The common room was full when Maximus found me.

I was sitting in the corner where my flower stall used to be, staring at the empty space. I hadn't slept. Hadn't eaten. The photograph of Kamden was in my pocket, pressed against my ribs like a second heartbeat.

I heard him before I saw him. The air changed. Thickened. Every wolf in the room went still.

His aura hit like a wave.

It wasn't the usual commanding presence of an Alpha. This was something else. Something raw and furious and suffocating. Around me, wolves dropped their heads. Necks bent in submission. A she-wolf near the coffee station actually whimpered.

I looked up.

Maximus stood in the doorway. His eyes locked on mine. For a moment, I thought I saw something flicker there—grief, maybe, or doubt. But it was gone before I could name it.

He crossed the room. Every step deliberate. The crowd parted without him asking.

He stopped in front of me.

"You killed him," he said.

The words were quiet. Calm. Worse than shouting.

"I didn't—" My voice cracked. I stood, my legs shaking. "Maximus, please. The footage is wrong. Someone altered it. I was in the kitchen. I can prove—"

"Enough."

The Alpha tone slammed into me. My mouth closed. My body locked.

But I fought it. For the first time in five years, I fought it.

"Please," I whispered. "Just listen. Please."

I reached for him. My hand stretched toward his arm, desperate, trembling.

He moved faster than I could track.

His hands closed around my shoulders. He lifted me—actually lifted me off the ground—and threw me backward.

I hit the glass display case with my full weight.

The sound was enormous. A crack, then a crash, then the high tinkling of glass raining onto tile.

I didn't feel it at first. Just the impact. The shock of my back hitting the wooden frame, the shelves collapsing, the world tilting sideways.

Then the pain came.

Sharp. Everywhere. Glass embedded in my back, my arms, my scalp. I tried to push myself up and my palm slid on something wet. Blood. Mine.

I looked up.

Maximus stood over me. His expression was empty. Not angry. Not sad. Just—empty.

Around us, the pack stood frozen. Fifty wolves, maybe more, and not one of them moved. His aura held them like invisible chains.

I opened my mouth. No sound came out.

Maximus stepped over me. His shoe came down inches from my hand. He walked toward the door without looking back.

The aura lifted.

The room exhaled. Wolves shifted. Whispered. A few looked at me. Most looked away.

I tried to stand. My legs wouldn't hold. I slumped back down, glass crunching under me.

Someone approached. The pack healer. I recognized her scent—lavender and something medicinal.

She knelt beside me. Her hands hovered over my shoulders, hesitating.

Then her phone buzzed.

She pulled it out. Read the screen. Her face went pale.

She stood up.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I can't."

She left.

I sat there in the glass and the blood and understood.

Alpha command. Do not treat her.

No one else came.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the blood to stop flowing freely. Long enough for the crowd to disperse. Long enough for the common room to empty until it was just me and the shattered case and the silence.

Finally, I stood.

My back screamed. My arms burned. Every movement sent glass grinding deeper.

I walked slowly. One foot. Then the other. Down the corridor. Up the stairs. To my room at the pack house's edge.

I locked the door.

In the bathroom, I stripped off my shirt. It stuck to the wounds. I peeled it away slowly, biting down on my lip until I tasted copper.

The mirror showed me what I already knew. Glass everywhere. Small pieces, some as long as my thumb, embedded in my skin.

I pulled out the first piece. It came free with a wet sound. Blood welled up immediately.

I kept going.

One piece. Then another. Then another. I worked methodically. No crying. No shaking. Just pulling glass and packing wounds with strips torn from my bedsheets.

My wolf stirred weakly. Then retreated.

She hadn't spoken in eleven days.

When I was done, I sat on the bathroom floor with my back against the tub. The tile was cold. The air smelled like iron.

I pulled the photograph from my pocket. Kamden at the construction site fence, grinning at something off-camera. His eyes bright. His smile easy.

I held it carefully, my bloody fingers at the edges.

I didn't move for a long time.

The sun set. The room went dark. I sat there and held the photograph and felt nothing at all.

Nothing but the mark on my neck, burning like it always did.

Burning like a brand.

Burning like a lie.

Three nights after the glass and the blood, I opened the lockbox for the last time.

