"Alpha," two of the females in my pack nodded to me as my brother, my enforcer and I walked toward the pack offices. Strangely, they moved right past me without smiles, not even attempting to stop.

They were not the first ones this morning who had been...distant to me. This was beyond unusual behavior since my pack members always stopped to take my hand for a moment. My Alpha's touch was soothing, comforting to my wolves and I touched hundreds of hands a day.

"They're not happy with you," Aymeric said in a voice so low only my brother and I could hear him. As my enforcer, as the Alpha's Teeth, Aymeric made it his business to know what was happening in the pack, what the mood was, what rumors and gossip were swirling around.

"You completely upset the pack when you rejected your Howl," he continued, "if for no other reason than to provide further protection for the pack. The Lunaire pack Alpha doesn't have his Howl -- yet -- so you having yours would have been an advantage for us and a deterrent to the Lunaires if they thought of trying to break the truce. They do not like that you rejected what could have been so advantageous to us."

"It's more than that," Néron sneered at my enforcer. My brother had been the one most obviously upset at what I'd done, or at least the only one bold enough to get in my face about it. Being my only sibling had both advantages and disadvantages, but one of the advantages was that he spoke quite freely to me, as no other member of my pack would dare.

"You took years of tradition and threw it aside. You rejected your Destined One, your motherfucking Howl, Night -- sent by the Forces -- and you did so without hesitation. There have been rejected mates before, not many, but a handful. But you're the very first Alpha to ever reject his Howl. I don't understand it. Nobody understands it. OK, so you have feelings for Lindsay Morgan, but you shouldn't have been able to resist your Destined One. Your feelings for Lindsay should have faded away to nothing the moment you faced your Howl. From the moment you were born, Neera was stitched into every fiber of your being...and you resisted that. Hell, you not only resisted her, you rejected her."

For a moment, I remembered looking into her eyes. Neera's green eyes, so bright when she stood on my porch, looking at me, her mate brand visible. For just a minute, I felt the invisible bonds between us forming until, for some reason, I looked away. And then I'd decided to call the wolves to the Den.

"Well, now word's out about what happened. It spread like wildfire, Night. I can't even tell you how many calls I've fielded from other packs -- from Australia, China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada, to name a few -- all wanting to know what sort of fuckery was happening that you could reject your Howl."

My brother glared at me, then continued. "The rejection was on one level, but then you changing her pack status? What the fuck was that? You hadn't already humiliated the poor girl enough by fucking Lindsay right in front of her and telling everyone assembled that you didn't want your Howl?"

The whole time in the Den? It was a blur to me, a vague fogginess that was not clear in my mind, as if --

"She didn't show up with the other greens today," Aymeric said, trying to interrupt my brother's tirade.

I'd been rubbing my chest as he spoke, but the pain that had begun wasn't going away. "Well, did you fucking check on her?"

"Sent one of my men," Aymeric confirmed. "They said she wasn't at her apartment. Her car wasn't there."

"Maybe she'd gone into town to give her notice?" Néron suggested.

I rubbed my chest, the pain still squeezing my insides. "That seems likely. Neera has always been dependable. She wouldn't want to just leave her job without telling her boss."

Néron looked at me as if I was stupid. "She would have had to tell Aymeric, asked his permission, if she was planning to do that. Zetas aren't allowed to make a move unless it's cleared through Aymeric first."

"She might not have known the new rules."

"Oh, come on, Night. Be real. Every pack member knows. Every last one knows how things work with the zetas."

The pain in my chest only seemed to intensify. "Then maybe she just went for a run today because she was pissed."

"Again, not reporting for duty would have to be cleared through Aymeric."

"I hope nobody got to her," Aymeric said in his quiet way. "It seems unlikely with our safeguards, but you left her swinging out there alone, Alpha. A Howl is valuable, even one who hasn't Taken the Blood. Our enemies could take her to prevent you from ever changing your mind."

"So if she's not here and her car is gone, it's obvious she went into work." Stupid chest pain.

"We called the business. She phoned in sick and said she was ill and needed to take an emergency leave of absence. For an indefinite amount of time."

"Then the obvious answer is she's out for a run, without permission, and one of her friends took her car for the day." That had to be it because anything else was unthinkable.

Néron and Aymeric exchanged glances. "Her two good friends are also gone. I checked back with all of the guards for the last twenty-four hours. One said Neera's car went through the gate at 9:37 a.m. yesterday. She wasn't in the car, however."

"Did they stop and search the car? To be sure? Or are they just talking out of their furry asses?" I demanded.

"No, Alpha," Aymeric said evenly. "There was no reason to stop the car since there had been no orders issued to search vehicles yesterday."

"You also didn't issue an Alpha directive for her to stay on pack lands," Néron reminded me. "Leaving the way clear for Neera to run away from the hell you set up for her when you made her a zeta."

Fucking little brother. Always such a pain in the ass.

"So where is she?"

"Unknown," Aymeric said. "The three of them are not answering their phones."

"What are you doing to find her?" Shouldn't this chest pain stop soon?

I could feel my voice changing as my wolf pushed forward. He didn't like this, didn't like what had happened yesterday. I didn't either, and I wish I could remember why I had --

"The fuck you care?" Néron snapped at me. "You rejected her -- brutally -- you changed her pack status, you didn't order her protection, so you were just about begging for something to happen to her. Now you and your non-Destined One can live happily ever after without all those children you clearly don't want to have and throw the pack into further chaos when you die and there's no successor to take your place."

"Watch yourself," I growled at him, feeling myself on the edge of a change. He might be my brother, but he still had to respect me as Alpha. My wolf demanded it.

