The Stand In Bride's Revenge I Never Loved You

In the third year of my mating bond with Alpha Fenris Blackthorn, I received good news.

I could finally leave him.

One more moon cycle, and your sister will return to the territory. You keep wearing her identity until then. My mother's voice crackled through the pack bond totem, cold as it had always been. "Once it's done, I'll give you the cache of moonstones and the territorial deeds. Then you can cross the border and live whatever life you choose."

"Understood." My reply was barely a whisper, my voice flat as dead water.

I severed the connection and lifted my gaze to the massive mating portrait mounted above the stone hearth.

In the painting, Fenris stood tall in ceremonial black leather, his jaw carved from granite, his dark eyes burning with an authority that made lesser wolves drop to their knees. He was devastatingly handsome almost cruel in his perfection, every inch the reigning Alpha of the most feared pack in the Capital Territory. And there I was beside him, draped in a moonsilk gown worth more than my entire childhood, smiling softly, the picture of a devoted Luna.

"Three years..." I murmured, my fingertip tracing the gilded edge of the frame. "It's almost over."

My inner wolf stirred faintly a weak, thin presence at the back of my mind, more shadow than beast. She had been quiet for so long that sometimes I forgot she was there at all.

Three years ago, the mating alliance between the Blackthorn Pack and the Ashvane bloodline had sent shockwaves through every territory in the realm. My twin sister, Umbra Ashvane, was the mate the Blackthorn Pack had handpicked a rare female Alpha born to a declining bloodline, a prize meant to strengthen both packs through bonded blood.

But the night before the mating ceremony, Umbra left a letter and ran.

Mother, Father I refuse to be shackled by an arranged mating, but I know the alliance is my burden to bear. Give me three years to run free as a rogue. After that, I'll come back.

To salvage the critical alliance between the two packs the only thing keeping the Ashvane territory from being absorbed by rival packs my parents had no choice. They sent a desperate howl-message across the territories and summoned me overnight. Me the daughter they had exiled to live with her elderly grandparents in a remote human settlement when I was five years old. The Omega twin whose wolf had been stunted from years of neglect and wolfsbane-laced food in childhood.

Just like that, the girl who had grown up outside pack lands, who had never once been invited to a pack gathering or a full moon run, stepped into Umbra Ashvane's name and became a substitute mate.

"Fenris isn't in love with your sister. He's in love with a girl his pack once took in a turned wolf from nothing, bitten during a Moon Goddess festival out of charity." The night before the ceremony, my mother's warning had been ice against my skin. "Your life within the Blackthorn Pack won't be easy. Just keep your head down, wear your sister's scent mask, and survive three years."

I had nodded obediently.

Of course I knew who Alpha Fenris Blackthorn was. His name echoed through every territory from the Capital to the coast. The most celebrated Alpha heir in the realm's elite circles. The wolf whose dominance aura alone could force an entire room to bare their throats. Every unmated she-wolf in the land would have killed to receive his mating bite.

And I had heard the story about him and Seraphina Holloway.

She had been a charity case a human orphan the Blackthorn Pack had taken in and turned during a Moon Goddess festival. A girl from nothing who had survived the bite when most humans didn't, clawing her way into the pack's inner circle on sheer will alone. Fenris had fallen for her deeply, defying the Pack Elders' opposition to claim her as his chosen companion. But Seraphina was proud. Unwilling to stay where no one blessed the bond, she had severed things herself and crossed into foreign territory.

The Blackthorn Pack Elders had been overjoyed. They arranged Fenris's mating immediately.

Life within the Blackthorn Pack Den turned out to be harder than I had ever imagined.

Fenris's private study was lined with portraits of Seraphina her delicate face captured in oils and charcoal, her fragile scent preserved in sealed vials on his desk like sacred relics. Every week, he shifted and ran across territory borders in secret to see her in whatever foreign pack sheltered her. And me his bonded mate I wasn't even permitted in the Alpha's den. I slept in the small guest chamber at the far end of the corridor, where the stone walls were cold and the moonlight barely reached.

He never marked me. No mating bite graced my neck. The bond between us was incomplete a hollow thing, a political arrangement sealed with blood oaths and nothing more.

I walked on eggshells, pouring everything I had into playing Umbra's role. For the sake of the alliance between our two packs, I spent those three years bending myself into knots to please him.

When he returned late from Pack Council Gatherings, I left the torches burning in the great hall all night so he wouldn't walk into darkness. His wolf ran hot and restless, so I woke before dawn every morning to brew the specific tea blend that calmed his beast before council meetings a mixture of moonpetal and ashroot that I had learned through careful, quiet observation. He preferred silence, so I made myself the quietest presence in the den, barely a whisper of scent, barely a shadow on the wall.

I memorized his preferred hunt routes. I learned the precise way he liked his den arranged during full moons furs folded just so, the window cracked to let in the silver light, a basin of cold water by the bed for when the moon fever made his skin burn. I wrote all of it down in a scroll and kept it close, a record of devotion he never asked for and would never know existed.

Gradually, whispers spread through the pack: The Luna is hopelessly devoted to her Alpha. And the way Fenris looked at me seemed to shift something subtle, something new. A flicker of warmth in those cold, dark eyes when he caught me waiting by the hearth. A pause in his step when my scent reached him across the hall.

The portraits of Seraphina disappeared from his study. The secret border crossings stopped. He started remembering the day of my birth. He came back to the den early when I fell ill with a fever. He even began sleeping beside me his massive body radiating heat in the dark, his breathing slow and steady, close enough that I could feel the rumble of his wolf settling beneath his ribs.

My own wolf fragile, half-formed thing that she was had trembled with something dangerously close to hope. Mate, she had whispered once, so faintly I thought I'd imagined it.

I almost believed that something real had grown inside this counterfeit mating.

Then, three months ago, Seraphina came back.

Everything reset to zero.

I remember the exact moment. The waning crescent moon hung thin as a scar in the sky the night she walked through the Blackthorn gates. Her scent hit me before I saw her sweet and fragile, like crushed violets and something wounded. My wolf flinched and retreated deep inside me, curling into a tight, silent ball.

Fenris's heart was consumed by Seraphina all over again. He stopped returning to the den at night. The portraits reappeared in his study, more of them now, covering every wall. Whispers and snickers rippled through the pack rival pack spies spread word of the Alpha's public devotion to the turned wolf, and gathering gossip painted me as the most pitiful Luna in the territory's history. Every wolf in the Blackthorn Pack knew. Every wolf watched me with either pity or contempt.

But I just smiled quietly. I never made a scene. I never bared my teeth or let my wolf what little of her existed rise to the surface in anger.

Because I had never loved him.

The only reason I had stayed by his side was for the moonstones and territorial deeds my parents had promised. For the freedom that waited beyond the border. If Fenris loved me, it made things easier to endure. If he didn't, I didn't care.

No one knew that although Umbra and I were twins, the Moon Goddess had dealt us entirely different fates.

She was born first an Alpha, rare and powerful, her wolf howling within minutes of her first breath. I came after, tearing my mother apart on the way out, a hemorrhage that nearly killed Fiora Ashvane and permanently weakened her wolf. I was an Omega. Small. Quiet. Blamed.

Umbra was raised in the pack, trained, celebrated. I was sent away at five years old to live among humans, my wolf starved and stunted until she was barely more than a flicker behind my ribs.

But a flicker was still a flame. And in one more moon cycle, I would be free to let it grow.

I pulled my hand away from the mating portrait and turned toward the window. Outside, the half-moon hung over the Blackthorn territory, casting pale silver light across the ancient pines. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled long and mournful, carrying across the cold night air.

It wasn't Fenris. I knew his howl. I knew everything about him.

And in thirty days, none of it would matter anymore.

My mother nearly bled out bringing me into this world. Her wolf was permanently damaged the hemorrhage during my delivery left her inner beast weakened, limping through the bond like a wounded animal that would never fully heal. After that night, she could never look at me without revulsion burning in her eyes. And my father, the aging Alpha of the Ashvane Pack who worshipped his Luna like she was the Moon Goddess made flesh, treated me as though I were a curse wrapped in skin and bone.

When I was five, they exiled me. Shipped me off to my elderly grandparents in a remote human settlement far beyond pack lands, where no wolf howled at the moon and no pack bond hummed through the earth beneath my feet.

I still remember that first winter. The old wood-burning stove cracked in the cold and went dead. I shivered beneath a threadbare blanket, my body too small, my wolf too stunted from the wolfsbane they'd been slipping into my food since birth to generate any warmth. Meanwhile, Umbra was in the heated Ashvane estate, twirling in a fine fur-lined dress, basking in the golden warmth of our parents' adoration their Alpha-blooded firstborn, the pride of the bloodline.

Eighteen years of that will grind the hope right out of you. I stopped expecting anything from family a long time ago. My wolf, that quiet, half-starved presence curled deep inside me, had learned to stay silent too.

Now, all I had to do was survive one more month. Thirty days of pretending to be Umbra the mate Alpha Fenris Blackthorn believed he'd been bonded to for three years and I would collect the cache of moonstones and territorial deeds owed to me for this performance. Then I would cross the border for good and finally live a life that was mine.

The thought lifted my spirits. My wolf stirred faintly, something close to hope flickering in the hollow place where she lived.

Then my pack bond totem buzzed with an incoming message.

The name that pulsed through the enchanted stone: Fenris Blackthorn.

I drew a deep breath and answered. "Hello?"

"Twenty minutes. Bring sanitary supplies to the Nightfall Den." His voice cut like a blade dragged across frost cold, commanding, every syllable dripping with the authority of an Alpha who had never once been refused. "Overnight pads."

The connection severed. I stared at the totem, knowing instantly who they were for.

He remembered Seraphina Holloway's cycle more precisely than the dates of his own Pack Council Gatherings.

