I made it three steps down the corridor before my legs gave out.
The guard caught me barely and helped me lean against the wall. His scarred face showed no surprise, like he'd been expecting this.
"How long were you in there?" he asked.
"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen." It had felt like hours.
"That's better than most." He studied me with professional assessment. "You need medical?"
"No." I pushed off the wall, forcing strength back into my trembling limbs. "I'm fine."
"Sure you are." But he stepped back, giving me space. "Your father left orders. You're to report to him immediately after the first session."
Of course he did.
I nodded and started walking, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. My body felt wrong... too hot, too tight, like my skin didn't fit properly anymore. Every breath I took seemed to carry Kael's scent, that impossible combination of pine and rain and wild things.
Mate bond, he'd called it.
Insane. Impossible.
And yet.
I reached the elevator and jabbed the button harder than necessary. My reflection stared back at me from the polished metal doors... pale face, too-wide eyes, hair coming loose from its braid. I looked haunted.
I looked like someone whose entire world had just been turned inside out.
The elevator arrived with a soft chime. I stepped in and selected my father's floor. As the doors closed, I caught myself reaching for the pendant I wore... my mother's pendant, the only thing I had of hers. A simple silver wolf on a leather cord.
A wolf.
I'd worn it every day since I was old enough to understand what I'd lost. Never once questioned why my father would let me wear the symbol of what had supposedly killed her. Never wondered why a hunter's daughter would treasure a werewolf image.
The elevator stopped. The doors opened.
Marcus Ashford stood in his office doorway, waiting.
"Come in, Elara."
His office was everything the cells below weren't warm, richly furnished, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the mountain forest. The view was beautiful, but I'd learned long ago that beauty in my father's presence was usually a prelude to pain.
"Sit."
I sat in the chair across from his massive oak desk. He remained standing, a power play I recognized from years of experience.
"Tell me about the interrogation."
"It didn't go as planned."
"Oh?" One eyebrow rose. "Did he attack you?"
"No."
"Did he refuse to speak?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what, precisely, went wrong?" His tone remained mild, but I heard the steel underneath.
I met his eyes... cold and blue, nothing like the warm amber that had trapped me minutes ago. "He talked. Just not about what I expected."
"Elaborate."
How did I explain this? How do I tell my father that his prisoner had spent fifteen minutes systematically dismantling everything I'd been taught, everything I believed?
"He knows things," I said carefully. "About you. About me. Things he shouldn't know."
"Such as?"
"My pills. The vitamins I take every morning. He said they contain wolfsbane."
Marcus's expression didn't change. Not even a flicker. "And?"
"Is it true?"
"You're asking me if I've been poisoning you for twenty years?" He moved then, circling around his desk with predatory grace. "Think carefully before you answer, Elara. Think about who's telling you these stories. A werewolf who's chained in my dungeon, facing torture and death. A creature that would say anything, promise anything, lie about everything if it meant survival."
He had a point. Of course he had a point.
"He also said..." I hesitated, then pushed forward. "He said I'm a werewolf. That my mother was pack, not human."
"And you believed him."
"I'm asking you to tell me the truth."
"The truth." My father laughed, a sound devoid of humor. "The truth is that Kael Thornhart is everything I warned you about. Intelligent. Manipulative. Dangerous. He's had less than an hour with you and already he's planted doubt." He leaned against his desk, arms crossed. "Let me guess what else he said. That I'm the villain. That werewolves are peaceful. That the numbers are wrong, that we're the real monsters. Did I miss anything?"
My silence was answer enough.
"Classic strategy," Marcus continued. "Turn the victim against their family, make them question everything they know. It's Stockholm Syndrome with a supernatural twist." He tilted his head. "Did he tell you about the mate bond too?"
My breath caught.
"Ah. He did." My father's smile was shark-like. "That's new. Usually they save that particular lie for day two or three. He must be more desperate than I thought."
