The great hall was full. Every wolf in Ironmaw had been summoned. Formal gathering, Jett had called it. Mandatory attendance. I stood near the back with my hands folded over my belly, feeling the baby shift under my ribs. Seven months along and still carrying the weight of a man who had already decided I was disposable.

The pack filed in slowly. Deltas in their uniforms. Omegas clutching each other's hands. Owen stood near the front, his face carefully neutral, but I saw the tension in his shoulders. He'd been asking questions lately. Quiet ones. About fund transfers and charter documentation that didn't quite match.

Margaret sat in the Elder's chair, her right hand resting on the armrest. The claw-ring caught the light. My father's ring. She wore it like jewelry.

I pressed two fingers to my mating mark. The bond hummed. Jett was upstairs still, preparing. I felt his satisfaction rolling through the link like warm oil. He was pleased with himself. Excited. This was the moment he'd been working toward.

The baby kicked. I put my hand over the spot and breathed.

The hall doors opened. Jett walked in.

He wore his formal Alpha attire. Dark suit. The Ironmaw crest on his collar. His hair was perfect. His face was calm. He looked like every picture of a modern Alpha—progressive, thoughtful, devoted to his pack.

He looked like a man about to do something noble.

The pack quieted. Jett took his place at the front of the hall. His eyes found mine across the room. Held them for a moment. I felt nothing through the bond but certainty.

He had already decided.

"Thank you all for coming," Jett said. His voice carried easily. Warm. Authoritative. "I know this gathering was called on short notice. But there are moments in a pack's history that require witnesses. Moments that shape our future."

I stopped breathing.

"Seven years ago," Jett continued, "I was blessed by the Moon Goddess with a mate bond. I believed it was sacred. I believed it was forever." He paused. Let the silence build. "But sometimes, the path the Goddess sets before us is more complicated than we understand at first. Sometimes, growth requires difficult choices."

My wolf slammed against my ribs. Once. Hard.

"I have been offered an alliance," Jett said. "A mating alliance with the Silvercrest Lycan Court. An opportunity to elevate Ironmaw to a position of strength and security we have never known. To protect our territory. To ensure our future."

Murmurs rippled through the pack. Lycan Court. The words carried weight.

Jett's eyes found mine again.

"But Lycan royal mating alliances require both parties to be unmated," he said quietly. "Completely free of prior bonds."

The hall went silent.

I knew what was coming. I had written it seventeen times in my cipher journal. I had practiced the shape of the words in my mouth. I had felt this moment building for weeks through the bond, through every spike of greed when Stella mentioned territory, through every wave of want when he thought about a crown instead of me.

I knew.

But knowing and feeling are not the same thing.

Jett straightened. His voice dropped into the formal register. The one used for oaths and vows and things that could not be taken back.

"I, Jett Hudson, Alpha of the Ironmaw Pack," he said clearly, "reject you, Cassidy Anderson, as my mate and Luna."

The mating mark on my neck went cold.

Not warm-to-cool. Not fading. Cold. Like something had died there.

The bond snapped.

I had read about rejection pain. Heard stories. Soul-level agony, they said. Designed by the Moon Goddess to be unbearable. A punishment for breaking sacred vows.

They were right.

It hit me like a physical blow. My knees buckled. My vision went white at the edges. Every nerve in my body screamed. The place where the bond had lived—where I had felt Jett's emotions for seven years, where his commands had traveled, where I had foolishly believed love lived—tore open like a wound.

I staggered.

Someone gasped. I didn't know who.

Jett was already moving. He pulled a document from his jacket. Walked toward me. His face was composed. Sympathetic, even. The face of a man doing something difficult but necessary.

He held out the separation agreement.

"Sign this," he said quietly. "It's already prepared. Clean split. No drawn-out legal battles. You keep your personal assets. I keep the pack."

I looked at the document. My vision was still blurred from the pain. But I didn't need to read it. Teagan had already told me what it would say. What he would give away in his greed to be free faster.

Every piece of Anderson territory. Every marital asset. Everything my father built.

Gone. Signed away. Because Jett couldn't wait.

I took the document. My hands were shaking. I found a pen in my pocket—the same pen I'd used to write the rejection vow in my journal. I signed my name at the bottom.

Cassidy Anderson.

Not Hudson. Never Hudson again.

Jett took the document back. Nodded once. Turned away.

I stood there in the center of the great hall with a hundred wolves watching and the mating mark on my neck cold and dead.

No one spoke.

I looked at Owen. His face was pale. His jaw tight. He was staring at Jett's back like he was seeing something for the first time.

I looked at Margaret. She was smiling. Thin and satisfied.

I looked at the pack. Half of them were staring at the floor. The other half were staring at me. And in their eyes—older than politics, older than hierarchy—I saw it.

They knew this was wrong.

I turned. Walked toward the doors. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. The pain was still there, radiating from the place where the bond used to be. But I didn't scream. I didn't collapse.

I walked.

The hall doors closed behind me. The night air hit my face. Cold. Clean.

I walked to the edge of Ironmaw territory and stopped.

The mating mark was cold and smooth under my fingers. Just skin now. Nothing more.

And then I felt it.

My wolf.

Not suppressed. Not distant. Not the faint, struggling thing that had been drowning under wolfsbane for seven years.

Huge. Silver. Furious.

She surged forward in a wave of heat that made my breath catch. Not a shift—not yet. But a presence. Undeniable. Enormous. The wolf Jett had spent seven years trying to kill.

She was awake.

I pressed my hand flat against my chest and felt her there. Felt her strength. Felt the Anderson bloodline—my father's bloodline—blazing under my ribs.

I pulled the burner phone from my pocket. Dialed Teagan's number.

She picked up on the first ring.

"He took the bait," I said.

Four words.

Then I hung up.

Headlights appeared at the end of the road. Teagan's car. She was already coming.

I looked back at the pack house one last time. The windows were lit. Warm. The place where I had lived for seven years believing a lie.

I turned away.

And I got into the car.