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Nothing answers. My eyes stay on Selena. My Luna. My best friend. My sister. Her unborn pup. The rogues lift her. I try to move. My body doesn't listen.

"Darian..."

His voice crashes through our bond, but I can't understand the words anymore. Darkness closes over the edges of my vision. I reach for my wolf one last time. Nothing is there. Then the darkness takes me.

40

Rylan's POV

Ihear Selena’s scream through our bond, raw, terrified, and then nothing. Absolute silence.

"Selena!"

I’m already running, already shifting, my body contorting as I tear through the forest toward Cypress Moon Park. My Lycan form erupts from my skin, bones snapping and reforming, muscles expanding as I hit the ground on four massive paws instead of two feet. The transformation should hurt, but I feel nothing. Nothing except the silence coming from my mate.

"Selena! Answer me!"

Silence.

Our mate bond is still there. Intact. I know exactly what a broken bond feels like, and this isn't it. But Selena is silent on the other end. I reach through it again and again, searching for her thoughts, her voice, anything that tells me what is happening.

Mate.

"I know."

Find our mate.

"I will."

"ARLENE!" Darian’s voice screams through the mindlink, frantic, desperate. "Something’s wrong! She isn't answering me!"

I run faster, trees blurring around me as I crash through the forest. My paws tear into the earth, throwing soil behind me. The park should be eight minutes away. I’ll make it in four.

"Justin!" I mindlink, my thoughts sharp as broken glass. "Take command at the border. Darian is coming with me."

"Yes, Alpha."

I push harder, branches whipping across my Lycan’s thick hide. Blood runs down my flank where one catches deep, but I don’t slow. Can’t slow. My mate is out there. My unborn daughter is out there.

"Selena!"

Nothing.

Not again.

The words rip through me, and suddenly I’m holding Selena’s dead body in my arms again. I remember the weight of her against me. The silence where our bond should have been. I remember knowing I was too late. But that isn’t the only loss clawing its way out of my past. Elise. My first mate. Our unborn child. Rogues took them both from me, and now rogues have Selena while she carries my daughter. No. I have already lost a mate and child to rogues. I have already held Selena after she died. I will not experience either again.

NO.

My Lycan's roar fills my head.

They will not take our mate. They will not take our pup.

The trees thin. I burst into Cypress Moon Park and stop dead.

Blood. Everywhere. Splattered across the grass, pooling beneath scattered bodies. Sixteen rogue corpses lie twisted and broken across the clearing. Their throats torn open, chests ripped apart, limbs bent at impossible angles. The scent of copper and death hangs thick in the air.

Arlene did this. I can smell her here, fierce, protective, the scent of a mother wolf defending her pack. The path of her fight is written in blood and broken bodies. She moved like death itself through these rogues, cutting them down one by one.