Chapter 173: Blood Evidence

Kaelen's POV

"I—" Vespera choked out, her fingers clawing desperately at my wrist. Her nails scraped against my skin, drawing thin lines of blood that I barely registered. "I... I don't... I can't breathe..."

"Good." The word came out flat, dead, carrying none of the heat of my fury but somehow so much worse because of it. "You don't deserve to breathe. You don't deserve to exist in the same fucking world as the man you murdered."

Her face was turning from red to purple now, her struggles becoming weaker, more frantic. Her legs kicked out uselessly, hitting nothing but air. Tears streamed from her eyes—whether from oxygen deprivation or genuine fear, I didn't know and didn't care.

"You're hurt, aren't you?" I leaned in close enough that she could see the gold completely overtaking my irises, could see the beast looking back at her through my eyes. "Because Orion found you're a traitor, so he attacked you!"

"I don't—" she wheezed, the words barely audible past my grip. "Please... I don't know what you're—"

"Lying won't save you." My free hand came up, fingers shifting into claws that pressed against her cheek hard enough to draw blood. "But maybe the truth will. So I'll ask you one more time, and you better pray you give me the right answer: Why did you betray Shadowmere? What else are you and Damien planning?"

Her lips moved but no sound came out except a thin, desperate wheeze. Her eyes were starting to roll back, her body going limp in my grasp.

"Kaelen." Lucian's voice came from behind me, shaking but determined. "Alpha, she's going to die. We need her alive. We need to know—"

"I don't give a fuck what we need!" I snarled without turning, my wolf pressing even closer to the surface. The urge to shift, to let the beast take over and finish what I'd started, was almost overwhelming. "She killed my Gamma. She sold out my mate. She deserves to—"

"Kaelen, look!" Cordelia's sudden exclamation cut through my rage like a blade.

I tightened my grip reflexively, and felt something warm and wet trickle over my knuckles. My claws had pierced Vespera's skin, puncturing the soft flesh of her neck in five distinct points. Blood welled up around each wound, running down in dark rivulets that dripped onto the white hospital sheets below.

Cordelia darted forward. She reached up with trembling fingers, swiping at the blood flowing from Vespera's neck. I watched, confused and furious, as she brought her hand to her nose and inhaled deeply.

Her eyes went wide. Then wider. Then she looked at me with an expression I'd never seen on her face before—pure, absolute certainty mixed with vindicated triumph.

"It's her," Cordelia breathed. "The blood on Orion's teeth. The scent matches perfectly. Kaelen, it's her blood."

Everything stopped.

The monitors. My breathing. Time itself seemed to suspend in that single moment as Cordelia's words registered.

Vespera's eyes—those tear-filled, desperate eyes that had been begging for mercy—suddenly went sharp with something else. Fear, yes. But also recognition. The knowledge that she'd been caught, that the game was over, that there was no more room for denial.

Her pupils contracted to pinpoints. Her already weak struggles intensified for a brief, manic second before her body seemed to give up entirely.

She tried to speak, tried to push words past my strangling grip, but all that came out was a broken "Uh... uh..." A wet, desperate gasp for air that her crushed throat couldn't provide.

Her hands fell away from my wrist, no longer strong enough to fight. Instead they just hung there, occasionally twitching as if her body had forgotten how to function without oxygen.

My vision went completely gold. I could see each individual tear on Vespera's face, could track the exact moment her pupils dilated from oxygen starvation, could hear the wet, struggling sounds her body made as it tried and failed to pull in air.

A growl rumbled up from somewhere deep in my chest, so low and primal that it felt more vibration than sound. It resonated through the room, making the windows rattle and the medical equipment screech even louder in protest.

"Orion bit you," I said, my voice dropping into that double-toned register that meant my wolf was speaking through me now. "He was a brave Gamma, left us the right clues before he died."

I leaned in closer, letting her see the beast that wanted nothing more than to rip her apart. "Three pieces of evidence, Vespera. Three separate ways you fucked up. The injection site. The sedatives in his blood. And now this—your blood, found in his mouth and bleeding fresh from your neck."

My claws dug deeper into her neck, and more blood flowed. The scent of it filled my nostrils, hot and copper-sweet and undeniable. "Still want to play innocent? Still want to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about?"

Her face had gone from purple to a sickly blue-gray now. Her eyes were rolling back, showing mostly whites. Her body had stopped fighting entirely, just hanging limp in my grip like a broken doll.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, past the rage and the wolf's howling demands for vengeance, a small voice whispered that I was going too far, that I was about to cross a line I couldn't uncross.

I ignored it. Orion's body, cold and carved with Damien's message, flashed through my mind. Sera's terrified face as Damien dragged her away. Eight years of trust and loyalty and pack bonds, all destroyed by this woman's jealousy and ambition.

My fingers tightened even more, and I felt something in her throat start to give way, felt the fragile structures beginning to collapse under the pressure.

"Alpha, STOP!"

The command hit me from the side like a freight train, and suddenly there was a body between me and Vespera, silver-gray fur sprouting along arms that had gone halfway to wolf. Lucian's eyes blazed pure gold as he wedged himself into the space I'd created, his partially shifted hands grabbing my wrist with enough force that I actually felt it.

"She dies and we learn nothing!" he snarled, his voice rough with the partial transformation. His muscles bulged under his shredding clothes, power flooding through him as he called on his wolf to give him the strength to stand against his Alpha. "We'll never know what else they're planning! We'll never find Sera!"

His whole body was shaking—whether from the effort of resisting my dominance or from the strain of forcing his shift, I couldn't tell. Probably both. His claws had fully emerged now, digging into my skin hard enough to draw blood. His canines had elongated, pushing past his lips in a snarl that was more wolf than human.

"Let. Her. Go." Each word came out like he was lifting a mountain. Sweat poured down his face. The tendons in his neck stood out like steel cables. But he didn't back down, didn't release his grip, just kept pulling with everything he had.

For a moment we were locked there, Alpha and Beta, my dominance crashing against his desperate determination. The air between us crackled with competing energies—my rage and his loyalty, my need for vengeance and his need to protect the pack's future.

Then, slowly, my fingers began to loosen.

Not because I wanted them to. Not because Lucian's words had penetrated the red haze filling my vision. But because he was right, and even through the fury and the wolf's bloodlust, some rational part of me recognized that truth.

My hand opened completely, and Vespera dropped like a stone.

She hit the bed with a dull thump that made the frame creak. Her hands immediately flew to her throat, fingers scrabbling at the deep bruises already forming there. She drew in a massive, rattling gasp that sounded like death itself—wet and desperate and absolutely pathetic.

"Cough... cough... cough..." The sounds that came out of her were barely human, just raw, animal noises of someone whose body had forgotten how to process oxygen properly.