Chapter 2

Collette Cooley POV:

Refusing to part my lips for his abortive brew, I clamped my jaws shut so hard my teeth bit clean through my lower lip. The metallic warmth of fresh blood welled up, trickling down my chin. Instead of striking me, Cooper merely raised a pale thumb and smoothed away the scarlet drop with the nauseating tenderness of a doting lover.

"Lottie, rest assured," he whispered against my ear, smooth as poison. "Even though your body has been stained by that beast's scent, I will never despise you."

His chilly fingertips slid across my cheek, calluses dragging over the raised, blackened scar that snaked across my skin—a wound that had never faded because of the lingering silver poison.

"Just as no one in this world besides me would tolerate your ruined face and your crippled, silent inner wolf, I will still treat you as before," Cooper murmured, his tone turning venomously sweet. "However, that tolerance does not include the bastard warrior blood taking root in your womb."

His gentle mask fractured entirely into vicious cruelty. Before I could twist away, his hand clamped around my jaw, forcing my bloody teeth apart as he poured the freezing, metallic draught straight down my throat.

The moment the liquid struck my stomach, it burned like molten iron. Ground silver—the one lethal bane capable of destroying a werewolf's rapid healing and violently severing the soul from the flesh.

I clawed wildly at his lavish velvet tunic, ripping the fine fabric, but Cooper pinned me against the mattress with an iron grip.

"Stripping away a high-ranking bloodline will hurt a little," he breathed against my temple, holding me trapped against his chest. "Do not be afraid. Your husband will stay right here with you. Do you know, from the first moment I saw you, I decided you belonged to me? Yet how could a common-born Beta like me ever reach a noble legitimate daughter?"

He let out a cold, quiet sigh against my hair.

"Thankfully, you were ambushed back then. Your face was slashed by a silver blade, and your wolf went dormant, forcing the Hewitt heir, Firman, to break off your betrothal. Only then did heaven drop you into my hands..."

Before I could grasp the horrifying truth behind his confession, a tearing agony detonated in my lower belly and my soul at the same time. The silver poison raced through my veins like boiling acid, dissolving my body's natural resilience and severing the fledgling soul-thread binding the apex pup to my womb.

A sudden, violent convulsion tore through my core, followed by a hot rush of blood soaking through my linen nightgown, dyeing the bedding dark crimson. My pup... Deep within my consciousness, my fragile inner wolf let out one last despairing howl as the silver rot devoured her essence, before sinking into the icy abyss of an endless, suffocating slumber.

Staring at the expanding pool of blood, Cooper curved his lips into a relieved, sickening smile and gathered me tighter against him. "Do not be afraid, Lottie. I am right here."

Summoning the last dregs of my strength from sheer hatred, I drove both hands against his chest and shoved the monster away with all my might.

"Get out!" I screamed, the sound tearing ragged from my throat. "You lunatic!"

The words barely left my mouth before a mouthful of thick black blood mixed with silver residue sprayed from my lips. My strength shattered, and my body collapsed backward onto the stained pillows.

My limbs twitched uncontrollably on the mattress, tangled dark hair sticking to the black gore on my chin. Closing my eyes, I let out a wet, rattling laugh. I should have known. Now that he had used my body to frame Arther and secured his glorious path at court, keeping a ruined wife who knew his filthy secret was a liability he could never afford.

"A high office, a stolen fortune, and a dead wife," I choked out through the red froth bubbling in my throat, glaring into his widening pupils. "You really did play a flawless game, Cooper Ortiz..."

Seeing the black blood pouring from my lips as my heartbeat stuttered to a halt, the cold smugness on Cooper's face cracked into sudden, unvarnished panic.

"Lottie? Lottie!" he shouted, grabbing my limp shoulders. "I didn't mean to—it wasn't meant to kill you! Don't die! Don't you dare die!"

He stumbled backward, lunging toward the oak door and roaring wildly into the courtyard for a Pack Healer, screaming for the High Alchemists.

Too late. Not even the rarest divine healing magic of the High Court could mend a soul whose flesh had been shredded by pure silver. The cold seeped into my marrow. My pulse sputtered out, and my vision dissolved into absolute dark.

A strange weightlessness pulled at me. Bound by some ancient, unseen tether of the Moon Goddess, I did not vanish into the void; instead, I floated upward as a translucent spirit hovering beneath the ceiling rafters.

Looking down, I watched Cooper throw himself over my cooling corpse, weeping and wailing as if his very heart had been torn in two. My ghostly stomach churned with pure disgust. He was the butcher who had poured the silver down my throat, yet he put on this pathetic spectacle of grief for the household servants.

Several days later, my spirit followed my body as it was moved to the Great Hall of Mourning in the center of the manor. Black silk drapes hung from the vaulted stone pillars, and hundreds of white beeswax candles illuminated the bower of pale winter roses. Cooper held a grand Wake that stirred the entire capital, receiving mournful condolences from noble colleagues who praised him as the most devoted, tragic widower in the realm.

Bound by an unseen spiritual tether, I could not drift more than five paces away from my corpse, forcing me to hover idly above the stone catafalque. My lifeless body lay encased within a carved limestone sarcophagus fitted with a heavy frost-glass viewing lid. Through the crystal, my gray skin made that blackened silver-blade scar look even more hideous—twisted like a dead centipede across pale marble.

When midnight arrived, the mourning guests finally departed, leaving the vast stone hall in hollow, echoing silence. Dying with such monstrous grievances yet unable to take vengeance filled my phantom chest with suffocating despair.

Suddenly, the candle flames whipped violently to the side. The ambient air grew impossibly heavy, thrumming with the crushing, suffocating bloodline pressure of a supreme predator.

Outside the hall, the night had gone eerily dead. No wind rustled; no nightjars cried. An ancient suppression aura had descended over the grounds like an iron bell—an apex predator's presence so terrifying that every sentry and patrol hound across the perimeter had collapsed in silent, breathless paralysis.

The heavy oak doors parted without a sound.

A tall figure wrapped in a soot-black cloak stepped out from the stormy shadows into the hall, radiating the lethal Alpha warrior scent of bloodied cedar, wet snow, and cold steel.

Cooper, who had been kneeling drowsily before the catafalque, snapped his head up. The instant he caught that terrifying scent, his bloodshot eyes bulged with venomous shock. He lunged forward across the stone floor, his fist swinging wildly through the air.