MARGARET’S POV

The change of scenery was jarring.

That was my first thought when the guards shut the door behind me, and I stood again in the room I’d occupied when I’d first arrived on the island, before betrayal and captivity unraveled everything.

Soft linen on the bed. Curtains drawn back, filtered sunlight spilling across polished floors. A small seating area near the window, as though I could spend my days lounging.

It felt like a performance.

As if I were once again a guest rather than a prisoner whose freedom existed only within carefully measured boundaries.

The guards did not enter, but I could feel them beyond the door. Two, at least. Even without my psychic abilities, their menacing presence lingered at the edge of my awareness.

I forced myself to play the role Catherine expected.

Days blurred together, though not in the suffocating way they had in the dungeon.

Here, time moved again, marked by shifting light and the distant hum of activity beyond these walls.

I slept in the luxurious bed. Ate when food arrived. Spoke little. Resisted less.

Compliance was often mistaken for surrender.

And Catherine, for all her brilliance, had always underestimated one thing about me.

My patience.

Soon enough, it paid off.

Just not in the way I expected.

The door opened without warning one afternoon, and I turned to find Catherine standing there, framed by the corridor light, her posture as composed and elegant as ever, her expression carrying that same smug satisfaction I was getting sick of.

“Margaret,” she said, as though greeting an old friend. “Walk with me.”

She turned without waiting for me to fall into step beside her, confident in my compliance.

I rose, smoothed my dress, and took a deep breath before following.

The guards fell in behind us, silent shadows.

We moved through corridors I had not yet seen, descending deeper into the structure of the facility.

The air cooled as we descended—sharper now, touched by something sterile that clung to my throat.

Catherine led without hesitation, her pace unhurried but purposeful, until we reached a reinforced door that slid open at her approach. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Inside was an observation room.

A wide pane of reinforced glass stretched across the far wall, separating us from whatever lay beyond.

“Come,” she said softly.

I stepped forward.

She gave me a soft, almost tender smile that made my stomach churn.

“There’s someone I want you to see.”

A light came on on the other side of the room.

And I forgot how to breathe.

My body went still, as if instinct had decided movement itself was dangerous, as if even the smallest shift might shatter whatever fragile illusion stood before me.

Every thought I might have had scattered until everything beyond the figure on the other side of the glass ceased to exist.

Edward.

He stood with his back partially turned, broad shoulders familiar in a way that carved something raw and aching through my chest.

His posture was the same. The line of his jaw, the dark hair threaded now with silver, the authority that had once anchored an entire pack and a family built around him.

For one impossible, devastating heartbeat, I forgot.

Forgot the battle. The hospital room. The ravaging grief after his death.

My breath caught, sharp and unsteady, and I stepped closer to the glass before I could stop myself.

“Edward.” The name slipped out of me like a sacred prayer.

He turned.

And the illusion shattered.

His eyes met mine. They were wrong.

There was recognition, yes. A flicker of awareness that suggested something of him remained beneath the surface.

But it was distant, dulled, as though layered beneath something heavier. Something imposed.

Controlled.

My chest tightened. Grief surged first—devastation over the mate I lost—then, like wildfire, fury crept in, burning away shock and filling me with resolve. The emotions tangled until one bled into the other, impossible to separate.

And eclipsing it all—horror.

Because this was not my Edward.

This was a puppet wearing his face.

I felt Catherine’s gaze on me, measuring, waiting, analyzing every reaction with clinical precision.

So I gave her what she expected.

My hand lifted slowly, pressing against the glass as though I could bridge the distance between us through sheer will.

Tears gathered in my eyes, blurring my vision just enough to sell the illusion.

“Is it...?” My voice trembled, the words carefully fractured. “Is it really him?”

Catherine’s smile was soft. Satisfied.

“As close as it can be,” she replied.

I let my breath hitch, let my shoulders shake as though emotion had overwhelmed me, even as my mind remained cold, clear, and calculating.

“You...you brought him back,” I whispered.

“Not entirely,” she corrected gently. “But enough.”

Edward—the thing wearing his form—tilted his head, gaze fixed on me. The movement twisted the knife; it was too close to the man I’d known.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to break through the glass and throw my arms around him.

I wanted to throttle Catherine for daring to do this to him.

Instead, I leaned closer to the glass, letting my forehead rest against its cool surface as though seeking comfort.

“How?” I asked, my voice soft with feigned awe.

Catherine stepped beside me, her presence close enough that I could feel the shift in the air.

“Years of research,” she said. “Trial and error. Refinement.”

“And...he’s stable?” I asked carefully.

“For now,” she said. “But stability is...fragile. That is why I require your cooperation.”

There it was.

I straightened slowly, turning to face her, allowing a fragile hope to linger in my expression.

“What do you need?” I asked.

Her eyes gleamed.

“You already understand the foundation,” she said. “Your psychic power was part of what made this possible. But to complete the process—to perfect it—I require something more.”

My heart thumped once, slow and heavy.

“What?”

“Your wolf.”

Sylvia surged, a sharp, instinctive protest that rippled through me before faltering.