"It's not real?"
"Oh, mate bonds are real. Rare, but real. But they're not what werewolves have romanticized them into." He pushed off the desk and crossed to the windows, looking out over the forest. "Do you know what a mate bond actually is, Elara? It's biology. Pheromones and hormones designed to ensure strong offspring. The 'soul connection' they talk about? Chemical dependency. The 'recognition'? Genetic compatibility. Strip away the poetry and it's just animals responding to evolutionary imperatives."
"That's not..." I stopped myself.
"Not what he told you?" My father glanced back at me. "Of course not. He told you it was destiny. Fate. That your souls recognized each other. That you're meant to be together despite everything that should keep you apart." His eyes narrowed. "And some part of you wanted to believe him."
"No."
"Don't lie to me." His voice cracked like a whip. "I watched the footage. I saw how you looked at him. How you reacted. He got under your skin in less than fifteen minutes... exactly as I knew he would."
The admission stunned me. "You knew?"
"Of course I knew. Why do you think I chose him specifically? Why do you think I put you in that cell instead of any of my other hunters?" He moved closer, and I had to fight the urge to shrink back. "You think this is a test of your interrogation skills? Your ability to withstand manipulation? No, Elara. This is a test of something much more fundamental."
"What?"
"Loyalty." He said it simply. "I need to know if you're truly mine. If twenty-three years of training and discipline will hold against the most powerful weapon a werewolf possesses their mate bond."
My mouth went dry. "You're using me as an experiment."
"I'm preparing you for war." He gripped my shoulders, his touch firm enough to bruise. "There's a storm coming, Elara. The treaty is failing. The packs are getting bold. Soon, we'll have to make a choice... wipe them out completely or be overrun. And when that war comes, I need to know that my daughter, my heir, won't be turned by some werewolf's pretty lies and pheromones."
"I would never..."
"You don't know what you'd do. None of us do until we're tested." He released me and stepped back. "That's why you're going back down there tomorrow. And the day after. You're going to face Kael Thornhart every day for three days, and you're going to prove to both of us that you're strong enough to resist."
"And if I'm not?"
His expression hardened. "Then you're not my daughter."
The words hit like a physical blow.
"Get some rest," he continued, turning back to his desk. "Tomorrow will be harder. He'll escalate, try different tactics. Be prepared."
I stood on shaking legs. "And if I get him to talk? If I actually extract information?"
"Then you'll have exceeded my expectations." He sat down, already pulling up files on his computer. "Dismissed."
I walked to the door, then paused. "Father?"
"What?"
"The pills. You never answered. Is there wolfsbane in them?"
He looked up, and for just a moment, I saw something in his eyes. Not love... I'd never seen that. But something almost like regret.
"Get some rest, Elara."
Which wasn't an answer at all.
I didn't go to my room.
Instead, I found myself in the estate's medical facility, waiting while the night nurse pulled my prescription records. She was young, relatively new, and hadn't yet learned to question orders from an Ashford.
"Here we are," she said, handing me a tablet. "Daily supplement, prescribed when you were... wow, when you were three years old? That's unusual."
I scanned the ingredient list. Medical terminology I didn't fully understand, compounds I'd never heard of. And there, buried in the middle: Aconitum napellus extract.
Wolfsbane.
My hands started shaking again. I set the tablet down carefully, afraid I'd drop it.
"Miss Ashford? Are you alright?"
"What does this do?" I pointed at the wolfsbane notation. "What's its medical purpose?"
She hesitated. "I... I'm not sure. That's not my area of expertise. But I can look it up..."
"Do that."
She tapped at her computer while I struggled to breathe normally. This didn't prove anything. Medical applications, my father had said. Legitimate reasons to include it.
"That's strange," the nurse murmured.
"What?"
"Wolfsbane extract has limited medical uses. Mostly historical. Some cultures used tiny amounts for heart conditions, but modern medicine has much better alternatives." She looked up at me. "According to this, the primary modern use is... oh."
