Chapter 1

The air in the back of the unmarked van was thick with the smell of pine and my own fear. My brother, Andrew, gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white.

"You know the plan, Gabi," he said, his voice a low rumble. "Get close to him. Use his past feelings for you. Do whatever it takes to make him stop."

"I know," I whispered, my voice barely audible.

"This isn't just about the forest anymore. His crews are getting closer to the Heartwood. If they find it, our people... everything is over."

I looked at my reflection in the dark window. My skin had a faint, iridescent shimmer under the van's single dim light, a trait of my people, the Silvans. A sign of the regenerative gland near my heart that kept us alive and connected to the ancient forests.

Ethan Scott. The man I was being sent to seduce was the same man who once swore to protect these trees with his life. The man I had loved with every fiber of my being. And the man I had to betray to save his life.

Now he was back, the head of a corporate logging unit, tearing down our world piece by piece. His reason was simple: revenge. He thought I left him for dead in a freezing river five years ago. He didn't know that my family and I staged the whole thing, that we pushed him into that icy water to slow a poison Nikki Lester's corporation had slipped him, buying us time to create an antidote.

He just knew that I broke his heart and vanished. Now, he was breaking my world.

Andrew pulled the van to a stop at the edge of a muddy access road. "This is as far as I can go. His main camp is a mile ahead. He'll be there."

He turned to look at me, his eyes full of a pain that mirrored my own. "Be careful, Gabi. He's not the man we knew."

I nodded, unable to speak. I got out of the van and watched it disappear back into the shadows of the trees. The cold, damp air of the Pacific Northwest filled my lungs. I took a deep breath and started walking toward the man I had to destroy, praying that a part of the boy I once loved was still in there somewhere.

The camp was a scar of mud and machinery under harsh floodlights. I found Ethan standing over a massive map laid out on the hood of a truck, barking orders. He was broader now, harder. The easy smile was gone, replaced by a permanent scowl.

When he saw me, his face went blank with shock, then twisted into a mask of pure hatred.

"Gabrielle," he said, his voice like gravel.

"Ethan," I said, forcing a smile. "It's been a long time."

He laughed, a cold, empty sound. "Not long enough. What the hell are you doing here? Did you come to watch your precious forest burn?"

"I came for you," I said, my voice soft.

I walked closer, letting the rain plaster my thin shirt to my body. I saw his eyes flicker down, a brief spark of the old desire warring with his anger.

That was my way in.

It worked. That night, and for the weeks that followed, I let him use me. I let his anger and passion crash over me, a brutal, desperate rekindling of what we once had. In his arms, I was a ghost from his past, and he was a man possessed. I pretended it was a game, a mission. But every touch, every rough kiss, was a fresh wound on my heart. I told myself it was for my people. I told myself I could keep him distracted from his true goal: finding the Heartwood, our hidden sanctuary.

I succeeded in distracting him, but I was the one who got caught in the trap. I got pregnant.

The moment I told him, everything changed. The flicker of old love in his eyes died, replaced by a terrifying, triumphant coldness.

"Pregnant?" he repeated, a slow, cruel smile spreading across his face. "Perfect."

That night, he didn't take me to his bed. He dragged me to an industrial freezer unit at the edge of the camp.

"What are you doing, Ethan?" I cried, struggling against his iron grip.

"Payback," he hissed, his face close to mine. "You left me in a freezing river, Gabi. You and your family beat me and left me to die. It's only fair I return the favor."

He threw me inside. The heavy metal door slammed shut, the lock clicking into place with a sound of absolute finality. The intense cold hit me instantly, a brutal shock to my system. I pounded on the door, screaming his name, but all I heard was his laughter fading away.

The cold seeped into my bones. I curled into a ball on the frozen metal floor, my body wracked with cramps. I lost our child in that freezing darkness, my body and my hope shattering together.

He let me out the next day, my body broken, my spirit crushed. The torture had just begun.

Over the next year, he kept me in a small, windowless room in his corporate-owned mansion, a prisoner. His revenge was a slow, meticulous art form.

He found my iridescent skin fascinating. He hired a specialist who, under his watchful eye, carefully peeled thin layers of it from my back and arms while I was conscious. The pain was unbearable, but my Silvan gland worked to heal the wounds, creating an endless supply. He had the shimmering strips of my skin inlaid into a custom art piece for Nikki Lester, a grotesque mosaic of my suffering.

Nikki, his childhood friend and a high-ranking executive at the corporation. The woman who now shared his bed. He would come back to my room after being with her, her scent clinging to his clothes, and force me to listen to the details of their encounters. He'd sit on the edge of my bed, his voice a low murmur, describing how she felt, how she tasted, while my body ached from the day's "harvesting."

Then Nikki developed a mysterious illness, a slow-acting degenerative condition that baffled corporate doctors. Ethan saw an opportunity.

"You heal so fast, Gabi," he said one night, his voice laced with a sick sort of wonder. "There must be something inside you that does it."

He brought in a corporate surgeon. They strapped me to a table. I begged him, pleaded with him, tried to explain that the gland was my life force, that without it I would die. He just smiled.

"Don't worry," he said, stroking my hair. "It's for a good cause. It's to cure Nikki."

He held my hand while the surgeon cut me open and removed the gland from beside my heart. The pain was nothing compared to the sudden, profound emptiness that flooded me. I felt my life force drain away, a light being extinguished. He had just handed my heart to the woman who orchestrated all of this, and he had done it with a smile.

He thought he was curing his new love. He was just killing his old one.

He didn't know I had less than a year to live. He just knew my skin no longer healed as quickly. The iridescent shimmer faded, leaving behind dull, scarred tissue.

Sometimes, in a twisted display of what he might have called affection, he would tend to my wounds himself. He'd gently apply antiseptic and bandages, his touch surprisingly soft.

"Just tell me where the Heartwood is, Gabi," he'd whisper, his breath warm against my ear. "Tell me, and I'll forgive you. We can be together again. I'll take care of you."

I would just stare at the wall, silent. My silence was the only weapon I had left.