My mother was waiting for me at the doors of the Moonridge celebration hall.

For three years, she'd barely answered my texts. Now she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me before I could say a word. She smelled like the same lavender lotion she'd used my whole childhood.

"You look tired," she said, pulling back to smooth my collar with both hands. "You should've let your father pick you up from the station."

"I didn't want to bother anyone."

"Aria." She tugged the fabric straight one last time. "You're home. That's what matters."

For one stupid second, I believed her.

I'd come back to sign the handover papers for Grandma's clinic, the little stone building on Birch Street where she'd set broken bones and stitched up pups for forty years. Her will had left it to me. I'd spent the whole train ride telling myself my family might finally be glad to see me.

Then I walked into the hall.

The room was packed. String lights hung from the rafters, and a livestream camera sat on a tripod near the stage. Up front, under a spotlight, Cole Maddox knelt on one knee.

Cole. The boy I'd loved from the age of fourteen. The boy who'd promised to stand beside me the night of my first shift.

He slid a diamond ring onto Vanessa Price's finger, and the room erupted.

Vanessa pressed a hand to her chest and laughed, blond hair bouncing, looking every bit the surprised bride-to-be. Behind them, a massive screen glowed with a photo of Grandma's clinic, its green door and window boxes of marigolds.

Across the bottom, in looping gold letters: *A new beginning for my future wife.*

My hands went cold.

"Mom," I said quietly. "Why is Grandma's clinic on that screen?"

She didn't answer. She was clapping.

---

Vanessa spotted me before I could reach the stage. Her smile widened.

"Oh my God, Aria's here!" She grabbed the microphone from the MC. "Everyone, we have a special guest tonight. You all remember Aria, right?"

Heads turned toward me. A few people whispered.

"I thought it'd be fun to show everyone how far our old friend has come," Vanessa said sweetly. "Hit it, Josh."

The screen changed.

My heart stopped when I saw the forest clearing and the full moon. And me, nineteen years old, on my hands and knees in the dirt.

I remembered the pain. Bones shifting halfway and then locking, my spine bent wrong, fur sprouting in patches on my arms before sinking back into skin. On the screen, I collapsed onto my side and reached toward the edge of the clearing.

"Cole," my younger self sobbed. "Cole, please. Help me."

The camera had caught him standing twenty feet away, his hands in his pockets.

He hadn't moved then.

He was laughing now.

"Okay, okay." Cole took the mic from Vanessa, grinning. "Since Aria's back just in time for tomorrow's Moon Hunt, let's make it interesting. Drop your bets in the chat. Does she finish the course, or does she face-plant before the first checkpoint?"

The comments on the side monitor exploded with laughing emojis.

*Face-plant. Easy money.*

*Does she still crawl like that lol*

I turned toward the doors. I didn't need to stay and watch myself break on a loop.

My mother caught my wrist.

Her grip was gentle, but she didn't let go. She leaned in close, still smiling for anyone watching.

"Don't," she whispered. "It's their engagement. Don't make a scene."

"They're playing that video, Mom. In front of everyone."

"It's a joke, sweetheart. Everyone knows it's a joke. Just smile."

I stared at her. She squeezed my wrist once, as if we'd agreed on something.

Onstage, Cole leaned toward the livestream camera, his voice warm and generous.

"And hey, no hard feelings. If she can't finish, I'll carry her back myself."

The room cooed like he'd said something sweet.

Three years ago, he wouldn't even take his hands out of his pockets. Now he was offering to carry me for an audience.

---

My father appeared at my other side before I'd pulled my wrist free. He had a leather folder tucked under his arm, and he set it on the cocktail table in front of me like he'd been waiting all night for this moment.

"Since you're here," he said, "let's take care of this."

I opened the folder. *Deed of Gift.* The address on Birch Street. Grandma's clinic.

"You told me I was coming home to sign the handover," I said.

"You are. You sign it over to Vanessa." He tapped the signature line. "Be reasonable, Aria. You don't even live here anymore. Vanessa's got plans. She'll renovate, bring in real equipment, make it something the pack can be proud of. Something respectable."

"Grandma's clinic was respectable."

"It's a relic." He lowered his voice. "I already told Cole you'd agree. He's announced it. Don't embarrass this family."

I scanned the page again, slowly, because I needed to be sure.

*Recipient: Vanessa Price.*

Not *transfer pending.* Not *under discussion.* Her name was printed in clean black ink, like the decision had been made the day they'd typed it.

I closed the folder.

"Aria," my father warned.

I walked to the stage. Beside the steps stood a display board with an architect's drawing of the clinic, all glass and white paint. A cream-colored card was pinned to the corner, tied with ribbon. *Vanessa's Wellness Studio.*

I pulled the card off.

