Chapter 3

The second, the third... all seven silver nails were driven inch by excruciating inch along my spine, piercing deep into my decaying bone marrow.

Black, toxic blood geysered from the gaping wounds in my back, mingling with the muddy water on the ground and giving off a foul, nauseating stench of copper and rot.

The pure silver toxins reacted violently with the Wolfsbane Necrosis inside me. My internal organs felt as if they had been thrown into a meat grinder, shredded into unrecognizable pulp.

My vision blurred out completely, and my hearing began to fade. The only thing I could discern was the sound of my own ruined heart inside my chest, letting out the faintest, dying thumps.

Griffin seemed to sense something was off. He prodded my limp, mud-like body with his boot and frowned. "Why aren't her healing abilities kicking in at all? She's losing too much blood, and the color isn't right..."

"What are you so afraid of? Werewolves don't die that easily," Selena scoffed coldly, using the tip of her shoe to nudge my deathly pale face with disgust. "Cullen said we just need to leave her with one breath. But even if she does die, it's just her own worthless fate. No one else is to blame."

Hearing their venomous mockery, the pain finally breached the ultimate threshold of what my brain could endure, shifting into a bizarre, floating numbness.

I could feel my body temperature plummeting. My soul seemed to grow lighter and lighter, gradually peeling itself away from this utterly shattered vessel of flesh and blood.

You thought you were teaching me a lesson, Cullen.

You thought I would be just like before—crying, kneeling in the dirt, begging you not to drive me away.

What a pity. You will never see that day again.

I slowly exhaled my last, ragged breath, my pupils dilating into nothingness. With one final, impossibly weak flutter, my heart stopped beating forever.

My soul drifted out, hovering in the air above. I looked down at the gruesome, unrecognizable corpse on the floor: the abdomen swollen, the lower half covered in the black blood of a miscarriage, the back pierced through by seven silver nails, the flesh flayed open, and the bone turning black. It hardly looked like the remains of a werewolf; it was more like a puddle of rotting, butchered meat.

I stared coldly at the scene, feeling as though I was looking at a complete stranger.

At that exact moment, Cullen was holding a glass of red wine, seemingly in a rather good mood.

[Ayla should be just about done suffering by now. She's so afraid of pain; she must be crying and begging Griffin for mercy. First thing tomorrow morning, I'll send someone to bring her back. As long as she's willing to be obedient, I'll treat her well in the future.]

Just as he lifted the glass of wine to his lips—

A terrifying, indescribable force suddenly detonated deep within his soul!

It was the most sacred, unbreakable connection in the werewolf species—the mate bond. And in that very second, like a steel wire stretched past its absolute limit, it snapped!

"Urgh—!" Cullen violently choked, coughing up a massive mouthful of dark blood. The wine glass slipped from his fingers, shattering into pieces on the floor.

He clutched his chest. His heart felt as though it had just been crushed into a bloody pulp by an invisible, giant hand. The agonizing, suffocating pain forced him straight to his knees. A guttural howl tore from his throat, sounding exactly like a beast at death's door:

"Alpha Cullen! What happened?!" Hearing the commotion, the guards outside burst into the room in a panic.

Cullen's eyes were bloodshot, his entire body trembling violently. He clawed at the fabric over his chest, his eyes filled with absolute terror and disbelief.

There was only one reason a mate bond would ever snap: the death of a mate.

"Impossible... absolutely impossible!" Cullen roared hysterically. "A werewolf wouldn't die this easily! What kind of trick is she playing now?! She must have used some dark magic to block the bond! She's trying to trick me!"

He crashed straight through the floor-to-ceiling window, shifting into a massive black wolf mid-air. Braving the violent storm, he sprinted like a madman toward the rogues' territory.

[She's not dead! She is absolutely not dead! Ayla, if you dare deceive me like this, I swear I will make you pay a far more agonizing price!]

Half an hour later, the black wolf crashed through the gates of the abandoned mine like a cannonball.

The deafening crash alerted the rogues inside, causing them to scatter. By the time Cullen shifted back into his human form and stumbled into the underground cavern, Griffin and Selena had long since fled.

The mine was dead silent. The only sound was the dripping of rainwater sliding down the rocky walls.

Cullen stood frozen on the spot, his gaze locked onto the corpse lying in the muddy puddle.

The body had been tortured beyond recognition. The seven eerily white silver nails protruding from her back stung his eyes in the dim light. The muddy water surrounding the corpse had been completely soaked through with blackish-red toxic blood.

"Ayla...?" Cullen's voice trembled uncontrollably. Walking as if he were treading on cotton, he dragged his feet forward step by step. "Stop pretending... get up. This isn't a funny joke at all..."

He reached out, attempting to scoop up the woman on the ground. But the moment his fingers brushed against that ice-cold, stiff, and utterly lifeless skin, he froze as if struck by lightning.

The pack's most authoritative medical examiner and witch doctor rushed to the scene at that moment. Meeting Cullen's murderous glare, the old doctor put on his gloves and inspected the body with trembling hands.

A few minutes later, the doctor stood up, trembling as he pronounced the final verdict.

"Alpha, the Luna is dead. The cause of death is total organ failure due to terminal Wolfsbane Necrosis, compounded by extreme weakness from a recent miscarriage, and... acute silver poisoning spreading to the heart, induced by the seven pure silver nails driven into her spine."

The doctor looked at Cullen, a trace of pity in his eyes: "Even without the torture she endured tonight, given the Luna's physical condition, she wouldn't have survived past the next few days. It's just that... her passing was... excruciatingly painful."