Back at Blackwood, Killian lives like a hollow ghost.

The structural grandeur of the Vance lineage pack house had transformed into nothing more than a dark, echoing tomb over the past twenty-four months.

The great hearths in the lower levels remained unlit, their stone grates accumulating grey ash, while the freezing northern mountain drafts whistled freely through the unsealed window fractures.

The corridors were silent.

The vanguard warriors walked on their toes when navigating the central halls, terrified of triggering the erratic, unpredictable fury of the man who ruled them from the shadows.

Killian flatly refusing to step inside his master bedroom.

The heavy, iron-paneled oak door at the end of the western wing remained locked, its key long since thrown into the freezing river slush below the gorge.

He slept where he fell—sometimes on the cold granite floorboards of his operational war room, sometimes on the very stone steps of the dais where his coronation had shattered two winters ago.

The high-tier silk sheets, the heavy silver-threaded tapestries, and the vast, empty bed that should have held his Luna remained entirely abandoned to the dust.

To enter that room was to acknowledge the total layout of his ruin.

Tanya tries desperately to comfort him, but he snarls, banishing her completely from his sight.

She broke through the heavy cedar double doors of the tactical chamber, her silk shoes clicking frantically against the dark stone.

Her fingers were weighted with heavy gold rings, and her perfume—a sharp, synthetic lavender—flooded the immediate radius of the doorway.

"Killian, this has to end," Tanya called out, her voice vibrating with a high-pitched, desperate irritation.

"The elders are demanding a council."

"The southern border is compromised, and you are sitting here in the dark like an invalid."

She stepped closer, her manicured hand reaching out toward his broad, unwashed shoulder, trying to press her fingers into the rigid muscle.

"Let me help you," she whispered, her voice dropping into a practiced, soft melody. "Let me take the place she abandoned."

Killian didn't let her complete the touch.

His head snapped up, his features twisting into a terrifying, predatory grimace as his upper lip pulled back entirely.

A low, guttural snarl tore from his throat, a sound so raw and loaded with dominant kinetic force that it physically threw Tanya back two steps.

His golden eyes burned through the dark, the pupils contracted into two razor-thin black slits of absolute malice.

"Get out," Killian growled, his voice a mechanical rumble that made the crystal decanters on the side table shake.

"Out of my room."

"Out of my sight."

"If your feet touch this floorboard again before sunrise, I will strip your lineage from the pack records myself."

Tanya’s face went entirely white, her lips trembling as she clutched her ruined velvet cloak against her chest.

She didn't offer another syllable.

She turned on her heel and fled into the corridor, her frantic gasps echoing off the high cedar pillars.

Killian dropped his head back into his bloodless palms, his thick fingers digging deep into his scalp as his chest heaved.

He smells Eva's phantom scent everywhere, losing his mind.

It didn't matter that the kitchen staff had scrubbed every stone floorboard with lye three times a week.

It didn't matter that her old apron had been burned to black soot in the eastern wing fire pit two winters ago.

To his hyper-sensitive, purebred tracking senses, the air was still thick with her unique molecular frequency.

Ozone.

Winter rain.

Crushed pine needles beneath a freezing sky.

The scent would materialize in the dead of night, hitting his nostrils like a physical blow, forcing him to bolt upright with his fangs extended, searching the empty shadows of the war room for a ghost that did not exist.

It was a systematic, torturous hallucination generated by his own fractured central nervous system.

Killian: Severe psychological withdrawal and agony.

The phantom chest stab—the brutal, permanent feedback loop of the rejected fated mate bond—had eroded his biological foundations.

Every morning, the internal ache inside his ribs spiked to a crippling degree, making his lungs lock up until he choked on his own saliva.

Thorin, his inner wolf, had completely withdrawn into a silent, shivering mass at the base of his skull, refusing to answer his conscious commands, only waking to whimper whenever the phantom scent grew too thick.

His massive Leo pride had been dismantled, replaced by a hollow, expanding vacuum of pure self-loathing.

He had broken his own lineage to protect a lie.

He had executed his own soul to satisfy a forged ledger.

Killian reached out his left hand, his raw, bleeding knuckles—the flesh still split from his daily, mechanical strikes against the fractured totem stone—closing around a crystal glass tumbler on the table.

He poured three fingers of heavy, dark amber liquor into the rim, his hand shaking so violently the crystal clicked against the bottle neck.

A low knock rattled the cedar door.

A senior vanguard scout entered the chamber, his uniform soaked with rain, his forearm extended as he held out a secure, encrypted leather pouch.

Killian receives intelligence on a rising Southern Sovereign.

"Alpha," the scout whispered, his eyes fixed firmly on the floorboards to avoid his commander's dangerous stare.

"The southern tracking networks have processed an anomaly."

"The old eastern vampire coven has unified under a single, unmapped entity."

"They are calling her the Southern Sovereign."

"Reports show she has systematically executed three high-tier regional commanders within the last forty-eight hours."

"Her speed matches a purebred alpha wolf, sir, but her core is fueled by an absolute, high-frequency blood-magic."

"The council elders believe she is preparing to move her vanguard against our northern borders within the week."

Killian listened to the report, his golden eyes remaining flat, fixed on the dark amber fluid inside his glass.

He didn't care about the southern borders.

He didn't care about the high coven's new king or queen.

But as the scout mentioned the combination of alpha wolf velocity and blood-magic, a sudden, terrifying calculation flashed behind his eyes.

The crystal glass inside his grip began to groan under the sudden spike of his muscular pressure.

The phantom scent of winter rain exploded through his nostrils again, thicker this time, suffocating his breathing with a sudden wave of internal panic.

It couldn't be.

She fell over the absolute edge.

She was a powerless Omega.

The contradiction tore through his mind-core, his trauma and his lingering instincts colliding with a violent, volatile impact.

Killian smashes his glass against the stone wall in rage.

The crystal shattered into a thousand jagged, glittering shards, the dark liquor splashing across the ancient tapestries like fresh arterial blood.

"Get out!" Killian roared, his 195cm frame exploding upward from his chair, knocking the heavy oak table two feet back.

The scout scrambled backward through the exit, slamming the cedar doors shut before the Alpha’s dominant aura could crush his chest.

Killian stood alone in the dark room, his bleeding fist clenched at his side, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps as he stared at the red stains on the wall.

The silence returned, heavier now, a suffocating weight that smelled of rotted cedar and ancient, unyielding ruin.