Chapter 138: Deep rot

The question caught me completely off guard; I hadn’t expected him to ask that first. His sharp eyes were already scanning the monitors, the tubing, the empty vial.

"The blood was for Matthias. Wasn’t it?" he asked softly, stepping toward the stand. He picked up the empty vial, rolling it between his fingers. "What is he sick with?"

"His body was poisoned by residual toxins, and he couldn’t produce his own Alpha hormone. When I found out I was pregnant, we hoped the worst was over because my system had been flushed of the poison... But as it turned out, it had penetrated too deep and infected Matthias. There was zero chance he would be born healthy," I admitted with a bitter chuckle, memories of that nightmare resurfacing. "Honestly, there was barely any chance he would survive birth at all."

Magnus stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me. The muscles beneath his shirt trembled violently with a deep tremor, but I knew it wasn’t from the cold. It was the fury shaking him. I felt it so intensely that my entire soul twisted in confusion.

He wasn’t supposed to react this way. He wasn’t supposed to care at all. Yet here he was, resting his face against my hair, holding me as if terrified I might slip away.

"The toxin they used on you in that holding cell was specifically engineered to leave your glands untouched. To preserve your hormones," he murmured, his voice tight with dark anger. "They wanted to extract far more from it—not just bleed my family dry, but harvest your hormones as well. It’s my fault. I failed to protect you."

"What are you talking about...?"

He ran a hand soothingly over the back of my head, his tone dropping to a low, heavy whisper.

"I don’t know if you remember the Foundation, established by the Nyland family. They built it right after the physician I summoned during your heats sold information about you on the black market. As it turns out, there are plenty of monsters willing to pay any price to harvest the glands of an Alpha Breeder for clinical research."

"What... but how could that be? That’s monstrous..." A deep chill coursed through my body, settling like shards of ice in my legs. I had no idea. I hadn’t suspected just how deep the rot went, or how many people were desperate to claim what was never theirs to take.

"But why? Why would they do all of this?"

Magnus exhaled slowly, pulling me closer. I obeyed without resistance, sinking down beside him on the edge of the bed.

"Money. Mind-boggling amounts of money," he said, his voice laced with grim contempt. "The Nyland’s pack was drowned in massive debt. Their leader ran their operations into the ground, until they were squeezed not just by rival packs, but by the state itself.

Cornered on all sides, they concocted a scheme. Using harvested hormones, they inked a tattoo on Karina to fake a true-mate bond. The government relies heavily on the revenue each pack feeds into the treasury, so when Nylands ceased to be profitable and became a liability, officials helped falsify the lab results through the testing institute. That was how their pack latched onto ours like a parasite."

He paused, his jaw clenching tightly. "Only the forced hormone couldn’t manipulate me the way they calculated. I never felt Karina on the level they bargained for. All I felt was sheer revulsion.

We were childhood friends, but even that bond had withered long ago. They realized that the moment I encountered my actual true mate, the charade would collapse—but by then, their hands were already elbow-deep in our coffers. Their only option left was to plot the execution of whoever my true mate turned out to be.

That was, until a genuine true-mate mark bloomed on Karina’s skin, and news of it reached her clan’s inner circle. The mark was permanent—impossible to erase. They moved to eliminate her real mate, but Karina fled with him first."

I sat there, utterly stunned. The sheer savagery of it all was overwhelming—a grotesque web woven from so many layers, involving so many corrupt players that my mind struggled to process it.

"They hoped that during the mandatory mourning period, they’d hunt her down and fabricate a believable story," Magnus continued bitterly. "Then I met you, and Dean realized their game was up. He knew every detail of his uncle’s plot. As the prospective heir, he had been living off the funds my uncle lent him out of old loyalty—a sneaky move, considering Dean knew Karina was being hunted and refused to touch his own pack’s reserves.

He knew if Karina’s gamble paid off, he’d be cast aside. But then the report of your Alpha Breeder status was leaked. The black market was flooded with high-value requests, and they decided to kill two birds with one stone. And then... Karina resurfaced on her own. Her true mate had been critically injured in a horrific fight and couldn’t walk. Needing emergency money, she returned. That was why they agreed to sell me the remaining years of mourning right before our trip home."

I sat frozen, numb from the weight of his revelation.

For money... I had been processed like trade stock. Slaughtered like livestock. All for bloody money.

"Goddess above... but what about the tribunal? The judicial authorities?" I stammered. "How could government officials not question any of it...?"

"The son of a former high-ranking government minister oversees restricted bio-research," Magnus growled, the wolfish rumble in his chest vibrating violently against my ribs. "They promised him... that he would receive you. Or rather... whatever was left of you when they were finished."

A terrifying, guttural snarl broke through his throat, and I let out a startled gasp as he suddenly hauled me onto his lap, crushing me against his chest with a grip so ferocious my ribs creaked under the strain.

"Forgive me," he rasped into my skin, his voice cracking with raw, unadulterated agony. "Forgive me for failing to protect you. I failed at everything. I lost it all. You. Myself. Us... Please... Forgive me, Jane."