The subterranean vaults beneath the Blackwood fortress smelled of damp limestone, old iron dust, and ancient rot.

A single tallow torch flickered against the damp wall, casting long, monstrous shadows across the heavy oak pillars.

Killian brutally interrogates the dark witch who helped Tanya two years ago, breaking her fingers until she confesses.

The crunch of bone was a dry, small sound.

It barely echoed in the deep layout of the isolation cell.

Mirela let out a sharp, wet shriek.

Her skeletal frame convulsed against the iron chair where she had been chained in complete obscurity for the past forty-eight hours.

"The ledger..." she gasped, her bloodshot eyes staring in terror at the massive 195cm shadow towering over her. "The records... they were never real, Alpha Vance!"

Killian did not offer a single millimeter of hesitation.

His broad, scar-tissue hands clamped down onto her next knuckle.

His golden eyes flashed with a dangerous, unstable purple static.

The raw residual signature of Eva's hybrid venom was pulsing through his central nervous system.

"Speak," Killian growled.

His voice was a dead, mechanical frequency that vibrated right through the stone floorboards.

"Speak before I strip the marrow from your wrists."

"Tanya paid me!" Mirela screamed, her mouth dripping with dark fluid as she thrashed against the iron links. "She wanted the orphan out of the grid! She needed a parasite to take the blame for the coven's silver-poisoning so the council elders would force you onto the throne with her!"

He learns the devastating truth: Eva’s parents were completely innocent, and Eva’s bloodline was forced shut.

The words dropped like heavy, molten iron weights into the frozen space of the isolation cell.

"Her father never sold secrets to the eastern vanguards," the witch wept, her voice cracking under the pressure of his dominant aura. "He was a sovereign king! We forged the letters! We stole the royal seal from the Western ridge!"

"The witch-seal... the restriction around her heart-core... I cursed her myself when she was an infant! We forced her royal heritage shut so she would display as a broken, low-tier Omega servant!"

"She was innocent... the whole lineage was completely innocent, Killian!"

Killian’s entire reality shatters into absolute horror.

The internal feedback loop of his biological core went entirely silent.

The physical feedback of the truth hit his chest-core like an exploding silver shell, tearing through the remaining foundations of his mind.

For seven hundred and thirty days, he had justified his actions under the iron law of the Vance lineage.

He had told his inner wolf that the mock trial, the iron collar, and the vertical plunge off the absolute border cliff were the necessary execution of his duty to protect the pack house.

It was all a calculation based on a lie.

A forged ledger.

A manufactured parasite profile.

Killian: Mind breaks from guilt; ready to die for her.

The structural grid of his Leo pride didn't just fracture; it dissolved entirely into black ash.

A wave of crushing, unadulterated self-loathing flooded his arteries.

A psychological withdrawal so severe it made his lungs lock up completely.

He had broken his own fated mate for a lie.

He had looked into her panicked eyes while she stood on the edge of the roaring ocean abyss and allowed his pack law to speak louder than his soul-bond.

Inside his skull, Thorin woke up with a violent, agonizing roar.

The beast was thrashing against the master-slave grid, screaming for the execution of the entire fortress.

Killian fell back two steps, his hand automatically snapping up to clutch his throat-line.

His fingertips pressed into the dark, bruised fang marks she had violently plunged into his skin.

He didn't want to live.

He was entirely ready to let her vanguards skin his frame.

He was ready to drag his knees across the marble mirror of her throne room until his skeleton turned to dust, if it meant he could pay a fraction of the debt.

The witch reveals Tanya plans a massive Blood Moon coup.

Mirela’s voice broke through his internal chaos.

A frantic, desperate rumble that stopped his breathing entirely.

"There is more, Alpha... the calculation isn't finished!" the witch hissed, her broken fingers clawing at the armrests. "Tanya knows the Southern Sovereign is closing the migration grids!"

"She has already bribed the senior vanguard executioners! Tonight, when the moon reaches its central alignment... during the alignment of the stars... she is going to trigger a massive Blood Moon coup!"

"She will purge the lower ranks, assassinate the remaining council elders, and use the raw spiritual energy of the pack house to launch a suicide strike directly against Eva’s obsidian vault!"

"She wants to cross her out permanently before the sovereign army can breach the perimeter walls!"

Killian didn't wait to hear the final entry of the report.

Killian rips the cell door off, shifting into a frantic sprint.

His physical mass exploded forward with a terrifying, kinetic velocity fueled by purebred alpha panic and hybrid blood-magic. His broad right arm locked onto the reinforced iron frame of the isolation cell door.

RIP.

The iron bolts sheared cleanly through the limestone masonry.

Sparks flew into the dark as he threw the massive barrier three yards down the corridor.

He didn't use his human form to navigate the stairs.

His muscles contracted, his skeletal structure expanding into his massive six-foot golden wolf frame mid-stride.

His matted fur rippled with a dark gold-violet radiation that shattered the stone steps beneath his paws.

Mirela: Ancient, corrupt and secretive pack seer.

She sat alone in the ruins of the cell.

Her silver hair was plastering her pale face as she watched the golden monster vanish into the upper corridors.

She had managed the secrets of the Blackwood lineage for three generations, tracking the frequencies of the stars to protect the purebred status of the Vance throne.

But as the echoes of his frantic, uncoordinated paws faded into the storm above, the ancient seer knew the calculation was closed.

The shadow dog was running to save his master.

And the execution of Blackwood had just entered its final, unyielding sequence.