My wolf moves before thought catches up: pure maternal instinct compressed into violence and teeth.
The nearest hunter raises his dart gun but I'm already on him. Four hundred pounds of white fur and Alpha fury driving him into our coffee table. The wood splinters beneath his back. His weapon skitters across hardwood.
I don't kill him. Every cell in my body screams for his throat, but conscious thought claws through the rage just enough. So, I settle for his arm instead.
Teeth closing around bone with enough force to feel it crack. He screams—high and terrified, suddenly understanding he's prey—and I release him just long enough to position myself over Kieran's naked, convulsing form.
Mine. The thought is primal, absolute. Mine to protect.
The other two hunters don't engage. They back toward the shattered sliding glass door with practiced efficiency, weapons trained on me but not firing.
"Mission accomplished," one says into his comm unit. "Package delivered, extracting now."
I snarl—the sound reverberating through our ruined living room—but they're already through the door, then gone into darkness like they were never here, leaving destruction and chemical poison in their wake.
I shift back. Bones cracking, fur receding, the transformation still brutal enough to leave me gasping. Naked and covered in blood—his, mine, the hunter's mixing together in ways I'll probably feel guilty about later when shock wears off.
"Kieran," my hands find his face and neck, checking for his pulse. Strong but wrong, his heart racing too fast while his skin goes clammy. "Baby, look at me."
His eyes track to my face. Gray and unfocused, pupils blown so wide the iris almost disappears.
"Thalia?" My name comes out uncertain, questioning, like he's not sure who I am.
The dart is still buried in his shoulder: black plastic and silver mechanism that looks too advanced for anything commercial. I yank it out without thinking about gentleness because leaving it in seems worse.
That's when I see the gunshot wound. His side, just below his ribs, bleeding sluggishly onto our living room floor. My stomach lurches: when did that happen? In the chaos, the fighting, the screaming children I somehow missed my mate taking a fucking bullet.
"I'm here, I've got you," My hands press against the wound, trying to slow the bleeding while my brain tries to reboot. Medical training from years of single motherhood kicks in through the panic. Pressure, elevation, keep him talking.
"Stay with me," I whisper.
"I сan't," his voice is wrong: flat and disconnected. "Thalia, I can't feel—"
He stops. Jaw working like the words won't come.
The bond. That constant pull, the gravity that's existed between us since my wolf woke. The thing that's been my compass for a year, showing me where he is, what he feels, the certainty that I'm not alone even when we're apart.
I reach for it desperately, but find nothing.
The space where the bond should be feels like reaching for a light switch in the dark and finding an empty wall. My chest goes tight with something beyond panic and fear.
"No," the word tears out of me. "No, no, no—Kieran, feel me. Feel the bond."
His expression shifts through confusion to devastation. Those gray eyes that usually burn with possessive certainty now hold only loss.
"I don't," two syllables that shatter everything I've built my world on.
My hands frame his face—desperate, demanding. "Try. The bond doesn't just disappear. It's mate magic, it's permanent, it's—"
"Gone," his voice cracks on the word. "It's gone."
I kiss him anyway. Frantic and claiming, trying to force the connection back through physical contact, to make my body remember what biology forgot.
His mouth responds—warm and familiar, his hand coming up to tangle in my hair with muscle memory even if the supernatural recognition is gone. But it's just human desire. Just flesh and want without the soul-deep certainty that made this right.
Nothing mate or forever. Nothing but two people kissing while my world crumbles around us.
I pull back, press my forehead to his. "It's the dart. Whatever they shot you with, it's temporary. Has to be. The bond can't just—"
"Mama!" Phoenix's scream cuts through from upstairs. Still terrified, needing me; still my responsibility even while my mate bleeds on our floor.
"I'm okay," Kieran's trying to sit up even though he's absolutely not okay. "The kids—"
"Don't move," I press him back down, hand sticky with his blood. "You're shot. You're—"
I lean forward and press my lips to his again. Desperate and deliberate, every ounce of love poured into the contact, willing the bond to reignite, demanding the universe return what was stolen from us on our own staircase.
Kieran reads the answer on my face before I can mask it.
"It's okay," I whisper, pressing my forehead to his. "We'll get you safe, get you to a healer. The bond isn't what makes us real. We were real before destiny confirmed it, and we'll be real after."
"Thalia—"
"Whatever that chemical did to your wolf, it can't undo the choice. Do you hear me?"
"I—" his voice is raw. "I can hear my heartbeat, just mine. Usually yours is underneath—that second rhythm that's been there since the bonding."
His eyes meet mine, and the man looking back is someone stripped bare. No supernatural layers and Alpha instinct.
"It's quiet now."
I pull him against my chest, his head tucked under my chin the way I hold our children after nightmares, and feel his solitary heartbeat against my sternum—singular, desperately ordinary.
Upstairs, a door opens. Small footsteps. Orion's voice, careful and controlled: "Mom? Is it safe? Luna passed out from the emotional overload. We need you."
My husband, broken and bleeding in my arms. My children, terrified and falling apart above me. The mate bond offering no guidance—just empty silence where instinct used to live.
I press my lips to Kieran's hair and call up the stairs with a voice that sounds steadier than anything I actually feel. "I'm coming, baby. Bring your sister to me. We're all going to be okay."
My phone buzzes against the floor where I dropped it. Text from an unknown number lighting the screen:
‘We took the bond. Next time we take everything.’
But it's the second text—from Marcus on the security team—that makes my stomach drop.
‘Alpha Magnus's house is burning. Three other families hit tonight. This was coordinated.’
I look at Kieran. At the dart that held whatever poison severed our supernatural connection. At the shattered remains of our home and the terror still echoing from upstairs.
This wasn't random violence or some isolated attack by hunters who got lucky. This was war.
They just fired the opening shot directly at our foundation.