"Tell me."
"Supernatural suppressant. It's used on captured werewolves to prevent them from shifting or accessing their enhanced abilities." She frowned. "But you're human, so I'm not sure why..."
I was out the door before she finished the sentence.
My feet carried me through the estate's corridors without conscious direction. Past the training rooms, past the armory, past the residential quarters. I ended up in the archive, a room I rarely entered, filled with old records and forgotten files.
My mother's file was exactly where I'd found it years ago, tucked between mission reports from 1999 and 2001. I'd looked at it exactly once, when I was sixteen and curious about the woman I couldn't remember.
I pulled it out with trembling hands and opened it.
Sarah Elara Ashford (née Moonridge)
Date of Birth: August 15, 1977
Date of Death: March 3, 2002
Cause of Death: [CLASSIFIED]
Additional Notes: Subject was compromised. Termination authorized by Hunt Master Marcus Ashford. See attached documentation for full details.
Termination.
Not killed by werewolves.
Terminated.
The room spun. I grabbed the shelf for support, papers scattering around my feet.
Subject was compromised.
My father had killed my mother.
The door opened behind me. I turned to find Thomas standing there, his face pale.
"El, what are you doing in here? It's three in the morning."
"Did you know?" My voice came out strangled. "About my mother?"
He went very still. "What about her?"
"That my father murdered her. That she was werewolf. That everything I've been told my entire life is a lie."
"Elara..."
"Did you know."
He closed the door carefully, checking the hallway first. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. "I found out six months ago. I wasn't supposed to see the file, but I... I was doing research on something else and it came up in the search."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"Your father made everyone sign NDAs. Made it clear that anyone who spoke about it would be terminated. Not fired, Elara. Terminated." He moved closer. "I wanted to tell you. God, I wanted to. But I couldn't figure out how without getting us both killed."
I looked back down at the file, at my mother's photograph clipped to the inside cover. She looked so young. Happy. Nothing like the monster I'd been told destroyed our family.
"What else don't I know?"
"About your mother? Not much. She was omega... low-ranking werewolf. Fell in love with your father before she knew he was a hunter. When she got pregnant, she tried to leave. He tracked her down and..." Thomas swallowed hard. "The official story is that she attacked him and he defended himself. But there are inconsistencies in the report. Witnesses that were never interviewed. Evidence that disappeared."
"He murdered her."
"Yeah. I think he did."
I closed the file, closed my eyes. Tried to process this new reality where everything I knew was built on lies.
"The prisoner," I said finally. "Kael Thornhart. He told me all of this. I didn't believe him."
"You should have." Thomas pulled out a chair and sat, suddenly looking exhausted. "El, there's more. Things about what your father has planned. Things I probably shouldn't tell you but..."
"Tell me everything."
He did.
He told me about the secret weapon development in the lower labs. About experiments on captured werewolves, trying to extract their abilities for use in human soldiers. About the upcoming offensive... a coordinated strike on twelve pack territories simultaneously.
"It's genocide," Thomas finished. "He's planning to wipe out every major pack on the West Coast in one night. And he's been planning it for years."
"How many will die?"
"Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. Packs don't just have warriors. They have families, elders, children."
Children.
My stomach turned.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you're the only one who might be able to stop it." He reached across the table and grabbed my hand. "Your father respects you, listens to you. If anyone can make him see reason..."
"He won't listen. You know that."
"Then we find another way." His grip tightened. "El, I'm going to be honest with you about something. I know how you feel about me, or don't feel. I've known for years that you'll never see me as anything more than a friend. But I still care about you. And I can't watch your father turn you into something you're not."
"What am I?"
"Someone good. Someone who questions. Someone who feels too much even though you've been trained not to." He smiled sadly. "Someone who's about to make a very difficult choice about who she wants to be."
I pulled my hand back. "What choice?"
