Chapter 3

Jaimen POV:

The waiting was the worst part. My wolf paced inside my mind, scratching at the walls of my consciousness. He was agitated, howling at nothing.

*She is near,* my wolf growled. *But she is... wrong.*

"Shut up," I muttered, rubbing my temples.

The door to my office burst open. It was Marcus again. But this time, he didn't look nervous. He looked terrified. His face was the color of ash. He fell to his knees as soon as he entered, baring his neck in submission.

"Alpha," he choked out.

"Did you find her?" I demanded, standing up. My chair scraped loudly against the floor. "Where is she? Is she in the dungeons?"

Ivanna, who had been lounging on the sofa filing her nails, sat up, her eyes gleaming. "Did you bring the bitch back?"

Marcus didn't answer Ivanna. He couldn't take his eyes off the floor.

"Speak!" I used the Alpha Voice. It cracked like a whip in the room.

"We... we tracked her scent, Alpha," Marcus stammered. "It led us to the Dead Lands. The Rogue territory near the old sulfur mines."

"And?"

"We found... we found traces of her."

"Stop speaking in riddles!" I slammed my hand on the desk, cracking the mahogany. "Bring her in!"

Marcus reached into his jacket pocket. His hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped the object. He placed a plastic evidence bag on my desk.

Inside was a necklace. A cheap, silver locket.

I froze. I knew that locket. I had given it to Christeen when we were teenagers, before I became Alpha, before I let power and Ivanna poison my mind.

"She... she dropped it?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.

"No, Alpha," Marcus whispered. Tears were leaking from his eyes now. "We found it... on the body."

The world stopped. The silence in the room was deafening.

"Body?" Ivanna asked, her voice shrill. "What do you mean, body? She can't be dead! Timothy needs her!"

I couldn't hear Ivanna. I could only hear the rushing of blood in my ears.

"You're lying," I said. It was a low growl. "She faked it. She put the necklace on a corpse to throw us off. She is hiding!"

"Alpha..." Marcus pulled out a file folder. It was stamped with the seal of the Werewolf Council's forensic unit. "We found skeletal remains. They were in a ditch, buried under three years of muck. The... the dental records match. The DNA matches."

He pushed the file toward me.

I stared at it. I didn't want to touch it. If I touched it, it became real.

"Read it," I commanded, my voice barely audible.

Marcus swallowed hard. He opened the file.

"Subject: Christeen Hahn. Estimated time of death: Three years ago. Cause of death: Blunt force trauma, multiple fractures, and... silver poisoning."

Three years ago.

The day I rejected her. The day Lily died.

"No," I said. I shook my head, backing away from the desk. "No. If she died, I would have known. The bond... I would have felt the mate bond snap completely."

"You did, Alpha," Marcus said softly. "You collapsed three years ago. You said... you said she severed it."

The memory hit me like a freight train. The pain. The vomiting. The emptiness. I had convinced myself she had done it out of spite. I had convinced myself she was alive, somewhere, hating me.

Because the alternative... the alternative was that I had sent my mate out to die.

"She's dead?" Ivanna screeched. "That useless bitch is dead? What about my son? What about the essence?"

For the first time in years, Ivanna's voice didn't sound like music to me. It sounded like screeching tires.

"Get out," I whispered.

"Jaimen, we need to find another way-"

"GET OUT!" I roared. The force of my voice shattered the windows. Glass rained down on the carpet.

Ivanna shrieked and ran. Marcus scrambled out backward.

I was alone.

I looked at the plastic bag. I reached out, my fingers trembling, and picked up the locket. It was cold. So cold.

And then I felt it again. That draft. That icy touch on the back of my neck.

I looked up at the ceiling, my eyes wild.

"Christeen?" I choked out.

There was no answer. But on the foggy glass of the broken window, a word appeared, traced by an invisible finger.

*MURDERER.*