Her anguished words tore at my sanity for the entire car ride back from the infirmary. I tried to tell myself she was lying, tried to tell myself I had done nothing wrong. But Draegan growled in my mind, his voice filled with truths I did not want to face.

You took her son from her.

I forced the thought down.

When I stormed into my private study at the Pack House, the air was thick with my erratic scent of winter pine and ozone. My mother, Elara, stood by the fireplace, a satisfied gleam in her eyes over the newly signed alliance treaty.

I shattered her victory before she could even speak. "The Combining Ceremony with Cassondra is canceled."

Elara's face went rigid, the color draining from her cheeks. "Are you out of your mind? You would humiliate Cassondra a second time for that disgraceful Omega? You will isolate this Pack and make us a laughingstock!"

"Liam is dying," I snarled, my Alpha aura crashing down on the room, forcing her to lower her chin. "Seraphina is his only hope. I will not give her a single excuse to refuse cooperation."

"You are making a grave mistake, Kaelen," Elara warned, her voice tight under my pressure.

I turned my back on her and walked out. I didn't care about the political fallout. As I climbed the stairs to my suite, it wasn't my mother's anger haunting me-it was the pure, unadulterated hatred in Seraphina's eyes.

The consequences of my decree arrived the very next morning.

The heavy doors to my private suite flew open. Cassondra stormed in, her suffocating artificial floral perfume burning my nose and instantly putting my senses on edge.

"Is it true?" she shrieked, her face twisted in ugly, unrestrained rage. "You're canceling the ceremony? Because that Omega whore came crawling back? You are pathetic!"

*Draegan* let out a vicious, bloodthirsty snarl in my mind at the disrespect toward our mate. My gaze turned to absolute ice. "Watch your tongue, Cassondra. This decision is about saving my son's life."

"Go rot with your rejected trash," she spat, her chest heaving with venom. "You will pay for this, Kaelen."

She spun on her heel and slammed the door, severing our political ties for good. I felt nothing but a hollow relief.

Hours later, I stood behind the black granite desk in my penthouse office at Steele Group, trying to focus on the border patrol reports. But the moment the heavy oak doors clicked open, the scent of honeysuckle after rain and pure moonlight hit me like a physical blow.

Seraphina stepped into my office uninvited. She stood tall, her posture rigid and her expression an impenetrable mask of ice.

"Have you come to your senses?" I asked, masking my desperation with cold Alpha authority. "Will you donate the marrow, or will you actually stand there and let your own flesh and blood die?"

She met my gaze unflinchingly. "I will save him. But on one condition." She stepped closer, the severed mate-bond humming agonizingly between us. "I want full custody of Liam."

My blood ran cold. The sheer audacity of her demand knocked the breath from my lungs. "You are out of your mind. He is the heir to the Black Moon Pack. You-"

You abandoned him.

The words were on the tip of my tongue. I almost said them. But then, last night's memory slapped me across the face like a physical blow. Seraphina standing in that infirmary, tears streaming down her cheeks, her voice trembling with rage:

"You executed the rejection! You handed me a legal document to sign while I was still bleeding on a hospital bed! You and your vile family ripped him from my arms!"

I swallowed the words back down.

My silence made Seraphina's eyes narrow. "What's wrong, Kaelen?" Her voice was sharp, laced with icy sarcasm. "Not going to accuse me of abandoning him this time? Weren't last night's words enough?"

My jaw tightened. Draegan growled in my mind, a mixture of shame and fury.

"Is it true?" I finally asked, my voice lower than I intended. "About the document? About the way I drove you out?"

Seraphina stared at me as if I had just said something absurd. "You were there, Kaelen. You put the pen in my hand yourself. And now you ask me if it's true?"

The truth slammed into me like a silver blade straight to my chest. For years, I had told myself she left. I told myself she abandoned Liam, abandoned me, abandoned the pack. I had constructed an entire narrative in which I was the victim and she was the betrayer.

But that was a lie.

I drove her out. I was the one who shoved a legal document into her hand hours after she had given birth. I was the one who told her to sign it and get the hell off my territory.

I stared at the woman I had harmed. My throat tightened, suffocated by the weight of my own guilt.

"Custody," I repeated, my voice hoarse. "You want custody."

"I want my son back," Seraphina corrected, her voice low, a deadly and unwavering whisper. "Sign the custody transfer. Restore my rights as his mother and renounce yours. Otherwise, Kaelen, you will lose him forever."

Chapter 8

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