POV: Kade
The severing ceremony was supposed to take an hour.
It took three.
Three hours of agony. Of feeling the pack bond, the thing that had defined me since I became alpha being, slowly, methodically torn away.
David performed the ritual. His voice steady even as I screamed. Even as my wolf howled inside me, clawing to hold onto what we were losing.
Every pack member felt it. I heard them crying out. Felt their confusion through the bond even as it dissolved.
When it was finally done, I collapsed.
Not alpha anymore. Just... Kade.
Empty. Hollow. Wrong.
"It's done," David said quietly. He looked worse than I felt. "The bond is severed."
I lay there on the cold ground, trying to remember how to breathe without the constant hum of pack consciousness in my head.
Silence. For the
