The clinic alarm began screaming before Elara could ask how an unborn child had appeared before the procedure. Director Voss reached for the red switch beside the door, but Kael caught his wrist and crushed the plastic casing beneath their joined hands.
“No one seals this room with her inside it,” the High Alpha said.
The silver pulse on the monitor answered his voice. Pain folded Elara over the examination bed. Kael was beside her before the nurses moved, one arm braced behind her back and his palm spread over the impossible light beneath her skin. The instant he touched her, heat raced from his hand to her heart. His cedar scent filled her lungs. Her supposedly absent wolf surged awake and whispered one word.
Mate.
Kael heard it too. His eyes flashed winter gold, but instead of invoking clause seventeen, he tore the monitoring bracelet from Elara's wrist. Hidden needles slid out from its underside, wet with wolfsbane.
Director Voss backed toward the corridor. “The rejection clause protects the crown.”
“It protects whoever wrote Elara Draven into that contract before she arrived.” Kael pressed the director against the glass. “Who authorized it?”
The answer came from the dark observation room above them. A woman in a white veil stood behind the one-way window—the same veil worn by Kael's supposedly dead Luna in every royal portrait. She lifted one hand against the glass, then vanished as armed guards flooded the procedure wing.
Kael pulled Elara against his chest and shifted just enough for claws to break through his fingertips. “Stay behind me.”
“My sister is still at St. Anne's.”
Every screen in the room changed. Lily appeared in a hospital bed with a silver collar locked around her throat. Nolan, the fiancé who had publicly rejected Elara, stood beside her holding the release switch.
“Bring the mother and the royal heir to Ashwood before moonrise,” he said into the camera. “Or Elara loses the only family she has left.”