Rain hammered the windows of the Blackthorn estate. Beyond the glass, the waning moon was swallowed by storm clouds. From the pack estate to the Nightfall Den was at least a forty-minute run by car through the territory roads under normal conditions.

I grabbed a cloak and walked out the door anyway.

Halfway there, the roads flooded and the vehicle ground to a standstill behind a line of others. I checked the time twelve minutes left. My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached. I shoved the door open and plunged into the downpour.

The rain soaked through my clothes in seconds, plastering the thin fabric to my skin. The cold hit me like silver sharp and burning. My boots skidded on the slick stone of the territory road once, twice then my ankle buckled and I slammed into a puddle, knees-first. Pain flared white-hot up my legs, and I felt the skin tear open against the rough ground.

My wolf whimpered somewhere deep inside me, a faint, pitiful sound. Get up, I told her. Get up.

I didn't stop. I dragged myself upright and kept running, rain blinding me, lungs burning, until I burst through the carved timber doors of the Nightfall Den at the nineteen-minute mark.

Outside the private gathering room, I raised my hand to knock and froze.

Laughter spilled through the heavy door, the scents of whiskey and dominant wolves seeping through the cracks.

"Alpha Blackthorn, you seriously made your mate deliver that in this storm? It's at least forty minutes from the pack estate!"

"Seraphina's in a lot of pain." His voice was flat, indifferent the voice of a man discussing something beneath his notice. "She'll find a way to get here."

"Well, sure everyone in the territory knows your Luna's devoted to you. Three years, and even though your heart's always belonged somewhere else, she's stayed by your side without a single complaint."

Someone else pressed further, emboldened by drink: "But honestly, Alpha a mate that loyal, that beautiful three years and she hasn't moved you at all? Not even stirred your wolf a little?"

The room went quiet. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears a sound any wolf inside could have caught if they'd been paying attention.

I held my breath.

A few seconds crawled by. Then he spoke, and his voice carried the weight of absolute certainty.

"No matter the circumstances if it's between Seraphina and her, I choose Seraphina. Every time."

Words that brutal should have hurt. Three years ago, they might have cracked something inside me. But I felt nothing close to pain. If anything, relief loosened the tightness in my chest, like a fist unclenching around my ribs.

Good, my wolf murmured, and for once I agreed with her. Let him choose. We leave soon.

I waited until the conversation drifted to other things territory disputes, alliance pacts, the usual posturing of powerful wolves then raised my fist and knocked.

When I pushed the door open, every face in the room turned to stare. The scents hit me first a wall of dominant Alpha pheromones thick enough to make a lesser Omega buckle. I locked my knees and held steady.

"Moon Goddess right on time!"

"Luna, you're drenched what happened?"

Fenris rose to his feet. He towered over the table, dark-haired and sharp-jawed, his eyes the color of a winter storm. His brows drew tight as his gaze swept over me the soaked clothes, the water pooling at my feet, the way I trembled despite every effort not to. I caught the briefest flicker of something in those grey eyes. His nostrils flared, catching my scent rain and cold and something underneath that made his jaw tighten.

"What the hell happened to you?"

I held out the package I'd shielded beneath my cloak the entire way, keeping it dry against my chest while the rest of me drowned. "You said twenty minutes. I was afraid you'd be worried, so I left the car and ran."

I didn't mention the fall. I didn't mention that my knees were trembling with pain beneath my soaked dress, blood slowly seeping into the wet fabric where no one could see.

Something shifted behind his eyes a crack in the frost, there and gone so fast I might have imagined it. His wolf, perhaps, stirring at something his conscious mind refused to acknowledge. Without a word, he stripped off his heavy outer coat still warm from his body, saturated with his scent of cedar smoke and iron and draped it over my shoulders.

"Put it on."

Then he nodded toward the package in my hands. "Take those to Seraphina. She's in the washroom down the corridor."

I nodded obediently, pulling his coat tighter around me despite myself, and headed down the hall. His scent wrapped around me like a cage. My wolf pressed toward it instinctively, and I shoved her back down.

Don't, I warned her. He's not ours. He was never ours.

When I knocked on the washroom door, Seraphina's voice drifted out soft, fragile, honeyed, the kind of voice that made every wolf in earshot want to protect her. She had perfected it over years. "Who is it?"

"Delivery."

Silence. I could smell her through the door that thin, sweet, slightly unstable scent of a turned wolf whose beast never fully settled. A few seconds later, the door cracked open just wide enough for me to slide the package through. Her fingers brushed mine as she took it, and I felt the faintest sting like touching something coated in diluted wolfsbane.

I pulled my hand back and left without another word.

Back at the Blackthorn estate, I stood under scalding water in the bathing chamber for a long time, letting the heat soak into my frozen bones. The scrape on my knee stung viciously under the stream, the torn skin raw and angry. I watched the faintly pink water swirl down the stone drain and thought about how wolves were supposed to heal fast.

My wolf couldn't even manage that much.

Lying in the bed afterward the bed in the Luna's quarters that Fenris had never once shared with me I thought about how close I was to freedom. Truly, permanently free. One more month. Thirty days. And then the border crossing, the moonstones, the territorial deeds, and a life where no Alpha's command could reach me.

A strange lightness settled over me. Something I couldn't quite name. My wolf uncurled just slightly, like a creature daring to lift its head toward a distant warmth.

Almost, she whispered. Almost free.

I was just drifting off, the rain still drumming against the windows and the waning moon hidden behind clouds, when the bedroom door was kicked open.

Fenris burst through the door and seized my wrist, his grip iron-hard. "Get up!"

Before my mind could catch up, he wrenched me from the bed. My bare feet scrambled against the cold stone floor of the pack estate as he hauled me toward the top of the grand staircase. His Alpha dominance rolled off him in waves so thick my inner wolf fragile, half-starved thing that she was cowered somewhere deep in my chest.

"Fenris? What are you"

The words died on my tongue. A savage force slammed into my body, and I pitched backward. The base of my skull cracked against the edge of a stone step, and then I was falling tumbling down the entire flight of stairs, each impact a new explosion of pain against bone and flesh.

Agony tore through every part of me.

I lay crumpled at the bottom, my vision swimming, the cold flagstones pressing against my cheek. Something warm and wet trickled from my hairline, and the sharp copper scent of my own blood flooded my heightened senses.

"Why..." I struggled to push myself upright, my arms shaking. "Why would you do this to me?"

He stood at the top of the stairs, the torchlight behind him casting his face into shadow. But his voice sliced through the dim corridor with perfect clarity cold as silver against skin.

"Did you push Seraphina off that ledge?"

I lifted my head, dazed and blinking. "What?"

"Don't play ignorant with me!" He descended one step at a time, each footfall deliberate, his wolf's dominance pressing down on me like a physical weight. I could feel it in my bones the compulsion to bare my throat, to submit. "Months of playing the dutiful Luna this is what you were building toward, wasn't it? Do you have any idea what you've done? You shoved Seraphina from a window. She's covered in fractures. She nearly died."

"I didn't" I shook my head weakly, but the motion tugged at the wound on my scalp. The corridor tilted sideways, and I tasted bile.

He crouched down and gripped my chin, his fingers digging into the soft flesh beneath my jaw. His eyes flickered that dangerous amber glow of an Alpha whose wolf was pressing close to the surface. I could feel his canines had lengthened slightly, the faintest hint of fangs behind his lips.

"Solara, has the way I've treated you these past three years given you some kind of delusion? Let me make it clear one final time. This mating is a pack alliance. Nothing more."

He leaned close to my ear, each word driven in like a silver nail:

"The love you want from me? You will never have it."

The pain was so blinding my vision went black. I nearly laughed.

Because I had never wanted his love in the first place.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Fenris had already straightened to his full height, his expression carved from granite, and yanked me to my feet. My wolf whimpered deep inside me a thin, pitiful sound only I could hear. She had long since stopped trying to fight him. Three years of wolfsbane-laced tonics and silver-scarred punishments had broken something fundamental in her.

"Enough with the performance." His voice was ice. "Seraphina fell from the fifth floor of the eastern tower. You only rolled down one flight of stairs."

"Get up. We're going to the healer's wing. You're going to apologize to her."

He dragged me toward the door without a shred of mercy never mind the blood still running down my face, or the way the half-healed wound on my knee had torn open again beneath my shift, sending a fresh spike of agony through me with every step. A wolf with a fully awakened bond would have healed in minutes. My body healed at barely more than a human pace another consequence of the suppressed wolf, the incomplete mating bond, the years of wolfsbane running through my veins.

He shoved me into the carriage. I didn't say a single word during the ride through the Blackthorn territory.

I watched the dark pines blur past the window, their branches clawing at a waning crescent moon that hung pale and distant in the sky. The Moon Goddess's light was thin tonight barely enough to see by. It felt fitting.

The only thought in my head was: Just a little longer.

Just hold on a little longer, and it will all be over.

In the healer's chamber, Seraphina was propped against her pillows, her face white as bone, bandages wound around her wrist. The room smelled of moon-blessed salve and something else that faint, deliberately fragile scent she always wore. Sweet and trembling, like a wounded pup. I had learned long ago that she could manipulate her pheromones at will, pushing out waves of false distress that made every wolf in range want to protect her.

The moment she saw me, she flinched. Her eyes turned red instantly, glistening with tears.

"Fenris..." Her voice trembled, delicate as a startled fawn. "I don't want to see her..."

Fenris was at her side in an instant, taking her hand with a gentleness I had never once been shown. His wolf that terrifying, dominant beast seemed to soften entirely in her presence, his rigid shoulders dropping, his thumb stroking across her knuckles. "Don't be frightened. I'm here. No one is going to hurt you."

Then he turned to me, and all that softness vanished. His gaze was flat and frigid, the amber completely gone, replaced by cold dark steel. "What are you standing there for? Apologize."

