Prologue
Gamma Michael was in his office when he felt a sudden pain tear through his chest. He gasped for breath, but couldn't inhale deep enough.
The bond didn’t just snap; it detonated.
One second, Evelyn’s warmth was a steady, rhythmic pulse at the back of his mind. The next, a blinding flash of psychic agony ripped through his skull, followed by a terrifying, hollow silence. It felt as though a vital organ had been surgically torn from his chest without anesthesia.
Michael dropped to his knees, clawing at the floor. A sound tore from his throat—not human, not wolf, but a mangled, agonizing shriek that shook the large room.
No. No, no, no.
He forced his mind outward, screaming her name into the mental void. He met nothing but freezing, empty space. She was gone.
The grief didn’t come as tears; it came as fire. It flooded his veins like boiling acid. His skin felt suffocatingly tight, a pathetic cage for the rage detonating inside him. Muscles tore and re-knitted in seconds. Bones snapped, elongating with sickening cracks. He didn’t just shift; his wolf tore its way out of him, desperate to destroy something to match the destruction inside his soul.
He rose on four massive paws, a towering chocolate brown beast driven entirely by feral madness.
Michael turned on his own territory. He slammed against the door, fracturing the glass. Tearing the wall in half next to the office door, he lumbered out into the cool air.
He tore at the earth, throwing up chunks of soil and rock, his claws leaving deep, jagged wounds in the terrain. He bit into boulders until his jaws bled, needing the physical pain to drown out the screaming emptiness in his mind.
When a few of his pack brothers sprinted into the clearing, drawn by the psychic shockwave of the broken bond, Michael didn’t see allies. He saw targets. He lunged, snapping his jaws inches from the Beta’s throat, a guttural, lethal growl vibrating through the pack. He bared his blood-stained fangs, forcing his own pack to back away in terror. He was completely untethered. No Alpha could command him now.
He caught her scent on the wind—underneath the pine and damp earth, there was the sharp, metallic tang of silver and stranger’s blood. The monsters who took her had left a trail.
Michael didn’t look back at his pack. He didn’t look back at his home. He threw his head back, letting out a final, blood-chilling howl that promised absolute slaughter, and charged blindly into the dark.
