Victoria came to the Omega quarters that evening with an audience.

I heard her perfume before I saw her—synthetic roses, too sweet, coating the narrow corridor like something sprayed from a bottle. My wolf stirred immediately, that low heat rising in my chest. I pressed my thumb against the mark scar on my neck and waited.

She knocked. Two light taps, performative politeness.

I opened the door.

Victoria stood in the doorway wearing a soft cream sweater and a concerned expression. Behind her, two junior pack members hovered—a Delta warrior named Marcus and an Omega girl I'd seen in the kitchens. They weren't trying to hide. That was the point.

"Selene," Victoria said, her voice pitched to carry. "I wanted to check on you. Make sure you're settling in all right."

I looked at her without expression. "I'm fine."

"Good. That's good." She glanced past me into the small room, taking in the narrow bed, the single window. Her mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "It's cozy. Simpler than what you're used to, I'm sure, but sometimes simplicity is exactly what we need after... loss."

My wolf sent a pulse of heat up my spine. I swallowed it down.

Victoria stepped closer, lowering her voice to something meant to sound gentle. "I know this transition has been difficult. Losing Oliver, then the bond... it's so much for one person to carry."

She said his name like it was any other word. Past tense. Casual.

I kept my face blank. "Is there something you need?"

"I just wanted you to know that Cason is doing wonderfully in his new room." She tilted her head, watching me. "Children adapt so quickly, don't they? We've refreshed the space—new paint, new furniture. It's like the room was always meant for him."

Oliver's room. She was talking about Oliver's room.

The heat in my chest built, layer by layer. My pupils wanted to dilate. I locked it down.

Victoria's eyes searched my face, looking for the break. When she didn't find it, something uncertain flickered across her expression. She recovered quickly.

"Anyway," she continued, her voice brightening, "I was thinking we should visit the clifftop memorial together. Pay our respects. It would mean a lot to Massimo to see us... united in honoring Oliver's memory."

The clifftop memorial. Where Oliver's ashes rested beneath a stone marker. Where I'd spent hours sitting in my wheelchair, tracing his name with my fingers.

I looked at Victoria for a long moment. Then I said, at conversational volume: "You chose the clifftop memorial for this conversation on purpose. You wanted me to know you know where his ashes are."

Her performance flickered. Just for a second—her smile tightening at the edges, her shoulders going rigid. Behind her, Marcus and the Omega girl exchanged a glance.

Victoria recovered with a soft laugh. "I don't know what you mean. I'm simply trying to—"

"I understand," I said quietly. "Thank you for the invitation."

She blinked at me, thrown by the lack of reaction. Then she smiled again, wider this time, and reached out to pat my shoulder. I didn't move.

"Wonderful," she said. "I'll let Massimo know you're agreeable. Good night, Selene."

She turned and walked away, her hips swaying, her perfume lingering in the corridor. Marcus and the Omega girl followed.

I closed the door and sat on the edge of my bed. My hands were steady. My wolf was not.

I pulled Oliver's drawings from my jacket pocket and smoothed the last one against my lap. Three figures in a field. The sun still unfinished in the upper left corner.

Victoria had just told me exactly what she intended to do. The clifftop. The memorial. The performance of reconciliation with Massimo as witness.

She wanted me to break there. At Oliver's grave. In front of the pack.

I folded the drawing carefully and tucked it back into my pocket. Then I pulled out the signed rejection papers and looked at them for a long moment.

My wolf sent another pulse of heat through my chest—not grief this time, not even rage. Something colder. Something patient.

I had spent four years learning to read Massimo's moods, to navigate his authority, to survive in the spaces between his commands. I knew how to watch. I knew how to wait.

And I knew exactly what Victoria had just given me: confirmation that she understood the memorial's significance. Confirmation that she knew where to strike to cause maximum damage.

Confirmation that she was careless enough to announce it in front of witnesses.

I pressed my thumb against the mark scar on my neck. It was cold and empty, the bond long dead. But my wolf was awake now. Fully awake.

And she was done being patient.

I would go to the clifftop memorial. I would let Victoria stage her performance. I would let Massimo witness whatever reconciliation theater she had planned.

And when the moment came—when she made her move, when she revealed exactly how far she was willing to go—I would make sure there were witnesses to that too.

I tucked the rejection papers back into my pocket beside Oliver's drawings and felt my wolf settle, warm and steady beneath my ribs.

Victoria thought she knew where to strike. She thought she understood what would break me.

She was wrong.

I had already broken. And what was left behind was something she had never bothered to look for.

The clifftop memorial sat at the edge of Shadowvale territory, where the forest dropped away into open air and the stone marker bearing Oliver's name faced the sunrise. I'd spent hours here in my wheelchair, tracing the letters with my fingers, talking to him in whispers the wind carried away.

