The Supreme Alpha, above all, was a being no human-born should have been able to touch, let alone conceive a pup with.
That was why he had fed me his Alpha blood essence, day after day.
It kept me ageless and undying, and it tempered my human-born body until the barrier between us slowly dissolved.
Even so, it had taken us hundreds of thousands of years to conceive this pup.
"Everything I've said is true. If anything happens to this pup, no one here will survive the Supreme Alpha's wrath. He will reduce the Six Great Packs to ash and ruin!"
Under the Supreme Alpha's nourishment, my body had long surpassed anything human.
But now, broken and bleeding, I could feel my life draining away with terrifying speed.
I poured every last scrap of strength into those words, praying Seraphina would spare my child.
She only gave a cold, thin smile.
"The harder you beg for this bastard's life, the more I want to kill him."
She raised my son high and hurled him at the ground.
"No!"
The scream ripped from my throat. It changed nothing.
All I could do was watch as my son slammed into the stone.
"He's still alive?"
Seraphina stared at the infant still squirming on the ground, murmuring to herself.
"Let's see just how hard this little mongrel is to kill."
She lifted her foot and brought it down on him.
The impact shook the ground.
The blow carried her full, devastating force.
It cratered the floor beneath him.
Every handmaiden there was certain the pup was dead.
But his tiny hands still moved, waving as though nothing had happened.
"I refuse to believe I can't kill one worthless mongrel!"
Seraphina's composure shattered. She summoned Moonsilver Fire and sent it crashing down on my son.
White-hot flames engulfed him in an instant. The stench of burning silver hit the air, and the scream that left me was not human. It came from somewhere deeper, somewhere the blood-bond had carved open inside me, a place that had no name before this moment and would never close again.
I was close enough to feel the searing heat scorch my skin.
Fear and anguish devoured me from the inside out.
My child was not just the future sovereign of the Six Great Packs.
He was the culmination of hundreds of thousands of years of hope between the Supreme Alpha and me.
Three years I had carried him. My own flesh and blood.
All those years, the Supreme Alpha and I had treasured him more than our own lives.