My back still burned where the deepest cuts hadn't closed. I'd wrapped them again that morning with strips of an old pillowcase because I'd used the last of the bedsheet the night before. Every time I moved, something pulled. I moved anyway.

The lockbox sat on the floor of my closet, tucked behind winter boots I hadn't worn since Kamden was alive. I pulled it out and set it on the bed. My fingers worked the combination. Click. Click. Click.

Inside, the mating certificate lay flat and pristine, the way it had for five years. Cream-colored parchment. Silver seal. Two signatures at the bottom — his and mine — written the night he marked me, when I was still stupid enough to think a signature meant something.

I lifted it out carefully.

Under it, the hospital bill. The one from the night he threw the carafe. Third-degree burns across my collarbone and jaw. I'd paid it in cash from a stranger's ATM so no one would trace it. Under that, the photograph of my mother's car from Silverfang's security camera. Under that, a printout of Kamden's real GPS data — the one I'd pulled from the app's backup server before someone could scrub it.

I laid everything out on the bedspread in a neat row.

My phone was already on the nightstand. I picked it up.

I photographed each page twice. Front, back. Close, wide. I made sure the seal was visible on the certificate. Made sure the timestamps were legible on the GPS log. My hands were steady the whole time.

When I was done, I sat cross-legged on the floor with my laptop and started writing.

I'm not a coder. But I know how to schedule an email. I know how to build a distribution list. And I'd spent the last three nights reading forum posts and technical guides until my eyes blurred, learning how to write a script that would fire on a timer and could not be recalled once armed.

Seventy-two hours.

The recipient list took the longest. Every Alpha on the continental council. Every senior Beta. Every recognized pack authority east of the Rockies. I'd copied the addresses from a directory Maximus kept in his office — I'd photographed it months ago, without knowing why, back when instinct still whispered to me and I still listened.

I attached the certificate. The bills. The GPS log. The security photograph. A short cover paragraph, no adjectives, no pleading. Just facts. Names. Dates.

I reread it once.

I hit schedule.

The screen confirmed it. Distribution set for 11:59 PM, three nights from now.

I closed the laptop.

I didn't pack. There was nothing in this room that belonged to me anymore. My mother's ring was in the lockbox. The photograph of Kamden was in my pocket, where it had lived since the day he died. Everything else was fabric and furniture and things Maximus had provided.

I put the lockbox back behind the boots. I closed the closet. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched the clock on the nightstand tick over.

Seventy-one hours and fifty-eight minutes.

My wolf did not stir. But she was listening. I could feel her, faint and far away, listening.

---

The summons came the next evening.

A soft knock on my door. One of the junior warriors, eyes carefully lowered. "The Alpha wants you in his study."

I put on the scarf. I always put on the scarf.

His study smelled like leather and cedar smoke. He was at his desk when I walked in, a stack of pack documents open in front of him, a pen in his hand. He didn't look up.

"Close the door."

I closed it.

"Sit down."

I didn't. I stood in the middle of the room with my hands folded in front of me. My back still ached under the dress.

He signed something. Turned a page. Signed something else.

Without looking at me, he said, "I've made a decision."

I waited.

"I'm requesting the Moon Goddess's formal dissolution rite. Within the week." His pen kept moving. "Prepare yourself accordingly."

The Alpha tone was there — soft, almost casual, laced through the words like a habit he no longer noticed. It pressed at me the way it always did. My chest tightened. My throat obeyed.

He still hadn't looked at me.

"Do you understand."

It wasn't a question.

Something inside me stirred. Not fear. Not grief. Just — recognition. Quiet and clean, like a bell rung once in an empty room. My wolf shifted somewhere deep, and for the first time in eleven days she made a sound. Not words. Just a low, tired breath of acknowledgment.

*This is it.*

I nodded.

He turned another page.

"You can go."

I went.

I walked out of the study with my hands still folded, past the warrior at the corridor's end, up the stairs, back to my room. I closed the door. I sat on the edge of the bed.

The clock read 8:47 PM.

I watched the numbers change. 8:48. 8:49.

Outside, the wind moved through the trees. Somewhere below, a wolf laughed at something I couldn't hear. The pack house breathed on around me, indifferent, unaware.

I folded my hands in my lap and waited for midnight.