The pack council chamber smelled like old leather and pine smoke. I was not there to see it, but Marcus Webb told me later, his voice tight over the phone, what had happened.

Jensen stood at the center of the council circle. His voice carried that Alpha tone that made every wolf in the room go still. Jessica sat beside him, her face pale and drawn, one hand pressed to her stomach. She looked fragile. Breakable.

"Carolina Powell," Jensen said, "is hereby banished from Silverfang territory. Effective immediately."

Marcus said the silence that followed was absolute.

"The attack on my chosen mate," Jensen continued, "resulted in injuries that endangered not only Jessica's life but the life of our unborn child. A healer who raised a daughter capable of such violence has no place in this pack."

Jessica made a small sound. A sob, maybe. Or something practiced to sound like one.

No one argued. No one questioned. The vote was unanimous.

My mother was escorted to the border with nothing. No herbs from her garden. No wolfsbane antidotes. No access to the collective pack energy that had sustained her healing gift for forty years. Just her coat and the clothes on her back.

Marcus's voice cracked when he told me. "I'm sorry, Whitney. I tried to—"

I hung up before he could finish.

---

The human hospital on the city outskirts smelled like antiseptic and fluorescent lights. It was the only place left that would take her. I signed the intake forms with a name that was not mine and paid cash I had saved from years of invisible work.

They put Carolina in a room on the third floor. The window looked out over a parking lot. The walls were beige. There were no healing herbs. No moonbloom. No silverleaf. Just IV drips and monitors that beeped in steady, mechanical rhythms.

I sat in the chair beside her bed and tried to brew substitutes from human stores. Chamomile instead of silverleaf. Peppermint instead of moonbloom. The scents were wrong. The potency was wrong. Everything was wrong.

Carolina watched me work. Her face was pale, but her eyes were sharp.

"You're wasting your time," she said. Her voice was steady. Unsentimental.

I did not look up. "I'm trying."

"I know." She shifted slightly in the bed. "But a healer without pack bond is just a woman with a garden. And I don't even have that anymore."

My hands stilled on the mortar and pestle. The chamomile smelled like nothing.

"How long?" I asked quietly.

"Weeks," she said. "Maybe less."

I set down the pestle. My throat was too tight to speak.

Carolina reached over and touched my wrist. Her fingers were cold. "Tell me about you. Not me."

I swallowed. "Jensen sent formal declarations to every allied Alpha. I'm blacklisted. No territory will shelter me. No pack will hear my name without knowing I'm accused of attacking his mate."

"And did you?"

"Yes."

She smiled faintly. "Good."

I looked at her. "Mom—"

"She let Ledger die, didn't she?" Carolina's voice did not waver. "Jessica."

I nodded.

"Then you should have hit her harder."

Something in my chest cracked. I pressed my hand over my mouth and tried not to make a sound. Carolina squeezed my wrist once, firm and steady, and then let go.

"You'll figure it out," she said. "You always do."

---

I stayed through the nights. The hospital staff learned not to ask questions. I brewed pale substitutes that did nothing. I sat in the chair and mapped my situation in my field notebook.

No wolf. No bond. No pack. No allies. No resources.

Every door in the region was closed.

During the third night, a growl rose in my throat. Low and involuntary. I pressed my hand to my chest and felt it vibrate in my ribs. Carolina was asleep. The monitors beeped. The growl faded.

I wrote it down in the margin of my notebook. *Phantom sensations. Grief artifacts.*

On the fifth night, I was sketching a territorial map when my vision flashed silver. Just for a second. The pen in my hand jerked, leaving a dark slash across the page.

I blinked. The silver was gone.

Carolina was awake. She was watching me.

"What?" I said.

She did not answer right away. Then, quietly: "Your father's mother had silver eyes."

I frowned. "I never met her."

"No," Carolina said. "You didn't."

She closed her eyes and did not say anything else.

---

Marcus called again on the seventh night. I almost did not answer.

"Whitney." His voice was strained. "I need to tell you something."

I waited.

"Silverfang is falling apart," he said. "We lost three border skirmishes this month. Territories we held for years. Jensen is—" He stopped. "He doesn't know what to do."

I said nothing.

"He's trying to hire someone," Marcus continued. "A strategist. Anonymous. Goes by the name Nova. Have you heard of them?"

My pulse kicked once, hard.

"No," I said.

Marcus sighed. "If you do—if you know anyone who might know how to reach them—tell me. Please. The pack is dying."

I looked at my field notebook on the table. Every map. Every alliance. Every strategy Jensen had ever claimed as his own.

"I'll think about it," I said.

I hung up.

In the bed, Carolina's breathing was shallow and uneven. The monitors beeped. Outside the window, rain began to fall.

I opened my notebook to a blank page.

At the top, in careful letters, I wrote: *Nova.*

Then I began to map.