I must have looked half-dead. Blood matted in my hair. My shift torn at the knee, the fabric darkened with fresh crimson. My body swaying on unsteady legs.

But I was perfectly calm.

I stared straight at Seraphina and asked quietly, "When you fell from that window was it really me who pushed you?"

Seraphina's lashes quivered. Tears spilled down her pale cheeks in perfect, crystalline streams. "If the Luna doesn't wish to apologize, then forget it. I never intended to cause trouble for you."

She sniffled, her voice thick with practiced grievance. "I know Fenris has been spending all his time with me lately, and I understand if you resent that. But your mating was always just a pack alliance. He doesn't love you." She paused, letting the words sink in like venom. "If my bloodline had matched his if I hadn't been a turned wolf taken in out of charity he never would have been yours to begin with..."

The harder she cried, the darker Fenris's expression grew. I could hear the low, rumbling growl building in his chest not directed at her. At me.

"Solara!" he snarled, cutting through her performance as though it were gospel truth. "I brought you here to apologize, not to provoke her. Are you going to do it or not?"

I closed my eyes.

I knew Seraphina was framing me.

But I was leaving soon.

I couldn't let anything jeopardize the alliance between the Ashvane and Blackthorn packs. If the pact fell apart, I wouldn't receive the cache of moonstones and territorial deeds and I wouldn't get my freedom.

"I'm sorry," I said softly. "It was my fault."

Somewhere deep inside, my wolf lifted her head not in protest, but in something quieter. Resignation. She had stopped howling a long time ago.

I turned to leave.

"Stop."

Fenris's voice sliced through the sterile air of the pack healer's chamber like the snap of an Alpha command. "Since you're the one who pushed her, you'll stay and take care of her. Until the healer clears her to leave."

My fingers curled inward, nails biting into my palms. My inner wolf cowered low, pressing herself flat against the floor of my consciousness. After a long, hollow moment, I dipped my head in submission. "Understood."

For the days that followed, I never once left Seraphina's recovery room in the healers' wing.

Fenris practically abandoned the pack den entirely neglecting territory disputes, council gatherings, patrol reports all of it cast aside so he could remain at her bedside. He lifted spoonfuls of warm bone broth to her lips with a gentleness I'd never known his hands capable of. He wiped her fingers clean with dampened cloth, murmuring soft reassurances until her breathing evened into sleep, his deep voice rumbling low like a wolf's purr.

He had never done any of those things for me.

But jealousy didn't stir inside me. That part of me had gone quiet long ago. I simply stayed close, tending to Seraphina in silence changing her compress, refilling her water, adjusting her blankets my expression smooth and unbothered, as though none of it had anything to do with me.

The healer's assistants whispered among themselves when they thought I was out of earshot. My wolf's hearing, weak as it was, still caught every word.

"Moon Goddess, I've never seen a Luna this generous."

"You don't understand this is what devotion looks like at its peak," another assistant murmured, her voice thick with pity. "She loves her Alpha so deeply that she's willing to care for even the she-wolf he adores, just hoping he'll spare her a single glance. It's heartbreaking, truly."

Fenris happened to pass by the doorway at that exact moment.

His steps faltered. Through the narrow gap, his gaze drifted almost involuntarily toward the slender figure inside the room.

I was sitting with my head bowed, peeling a moon-apple with quiet focus, a small knife turning in careful strokes. My profile was still, docile, the faint silver-burn scars along my wrists hidden beneath long sleeves.

Something unfamiliar stirred behind his ribs. His wolf shifted restlessly, lifting its head with an attention Fenris didn't understand.

He walked on without a word.

The day the healer finally cleared Seraphina, Fenris told me plainly, his tone leaving no room for discussion. "I'm taking Seraphina beyond the territory for a few days. Don't reach out through the bond link unless it's urgent."

I nodded. "Understood."

I stood at the entrance of the pack den and watched them walk away his hand wrapped around hers, their figures growing smaller against the treeline where moonlight broke through the canopy. His wolf moved close to hers, protective, possessive.

And I felt something unexpected loosen inside my chest.

Relief.

Finally, I wouldn't have to face the two of them together. Wouldn't have to breathe in the mingled scent of their closeness, a scent that made my stunted wolf whimper and curl tighter into herself.

Back in the Alpha's quarters the rooms I technically shared with Fenris but occupied alone more often than not I began packing. Quietly. Methodically. Folding garments into a leather travel satchel, tucking away the few personal things I owned. Preparing for the departure that was no longer far off.

The waning crescent hung outside the window, thin as a scar. Under its pale light, my wolf stirred faintly, pressing against my awareness like a creature trying to remember how to breathe.

Soon, I told her silently. Soon we leave.

A few days later, I caught wind of the gossip circulating through the pack whispers carried on the tongues of wolves who had nothing better to do. Rival pack scouts had spotted Fenris and Seraphina together in the tropical neutral territories far to the south. He'd bid on sky lanterns at a coastal auction for her, releasing them into the warm night. He'd spent a fortune on rare gemstones she'd admired at a market stall, draping them around her throat himself.

I absorbed the information for exactly one heartbeat, then let it pass through me like wind through empty branches.

I didn't care.

I had never cared.

A week later, the Blackthorn Pack's monthly formal dinner arrived on schedule a tradition the Pack Mother enforced with iron will, where the Alpha's inner circle gathered to reaffirm bonds and discuss pack affairs.

Fenris wasn't back. I had no choice but to attend alone.

The great dining hall of the Blackthorn estate was lit by iron chandeliers and smelled of roasted elk and cedar smoke. Pack elders lined the long table, their gazes heavy with judgment. The moment Fenella Blackthorn laid eyes on me from the head of the table, her expression darkened like a storm rolling across open plains. Her dominant Alpha pheromones pressed outward, thick with displeasure.

"Where is Fenris?" she demanded.

I lowered my gaze, baring the side of my neck in the expected show of deference. "He's occupied with matters outside the territory. He won't be back for some time."

Fenella let out a cold, brittle laugh and was about to speak when the pack steward hurried over, a folded report clutched in his hands intelligence gathered by rival pack spies, the kind of gossip that spread between territories like wildfire.

The contents were impossible to miss. A detailed account, accompanied by descriptions vivid enough to paint pictures: Alpha Fenris Blackthorn and the turned wolf Seraphina Holloway, tangled together on the deck of a boat in the southern waters, his mouth on hers, her fingers buried in his hair. The report had already circulated to at least three neighboring packs.

Crack.

Fenella slammed her fist against the oak table so hard the wood groaned. The elders flinched. Her eyes blazed gold, her wolf surging to the surface as fury overtook her composure. "Umbra. The study. Now."

The moment the heavy door shut behind us, sealing us in the dim, wood-paneled room lined with ancestral pack relics, her voice turned razor-sharp.

"Kneel."

I knelt on the cold stone floor in silence. My wolf pressed flat inside me, trembling.

"Useless creature!" Fenella was shaking with rage, her canines elongating past her lips, her Alpha aura crashing over me in suffocating waves. "You can't even keep your own Alpha bonded to you! The entire Capital Territory is laughing at the Blackthorn name!" She paced before me, claws clicking against the stone where they'd extended from her fingertips. "I'm giving you two choices. Either reach out through the bond link right now and bring him back or you take the pack's discipline."

My lashes trembled.

I already knew. Even if I called through the faint thread of our incomplete mating bond, Fenris wouldn't come back. He'd severed his awareness of that thread long ago. It was a bond in name only no claiming mark, no true connection. Just a formality signed in blood at a ceremony he'd never wanted.

And I couldn't interrupt his time with the she-wolf he loved. If he lost his temper, if his wolf turned savage at the intrusion, the fragile alliance pact between the Ashvane and Blackthorn Packs could unravel entirely. My father's territory weak as it was would be absorbed within a moon cycle.

"I'll take the discipline," I said quietly.

Fenella's face contorted, her features caught between human fury and the snarl of her wolf. "Say that again."

"I'll take the discipline." I lifted my head, meeting her blazing gold eyes with a calm that seemed to enrage her further. "Go ahead."

Her complexion went ashen with disbelief. She turned to the wall where the instrument hung a whip with silver-tipped ends, an archaic tool of pack punishment that most modern packs had long abandoned. The Blackthorn Pack was not most packs.

She tore it from its mount and brought it down across my back.

The silver kissed my skin and burned not like ordinary pain, but like liquid fire poured directly into the wound, searing through flesh and into something deeper. My wolf screamed inside me, thrashing, trying to claw her way to the surface to heal what the silver wouldn't let heal.

"Will you call him?!"

Crack.

Another lash. The silver tips bit through the fabric of my dress and into the muscle beneath. I could smell my own blood copper and something faintly sweet, the scent of old Ashvane lineage that I'd been told meant nothing.

Crack.

I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted that same copper on my tongue. My back was a sheet of white-hot agony, every lash searing deeper than the last, the silver preventing my body from beginning even the faintest attempt at wolf-accelerated healing. The wounds would scar. I knew they would scar. They always did.

But I shook my head. Again. And again.

My wolf howled inside me a broken, keening sound and then went silent.

Until the darkness swallowed me whole.

When I woke, I was lying facedown on a healer's cot, my back wrapped in layers of moon-blessed bandages that smelled of chamomile and wolf's bane antidote. The pain was a dull, constant roar beneath the numbing salve.

Fenris sat at my bedside.

His brow was drawn tight, his jaw clenched. He smelled of salt air and distant places he'd only just returned. His wolf was restless behind his eyes, pacing, though he didn't seem to understand why.

"My mother made things difficult for you," he said, his voice low and hard. The words weren't quite an apology. They weren't quite anything. "Why didn't you reach out through the bond? Why didn't you call me back?"

I managed a weak smile, the expression pulling at my cracked lips. "I didn't want to interrupt your trip with Seraphina."

He went still.

