Chapter 2

Isolde’s POV

"I already gave you my son!" I screamed, violently slapping Jaxson's hand away. "You took my newborn son and gave him to her! Now you want me to be her breeding machine?!"

I grabbed the collar of my shirt and ripped it down. 

The bulb illuminated my shoulders and collarbone. They were covered in thick, jagged scars. Burn marks from electroshock collars. Whip lashes from the underground fighting rings. 

"Look at me!" I roared, my voice tearing. "Look at what her father did to me! You told me you'd make the traffickers pay! But instead, you're worshipping that trafficker's spawn! She stole my life while her father tortured me, and now you want me to breed for that cheap bitch—"

My brother moved so fast he was a blur. 

His hand slammed into my shoulder, shoving me backward with the brutal, crushing strength of an Alpha. 

"Cut the bullshit, Isolde!" my brother barked. "Violet's adoptive mother confessed everything before she died. Nobody laid a finger on you. You got those scars picking street fights in the slums because you're a violent thug."

My mother sneered from the doorway. "See? This is exactly why we didn't raise her. Blood doesn't matter; she's rotten to the core. Sending her to the underground for six years was the right call. A compulsive liar like her could never raise William properly anyway."

I lay on the cold concrete. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. 

The people standing above me were my blood. My family. My husband. 

They had thrown me into a meat grinder, watched me bleed out for six years, and called it a "trial."

I slowly pushed myself up on my elbows. I looked straight into my mother's eyes, spitting the blood from my lips. 

"I can't raise a child?" I let out a broken, raspy laugh. "But the spawn of a human trafficker can? She's nothing but a parasite with dirty, criminal blood!"

My brother’s face darkened.

He grabbed me by the hair, hauling me up, and struck me across the face. 

SMACK.

My head snapped to the side. My ear rang violently as blood dripped from my nose. 

"Looks like six years wasn't enough," he snarled. "You still haven't learned your damn lesson."

Before I could even process the slap, my brother was dragging me across the concrete floor. 

"Brother, wait—"

He still dragged me straight toward the back of the underground clinic, right to the morgue freezers. The ones lined with pure silver, used to keep mutant corpses from reanimating. 

"No. No, please!" I thrashed, kicking wildly, but his Alpha strength was absolute. 

He shoved me inside. The heavy door slammed shut. Click.

Total darkness. 

The silver lining instantly seared through my thin shirt, burning my bare arms like acid. But the physical pain was nothing. It was the dark. The suffocating, tight space. 

My breathing hitched. My lungs seized up. 

The memory slammed into my brain. A hazing prank by the underground scavengers. Three days locked in a silver cabinet with a rotting, half-mutated corpse. I had clawed at the door until all ten of my fingernails ripped off. I almost froze to death in that box. 

"Let me out! I'm afraid!" I screamed, slamming my scarred fists against the metal. "Please! I'm sorry! Let me out!"

I clawed at the seams. My breathing grew frantic.

"Brother! I'll do whatever you want! Please, I'm going to die in here!"

Silence. 

I scraped my fingers until the fresh scabs on my knuckles tore open. "Jaxson! Mom! Please!"

Nothing. Just the echo of my own desperate sobbing. 

Just when my vision started going black and my knees buckled, the latch clicked. 

I tumbled out of the freezer, hitting the concrete hard.

"Thank you," I choked out, my entire body shaking uncontrollably. "Thank you."

He looked down at me. For a split second, his hand twitched, like he wanted to reach out and pull me up. But then he scoffed and stepped back, violently ripping his leg from my grasp. 

"Stop acting pathetic," he said flatly. 

I stayed on the floor, clutching my chest, trying to force air into my lungs. 

"You think I don't know you're faking it?" he continued, pacing in front of me. "I know exactly what you can handle, Isolde. Who do you think paid off those fight club bosses to put you in the ring with the heavyweights?"

The ringing in my ears stopped. 

I slowly raised my head. "What?"

"Who do you think told the lab supervisors to give you the worst scavenger shifts? To make you handle the highly toxic corpses?"

"You... you paid them to torture me?"

"I paid them to test you," he corrected, his tone hardening with absolute self-righteousness. "How else is a Voss supposed to awaken? You think a top-tier bloodline just hands you a crown while you sleep? If I didn't push you to the brink, you'd be a useless, unawakened mutt forever. I did this for your own good!" 

I stared at him. The man who shared my blood. 

He orchestrated six years of literal hell, watched me get beaten half to death on a weekly basis, and convinced himself he was a savior. 

"You're insane."

"I'm pragmatic," he snapped. He reached into his coat pocket and tossed a velvet garment bag.

"Next week is the Voss Group's annual charity gala," he ordered. "You're coming with me."

"Why?"

"Because people are starting to talk," my mother chimed in from the doorway, her face pinched in annoyance. "Rumors are spreading that Violet is the daughter of the human trafficker who took you. It's ruining her reputation in high society. The other girls are excluding her."

"You're going to stand on that stage," my brother said, "and read a public statement. You will tell the press that Violet's adoptive father was actually your savior. That he took you in when you selfishly ran away from home, and that you're grateful to him. You clear her name, completely."

"You want me to publicly thank the man who chained me to a radiator and beat me for twelve years?"

"It's just PR, Isolde," Jaxson sighed, stepping forward. "Violet is sensitive. She cries every night because of these rumors. Just read the damn statement. Do it for William."

Hearing my son's name made my stomach twist. "Don't bring him into this."

"He thinks of Violet as his real mother," Jaxson said cruelly. "If her reputation is ruined, it ruins his. Do you want your own son to be mocked at school?"

"And if I refuse?" I asked. 

My brother leaned down, grabbing my jaw in a crushing grip. "Then I lock you back in that freezer. And this time, I leave you there until the gala."

I looked into his eyes. There was no bluff there. He would do it.

"Once you do this," Jaxson added, softening his tone slightly. "I'll take you out of this basement. You won't have to work as a scavenger anymore. We can go back to normal."

"Okay," I said quietly. 

Deep inside my chest, I felt my wolf core. It was supposed to be a burning, powerful thing. But after six years of silver poisoning and cheap suppressants, it was the size of a shriveled peanut. It wasn't awakening. It was dying. 

My life force was draining away, and with it, whatever lingering attachment I had to these people turned to dust. 

If my time was running out anyway, I had absolutely nothing left to lose.

"I'll go to the gala," I repeated. "I'll read the statement."