"Someone has to make you see what you've done! You've practically alienated the entire pack, Night! You took something sacred to all of us and made it into something horrifying and humiliating. You might as well have torn that poor girl's throat out because you absolutely gutted her. So you tell me, what the fuck did you expect to happen? You didn't issue an Alpha decree that she could never touch Lindsay, so you know how that was going to go. Your Destined One couldn't stand by and watch you with another female -- it was only a matter of time before she attacked Lindsay Morgan and then you'd kill Neera in retaliation. So what sane, clear-thinking person would stay on pack lands just biding her time before she brought about her own death?

"I can't explain it!" I shouted at him. "Something happened!" I bellowed, and then I forced myself to calm down and pushed back my wolf.

"Something happened," I repeated, this time more quietly.

"What happened?

"I don't know, Aymeric. It happened twice. Once to a lesser extent when I was at my house and Neera was on my porch. I looked into her eyes and felt the bond start. Then I stopped looking at her, and the connection was broken. It was like --"

"What, Alpha?"

"It was like somebody turned my face to make me stop looking at her."

"Was it Lindsay?"

"No, Néron. She didn't lay a hand on me. Then I was calling everyone to the Den and I grabbed Neera's arm and I grabbed Lindsay's hand. We walked over to the Den and stood in front of the fireplace."

I remembered looking into Neera's eyes again, this time long enough for our hearts to beat in sync, our breathing to match breath for breath, inhale for inhale, exhale for exhale. My mate brand began to pulse and those links of connection had just started to form when I -- I don't know what. I'd felt a surge of power move into my body, pushing my wolf down even as he fought against it, and I was...shoved aside, turned away from Neera, breaking off what had felt so much like the beginning of a powerful bond, even without the Taking of the Blood.

The rest was like trying to see yourself in a fogged-up mirror after a shower. Vague impressions. My memories were incomplete bits and pieces. I could remember a few distant, disjointed words here and there, some incomplete phrases, but it was like hearing something underwater.

Then Neera walking away. Less fuzzy.

Neera walking out the Den doors. That was a bit more clear.

I felt the eyes of my pack members on me, slack jawed, eyes wide, silent.

Shocked.

I looked out at them, and their heads dropped in shame.

Shame at something I had just done. Shame at something I had just said.

Disapproving.

But what exactly had I done? What exactly had I said? It was just at the edges of my consciousness but I couldn't pull it up. I felt...off. My wolf was practically comatose, as if he'd been knocked out and was down for the count. I couldn't rouse him, and it would be several hours before he would come back. Wobbly. Confused. Dazed.

Join the club.

At that moment, before I could wrap my head around what had just gone down, I felt power leave me and I staggered, just as Lindsay Morgan gasped and then crumpled to the ground.

Very clear.

Not a minute later, I followed her.

When I came to, Néron, Aymeric and the pack doctor were leaning over me.

"Alpha," the doctor said. "Welcome back."

Then he walked me through a series of questions that I was able to answer more and more readily as the fog lifted. I sat up after a moment, feeling for my wolf, but he was groggy, too, whining softly.

"You scared the fuck out of me," Néron said, and he looked a bit gray. I was on a couch in the Den, and Aymeric offered me a glass of water that one of the zetas had brought to him.

"What time is it? How long was I out?"

"Hours," the doctor said. "Almost three hours, Alpha. "I've never seen the like before in all my years."

"And Neera?" I asked, remembering her standing in front of the fireplace with me.

The three men exchanged concerned glances.

"What?" I demanded.

"What do you want to know about Neera?" Aymeric asked.

"Where is she?"

"What do you remember," my brother asked, his face pinched.

"The last thing I remember clearly is her being on my front porch, maybe a little bit when she was in front of the fireplace with me. So, I'll ask again, where is she?"

"Alpha, I need to examine you again. Maybe you hit your head harder than we thought. Although after three hours, you should be completely healed no matter how hard you hit it."

Angry, frustrated, I brushed his hands away. "Where is Neera?"

"Night," my brother said, impatience and disgust in his words, "you rejected her. In front of the entire pack. Are you telling me you don't remember fucking Lindsay Morgan right in front of her and then demoting her to zeta?"

No. No, I did not.

All I could say when they related the events of the rejection to me was I couldn't remember it clearly. My wolf was whining for Neera, but my brother and Aymeric told me I needed to give her some time.

I didn't want to.

But I was still weak, and I didn't like that at all. Not one day in my life had I been weakened like this. I had Alpha strength and power, but I felt like my body had been hit by a truck.

"I want you to stay with me for a few days," Néron said. I agreed, even when Lindsay Morgan -- who had been carried back to my house after she had fainted -- had come bursting into the Den, demanding to see me.

The doctor had turned her away.

I hadn't seen Lindsay for more than a day, but my focus was Neera and I was now trying to absorb the fact that she'd pulled a runner. Not that I blamed her after what I had done to her in front of the whole pack. From all accounts it had been brutal, and that I had done that to my Howl was fucking with me and pissing off my wolf.

My brother and Aymeric hovered around me for the next two weeks, refusing to let Lindsay see me, worried that my wolf might kill her as the cause of being without our Destined One. She screamed and demanded and cried, but Néron and Aymeric stood firm. With each day that I was away from Lindsay Morgan, I felt a clarity I hadn't felt in three years returning.

But a week after the rejection, I began to have vivid nightmares about Neera, where she was trying to cut off the mate brand on my face, and each day without her brought more and more pain. My wolf was trying to claw his way out of me half the time, desperate to search for Neera, certain he could find her when no one else could.

So two weeks passed, until Aymeric got a call one day from the guards at the front gate while he and my brother and I were in my office, trying to discuss pack business in between waves of my pain.

He ended the call and looked at me steadily.

"Alpha," he said calmly, "Neera's back."