He stared at my colorless face the hollowed cheeks, the dark circles beneath my eyes, the way I lay so carefully motionless because even breathing made the silver-burns scream and the healer assistant's words surfaced unbidden in his mind.

She loves her Alpha so deeply that she's willing to care for even the she-wolf he adores, just hoping he'll spare her a single glance.

Was that how deeply she loved him?

Enough to endure silver-tipped lashes rather than disturb him?

His wolf rose inside his chest not with its usual restless irritation, but with something heavier. Something that pressed against his ribs like a howl that couldn't find its way out. The beast paced in tight, agitated circles, whining low, and for the first time, Fenris felt the strange, sharp pull of it an ache he couldn't name, directed at the broken she-wolf lying before him.

He didn't understand it.

He chose not to examine it.

He stood, and he left the room without another word.

And on the cot, beneath the bandages and the pain and the silence, my wolf lay curled in the smallest shape she could manage, and did not stir.

Over the next few days, Fenris did something no one in the Blackthorn Pack would have believed he stayed at the pack infirmary to watch over me.

I told him there was no need. He stayed anyway.

His wolf seemed restless during those days. I could hear it sometimes a low, barely audible rumble in his chest when the healers changed my bandages, a flicker of something unreadable behind his dark eyes when he thought I wasn't looking. But I told myself it meant nothing. It never did.

On the day the healer finally cleared me to leave, a howl-message came through the pack link something urgent at the Great Hall. A Pack Council Gathering that demanded the Alpha's presence.

"Get yourself back to the den." He tossed the words over his shoulder without turning around, his broad frame already disappearing through the infirmary's stone archway.

I nodded to his retreating back and made my way slowly out of the healing wing.

The late afternoon sun hung low, and a pale crescent moon was already visible against the bruised sky a waning quarter, thin as a sickle. I could feel its faint pull against my suppressed wolf, a gentle tug that promised nothing.

I'd barely made it down the stone steps leading from the infirmary when I collided with someone.

"Are you blind?!" The she-wolf rounded on me instantly, her canines flashing as her lips curled back in a snarl. Her scent was sharp cedar and expensive oils, the kind only high-ranking wolves wore. "Do you have any idea how much this cloak costs? Look at you dressed like a packless rogue. Could you even afford to replace it?!"

I was about to lower my head and apologize when a cold, cutting voice sliced through the air from behind me.

"Get lost."

Fenris had stepped out of his vehicle I hadn't even caught his scent returning, hadn't heard the crunch of gravel beneath his boots. He flung a leather pouch heavy with moonstones directly at the woman's face. "Is that enough?"

She opened her mouth to snap back, but the moment her eyes landed on him the sheer dominance radiating from every line of his body, the Alpha pheromones rolling off him like a winter storm her wolf made her decision for her. She bared her throat in submission and scurried away without another word.

His gaze swept over me, cold as iron. "Umbra. The Ashvanes and the Blackthorns didn't provide for you? You're walking around the territory dressed like this?"

I said nothing.

The Ashvanes had never given me anything. The Blackthorn Pack had a Luna's allocation, yes resources, furs, access to the pack's stores but I wasn't truly Luna. I'd never touched any of it.

My silence seemed to ignite something in him, an irritation he couldn't name. His jaw tightened, and I caught the briefest flash of amber bleeding into his dark irises his wolf pushing forward. He grabbed my arm with a grip that was firm but not bruising and pulled me toward the waiting vehicle.

"We're getting you proper attire."

At the merchant quarter in the heart of the Capital Territory, he selected several pieces for me finely woven cloaks lined with moon-silver thread, leather boots crafted by the best artisans in the region, garments worthy of a Luna from one of the great bloodlines. Each piece was worth a small fortune in moonstones.

I cooperated quietly the entire time, like a puppet with no will of its own. I let the attendants drape fabric over my shoulders and pin hems at my waist, and I felt nothing at all.

But just as we stepped out of the merchant hall and into the cool evening air

"Fenris?"

A trembling voice.

I looked up. Seraphina was standing a short distance away, still wearing the plain tunic of a part-time server at one of the territory's common dens. The waning moon caught the sheen of unshed tears in her eyes.

Her gaze was rimmed red, disbelief written across her delicate features as she stared at the two of us at the fine bags in his hands, at the new cloak draped over my shoulders. "Didn't you say you had a Pack Council Gathering at the Great Hall?"

"Seraphina" His entire expression shifted. The cold authority that had been etched into his face moments ago cracked open, replaced by something raw and desperate. His wolf surged visibly I could see the tendons in his neck tighten, feel the spike in his pheromones as they turned from icy dominance to something aching and warm.

"You don't have to love me " Tears spilled down her pale cheeks, and her scent flooded the space between us that fragile, wounded sweetness that always made every wolf nearby want to protect her. "But how could you lie to me? I shouldn't have come back to this territory. I'm the one intruding on the two of you"

She turned and ran.

"Seraphina!" He went after her without a heartbeat's hesitation, dropping the bags where he stood.

I remained where I was, watching his retreating figure as he chased her down the cobblestone path. My heart was perfectly still. My wolf that faint, stunted presence deep inside my chest didn't even stir. She had learned long ago not to hope.

And then, the very next second

CRACK.

A heavy stone ornament mounted high on the merchant hall's facade split from its moorings and plummeted straight down toward Seraphina's head.

She didn't even make a sound before she crumpled into a pool of blood on the cobblestones.

The color drained from Fenris's face. Every trace of composure vanished. He rushed forward, scooped her unconscious body into his arms her blood soaking into his dark tunic, staining the fabric crimson and sprinted toward the pack infirmary without looking back.

I stood rooted to the spot, my fingers curling slowly at my sides. The bags of fine clothing lay scattered on the ground around me like discarded things.

In the end, I followed.

Under the harsh glow of the healer's lanterns lining the infirmary corridor, the warding runes etched above the emergency chamber pulsed with a steady amber light the sign that the healers were still working inside.

Fenris stood outside the sealed doors. Seraphina's blood still stained his jacket, dark against the black fabric. That face always so controlled, so devastatingly composed now held a rare flicker of agitation. His wolf was close to the surface. I could see it in the way his hands kept clenching and unclenching at his sides, in the faint glow of amber that bled in and out of his irises, in the way his canines had lengthened just slightly past his lower lip.

I sat quietly on a stone bench nearby. I didn't speak.

The chamber doors swung open and a healer rushed out, her hands still gloved in blood. "We have a problem. The patient is hemorrhaging severely and needs an emergency blood transfusion, but her blood carries a rare marker Moon-null type. Our stores are critically low. We don't have enough."

Fenris's brow furrowed, a growl building low in his throat. He was about to speak when I was already on my feet.

"I'm Moon-null type. I can donate."

He turned sharply, a flash of shock cutting through the amber glow of his wolf's eyes.

I met his gaze, calm. "Saving her is what matters."

Something passed across his face something I couldn't read and didn't try to. His wolf stilled behind his eyes, watching me with an intensity that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

I followed the healer to the blood-draw station. They used a clean needle not silver, at least and four hundred cc's of my blood drained slowly through the thin tube. My face grew paler by the minute, the room tilting faintly at its edges, but my expression never wavered.

Fenris stood to the side, arms crossed, watching the needle buried in the crook of my thin arm. His gaze lingered on the faint silver-burn scars that traced along my inner wrist old marks, half-hidden beneath my sleeve and that strange, unnameable feeling inside him seemed to grow heavier. His wolf paced behind his ribs, restless, unsettled by something it couldn't articulate.

How much did she love him?

When it was over, I pressed a wad of herb-soaked cloth to the puncture wound and walked out on unsteady legs. He was still standing exactly where I'd left him, motionless outside the emergency chamber, a sentinel carved from stone and shadow.

I hesitated, then went to him and said softly, "Don't worry. She'll be fine."

He looked up at me, his voice rough, scraped raw. "Why are you still here?"

I shook my head gently. "Seraphina has the wrong idea about us. When she wakes up, I need to explain things to her make sure she understands there's nothing between you and me."

He stared at my colorless face at the dark hollows beneath my eyes, at the way I swayed almost imperceptibly on my feet. Then, abruptly, his voice dropped low: "Do you really love me that much?"

I froze.

Something deep inside me that faint, battered wolf flinched. For one terrible moment, I felt her stir, felt her press against my ribs like a wounded animal trying to crawl toward warmth. Mate, she whispered, so quietly I almost didn't hear her. He's asking.

I was about to answer when the chamber doors opened again. The lead healer stepped out, pulling the blood-stained gloves from her hands. "The healing was a success. Once the sedative herbs wear off, the patient will wake."

The rigid line of his shoulders finally eased. The amber faded from his eyes. His wolf retreated, and he was just Fenris again cold, distant, unreachable.

I quietly stepped back and said nothing more.

The crescent moon hung outside the infirmary window, thin and pale, offering no light at all.

A few hours later, Seraphina stirred awake.

The instant her eyes fluttered open and found me standing at her bedside, the rims of her pale eyes turned crimson. "Fenris, did you bring her here again because you want me to give you my blessing?"

I stepped forward quickly, keeping my voice low and my gaze submissive, tilting my head just enough to bare the side of my throat a gesture of deference that had become second nature over three years. "Miss Holloway, you've misunderstood. Alpha Fenris truly did have a Pack Council Gathering that day. Taking me to the clothier was only because it fell along the route it wasn't a courtship outing. He didn't deceive you."

Fenris gave a curt nod, his jaw tight. "She and I are only mated for the alliance between our packs. There is nothing between us."

Deep inside my chest, my wolf still so faint, still barely more than a flicker of warmth behind my ribs curled tighter into herself and said nothing. She had learned long ago not to react to those words.

Seraphina bit her lip, and tears slid down her cheeks, carrying the faintest tang of distress pheromones into the air. They were delicate, trembling, the kind of scent that made every wolf in the room want to shield her. She had perfected that fragile aura like a weapon. "Then prove it. Prove you don't have even the smallest feeling for her."