"Whether to be your father's daughter or your own person. Whether to follow orders or follow your conscience." He stood, pushing his chair back. "Whether to see Kael Thornhart as an enemy or something else entirely."
"You think he's right? About the mate bond?"
"I think," Thomas said carefully, "that you've never looked at anyone the way you looked at him on those monitors. I think something happened in that cell that scared your father more than he's letting on. And I think you need to figure out what that something is before it's too late."
He headed for the door, then paused.
"One more thing. The pills you take? Your father modified the dosage three weeks ago. Right after he captured Thornhart." He met my eyes. "He's been preparing for this, El. All of it. The question is: what exactly is he preparing you for?"
Then he was gone, and I was alone with my mother's file and the wreckage of everything I'd once believed.
I looked at my mother's photograph again. Studied her features... so similar to mine. The auburn hair. The shape of her eyes. The slight smile that suggested she knew secrets the camera couldn't capture.
"What do I do?" I whispered to her image.
She didn't answer. But somewhere deep inside, in a place that had been quiet my entire life, something stirred. Something that felt like recognition.
Like waking up.
I didn't sleep that night.
Instead, I sat in my room and made lists. Facts I knew versus facts I'd been told. Questions I needed answers to. Inconsistencies in my father's stories.
The more I wrote, the more the picture came together.
And the more it did, the more I realized Kael Thornhart had been right about everything.
When dawn finally came, I stood in front of my mirror and made myself look. Really look.
Green eyes... my mother's eyes.
Auburn hair... my mother's hair.
The way I moved when I fought, fluid and instinctive. The enhanced healing I'd always attributed to good genetics. The restlessness during full moons. The dreams of running through forests on four legs.
All my life, I'd been told I was human.
All my life, I'd been something else.
The question now was: what was I going to do about it?
I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door. Time to return to the cells. Time to face Kael Thornhart again.
Time to get some real answers.
But when I reached the lower levels, the guard stopped me.
"Miss Ashford. Your father left new instructions."
"What instructions?"
"You're not to go in unarmed or unequipped." He handed me the interrogation case I'd abandoned yesterday. "He says it's time to move to the next phase."
I looked down at the case, at the silver instruments inside. Tools designed to cause pain. To break. To destroy.
"And if I refuse?"
The guard's expression was sympathetic but firm. "Then he sends someone else. Someone who won't hesitate."
Meaning if I didn't torture Kael, someone else would. Someone who wouldn't care about mate bonds or truth or anything except extracting information by any means necessary.
I took the case.
The guard opened the door.
I stepped through.
And found Kael Thornhart exactly where I'd left him... chained to the wall, amber eyes tracking my entrance. But this time, he looked at the case in my hands first. Then at my face.
"So," he said quietly. "We move to the hard part."
"I need answers."
"Then ask. But I think we both know you're not here for interrogation anymore, are you, little hunter?"
He was right.
I set the case down and met his eyes.
"Tell me about mate bonds," I said. "Tell me everything."
His expression shifted... surprise, then something warmer.
"Finally ready to listen?"
"I'm ready for the truth. Whatever it is."
"Alright." He shifted, chains clinking. "But fair warning... once you know, you can't unknow. Once you understand what we are to each other, everything changes."
"Everything's already changed."
"Not yet. But it will." His eyes held mine. "Ask your questions, Elara. I'll answer as honestly as I can."
I pulled up the room's single chair and sat, facing him.
"Start at the beginning. What is a mate bond?"
"It's connection," he said simply. "Soul deep. When a werewolf finds their true mate, something inside them recognizes something inside the other. It's not a choice... it's recognition. Like finding a piece of yourself you didn't know was missing."
"That's not biology. That's poetry."
"It's both. The biological component is real... pheromone compatibility, genetic synchronization. But there's something else. Something science can't measure." He paused. "When I saw you yesterday, my wolf didn't just recognize a compatible female. He recognized his female. The only one. The one he'd been searching for across nearly three centuries."
