Over the next forty-eight hours, the rot inside Shadowmere became impossible to hide.

I watched it happen from the edges. On the morning pack run, Callahan shifted in front of the assembled warriors. Usually, his beast was a massive, obsidian-coated monster that forced heads down by sheer presence alone. But when his paws hit the dirt that morning, people gasped.

He was smaller. His dark fur looked patchy and dull, like ash after rain. When he tried to push his Alpha aura across the clearing, the pressure didn't hold. It flickered like a light bulb about to burn out. The pack felt it. Wolves don’t follow weakness; they survive it. By noon, the Gamma hadn't bothered to show up for the tactical briefing. Two senior warriors marched straight past Callahan’s office and knocked on Elder Silas’s door instead.

Rejecting a true mate carried a biological tax. Callahan had gambled that his rank would shield him from the Moon Goddess’s design, and his own wolf was starving for the mistake.

That evening, the knock on my basement door was soft and hurried.

I opened it to find Chelsea standing in the hallway. She had come alone. She wore a heavy coat with the collar pulled up, and her signature sweet smile was completely gone.

"Let me in," she whispered, her voice clipped.

I didn't move from the threshold. "Say what you came to say."

She glanced nervously down the empty corridor, then stepped right up into my space. The practiced warmth she usually performed for Callahan had peeled away, revealing the raw, vicious pragmatism underneath.

"You think you’ve won something because Callahan's wolf is crashing," she said quietly, her eyes darting across my face. "You haven't. The council will drag out this investigation for months, and if Callahan dies from the severed bond, this entire pack gets absorbed or slaughtered by neighboring packs. Nobody survives that. Especially not an Omega who just sprouted rogue fur."

I tilted my head, looking at her in silence.

"I'm offering you an out," she said, leaning in. Her tone was sharp, businesslike. "Leave Shadowmere tonight. Cross the southern border. I'll make sure you get a clean rogue pass and enough cash to disappear. You take the blame for the kitchen tampering—say you bought it yourself to trigger an illegal shift. In exchange, I stay quiet about who really sourced the wolfsbane, and I promise Callahan won't send trackers after you."

It was an absurd offer. A desperate woman trying to trade air for gold.

I looked at her calm, cold eyes. "You really think you're still in charge of this board, don't you?"

"I'm giving you a life, Flora!" she hissed.

"Did you keep records, Chelsea?" I asked softly.

Chelsea froze.

It was tiny—just a micro-flicker of panic across her dark pupils, a quick twitch of her bottom lip. But Seraphine caught it, and so did I. She hadn't burned the receipts. People like Chelsea were too paranoid to destroy their own leverage.

Before I could say another word, Chelsea snapped her jaw shut, schooling her face back into stone.

"This conversation is over," she snapped, turning sharply on her heel. Her boots clicked fast against the concrete as she fled down the hall.

I closed the door and made a mental note. The paper trail wasn't just in the pantry ledgers. It was in her personal quarters.

***

The morning of the third day was crisp and gray.

A biting frost coated the grass along the northern valley. Hundreds of Shadowmere wolves lined the gravel path leading up to the heavy wrought-iron border gates. Callahan stood at the front beside Elder Silas, dressed in formal ceremonial leather. He looked awful. Dark purple bruises hung under his hollow eyes, and his hands trembled inside his pockets.

I didn't stand near him. I stood forty yards back, near the treeline, occupying the exact spot I had stood in for ten years. The back row. Close enough to witness the pack's business, far enough away to be treated like furniture.

Beside me, Koda stood with his hands loosely clasped behind his back, watchful and silent.

Heavy steel groaned as the border gates swung open.

A dozen black SUVs rolled through, their tires crunching over the frost before stopping in neat formation. Royal guards stepped out first. They were massive Lycans dressed in midnight-blue coats, their auras rolling over the clearing like thunder before a summer storm. The Shadowmere warriors instinctively took a step back, their chests tight with fear.

Then the passenger door of the lead vehicle opened.

King Kenneth Reynolds stepped out into the mountain air.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, with silver-streaked dark hair and an aura of pure, unshakeable sovereignty. Behind him stepped Prince Kieran, lean, lethal, and observant.

Callahan stepped forward, clearing his throat to begin the formal greeting. "Shadowmere welcomes the Ironveil Court—"

He didn't finish.

The moment King Kenneth cleared the gate, he stopped mid-stride.

His broad chest expanded as he inhaled the cold morning air once. Twice.

Every line of the Lycan King's posture locked into rigid iron. His dark eyes went completely wide, the color of his irises flaring with pure, feral gold.

In that exact instant, the faint magnetic tug I had felt two days ago didn't just pull—it detonated inside my chest.

Seraphine threw her head back inside my mind and let out a deafening roar. It wasn't fear. It wasn't hostility. It was the visceral, overwhelming shock of a lost child catching the scent of her own blood. A scent of pure white winter frost and ancient timber, screaming through my veins like a wildfire.

My breath seized in my throat. I stumbled half a step forward against the tree trunk.

The King ignored Callahan entirely. He didn't look at Silas. He didn't look at the bowing elders.

With the terrifying precision of a hunter who had been tracking the same scent for ten long years, Kenneth Reynolds turned his head slowly toward the back of the clearing.

His eyes cut through three hundred wolves.

And locked dead onto mine.