Fenris's brow creased, a low rumble building in his throat. "What do you want me to do?"

She was quiet for a moment, her gaze drifting toward the frost-edged window where the waning crescent moon hung like a pale scar in the winter sky. Then she pointed beyond the glass, toward the frozen lake at the far edge of the Blackthorn estate grounds.

"Throw her into the silver-laced ice water."

The lake. Every wolf in the Blackthorn Pack knew about it. During the harshest months, the pack elders had the water infused with dissolved silver a deterrent against rogue wolves crossing the frozen territory border. Even a brief submersion would burn a wolf's skin, suppress the shift, and send the body into shock.

Fenris's expression shifted, something tightening behind his dark eyes. "Seraphina..."

"You're hesitating?" Her voice broke, trembling like a wounded pup's whimper. "You do have feelings for her!"

He went still. His jaw worked silently, and I could see the muscles in his neck cord as though his wolf was pacing beneath his skin, agitated, pushing against his control. Several long seconds crawled past.

Finally, he let out a slow breath, turned on his heel, and gestured to the pack enforcers standing by the door. "Put her in the lake."

My pupils contracted.

I knew he would do anything for Seraphina. I had witnessed it a hundred times the way his entire world narrowed to the orbit of her fragile, weaponized scent. But I never imagined he could be this ruthless.

I couldn't fight back, though. I had to endure. The alliance between the Ashvane and Blackthorn Packs depended on it. My father's territory small and starving and barely holding its borders depended on it.

The enforcers seized my arms, their grips iron-hard, and marched me out of the chamber. Fenris stood where he was, unmoving, his gaze dark and unreadable as a moonless sky. I searched his face for something anything but found only stone.

My wolf stirred faintly inside me, a whisper of warmth that tried to reach out, tried to brush against the bond that should have connected us. But there was no bond. He had never marked me. There was no claiming bite on my neck, no tether between our wolves. I was his mate in name only a ghost occupying a Luna's place.

The water of the silver-laced frozen lake was beyond cold. It was annihilation.

The instant the enforcers shoved me beneath the surface, my entire body seized. Every nerve screamed. The silver in the water burned against my skin like liquid fire even as the cold crushed the air from my lungs. Ice water flooded my nose, and my limbs went numb within seconds but the burning didn't stop. It sank deeper, into muscle, into bone, into the place where my wolf lived.

She howled. For the first time in months, my inner wolf howled a thin, agonized sound that no one else could hear, reverberating through my skull as the silver forced her down, down, deeper into dormancy. The shift was impossible. My body couldn't even attempt to change. The silver held me trapped in my human skin like a cage made of poison.

I clenched my teeth, forcing myself to claw toward the surface, but my body kept sinking beyond my control. The cold was a living thing, wrapping around my chest, squeezing.

On the bank, the enforcers watched with flat, indifferent eyes. Not a single hand reached out.

My consciousness began to blur. Through the haze, I saw myself as a pup abandoned by my parents in a remote human settlement far from pack lands, shivering through winter without a proper fur-lined coat, curled up in the firewood shed behind my grandmother's cottage just to stay warm. No pack. No wolf to call to. No howl answered in the night.

No one had ever cared about me. Not once in my entire life.

I don't know how long it was before they finally dragged me out.

My body was frozen through, my lips a bruised shade of violet, all sensation gone. Silver burns traced faint patterns across my arms and collarbone like cruel lacework, already blistering where the dissolved metal had eaten into my skin.

In a daze, I felt someone wiping my body with a heated towel soaked in moon-blessed salve. The touch was unexpectedly gentle careful around the burns, slow over the places where my skin had gone white with cold.

I grabbed that hand by instinct, my frozen fingers curling around warm skin, and murmured through cracked lips, "Just a little longer... I can leave soon..."

The next second, that hand clamped down on mine so hard it felt like my bones would shatter.

"Leave where?!" Fenris's voice was cold as the lake itself.

The pain forced my eyes open. I was back in the Alpha's den at the Blackthorn Pack estate.

Fenris sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at me with a dark, heavy gaze. His wolf was close to the surface I could see it in the faint amber glow bleeding into his irises, in the way his canines had lengthened just slightly past his lower lip. The air around him was thick with dominant Alpha pheromones, sharp and suffocating. "What did you just say about leaving?"

My heart lurched. I made my voice hoarse and played dumb, letting my body tremble convincingly which wasn't difficult, since I could barely stop shaking. "Leaving? I must have been delirious from the fever... just talking nonsense..."

He studied me for a long time, those amber-flecked eyes boring into mine as though he could scent a lie on my skin. His nostrils flared once, twice. My heart hammered, and I prayed the silver still lingering in my blood was masking whatever my scent might betray.

Eventually, something in his expression eased not softened, never softened and he released my hand. "Why didn't you tell me you were in your heat cycle? And you stayed in that lake for that long."

A heat cycle made everything worse. The body was already vulnerable, already burning from the inside. Adding silver-laced ice water was the kind of cruelty that could have killed a lesser wolf permanently snuffed out the inner wolf entirely, leaving nothing but a hollow human shell.

I managed a weak smile, though the silver burns on my arms screamed with every small movement. "If going in meant she would forgive you, I'd rather not say anything."

Something complicated moved across his face a flicker, there and gone, like moonlight through storm clouds. His wolf shifted behind his eyes, the amber brightening for a single heartbeat before he forced it down. He asked again, his voice lower, rougher, "Do you really care about me that much?"

I lowered my lashes.

It wasn't about caring.

I just needed to maintain the alliance between our packs. The moment Umbra came back, I could disappear for good. I could sever this hollow, unmarked bond, cross the territory border, and never look back.

The door to the chamber swung open, and Seraphina walked in, her slight frame wrapped in a pale fur-lined cloak, her weak wolf's scent drifting ahead of her like a veil. "Fenris, when are we heading out for the hunt along the coast?"

She spotted me awake and feigned surprise, one delicate hand rising to her mouth. "Oh, Solara are you alright?"

Before I could answer, she smiled warm, lovely, perfectly crafted. "I was just angry when I told Fenris to do that. I never actually thought he would throw you into the silver-laced lake. I'm so sorry."

Her gaze lingered on the burns tracing my arms, and something flickered in her eyes satisfaction, maybe, buried deep beneath the performance. My wolf, battered and barely conscious inside me, let out a low, warning growl that only I could hear.

"I heard you donated blood for me during my collapse? Why don't you come on the coastal hunt with us? Consider it my way of making it up to you."

I was about to refuse, but she had already grabbed my hand with familiar warmth, her fingers curling over the silver burns without flinching. The pressure sent a spike of pain up my arm that I swallowed silently.

"Don't say no I already cleared it with Fenris."

Fenris glanced at me from across the room, a silent signal not to spoil the mood. His expression was flat, expectant. Obey. Don't cause a scene.

In the end, I could only nod.

On the luxury vessel cutting through the dark coastal waters, the sea breeze carried the taste of salt and the distant, mournful call of wolves running along the cliff-side territories. The crescent moon hung low over the ocean, casting a thin ribbon of silver across the waves and even that pale light made the burns on my arms ache, as though the Moon Goddess herself was reminding me of what I had endured.

I stood at the rail, the wind pulling at my hair, and said nothing.

Seraphina clung to him the entire voyage, her laughter breathy and deliberately soft a sound pitched to stir any Alpha's protective instincts. She coaxed Fenris into hand-feeding her moon-berries, rubbing sun-protection salve across her bare shoulders, even climbing onto his back so she could watch the ocean from a higher vantage. Her scent that thin, fragile sweetness of a turned wolf curled around him like a vine, and he let it.

I stood at the railing of the vessel's upper deck, my gaze fixed on the distant line where sea met sky. The waning crescent moon was still faintly visible in the afternoon light, pale and indifferent. My inner wolf lay curled in the deepest hollow of my chest, silent. She had learned long ago that watching Fenris lavish tenderness on another she-wolf was not worth the pain of surfacing.

None of it had anything to do with me. That was what I told myself.

It wasn't until Fenris stepped away to take a communication from the Blackthorn Pack Den some urgent matter relayed through the pack's mind-link channel that Seraphina finally drifted toward me. The wind caught her hair, and she pushed it back with delicate fingers.

"Sometimes I truly cannot figure you out," she said.

I turned my head to look at her.

She squinted against the glare bouncing off the waves. "Every wolf in our circle whispers that you're devoted to Fenris. That you'd throw yourself into silver for him." She tilted her head, studying me the way a predator studies something it doesn't consider a threat. "But shouldn't love mean possessiveness? Shouldn't your wolf be tearing at the surface right now?"

"I framed you, forced you to kneel and apologize before the entire pack and you felt nothing." Her voice dropped, smooth and probing. "He threw you into silver-laced ice water nothing. Even now, watching me draped across your mate, breathing his scent, touching his skin still nothing."

She leaned closer, and beneath her manufactured sweetness I caught the faintest undercurrent of something bitter. False distress pheromones hovered at the edges of her aura, ready to be deployed the moment Fenris returned.

"Do you actually love him, Solara? Or don't you?"

I tugged at the corners of my lips a ghost of a smile that held no warmth.

She wasn't wrong. I didn't love Fenris Blackthorn.

Whatever fragile thing I'd once carried for him had been drowned in frozen water, whipped out of my skin with silver-tipped lashes, starved in a lightless basement den. My wolf stirred faintly, a low whimper of agreement, then fell silent again.

But before the words could leave my mouth, the ocean heaved.

A massive swell struck the vessel broadside the kind of rogue wave that seemed conjured by the sea itself. The deck lurched violently beneath us.

"Ahhh!"

Neither of us kept our footing. The railing caught my hip, and then the water swallowed us both.

