The main hall of the Blackmoor pack house was packed wall to wall by ten that morning. Ryder stood at the head of the long oak table, flanked by the pack elders and Daniel Whitfield. Skylar Patterson sat in the front row, legs crossed in a pastel skirt, checking her diamond watch like she had better places to be.

Ryder cleared his throat, leaning forward to project that smooth, untouchable Alpha charm.

I didn't give him the chance.

I walked straight down the center aisle, my low heels clicking against the hardwood. The room went dead silent. In my left hand, I held the printout of the hidden debt ledger I had pulled before Daniel locked my system access. In my right, I carried the cream-and-crimson invitation.

I stopped right in front of the head table and slapped both documents down on the polished wood.

The smack echoed up to the rafters.

Ryder’s jaw tightened. "Waverly, sit down. This is an official pack assembly—"

"I, Waverly Bailey," I said, my voice ringing cold and clear through the room, "reject you, Ryder Brooks, Alpha of the Blackmoor Pack, as my mate."

A collective gasp swept through three hundred wolves.

Ryder's face drained of every drop of color.

Then the bond tore.

It felt like a live wire snapping behind my ribs. A white-hot agony ripped through my chest, violently severing five years of shared soul and breath. In my head, our mind-link shrieked with static and died. Deep inside me, my inner wolf didn't roar. She didn't whimper. She fell into an absolute, terrifying silence, curling into a cold knot that left my spirit feeling like an empty room.

Across the table, Ryder gasped. His knees gave out, and he slammed his palms onto the wood to keep from hitting the floor. His signature cedar-and-ash scent turned sour, rotting into something thin and hollow. His dominant Alpha aura cracked right in front of everyone, fracturing like cheap glass.

The elders rose in an uproar, but I didn't stay to watch him struggle to stand. I turned on my heel and walked out.

Two hours later, the retaliation hit my phone.

A notification from the bank flashed on my screen: *Account frozen by primary administrator.* Right behind it came an automated notice from pack legal. The lease on my Brooklyn apartment—held in Ryder's name—had been terminated effective immediately.

I packed my laptop and personal files into a single cardboard box, heading for the emergency exit to avoid the lobby.

The heavy steel door of the stairwell slammed behind me before I could reach the first landing.

Ryder stood on the concrete steps above me, his tie ripped off and his dark eyes bloodshot.

"You think you're clever?" he breathed, his voice raw and shaking. He came down the stairs two at a time, trapping me against the cold metal railing. "You just made yourself a stray, Waverly. I will personally call every Alpha from Maine to Florida. You won't find a pack. You won't find a job. You will die packless and forgotten in some gutter."

"Step aside, Ryder."

He grabbed my upper arm, his fingers digging into my muscle. "Go back in there. Tell the council you had an episode of hysteria. Tell them you're fine, and maybe I'll still keep a roof over your head."

"Never."

His face twisted into an ugly sneer. He drew a sharp breath, and when he spoke, he threw the full, crushing weight of his Alpha tone directly into my skull.

"*Submit.*"

The command hit me like a physical punch. My vision blurred. A shrill ringing pierced my ears, and a warm trickle of blood slid down my neck from my ear canal. Every primal instinct in my blood screamed to drop, to bare my throat, to give in.

I didn't bend an inch.

I wiped the blood from my neck with the back of my hand, looked him dead in his wild, desperate eyes, and ripped my arm free.

"Your tone doesn't work on wolves who aren't yours," I whispered.

I walked past him down the stairs. Behind me, his hands were trembling.

When I pushed through the ground-floor exit into the cold gray drizzle of the alley, quick footsteps splashed through the puddles behind me.

"Waverly! Wait!"

I turned. Lara Ramirez was sprinting toward me, her coat half-buttoned. Before I could say a word, she unpinned the silver Beta crest from her lapel and hurled it onto the wet asphalt.

"I'm done," Lara said, out of breath, her eyes blazing. "I'm not taking orders from a coward who treats his true mate like an unpaid intern."

She fell into step beside me, pulling out her smartphone. Her thumbs were already flying across the glass. "I still have backend network access for another thirty minutes before Daniel figures out how to lock my admin profile. Plus I have three PR contacts at the major shifter journals. I’ve got three bombshell leaks ready to post right now. His fake shell companies, his unpaid vendor debts, the whole circus. Let's ruin him before five o'clock."

I reached out and laid a firm hand over her phone, stopping her fingers.

"Not yet," I said. My voice was completely steady.

"Why not? He's trying to erase you!"

"If you leak pieces of it now, the Patterson family lawyers will spin it as a bitter ex lashing out, and the Lycan King will bury it under twenty million dollars of PR clean-up," I told her, looking toward the gray Manhattan skyline. "Receipts first. Theatre second."