Chapter 002

Sienna's POV

The air hit me first.

Clinical and sharp, thick with the industrial rot of bleach and old iron. I tried to drag oxygen into my lungs but my chest was pinned under an invisible weight, my body heavy, my eyelids rusted shut by dried salt.

I tried to shift. A loud clang echoed through the hollow room as metal struck metal. Steel bit into my wrists where my pulse hammered against the restraints, strapping me down like a specimen rather than a person.

Deep within me, my wolf stopped whimpering and began to pace. A low guttural snarl built in my throat because she felt the violation before I even saw the blade.

Then came the scent of cedar and cold.

My eyes snapped open. The overhead bulb buzzed with a dying insect hum that burned into my retinas. Lucas stood by the far wall like a statue carved from ice, staring at my feet as if I were already a corpse waiting to be buried.

"Oh, look. The vessel is finally awake," Ivy purred.

She stood beside him, draped in a silk dress that looked obscene against the grime of the room. She invaded his space, cupped his face, pulled him into a kiss while keeping her eyes open, locking them on mine with a cruel and triumphant glint.

Lucas did not flinch. He did not resist. When she finally pulled away his eyes found mine, flat and cold, with no trace of anything left in them.

"Mother, the heart rate is peaking," Ivy said, her voice climbing with sick excitement. "Let's not waste the moon. I am not letting my son be born weak just because an Omega is hoarding the bloodline."

"Patience, Ivy." Morrigan stepped into the light wearing a sterile white lab coat, carrying a tray of instruments with the ease of someone who had done this before. "The vessel is ready. The moon is high."

Vessel. A harvest.

"Lucas." My voice came out thin and distant. "You marked me yesterday. You claimed me. Why."

"Stop it, Sienna." He turned his face to the wall. His jaw worked once, then went still, and he would not look at me. "You have always been fragile," he muttered, the words arriving flat, like something repeated until the meaning wore off. "This is service."

"Fragile." My body shook in a violent tremor. "You are standing there while they plan to carve me open."

"The moon is peaking," Ivy said sharply, leaning over the table until her face was inches from mine.

"Stop. Ivy, please." Pride stripped away by raw terror, I let it go entirely. "Just let me go. I will go to the human cities. You will never see me again."

Ivy blinked. Something that might have been surprise crossed her face before she laughed, slow and certain.

"You really are stupid," she whispered. "You think this is about the man. I want what she denied me. Womb, name, blood. You are the last." She dragged her tongue over the mate mark on my neck, the one Lucas had given me with promises of forever.

"Enough." Lucas finally moved to the bedside.

Hope flickered in my chest before my wolf rose inside me, her eyes turning a blinding pale white.

"Lucas, look at me," I whispered. "You said I was your anchor."

"Sienna." He said it quietly, leaning in. His hand reached for my hair but his fingers stopped short, as if the air around me had begun to burn. "I do love you." He swallowed once. "Father is dying. This buys him time. The pack needs strength, and you carry that. Your spark, his future."

I went limp.

He stepped back, turned to the wall, and began muttering a pack mantra under his breath like a man who has decided the only way through something is to stop thinking about it.

The room fell into deathly silence.

Then the blade went in.

A jagged cold slice tore across my abdomen. My vision whited out as the needle sank deep, a sick hollow suction dragging through me as if the heat were being pulled straight from my marrow.

"It is working," Morrigan whispered.

I forced my eyes toward her hand. She held a glass vial, and for one brief moment I saw it clearly. The liquid inside was not red. It was a thick pulsing gold that lit her fingers from within while she stared at it with wide and greedy eyes.

That was when the hum in the room changed.

A roar ripped from my throat. Not human. Something that rose from deep beneath the floor, like the earth itself was screaming through me.

The bulb overhead shrieked and exploded. The force of it hit the windows, shattering the glass into a thousand shards that burst outward into the night.

Everything blurred into motion and shadow. I could no longer see their faces but I heard the tray crash to the floor and Ivy's sharp terrified scream cutting through the dark.

"The light. Morrigan, it is burning through the glass."

The heat in my veins surged until I could no longer feel the table or the restraints. I was no longer a girl. Something else entirely, collapsing inward like a dying star.

My fading sight caught one last thing. The gold was no longer only in the vial. It was leaking from my wound, spilling across the floor in a molten river that lit the darkness on fire.

My heart stuttered.

Stopped.

Then the blackness came.