Seraphina's POV
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The glass vial slipped from my fingers and shattered across the laboratory floor.
"Dr. Thorne?" My assistant's voice sounded far away, like she was speaking underwater. "Are you okay?"
I wasn't okay. I was drowning.
My hands shook as I stared at the test results on the screen. Bloodline Rejection Syndrome. Stage Three. Progressive. Fatal.
My baby. My Kai.
"Get out," I whispered.
"But Dr. Thorne—"
"GET OUT!"
The door clicked shut. I was alone with the worst news a mother could receive. My four-year-old son—my entire world—was dying. And it was all because of *him*.
I grabbed the edge of the metal table to steady myself. Five years. Five years I'd spent building a new life, becoming someone strong, someone powerful. Five years of pretending the past didn't exist. And now fate was dragging me back to the one place I swore I'd never return.
Shadowpine Pack. The place where I learned that love was a lie and fairy tales were for stupid girls who didn't know better.
My phone buzzed. A text from Kai's nanny: He's asking for you. Says his chest hurts again.
My heart cracked. I grabbed my coat and ran.
---
Twenty minutes later, I burst through my penthouse door. Kai was on the couch, his small hand pressed to his chest, his face too pale.
"Mommy!" He tried to smile, but I saw the pain in his eyes. Those beautiful brown eyes that looked exactly like his father's.
I knelt beside him, pressing my palm against his forehead. He was burning up. Again.
"Does it hurt badly, baby?"
He nodded, trying to be brave. "Like something's fighting inside me."
That's exactly what it was. His wolf—the powerful alpha wolf he inherited—was trying to emerge. But because his father had rejected our bond, rejected *me*, Kai's body treated his own wolf as an enemy. His immune system was literally attacking itself.
And it was killing him.
"I'm going to fix this," I promised, pulling him into my arms. "Mommy's going to make you all better."
"You always fix everything," Kai whispered, snuggling against me.
If only he knew. This was the one thing my medical genius couldn't solve. I'd tried everything—every treatment, every experimental drug, every healing technique I'd learned. Nothing worked.
Because the cure wasn't medical. It was magical.
He needed his father's pack magic. He needed the Alpha who'd thrown us away like garbage to acknowledge him, to accept him, to let him belong to the bloodline that was slowly killing him.
He needed Darius Thorne.
The man who'd used me, humiliated me, then discarded me the day I gave birth to his son.
My phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, but something made me answer.
"Dr. Thorne?" A woman's voice, professional and cold. "This is Elder Miriam from Shadowpine Pack. We need to speak about a matter of urgent importance."
My blood turned to ice. "How did you get this number?"
"We've been looking for you for quite some time. We need you to return to Shadowpine immediately. There's been a... development."
"I'm not interested in anything Shadowpine has to—"
"Your son is dying, Dr. Thorne. We know about the Bloodline Rejection Syndrome."
I stopped breathing. How did they know?
"Return within forty-eight hours, or Alpha Darius will invoke the Bloodline Reclamation Law. He'll take the boy whether you cooperate or not."
"He wouldn't dare—"
"He's desperate, Dr. Thorne. The pack is dying too. A curse triggered by broken mate bonds is destroying us from within. We need you both. Come willingly, or we'll come for you."
The line went dead.
I stood there, phone pressed to my ear, my entire body shaking with rage. Darius was threatening to *take* my son? After five years of not even bothering to check if we were alive?
Kai coughed, a painful sound that snapped me back to reality. He looked up at me with complete trust. "Mommy? You okay?"
No. I wasn't okay. I was furious. Terrified. Desperate.
But I was also a mother.
"Kai, baby, how would you feel about taking a little trip?"
"Where?"
I swallowed hard. "To meet your father."
His eyes went wide. Kai had asked about his father exactly three times in his short life. Each time, I'd told him the same thing: "Your daddy made a mistake and had to go away. But I love you enough for two parents."
He'd stopped asking after that.
"My real daddy?" Kai whispered. "The Alpha?"
"Yes."
"Will he... will he like me?"
The question destroyed me. "He'd be a fool not to love you."
Kai smiled, hopeful and innocent. "Okay! Let's go meet him!"
I held my son close, breathing in his scent—milk and honey and something wild, something wolf. In forty-eight hours, I'd face the man who broke me. The man who taught me that love was just another word for pain.
But this time, I wasn't a scared, powerless omega. This time, I was Dr. Seraphina Thorne—CEO, healer, and mother bear protecting her cub.
Darius wanted us back? Fine.
He was about to learn that the woman he threw away had become someone even an Alpha should fear.
My phone buzzed again. Another text, this time from an unknown number:
"Come home, Sera. Before it's too late for all of us. - D"
I stared at the message, my jaw clenched.
Then a second text arrived, this one from a different number:
"Don't go alone. Call me when you're ready. I'll protect you. - A"
Adrian. The Lycan King who'd saved my life five years ago and asked for nothing in return.
I looked at Kai, then at both messages.
Two Alphas. One dying son. And me, caught in the middle of something much bigger than a rejected mate bond.
Something was very, very wrong in Shadowpine Pack.
And I was about to walk straight into it.