Freezing saltwater closed over my head. The metal edge of the hull scraped across our arms as we were dragged under, slicing long gashes through skin and flesh. Blood bloomed immediately, ribboning out into the deep blue in slow, crimson tendrils. The salt seared the wounds like liquid fire. My wolf surged a desperate, instinctive push toward the shift but my body was too weakened, too long suppressed by years of wolfsbane. The shift stuttered and died beneath my skin, leaving only the ache of bones that tried to reshape and couldn't.

"Someone's overboard! Help! Get them out NOW!"

The deck erupted into chaos above us. I could hear it even through the muffled roar of water shouting, the thud of boots, the sharp crack of a rescue line being thrown. A diver plunged in, his form cutting through the waves, but he surfaced almost immediately. Even from below, treading weakly, I caught the grim tone of his voice carrying across the surface.

"Alpha Blackthorn, the blood is going to draw ocean predators fast. The current has pulled them in opposite directions to be safe, we can only reach one of them first!"

Through stinging, salt-blurred eyes, I saw Fenris at the railing. His face had gone white as bone. His gaze tore across the churning surface, frantic, wild and for one breath, I thought I saw his wolf flash behind his eyes, golden and anguished.

On one side, Seraphina thrashed and screamed, her weak wolf making her nearly helpless in the water. Her distress pheromones flooded the air even above the brine sharp, acrid, designed to trigger every Alpha instinct Fenris possessed.

On the other side, the current was dragging me further and further away. I was silent. I had always been silent.

"Get Seraphina first!" The words ripped out of him like a command torn from somewhere deeper than his throat from the very marrow of his Alpha authority.

By the time the sound reached me, I'd already choked on several mouthfuls of bitter seawater. It burned down my windpipe, filled my chest with cold weight.

I watched the diver cut toward Seraphina. I watched the anguish carved across Fenris's face every line of it, every flicker of his golden wolf-eyes all of it for her. A hollow smile pulled at my lips, and I let my eyes drift shut.

I should have known.

In his heart, I was always the one who could be abandoned.

We were always the one, my wolf whispered, her voice so faint it was barely a thought. Then even she went quiet.

Saltwater flooded my lungs. My consciousness frayed at the edges, thinning into nothing unraveling like a thread pulled from old cloth. The cold stopped hurting. Everything stopped hurting.

Through the darkening haze, I saw a shape knifing toward me from below. Sleek. Fast. Drawn by the blood that still poured from my shredded arms.

A shark.

Searing pain exploded through my leg teeth clamping down, tearing through muscle and sinew with the ease of shears through silk. My body jerked, and a soundless scream left my mouth in a burst of silver bubbles. The last thing I saw was the brilliant blue of the ocean turning red, one slow cloud of crimson at a time, spreading outward like a bloom of dark flowers.

Then nothing.

When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at the stark white ceiling of a healer's ward.

The scent hit me first antiseptic herbs, moon-blessed salve, the faint metallic tang of silver-cleansed instruments. A human medical facility, not a pack healer's den. We must have been brought to the nearest coastal settlement.

"Oh, thank the Moon Goddess you're awake!" The attending healer exhaled in open relief, pressing a hand to her chest. She was human, I realized or perhaps a wolf who worked among humans. Either way, her eyes were wide with concern. "With injuries this severe, we really need to contact your pack. Your Alpha, your family someone."

She paused, adjusting the fluid line attached to my arm, then couldn't help adding in a lower voice, "Take the young she-wolf in the next room Miss Holloway. She fell into the same water, and her injuries are nowhere near as bad as yours. A few cuts, some swallowed seawater. But Alpha Blackthorn hasn't left her side for a single moment. Treats her like she's spun from moonlight." She glanced around my empty room the bare walls, the untouched chair beside the bed, the silence that pressed in from every corner. "Your pack, though... it's been two days. No one's even shown up."

I tugged at my lips. Said nothing.

Two days. My wolf lay motionless inside me, barely a flicker of warmth. The place on my neck where a mating mark should have been where Fenris had never bitten, never claimed me felt cold and hollow. No bond hummed through it. No one had sensed my pain through it. No one had come.

The door burst open.

Fenris stood in the doorway.

His presence filled the room like a storm front rolling across open territory suffocating, electric, inescapable. His dark hair was disheveled, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles corded visibly beneath his skin. But it was his eyes that pinned me to the bed. They were black with fury, his wolf surging just behind them, turning the edges molten gold.

The healer froze mid-step. She clearly couldn't understand why the Alpha who'd been glued to another she-wolf's bedside for two days was now standing here, radiating killing intent. But one look at his face at the dominance rolling off him in waves thick enough to taste sent her scurrying from the room without a word.

The second the door clicked shut, he swept the medicine tray off the nightstand.

Glass shattered against the floor. Bottles of healer's tonic, moon-blessed salve, carefully measured remedies all of it exploded across the tile in a spray of shards and scattered pills. The sound was sharp enough to split the air, and my wolf flinched deep inside me, pressing herself flat.

"Did you push Seraphina overboard?" His voice was cold enough to freeze bone. Low, controlled, and more dangerous for it. His canines had lengthened not a full shift, but enough that the words came out edged with a growl.

I stared at him.

Stunned.

I couldn't fathom why Seraphina would frame me again. What purpose it served when I was already lying here with a mangled leg and lungs that still burned with every breath. All I felt was a wave of exhaustion so heavy it pressed against my chest like a stone. My wolf didn't even stir. She had nothing left.

"I didn't," I said.

"Still lying?" He seized my wrist the one connected to the arm wrapped in blood-soaked bandages and his grip crushed down as if he meant to grind the bones to dust. Pain lanced up to my shoulder, white-hot and blinding. His fingers were iron. His wolf was in his grip, all that terrible Alpha strength focused on a single point of contact.

"Seraphina told me herself." His voice was a blade dragged across stone. "You used to be so compliant so willing to endure anything. What happened? Why would you suddenly do something like this?"

A frigid laugh left him, humorless and sharp, as though something had just clicked into place behind those furious golden eyes. "Unless all that tolerance was an act. A performance designed to earn my attention. To make me see you as something other than what you are."

The pain blanched every trace of color from my face. I could feel my pulse hammering against his crushing grip, could feel the fragile bones in my wrist groaning under the pressure. But I only looked at him. Steady. Still. I didn't bother to explain.

What was the use? He had already decided. He always decided before he walked through the door.

That look that calm, unbroken gaze from an Omega who should have been cowering, whose wolf should have been whimpering in submission beneath the weight of his Alpha fury enraged him completely.

Something shifted behind his eyes. His wolf snarled, and for a fleeting instant, I thought I saw confusion flicker across his features a crack in the rage, as though some deep, buried instinct was clawing at him, screaming something he refused to hear.

Then it was gone.

He flung my wrist aside. My arm hit the mattress and I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, refusing to make a sound.

"Fine." His back was already to me, his broad shoulders rigid, his claws slowly retracting as he forced his wolf down. "If you won't admit what you did, then live with the consequences."

He walked toward the door. His voice trailed behind him, each word sharp as a shard of silver: "From this moment on, not a single healer or attendant will tend to you. No salves. No tonics. No one enters this room. This pain? You bear it alone."

The door closed behind him with a sound like a coffin lid settling into place.

I lay in the silence that followed, staring at the ceiling. The shattered glass glittered on the floor. The healer's tonic pooled in a spreading puddle, its moon-blessed scent rising faintly before fading.

My wolf stirred barely. A single, thin whimper that echoed through the hollow of my chest.

Why won't he see us?

I closed my eyes.

The days that followed were the hardest I had ever endured.

No healer came to check on me. No pack physician arrived to change my dressings or apply fresh moon-blessed salve to the silver-burn welts across my back. All I could do was drag my broken body across the cold stone floor of the recovery chamber, inch by agonizing inch, toward the supply cabinet where the healers kept their tonics and poultices.

My hands shook so badly I could barely uncork the bottles.

I collapsed more than once, my knees striking the hard ground until they bloomed dark purple beneath the skin. Each time, I gritted my teeth, swallowed the whimper rising in my throat, and hauled myself upright again.

Deep inside me, my wolf stirred faint, barely there, like a candle flame guttering in a storm. She couldn't help me. She'd been suppressed for so long, weakened by years of wolfsbane-laced food during my childhood, that she could barely lift her head. But I felt her try. I felt her push warmth into my limbs when the pain threatened to drag me under.

Get up, she whispered. We survive.

Fenris probably assumed the Ashvane heiress couldn't endure this kind of suffering. He thought a pureblood daughter from a noble bloodline would crumble under the weight of a silver-tipped whip and a few days without a healer's care.

What he didn't know was that I wasn't Umbra I wasn't some sheltered she-wolf raised behind the walls of a pack estate, groomed and coddled since birth.

I was Solara. The girl who'd been cast out at five years old to live with her elderly grandparents in a remote human settlement far beyond pack lands. The girl whose wolf never properly awakened because no pack healer ever came when she burned with silver fever as a pup. The girl who learned to set her own broken fingers, to chew bark for pain, to survive when no one in the world cared whether she lived or died.

This kind of pain? It was nothing.

A few days later, I had just finished the discharge rites signing the healer's log and gathering my meager belongings when the door to my chamber was kicked open so hard it cracked against the stone wall.

Fenris stormed in, his dark presence flooding the room like a storm front rolling across the territory. His Alpha pheromones hit me in a wave fury, urgency, something almost frantic beneath the iron control. His wolf was close to the surface; I could see it in the way his eyes flickered between their usual cold grey and a burning amber gold.

He seized my wrist. "Come with me."

"Why?" I frowned, trying to pull free. His grip was immovable.

"Seraphina's been taken by Vexor Grimfang." His voice was taut as wire, barely contained. "He's demanding you as an exchange. Three days in his custody, then he sends you back."

My heart lurched so hard my wolf flinched.

