Silas stood on the high balcony of the Silver-Claw Citadel, watching the taillights of Rikae's SUV disappear into the treeline toward the Black-Ridge. The wind was biting, carrying the scent of coming snow, but Silas didn't move.
He felt the heavy, metallic thrum of the pack-link. It was strong-stronger than it had been in decades-but it was cold. Rikae's contribution to the collective consciousness of the pack was like a block of dry ice: efficient, freezing, and utterly devoid of life.
"He's going to break, Silas," a voice said from the shadows.
It was Jax. The young Omega looked smaller in the moonlight, his eyes wide with worry. "I felt his scent today. It's... unstable. Like a wire about to snap."
"I know," Silas murmured, his grip tightening on the stone railing until it began to hairline fracture. "He thinks he's a machine. He thinks that silver blade solved his problems. But all he did was bury a starving wolf in a shallow grave."
Silas turned, his Alpha aura flaring-a warm, golden pressure that made Jax instinctively bow his head. "I didn't send him to the Black-Ridge to fix a fence, Jax. I sent him there to see if he could still bleed."
"But if he bleeds, he'll realize what he's lost. He'll realize he let her suffer for a year while he played the robot. That kind of guilt... it kills men, Silas."
"And the alternative is watching my best friend turn into a statue," Silas growled.
He strode past Jax and descended into the sub-levels of the Citadel-to the private armory where Rikae kept his personal files. Silas swiped his Alpha-clearance card, the doors hissing open to reveal the sterile, hyper-organized workspace of the Lead Beta.
Silas didn't look at the tactical maps. He went to the "shredded" file directory.
Rikae was a genius, but Silas was his Alpha; there were backdoors in the system that even Rikae hadn't closed. Silas pulled up the deleted audio logs from the night of the explosion-the ones Rikae had refused to listen to before he wiped the frequency.
The static filled the room, and then, a broken voice began to play.
"Rikae... please... she's fading... it's pulling the life out of her..."
Silas listened to the whole thing. He heard the desperation. He heard the moment the frequency went dead-the moment Rikae hit the delete key.
"You cold-blooded bastard," Silas whispered, but there was no malice in it, only a deep, aching pity.
He realized then that Rikae hadn't just deleted the transmission to be efficient. He had deleted it because, even then, the "Vessel" was terrified. If he had listened, he would have had to save her. And if he had saved her, he would have had to face the fact that the Moon was right and his logic was wrong.
Silas began to type, his fingers moving with a heavy purpose. He wasn't a tech-genius like Rikae, but he knew enough to leave a trail.
He restored the deleted file, but he didn't put it back in the archive. He set it to play as a "System Alert" on Rikae's private terminal-scheduled for 03:00 AM.
"What are you doing, Alpha?" Jax asked, hovering by the door.
"I'm waking up the Wolf," Silas said, his eyes flashing a dangerous, protective amber. "Rikae thinks the ritual is his armor. I'm going to show him it's his cage. And when he realizes what he almost let die... he's either going to come back to us, or he's going to tear the world apart to get to her."
Silas walked out, leaving the audio log looping in the darkness. The "Gold Standard" was about to be tested by the one thing it couldn't calculate: the sound of a mate's last breath..