The violet lines beneath Claire's skin didn't just pulse anymore; they crawled.

The transparent walls of the island facility caught the pre-dawn light, turning the room into a prism of cold, clinical greys. Claire lay on the dark oak floor, her cheek pressed against the wood, her fingers curled into a claw against her right wrist.

The hum of the high-frequency scanners overhead was a constant, drilling vibration in her molars.

She closed her eyes, but the darkness was worse.

The dream hit her like a physical impact, a surge of violet static that smelled of formalin and wet earth.

She wasn't on the island. She was on a stainless-steel table, the metal sucking the heat from her spine. Orpheus stood over her, his gold-rimmed glasses reflecting a dozen different versions of her own terrified face.

"A puzzle," Orpheus's voice resonated, not in her ears, but in her bone marrow. "The world is just... scattered pieces, Claire. I'm just the one holding the needle."

The scene shifted, the violet haze thick as oil.

She saw a man. He had Killian's aristocratic jawline and the same broad, unyielding shoulders, but his hair was a shock of silver-grey.

He was standing in a forest clearing, his throat a jagged ruin of red.

The Alpha of the previous generation—Killian's father.

He wasn't fighting a wolf. He was fighting a shadow that moved like liquid mercury.

A hand, pale and featureless, reached into the man's chest, not to stop his heart, but to harvest the beat.

"The Virel marrow," Orpheus whispered in the dream, his voice a choir of a hundred stolen vocal cords. "It's the only conductor that doesn't melt under the load."

Claire saw the transition—the way the old Alpha's life was stitched into a glass vial, a pulsating violet sludge that Orpheus held up to the moon like a trophy.

The memory wasn't hers, but the pain was.

Claire's eyes snapped open. She gasped, her lungs burning as if she had inhaled ash.

She reached up, her hand clawing at her own throat, searching for the wound she had just seen on a dead man.

The room was silent. The blue lasers of the ceiling sensors traced the frantic rise and fall of her chest.

"Claire?"

The voice came from the intercom grill near the bed. It was sandpaper-rough, stripped of its billionaire polish.

Killian.

Claire didn't answer. She looked at her right wrist. The violet thorns had spread, the lines now reaching halfway to her elbow, etched in a bruised, neon purple.

"Claire, talk to me," Killian's voice crackled again. The frequency was slightly distorted, a low-voltage hum underneath his words. "The biometric spike... it hit 180. Breathe. Just... just breathe with the signal."

Claire crawled toward the floor-to-ceiling glass.

Outside, the black sand beach was a strip of charcoal against the churning Lake Michigan waves.

Killian was there.

He stood fifty yards away, his bare chest glistening with the freezing spray of the lake. He was holding an encrypted tablet, his amber eyes fixed on the screen—fixed on her.

He couldn't come inside. He was the sun, and she was the wax.

"I saw him," Claire whispered, her voice a dry thread that barely caught the microphone.

"Saw who?"

"Your father," Claire rasped. Her fingers left a smear of sweat on the ballistic glass. "I saw the... the stitching. I saw how he died, Killian. It wasn't a war. It was an extraction."

Silence fell over the intercom. On the beach, Killian went perfectly still, his silhouette a dark monolith against the grey horizon.

His knuckles turned white against the edge of the tablet.

"The mark is... it's feeding you the archives," Killian whispered through the speaker. "He's trying to break your frequency with the weight of the dead."

The airlock hissed—a heavy, pressurized sound that signaled a delivery.

A tall, broad-shouldered woman in tactical grey gear stepped into the room. Her name was Freya, a Blackwood warrior with a scar running through her left eyebrow and eyes the color of flint.

She carried a silver tray with a bowl of high-protein broth and a glass of dark, iron-rich juice.

"Broth, Miss Reyes," Freya said, her voice a clipped, professional monotone.

She set the tray on the marble counter, her eyes scanning Claire's wrist with a flicker of wolfish unease.

"The Alpha says the salt will help the neural load."

Claire didn't move. She stayed huddled by the glass.

"What is he doing out there?" Claire asked, her eyes never leaving Killian's distant form.

"Deploying the perimeter jammers," Freya answered, her hand hovering near her holster.

"We've mapped the Suture's frequency from the campus fight. Mr. Virel is setting silver-tipped ordnance in the reef. If Orpheus tries to project here, we'll shatter the signal before it touches the rock."

Freya took a step closer, her posture softening by a microscopic fraction.

"He hasn't slept, Miss Reyes. He hasn't looked away from the monitor in twenty hours. He's... he's terraforming the island for you."

Claire let out a short, jagged laugh that sounded like a sob.

"I'm a research prompt," Claire muttered. She looked at her hands—they were shaking, a high-frequency tremor she couldn't stop.

"I'm a patient in a very expensive hospice."

"You're Alpha's mate," Freya corrected her sharply.

Claire grabbed the glass of juice and threw it.

The glass shattered against the transparent wall, the dark red liquid sliding down the pane like a curtain of blood.

"I don't want to be anyone's mate!" Claire screamed, her voice cracking. "I want to go out! I want to do my paper in the library!"

Freya didn't flinch. She just looked at the red stain on the glass. 

She turned and walked back toward the airlock, the door hissing shut behind her.

Claire sank back onto her haunches, her spine hitting the cold glass.

The intercom crackled.

"Claire."

Killian's voice was lower now, vibrating through the floorboards.

"I'm here with you. I'm right on the other side of the glass."

"You're a mile away, Killian," she whispered, her forehead resting against the pane.

"My eyes are on you," he rasped. "Claire. I love you always. I'll fix this"

Claire looked down at the violet thorns on her wrist.

Underneath the translucent skin, a new line was forming—a jagged, vertical stitch that hadn't been there an hour ago.

She could feel the raw, predatory grief radiating from the man. She was beginning to mirror him.