Vexor Grimfang the deranged rogue Alpha who haunted the shadows of the Capital Territory's elite like a specter. Once from a noble bloodline that had been destroyed for practicing forbidden blood magic, he now operated alone, feared by every pack. Every time he'd been present at a Blood Moon Gathering or Moon Ceremony, that cold, reptilian gaze of his had crawled over me like something wet and rotten. He'd lean close, inhale near my neck, and murmur things about my "exquisite bloodline" that made my skin crawl.

He wanted my blood. The ancient Moon-blessed blood of the Ashvane line.

"No." I refused outright.

Fenris's eyes turned frigid, the amber receding into steel. "You don't have a choice."

He stared at me, and I watched the muscles in his jaw work before he forced his tone to soften a calculated shift, the way an Alpha modulates his voice when he wants compliance without issuing a direct command.

"Vexor is interested in you. He won't harm you. Just cooperate with whatever he wants, and when this is over, I'll agree to whatever terms you name."

I lifted my gaze to his. Despite everything the ache in my bones, the welts still raw across my back, the hollow place inside me where a proper mate bond should have lived a smile broke across my face.

"Alright then. I want a mating ceremony."

He blinked. For a fraction of a second, his composure cracked. "What?"

"When we were bonded, we only signed the blood oath before the Pack Elders. There was no real ceremony." My voice was quiet, steady. "I want you to give me one. A full Moon Ceremony, under the open sky, witnessed by every wolf in the Blackthorn Pack."

This was part of my plan.

When Umbra returned and she would return I needed a grand mating ceremony. One where every wolf in attendance would witness with their own eyes the moment the title of Luna Blackthorn was formally acknowledged. A ceremony that couldn't be denied, couldn't be quietly erased. So that when the time came for the transfer, there would be no question about what was being given up.

Fenris was silent for a long time. His wolf shifted behind his eyes I caught the flash of amber again, something restless and conflicted moving beneath the surface. His jaw clenched.

Finally, he nodded. "Fine. I agree."

When I was delivered to Vexor Grimfang's territory a crumbling estate on the far edge of the Capital, surrounded by dead trees and the lingering stench of old blood magic the rogue Alpha was lounging on a massive carved chair, watching me with a lazy, slit-eyed smile.

"Luna Blackthorn." His voice was silk dragged over broken glass. "It's been a while."

He rose with predatory grace, closing the distance between us. His fingertip traced down my cheek, and I caught the scent of him copper and decay, wolfsbane and something ancient and wrong. My wolf recoiled deep inside me, pressing herself flat against the floor of my consciousness.

I swallowed the revulsion clawing up my throat and didn't flinch.

The first two days were almost bearable. He only had his servants draw my blood vial after vial after vial, using silver needles that burned where they pierced my veins.

The sting of the silver entering my bloodstream had long since gone numb. But watching my blood fill one glass vessel after another dark and rich, the Moon-blessed blood of the Ashvane line that he coveted so desperately I couldn't stop the tremor deep inside my chest.

My wolf whimpered. She was growing weaker with every vial they took.

Then came the third day.

I was drifting somewhere between sleep and consciousness, my body cold and hollow from the blood loss, when I caught the guards whispering outside the door. Even with my wolf fading, my hearing was sharp enough to catch the words.

"Has he lost his mind? Is he really going to drain every last drop for his blood magic ritual?"

"Keep your voice down He says her bloodline is too rare, too beautiful. That once she's dead, he can preserve her body forever a living vessel, suspended between death and the Moon Goddess's light"

Every remaining drop of blood in my body turned to ice.

This was Fenris's promise that nothing would happen.

I was going to die here. Drained dry by a madman for a dark Moon Goddess rite, my body kept as a trophy in his rotting estate.

A bone-deep chill shot from the soles of my feet straight up my spine. I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted iron the sharp copper tang flooding my mouth before the shaking finally stilled.

Move, my wolf rasped. She was barely conscious, but she pushed everything she had left into my limbs. Move now.

When the guard's attention slipped a shift change, a moment of carelessness I reached for the heavy crystal ornament on the nightstand beside me and hurled it at the window with everything I had left.

Crash.

Glass exploded outward into the night. Moonlight poured in a waning crescent, thin and cold, but still the Moon Goddess's light on my skin. I grabbed a jagged shard of glass and sawed through the ropes binding my wrists, ignoring the way the edges bit into my palms and sent fresh blood streaming down my fingers.

When I threw myself from the second-floor window, I heard a sharp, clean snap in my right ankle the moment I hit the ground.

The pain whited out my vision. My wolf howled inside me a thin, broken sound, barely audible even to my own mind.

But I didn't dare stop.

Dragging my ruined ankle behind me, I stumbled and staggered through the dead grounds of the Grimfang estate, past the boundary markers reeking of old blood, and out into the open territory beyond. I ran limping, crawling, pulling myself forward by sheer will all the way back to the Blackthorn Pack Den.

The moon hung low on the horizon, offering what little silver light it could. My wolf was silent now, spent entirely, but I could still feel her a faint pulse of warmth deep in my chest, refusing to go out.

When I shoved open the great doors of the main hall, I saw Fenris kneeling on one knee before the central hearth, carefully applying a moon-blessed salve to Seraphina's ankle.

His hands cradled her foot with impossible tenderness the same hands that had seized my wrist hours ago and delivered me to a madman without a backward glance.

"Fenris" Seraphina's eyes were rimmed red, her voice trembling with perfectly calibrated distress. I could smell the faint tang of her false pheromones that fragile, pitiable scent she wielded like a blade. "Solara's been gone so long. Aren't you even a little worried about her?"

His hands paused for a fraction of a second. When he spoke, his voice was impossibly gentle a tone I had never once heard directed at me in three years of living under his roof.

"You're the only one I worry about." He resumed smoothing the salve over her skin. "How could you twist your ankle and not tell me? Are you trying to break my heart?"

I stood in the doorway soaked through with sweat and blood, my ankle swollen grotesquely beneath torn fabric, my wrists raw and bleeding from the ropes and glass, silver needle marks dotting the insides of my arms like a constellation of small cruelties and didn't receive so much as a glance.

My wolf didn't even stir. She had nothing left.

I walked past them, my face blank as stone.

"Solara?" He finally noticed me, shooting to his feet. His nostrils flared catching the scent of my blood, the silver, the wrongness of it all. His eyes flashed amber for a single, startled heartbeat. "You"

His gaze swept over me with the sharpness of a predator assessing wounded prey, nostrils flaring as he drew in my scentsearching, I realized, for traces of fresh blood or broken bones. After a long moment, he released a slow breath through his teeth. "These three dayswhat happened to you?"

I tried to force the corners of my mouth upward. The dried, cracked skin of my lips split apart at the effort, and a thin ribbon of blood welled through. I could feel his wolf stir at the copper scent, though his expression betrayed nothing. "Nothing."

I didn't waste time. "The mating ceremony you promised me. When are you honoring that oath?"

Seraphina's head snapped up immediately, her weak wolf bristling beneath her skin. "What ceremony?"

Fenris was silent for a beat, his jaw tight. "She and I are having a vow renewala formal mating ceremony under the moon."

The moment Seraphina's eyes rimmed red and her lower lip trembled, he rushed to soothe her. "It's just a formality, Seraphina. A ritual and nothing more. You're the only one in my heart."

She forced a fragile smile, her distress pheromones softening to something delicate and pitifulperfectly calibrated. "I understand... I'm not upset. You're doing this to save me."

Then she turned to me, her voice soft as spider silk. "Miss Ashvane, why don't I help you select a ceremonial gown?"

From that day on, she was my shadow during every fitting.

At the pack's ceremonial tailora stone-walled den draped in moonflower garlands and silver-threaded fabricsI stood before the full-length mirror. White satin traced the narrow curve of my waist, the fabric shimmering faintly like moonlight on still water. Seraphina hovered behind me, inspecting every gown with her own eyes, picking apart every last detail with the precision of someone staking a claim.

"The neckline is too low." She tugged at my collar with a look of open distaste, her fingers lingering near the bare skin of my throatthe unmarked skin where a mating bite should have been but never was. "Try something more modest. We can't have the pack seeing that much of the Luna's neck."

"The waistline doesn't flatter your figure." She held up another dress, draping it against me like a shroud. "The Alpha's mate can't possibly wear something this plain for a moon ceremony."

I cooperated in silence, a marionette with its strings pulled taut and its expression wiped clean. My inner wolf lay curled in the farthest corner of my consciousness, too weak from years of wolfsbane-suppressed meals to even whimper.

It wasn't until the final gown was chosenin the fitting room, with no one else around, the heavy oak door shut tightthat she finally dropped the mask.

"So all this time, it wasn't that you didn't care." Her voice shed its silk and turned to sharpened steel. "You were playing hard to get."

Her hand shot out and clamped around my wrist, her nailsfiled to points, almost claw-like despite her weak wolfbiting deep into my flesh. I felt the sting of something wrong against my skin and realized with a dull shock that she'd coated her nails with a thin film of dissolved silver. The burn was faint but deliberate.

"Let me make one thing perfectly cleardon't think for a second this little performance will steal Fenris from me. He's mine. His wolf chose me."

I didn't so much as lift my gaze. I simply pulled my hand free, watching the crescent-shaped welts on my wrist already beginning to redden from the silver trace.

There was no game. No scheme to steal Fenris.

I wanted out more than anyone. I was counting the days until this farce was overuntil the ceremony was done and I could sever whatever thin thread still tethered me to this pack.

But she had already decided I was her rival, and she wasn't done.

The night before the ceremony, Fenris kicked my bedroom door open so hard the hinges groaned and the wood cracked along its grain. His Alpha pheromones flooded the room like a storm surgedark, suffocating, laced with fury.

"You locked Seraphina in the fitting room?" His face was savage, his canines visibly elongated, the amber of his wolf bleeding into his irises. "Do you have any idea she's claustrophobic? Her wolf nearly broke trying to claw freeshe could have shifted uncontrollably and torn herself apart!"