"How do you know it's real? Not just attraction or pheromones like my father said?"
"Because I can feel you." He said it with such quiet intensity that it stole my breath. "Right now, even with these chains suppressing most of my abilities, I feel your heartbeat like it's my own. I feel your confusion, your fear, your anger. When you're in pain, I feel it. When you're close, everything in me settles. When you leave, it's like tearing something vital away."
"I don't feel that."
"Don't you?" His eyes searched mine. "You couldn't stop thinking about me last night. You came back here even though everything you've been taught says you shouldn't. You're sitting in that chair instead of using those tools because the thought of hurting me physically hurts you."
He was right. Damn him, he was right about all of it.
"My father said mate bonds are just chemical dependency."
"Your father is scared of them. Because a true mate bond can't be controlled or manipulated or broken. It's the one thing in our world that supersedes pack law, supersedes duty, supersedes everything." Kael leaned forward slightly. "That's why he drugged you. Why he kept you isolated. Why he's so desperate to prove the bond can be overcome. Because if it can't..."
"Then I'm lost to him."
"Yes."
I absorbed that, feeling the weight of it settle in my chest.
"Tell me something," I said after a moment. "If we're mates, why did my mother marry my father? Why didn't she have a mate bond with someone else?"
"Omega wolves don't always find their mates. It's rarer for them... their wolves aren't as dominant, don't have the same instincts driving them to search." His expression softened. "But from what I know of your mother, she believed in love without bonds. She fell for Marcus the human, before she knew Marcus the hunter. By the time she realized what he was, she was already pregnant with you."
"Did you know her?"
"No. She was Moonridge Pack... different territory. But I knew of her. Every pack did after her death. The omega who loved a hunter. The one who died trying to protect her hybrid daughter."
"Hybrid?"
"Human-werewolf couplings don't always produce viable offspring. When they do, the child is usually either fully human or fully wolf, never both. But occasionally—very occasionally—you get something else. Something that carries the potential for both."
"That's what I am?"
"That's what you are. With training, you could shift. With proper teaching, you could access all your wolf abilities. But your father's been suppressing that potential since you were a toddler, probably since the first time you showed signs of enhanced abilities."
I thought about all the times I'd healed too fast from training injuries. All the times my strength had surprised even the veteran hunters. All the times I'd known things I shouldn't have been able to know.
"Why not just kill me?" I asked. "If I'm half wolf, if I'm the evidence of his greatest mistake, why keep me alive?"
"Because you're useful." Kael's voice hardened. "A werewolf raised as a hunter. A hybrid who could infiltrate packs, who could betray her own kind without even knowing it. You're the perfect weapon, Elara. You always have been."
The truth of it hit like a physical blow.
"What do I do?" The question came out smaller than I intended.
"That depends. What do you want?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do. You're just afraid to admit it."
He was right. Because somewhere between yesterday and today, between lies and truth, between what I was taught and what I felt, I'd made a decision.
I just hadn't been ready to voice it yet.
"When did you last shift, Elara?"
The question echoed the one he'd asked yesterday. But this time, my answer was different.
"I don't remember ever shifting."
"But you've felt it. The wolf inside you, pressing against the barriers. Especially during full moons."
"Yes."
"The wolfsbane in your system prevents the shift. But it doesn't kill your wolf... it just locks her away." He studied me carefully. "Stop taking the pills. Let her wake up. Let yourself feel what you really are."
"And then?"
"Then you make a choice. Maybe you decide your father is right, that werewolves are monsters, that everything you've been taught is truth. Maybe you go back to being his perfect weapon." His eyes held mine. "Or maybe you decide there's another path. One where you're not anyone's weapon. Where you're just... yourself."
"Is that what the mate bond does? Makes me choose you over everything else?"
