to someone else. My body is a dead thing being hauled across the earth, and the only part of me that still screams is the part Candice’s needle couldn’t reach.

Wake up, I beg the silence inside my skull. Wake up, wake up, wake up.

Nothing answers.

The rogue camp materializes through the trees, torchlight flickering against canvas tents. Candice leads the way, my unconscious pups swinging against her hips, and no one stops her. No one even looks twice. The few rogues still awake glance at us and then quickly away, I catch the shame in their eyes before they turn their backs.

They knew. Some of them, at least. They knew and they did nothing.

Zeke drags me past the central fire pit, past the row of supply tents, toward the back of the rogue camp where the ground slopes downward into a rocky outcropping. I’ve patrolled this area a hundred times. There’s nothing here. Just rocks and dead brush.

Candice kneels, sets the pups down carefully, the tenderness of the gesture makes bile rise in my throat, and presses her palm against a flat stone embedded in the hillside. Something clicks. The rock slides sideways, revealing a dark opening that exhales cold, damp air.

A hidden entrance.