Since Catherine siphoned the bulk of my power during the sealing, Sylvia had been affected. Weakened. She surfaced in rare, fleeting moments before retreating to dormancy, as if existing itself now strained her.

I let silence stretch, appearing to weigh her request, while the truth took shape in my mind.

This was not about Edward. Not truly.

This was about power.

About Catherine’s insatiable hunger for control.

“If I help you,” I said slowly, “what happens to him?”

Catherine’s smile was indulgent.

“You and your mate will be reunited,” she said.

It was tempting. Gods, it was tempting.

For a brief moment of weakness, longing overtook caution, and I allowed myself to imagine it.

Standing beside Edward again. Speaking to him. Touching him.

I turned back to the room and looked at him again.

And the cracks became impossible to ignore.

It wasn’t just the eyes.

I reached inward, searching for that bond that had once been as natural to me as breathing, the anchoring presence of my mate.

There was nothing.

No warmth. No pull. No echo of recognition threading through my wolf to meet his.

Just silence—a void where something sacred belonged.

My fingers pressed harder against the glass without me realizing it.

My gaze dragged over him, searching not for the man I had loved, but for the pieces that didn’t belong.

The details Catherine could not replicate.

A thin, pale line along his collarbone from a rogue skirmish years ago. The faint, ridged mark across his ribs from a hunt gone wrong. The barely visible crescent near his wrist that I used to trace absentmindedly when we lay together in the quiet hours of the night.

They were gone.

His skin was smooth. Unmarked. Too perfect.

The sight twisted something deep in my chest, revulsion creeping in beneath the grief.

Edward had lived. He had fought. He had bled.

This...thing had not.

I searched again, deeper this time, instinctively reaching for that other presence that had once existed alongside his own, the powerful, steady force of his wolf that had always mirrored him so perfectly.

There was nothing there either.

No Alpha’s weight. No silent, watchful counterpart beneath the surface. No sense of restrained power coiled just beneath his skin.

Sylvia pressed at my consciousness—a fragile recoil, not in recognition but quiet refusal. Even in her diminished state, she knew this was wrong.

My breath shuddered, the sound barely contained as it slipped past my lips.

Any future with this thing was a future built on the desecration of everything Edward Lockwood had been.

Something in me snapped.

The fragile mask I had so carefully constructed fractured in an instant, shattering beneath the force of what I now understood.

“You’re not bringing him back,” I said, my voice sharp as broken glass. “You’re defiling him.”

Something cold slid into Catherine’s gaze.

“Margaret—”

“You stole my power,” I continued, stepping back from the glass, from her, from the grotesque parody of the man I had loved. “You twisted it into this—this abomination—and now you want more?”

“This is evolution,” she said calmly.

“This is desecration!” I snapped.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re letting emotion cloud your judgment.”

“And you’ve let ambition rot yours,” I shot back.

The air between us tightened, heavy with something volatile.

“You could have stood beside me,” she said, her voice dropping. “You still can. Everything I’ve built—everything I can create—you could be part of it.”

I took a step closer till we were face to face so she could see the loathing in my eyes.

“I. Would. Rather. Die.”

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then Catherine sighed, a sound laced with disappointment rather than anger.

“How tiresome,” she murmured, waving a hand behind her.

The guards moved before I could react.

Hands seized my arms, pulling me back as I struggled, my gaze snapping once more to the figure beyond the glass.

Edward stood there, unmoving. Watching.

His brows furrowed, and for the briefest moment, I thought—

No.

I refused to hope.

“Take her back,” Catherine said coldly.

The world blurred as they dragged me from the room, the image of Edward burned into my mind like a brand I could not erase.

***

They threw me into the same dungeon, the door slamming shut behind me with a finality that echoed through my bones.

I hit the floor hard, the impact jarring enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

For a long moment, I didn’t move.

Didn’t think.

Didn’t breathe.

Then the reality of it crashed down all at once.

Edward.

What Catherine had done to him.

What she intended to do with me.

A broken sound tore from my throat, raw and unrestrained, as I pushed myself up, my hands shaking with something far beyond anger.

I staggered to my feet, pacing the small space like a caged animal, my thoughts spiraling faster, darker.

She would not stop.

Not unless she was stopped.

And I—

I was part of it.

Even after everything, my existence, my power, was still something she could use.

The realization settled into something cold and absolute.

No.

I would not allow it.

If I could not escape...

If I could not stop her from the outside...

Then I would remove myself from the equation entirely.

’I. Would. Rather. Die.’

The decision came with a terrible kind of clarity.

My gaze dropped to the edge of the metal table, to the sharp corner where steel met stone.

It wouldn’t take much.

A precise strike. Enough force.

Pain flared briefly at the thought, but it was nothing compared to what waited if I did nothing.

I stepped closer.

Lifted my hand.

Brought it down—

“Stop!”

The voice cut through the air, sharp and urgent as the door burst open, and someone rushed inside, crossing the distance between us in an instant.

Hands caught my wrists, pulling them away from the table before I could act.

I struggled, fury surging.

“Let me go!”

“No!”

“I said, let me—”

“Margaret! Look at me.”

I froze.

Slowly, I lifted my gaze.

And met a pair of familiar eyes I had not seen in years.

“Tobias?”