"The mate bond doesn't make you do anything. It just shows you what's possible. What you could have if you're brave enough to reach for it." He shifted again, and I heard the pain in his sharp intake of breath. "But I won't lie to you, Elara. If you accept the bond, if you let it complete, everything changes. Your loyalties. Your understanding of the world. Your very nature. You'd be choosing me over your father, pack over hunters, wolf over human."
"That's too much."
"I know."
"I can't..."
"I know that too."
We sat in silence for a long moment.
"Ask me something else," Kael said finally.
"Why did my father really capture you? Out of all the werewolves in the region, why you specifically?"
His smile was bitter. "Because I'm the one who killed his best hunters. The ones who got closest to tracking Silverpine's location. The ones who would have destroyed my pack if I hadn't stopped them." He paused. "And because I'm the one who was there the night your mother died."
Everything stopped.
"What?"
"I wasn't lying yesterday. I was there. I saw it happen." His eyes darkened with old pain. "We'd been tracking a group of hunters who'd been raiding the neutral zones. Found them at an abandoned cabin. Marcus Ashford was there, and he had a woman with him. She was begging, pleading with him about their daughter."
No. No, please...
"She shifted," Kael continued quietly. "Tried to escape with you. She was fast... omega wolves are always faster than they look. But she was weak from years of suppression, years of living as human. We tried to help her, but we were too late. Marcus shot her with silver before we could reach her."
"You saw him kill her."
"I saw him murder his mate. Watched him pick up a crying three-year-old girl and walk away like he hadn't just committed the worst betrayal imaginable." His chains rattled. "That's why he wants me specifically, Elara. Because I'm the witness to his greatest crime. And because I've spent twenty years making sure every werewolf in the region knows what Marcus Ashford really is."
"A monster."
"Yes."
I stood abruptly, the chair scraping against concrete.
"Where are you going?" Kael asked.
"I don't know. Out. Away. Somewhere I can think."
"Elara..."
"Don't." I held up a hand. "Don't say anything else. I can't... I need time."
"You don't have time. Your father's going to expect you to escalate today. To use those tools. To hurt me. And if you don't..."
"Then he'll know the bond is real."
"Yes."
I looked at the interrogation case, at the silver instruments gleaming inside. Tools of pain.
Then I looked at Kael... chained, injured, vulnerable.
Mine to hurt.
Mine to save.
Mine.
The word resonated through me with unexpected force.
"One more question," I said.
"Anything."
"If I choose this...if I choose you...what happens to me? Who do I become?"
"Someone free." His amber eyes caught the light. "Someone who makes her own choices instead of following her father's script. Someone who can look in the mirror and recognize herself."
"What if I'm not strong enough?"
"You are. You're stronger than you know. You just need to stop letting Marcus define your strength for you."
I turned toward the door, then stopped.
"The mate bond," I said without looking at him. "How does it... complete?"
"Are you asking for academic reasons or practical ones?"
"Both. Neither. I don't know."
"Physical contact accelerates it. Intimacy... emotional or physical... deepens it. And marking..." He trailed off.
"Marking?"
"A bite. An exchange of blood. It's the final step, the one that makes the bond permanent and unbreakable."
"And you want that? With me? Your enemy's daughter?"
"I want you, Elara. Enemy's daughter, hunter, hybrid, whatever you are. My wolf claimed you the moment I saw you. The question isn't what I want. It's what you want."
"I don't know what I want."
"Yes, you do." His voice was soft but certain. "You're just not ready to admit it yet."
I hit the door control. The guard opened up.
"Same time tomorrow?" Kael called after me.
I looked back at him one last time. Chained. Bleeding. Beautiful.
Waiting.
"When did you last shift, Elara?" he asked again, throwing my own words back at me.
I could lie. Could maintain the fiction.
Instead, I said: "I'm human."
His laugh was dark, knowing. "Is that what he told you?"
And as the door sealed between us, I realized with sudden, terrible clarity:
I didn't know the answer anymore.