Victoria arrived first. I heard her heels on the stone path before I saw her—sharp, deliberate clicks that announced her presence like a performance beginning. She wore soft gray, mourning colors, her hair pulled back in a way that made her look younger. Concerned.

I was already positioned beside the marker, my wheelchair locked in place. The rejection papers and Oliver's drawings sat in my jacket pocket, pressed against my ribs.

"Selene," Victoria said, her voice pitched to carry. "Thank you for coming."

I didn't answer. I looked at the marker instead, at Oliver's name carved into gray stone.

Victoria moved closer, her perfume coating the air—synthetic roses, too sweet. My wolf stirred immediately, that low heat rising. I pressed my thumb against the mark scar on my neck and waited.

"I wanted us to do this together," she continued, crouching beside the marker like she had any right to be near it. "To honor Oliver's memory. To show the pack that we can move forward with grace."

She reached into her own pocket. My wolf went still.

Victoria pulled out a folded piece of paper. Even before she opened it, I recognized the crayon-soft edges, the particular way the folds had worn thin from being carried.

Oliver's last drawing. The unfinished family portrait. Three figures in a field.

I'd kept it in my jacket pocket for a year. I'd checked for it this morning before I left the Omega quarters.

It had been there.

"I found this in Oliver's old room," Victoria said softly, smoothing the paper against her knee. "Such a sweet picture. He was so talented."

She was lying. She'd taken it from my pocket. Probably when she'd patted my shoulder outside the Omega quarters, her hand lingering a second too long.

My wolf sent a pulse of heat up my spine. I locked it down.

Victoria held the drawing up to the light, tilting her head like she was admiring it. Then, very slowly, she tore it in half.

The sound was soft. Paper separating. Crayon lines splitting down the middle.

My body moved before my mind caught up. I lunged from the wheelchair, my damaged legs folding wrong, my hands reaching for the pieces. "Stop—"

Victoria stepped back, tearing again. Massimo's crayon face separated from mine. Oliver's figure split at the waist.

"It's just paper," she said, her voice still soft, still performed. "He's gone, Selene. Holding onto these things won't bring him back."

I hit the ground hard, my knees scraping stone. The pieces fluttered between us—Massimo's smile, Oliver's unfinished sun, my own crayon face staring up at nothing.

Victoria tore once more. Oliver's head separated from his body.

"Massimo!" she called, her voice rising into distress. "Help!"

He appeared within seconds. Too fast. He'd been waiting nearby.

Massimo took in the scene: me on the ground, the drawing in pieces, Victoria's wide eyes and performed fear. His expression hardened.

"Selene." His voice dropped into Alpha tone, the command hitting like a physical weight. "Kneel before Victoria. Apologize."

My body tried to obey. My spine curved inward. My damaged legs folded further, the angle wrong and agonizing. My head bowed.

But my wolf exploded.

Heat flooded my chest, my throat, my eyes. Not the low simmer I'd been swallowing down for days. This was a detonation—primal, enormous, something I couldn't contain.

Gold bled into my vision. My pupils dilated so fast it hurt.

Massimo's Alpha tone faltered. He stepped back, his face uncertain.

My body fought itself—the command pulling me down, my wolf surging up. I was caught between them, my spine arching, my hands clawing at stone.

Victoria's performance cracked. Something cold crossed her face. She grabbed the wheelchair and shoved it into my hip.

Momentum carried me sideways. Toward the cliff edge.

I reached for the marker, for the stone path, for anything. My hands found air.

I went over.

The rock face rushed past. Wind screamed in my ears. The ground approached with brutal clarity—hard, final, terminal.

Oliver's face flashed through my mind. Not the drawing. Him. Real. Four years old and laughing.

My wolf detonated.

Silver fur erupted from my skin in a blinding cascade. My bones cracked and reformed—not the slow shift I'd known before, but something massive and immediate. Pain lanced through every nerve as my body doubled in size, then doubled again.

I was not a wolf. I was something larger.

My claws—silver, huge, sharp enough to split stone—slammed into the rock face. The impact jarred through my shoulders, my spine, my newly reformed legs. But I held.

I clung to the cliff face, trembling, my body enormous and unfamiliar. My vision sharpened—colors brighter, edges clearer. I could smell everything: stone and earth and my own blood, Massimo's scent above, Victoria's synthetic roses.

And something else. Something in my own fur, my own scent.

Royal blood.

Above me, I heard voices. The two Shadowvale sentries who'd been stationed at the memorial perimeter.

"Moon Goddess," one whispered. "That's—"

"Royal blood," the other finished, his voice shaking. "Lycan-lineage. Look at the size of her."

I opened my eyes. Gold stared back at me from my reflection in the stone—not the amber of an ordinary wolf, but the unmistakable Lycan-lineage gold that marked royalty.

My wolf was awake. Fully awake.

And she was not broken.