I closed my eyes, exhaustion dragging at every bone in my body like silver weights. "I didn't lock her anywhere."

"And you still have the nerve to lie?" He seized my arm and hauled me upright, his grip bruising, his claws half-extended and pressing into my skin. "Clearly last time's lesson wasn't enough."

He ignored my struggling. With a sharp command, he had his enforcers drag me through the corridors of the Blackthorn Pack Den, down the winding stone stairs, and into the silver-lined underground den beneath the estate. The walls gleamed with that telltale dull sheensilver ore embedded in the stone, enough to suppress any wolf from shifting. The moment they shoved me inside, I felt my already-feeble wolf shrink even further, retreating into a place so deep inside me I could barely sense her at all.

The iron door slammed shut. The lock turned.

In the darkness, I sat in the corner with my knees drawn to my chest, the silver in the walls humming against my skin like a low, constant fever. Above, through layers of stone, I could feel the faintest pull of the waxing moontomorrow it would be full, the night of the ceremonybut down here, its light couldn't reach me.

At midnight, a faint rustling sound broke the silence.

Then a cloth sack of live ratsferal, squealing, reeking of sewage and rotwas hurled through the narrow gap beneath the door. They scattered across the floor in a writhing tide, their claws scratching against stone.

"No!"

I screamed and scrambled to my feet, pounding on the iron door until my nails cracked and split against the metal, blood smearing across its surface. The silver in the walls made sure I couldn't shift, couldn't even summon claws to defend myself. I was as helpless as a human child. I screamed until my throat tore raw.

No one came.

The next morning, Fenris opened the door with a cold expression, his arms crossed over his broad chest. Morning light spilled down the stairwell behind him, and the faint scent of dew-soaked pine clung to his clotheshe'd been on a dawn patrol, running the territory while I'd been trapped in this pit.

"I only locked you up for one night." His voice was flat, dismissive. "Was it really worth crying the whole time?"

After an entire night of tormentof rats crawling over my legs, of silver sickness burning through my veins, of my wolf too suppressed to even surface enough to growlmy face was drained of every last trace of color. I could barely stand. My voice came out cracked and hollow.

"Seraphinashe threw rats in here..."

Fenris let out a low scoff, the sound rumbling from deep in his chest. "Seraphina would never do something like that. Her wolf can barely handle a raised voice. You expect me to believe she came down to the silver den in the middle of the night?"

He reached past me and flicked on the dim overhead light. "Where are these rats you're talking about?"

I froze.

The floor was bare. Clean stone, undisturbed. Not a single rat, not a single dropping, not a trace of the sack they'd been thrown in. The only evidence was the blood caked under my broken fingernails and the raw, shredded skin of my palms where I'd beaten the door.

Someone had come in the hours before dawn and cleared every trace away.

Fenris stared at the empty room, then looked back at me. His expression didn't changeit was the same cold, unreadable mask he always wore when he looked at me. As if I were something barely worth the effort of seeing.

"Get yourself cleaned up," he said, already turning away. "The ceremony is tonight."

The silver-lined underground den was immaculatenot a single trace remained.

Seraphina had already scrubbed away every shred of evidence. The feral rats, the filth, the scratches along the walls where I'd clawed in desperationall of it, gone. As if none of it had ever happened.

I parted my lips, but no words found their way out. My wolf, still trembling deep inside me, had gone silent too.

Fenris's voice cut through the cold air like a blade forged in ice. "The mating ceremony is in three days. I'll be with Seraphina until then. I won't set foot in this den until the ritual begins."

He turned his head just enough to pin me with those glacial silver eyeshis wolf lurking behind them, dominant and utterly indifferent to my suffering. "Don't cause any more trouble, or the ceremony is off."

With that, he turned on his heel and ascended the stone steps, his heavy footfalls echoing through the underground chamber like a death knell.

I listened until the sound of him faded into nothing. Then I braced my palm against the rough stone wall, feeling the faint burn of residual silver against my skin, and slowly dragged myself to my feet.

For the next three days, I sealed myself inside my quarters. I barely left.

The meals the pack servants brought to my door went mostly untoucheda few small bites at most, and even those I sniffed carefully first, my wolf's newly sharpened senses searching for the faint bitter trace of wolfsbane. Pale moonlight and golden sunlight traded places through the tall windows, but I never once stepped beyond the threshold.

I couldn't give Seraphina another chance to set a trap.

True to his word, Fenris spent all three days at Seraphina's side. He didn't return to the pack estate once.

I learned of them through the gossip that traveled between packsrival pack spy reports and gathering whispers that spread like wildfire through the territories. Image after image painted in words by gleeful messengers: Seraphina on the Alpha's arm at a neutral-ground feast, her fragile scent clinging to him like a second skin, her smile radiant and effortless. And when he looked down at herthose who witnessed it said his gaze was so tender it could melt stone.

My wolf whimpered softly, curling into a tight ball somewhere in the hollow of my chest. I pressed my hand against my sternum and told her to be still.

It doesn't matter anymore, I whispered to her. We're leaving.

The night before the mating ceremony, the waning crescent moon hung thin as a scar outside my window. I sat at the desk and, by the light of a single candle, began to write out every one of Fenris's preferences and habitsone careful stroke at a time.

He despised the scent of wild fennel in his food. Could not tolerate overly spiced meat from the hunt. Drank only black root tea before council gatheringsno honey, no sweetener. His formal tunics had to be laid out with the collar facing east, a superstition from his bloodline he'd never admit to. His den had to be sealed in absolute darkness when he sleptnot a sliver of moonlight permitted, or his wolf would pace restlessly through the night.

The tea blend that calmed his wolf before pack council meetingsthree parts dried moonflower, one part blackthorn bark, steeped until the water turned the color of dark amber.

His preferred hunt routes through the northern ridge, where the elk ran thickest in autumn.

The specific way he liked his den arranged during full moonsfurs layered thickest near the eastern wall, the window cracked just enough to let the night air carry the scent of pine.

When I finished, I folded the scroll neatly, sealed it with a drop of candle wax, and called for Primrose.

She appeared quicklythe loyal Omega servant who had been one of the few kind souls in this entire pack. Her soft brown eyes searched my face with quiet worry.

"This is for you," I said softly, pressing the scroll into her hands. "After the mating ceremony is over, give it back to me."

Primrose blinked, confusion flickering across her gentle features. "My lady, what is this...?"

"Just in case I forget." I managed a small smile, though it cost me everything. "You know how scattered my mind has been lately."

She clearly found it strangeI could see the way her nose twitched, catching something off in my scent, some undercurrent of finality she couldn't quite name. But she tucked the scroll into her apron obediently. "Don't worry, my lady. I'll keep it safe."

After she left, I knelt beside the wardrobe and dragged out a worn traveling pack from the very backalready filled with everything I needed. Everything I owned, which was almost nothing.

I rose and took one last look around the room I'd inhabited for three years. My gaze settled on the ceremonial portrait hanging on the wallthe one painted the night of the mating ceremony.

In it, Fenris stood tall in his Alpha's formal blacks, devastatingly handsome in the way that ancient bloodlines carved into bone and jaw and bearing. His silver eyes stared out from the canvas with the cold authority of a wolf who ruled without question. And there I was beside him, draped in a ceremonial gown worth more moonstones than my entire birth pack possessed, smiling like a woman who had everything.

A lie, captured in oil and pigment.

I lifted the frame from the wall. For a moment I held it, feeling the weight of three wasted years in my hands. Then I laid it facedown on the desk and walked out without looking back.

The territory border crossing was bright under the harsh light of human-world lanterns, bustling with travelers moving between pack lands and the wider world. My mother was already waiting at the designated meeting point, her posture rigid, her scent sharp with the particular coldness she had always reserved for me.

Fiora Ashvane held out a leather pouch and a set of traveling papers. "A cache of moonstones and the territorial deeds to a small plot beyond our borders. Every last resource we agreed upon." Her voice was flat, practiced. "From this point forward, you have nothing to do with the Ashvane bloodline."

I took the pouch. My fingertips trembled against the worn leather.

I looked up at her. She wouldn't even meet my eyes. The claiming mark she bore from my fatherfaded now, like their bond itselfpulsed faintly at her throat, but she angled her body away from me as if I were a stranger. As if I were less than a stranger.

"Thank you," I whispered.

Her tone was clinical, the voice of a Luna conducting pack business. "You did well these three years. The alliance between the Ashvane and Blackthorn packs went off without a hitch."

A pause. Something flickered behind her eyestoo brief to be called emotion. "Go. Go live the life you want."

I nodded. My wolf stirred inside me, lifting her head for the first time in daysnot with grief, but with something that felt almost like hope.

I turned and walked toward the border checkpoint.

At the corner where the pack lands ended and the human roads began, I glanced back one last time. She was already goneher retreating figure disappearing into the tree line as final and absolute as if she'd never had a daughter at all.

But I wasn't sad.

I gripped the traveling papers in my hand, my eyes stinging with fierce, burning heat. Above me, the thin crescent moon hung in the darkening sky like a promiseor a blessing from the Moon Goddess herself.

This time, my wolf whispered, her voice stronger than I'd ever heard it, we live for ourselves.

I walked toward the border gate without looking back. Not once.

Meanwhile, at the Blackthorn Pack Estate.

A woman who bore a striking resemblance to menine parts out of ten, with the same dark hair and sharp Ashvane features, but whose scent carried the unmistakable edge of Alpha blood rather than Omega softnessslipped into the ceremonial mating gown and stood in silence before the mirror. Her wolf paced behind her eyes, fierce and barely contained, nothing like the quiet creature I'd spent three years pretending to be.

She was waiting for tomorrow's ceremony under the full moon.

Umbra Ashvane had come home.