Tristan crashed onto the rough surface of the gallows platform with a thud. Beta Edward Douglas bent down and loosened the noose around his neck and removed it, tossing it aside.

Tristan lay on his side, gasping for air as the shackles were removed from his wrists and ankles.

His eyes frantically searched for mine as I sat on the ground near the gallows, sobbing. My body violently shook in pain and heartbreak.

He mind-linked me again, “Jane, look at me.”

I looked up at him with tear-filled eyes.

Through the link, he said clearly, “I don’t accept your rejection. You are my true mate.”

My eyes widened in fear, but he cut into my thoughts again, and his words were quick but clear.

“Listen to me, Jane. They are going to take you far away from here. They might even force me to mark someone else. They will sever your connection to the pack, and I won’t be able to mind-link you again. You will be a rogue. But I will find you when it’s safe.

“You’ll be safer away from here. Live with other humans; you’ll be ok. I need you to survive, alright? Do whatever you have to and survive. I will forgive you anything. Just survive until my father dies, Jane. Then I will come for you. I promise. You are my true mate now and always.”

I stared at him with red eyes and a tear-streaked face. The aching pain in my entire torso was almost rendered insignificant by the shock of what he was saying.

He still wanted me as his mate. He wanted me to be safe. I had to survive.

“Will you do that, Jane?” He pressed desperately into my mind, “Will you survive for me?”

“I will,” I linked back with all my heart.

“Good girl,” he said out loud.

Beta Edward scowled at him then shouted at the warriors standing beside me.

“Take her out of here. Dump her in the forest at the north border. She’ll be severed from the pack shortly.”

I was yanked roughly up by my armpits and carried around the pack house to the driveway. The men threw me into the back of a pickup truck and started driving. My body was inflamed with pain, and my heart ached with both sorrow and a glimmer of hope.

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Halfway down the drive, I heard Tristan’s voice for the last time through the link, “I love you, Jane Marie Brown.”

As the pack link severed, I felt my connection to my people snapped in two, like the cable of an elevator, and I was the car that would crash to the ground.

All went silent on the two-hour drive to the edge of pack territory. Because no one spoke much to me through the link, I’d assumed its absence wouldn’t affect me much. I was wrong. Though I wasn’t often spoken to, the push and pull of the thrumming emotions and presence of the pack had been there like the breath I breathe. It existed my entire life and I’d taken it for granted. Now I was utterly, wretchedly alone.

Clinging to the side of the truck bed, my aching back offered to the falling snow, I felt the intense cold numbing the pain a bit.

We were driving through the forest, and I was being jostled, bounced, and battered for the entire trip before the truck finally came to a halt.

One of the warriors exited the truck cab, reached over the side to pick me up like a sack of potatoes, and ruthlessly tossed me into the snow.

“Run,” snarled the warrior who had thrown me on the ground.

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I got to my feet and started running. It wasn’t long before my body screamed at me, and my lungs burned, but I ran without stopping anyway. I silently thanked whoever had put my sneakers on me in that cell when I was unconscious. Goddess bless that person.

I ran as my shirt was trying to fall off my body, and my shorts were crackling and stiff from the dried blood that saturated them. I ran anyway.

I ran as long as I possibly could before collapsing into a pile of leaves at the foot of the giant oak tree.

As my lungs heaved and pumped, begging for more air, the adrenaline began to fade. The precarious and hopeless situation in which I found myself overtook me as my body was racked with shivers from the cold, and gasps for deeper breaths. The fear, the loneliness, and the heartbreak began to diminish as the cold consumed me, embraced me, and pulled me down into the loving arms of oblivion.

I tried to keep my promise to Tristan. I tried to survive, but I was miles from any shelter and didn’t have enough warmth to make it through this cold winter night.

Not having eaten for at least two days, my body was weak to its human flesh. Seduced into the belief that death was a welcome and beloved relief, I had finally surrendered.

I must be dead now. I felt warm and comfortable. There was no more pain in my back, and my limbs were no longer numb. I felt like I could open my eyes and be awake. This must be the afterlife.

I needed to check. I turned a little and opened my eyes to the warm glow of a fire burning in a hearth a few feet away.

It took me several blinks to focus on the man sitting still and quietly in the chair beside the bed. He didn’t seem like an ordinary man or even a wolf.

He appeared to be approximately thirty years old and very tall. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about him was how incredibly beautiful he was, which I observed dispassionately. With black hair and eyes so dark brown they were almost black, he watched me without moving. At all.

Maybe this was the afterlife. I didn’t think a normal person could sit that still. His statuesque lack of motion indicated he wasn’t even breathing. Was he an angel? No…he seemed more dangerous than that. A devil, perhaps?

An amused smile appeared at the corners of his perfectly sculpted mouth, and then he spoke.

“I am neither angel nor devil, Jane Marie Brown. Welcome to my home. You are not dead.”