The ribbon snapped. The music faded as the room went quiet.

Vanessa's smile faltered. "Aria, what are you—"

I turned to the livestream camera and held up the card.

"My grandmother's clinic is not your wedding gift."

The chat froze for a second, then flooded.

Cole stepped forward, jaw tight. "Seriously? Tonight?"

"You picked tonight," I said. "Not me."

---

I pulled out my phone and screen-recorded the livestream replay. The video of me, Cole's joke, the betting poll, and the gold caption over Grandma's clinic. I saved it and backed it up to the cloud.

Then I looked at Vanessa.

"I want the original footage of that night. The full file. Everything with me in it."

She blinked, too quickly. "Oh, that? It got deleted ages ago. This clip is all that's left."

"Somebody edited it together from something."

"Well, it's gone." She tucked her hair behind her ear, the diamond flashing. "Sorry."

Nobody looked convinced. Nobody pushed back either.

Behind me, I could feel my parents waiting. My mother would want an apology, and my father would expect me to take the pen and sign. For three years I'd waited for one of them to say *that's enough.*

They weren't going to.

So I stopped waiting.

A registration table sat by the side door, with a banner above it reading *MOON HUNT — SIGN-UPS CLOSE AT MIDNIGHT.* I walked over, took a form from the stack, and started writing.

Name. Age. Pack affiliation.

Previous shift status. I hesitated only a moment before writing *Incomplete.*

Footsteps followed me. Cole's cologne reached me before he did.

"What is this?" He looked down at the form, then at me, and a slow, knowing smile spread across his face. "Come on, Aria. You come back, make a scene, and now you're signing up for the Hunt? Is this about me? Are you trying to get me back?"

Beside the table, the staff volunteer froze with her pen in the air.

I signed my name at the bottom and held the form out to her.

"I'm entering a race, Cole." I didn't look at him. "Not asking you to take me back."

She took the paper. Behind me, I heard Cole's breath catch, then the murmur spreading through the hall.

On the livestream monitor, the betting poll ticked upward.

*Face-plant: 94%.*

By the time I reached Birch Street that afternoon, someone was already prying Grandma's name off the door.

A worker in a paint-stained hoodie had a crowbar wedged behind the brass plate. *Dr. Ruth Calloway, Pack Healer.* One screw popped loose, then the second, and the plate tipped forward.

"Toss it in the bin," he called over his shoulder.

I caught it before it hit the gravel. The brass was warm from the sun and heavier than I remembered.

Inside, through the open door, I heard my mother's voice.

"And this whole waiting room comes out," she was saying. "Picture a marble reception desk right here, sweetheart. Somewhere your VIP clients can sit without looking at a bunch of limping farmhands."

Vanessa stood beside her in white jeans, nodding, one hand resting on the back of Grandma's old wooden bench like she already owned it.

"Mom."

They both turned. My mother's smile tightened at the corners.

"Aria. You shouldn't be here. They're working."

"I noticed." I set the nameplate on the front counter and pulled a blue folder from my bag. "The probate cleared last month. The deed was recorded in my name on the fourteenth." I laid the papers flat so the county seal faced up. "Nobody authorized construction on my property. Everyone stops. Right now."

The worker with the crowbar glanced at a heavyset man holding a clipboard by the window. The foreman, I guessed.

"Ma'am, we were hired by the family," he said.

"I'm the family that owns it." I held out my hand. "I'll take the keys. And the equipment inventory."

Vanessa laughed softly. "Aria, you're being dramatic again."

---

My father came through the back hallway, drying his hands on a paper towel. He took one look at the deed on the counter and his jaw set.

"Put that away," he said. "This project is tied to Cole's wedding. The Maddox family's already told half the pack. You want to humiliate them twice in two days?"

"I didn't sign anything."

"I signed for you. I'm your father."

"Then let's fix that." I turned to the foreman. "Whatever permission you were given, it didn't come from me, and I'm withdrawing it. You can send your invoice to whoever hired you. If anything else comes off a wall, I'll call the pack council."

The foreman looked at my father for a long moment. Then he tucked his pencil behind his ear.

"Pack it up, guys."

The crowbar clattered into a toolbox. My father's face went a dull red.

"You've lost your mind," he said quietly.

"No. I've read my grandmother's will."

Martha, Grandma's nurse for twenty-two years, had been hovering in the exam room doorway the whole time. Her gray braid was pinned up, and she was holding a ring of keys against her chest like she'd been protecting them.

"Martha," I said. "From now on, schedules, supplies, anyone who wants to come in here, you check with me directly. Not my parents. Not Vanessa."

Her eyes went glassy. "Your grandmother said you'd come back." She pressed the keys into my palm. "The inventory's in her office. So are her private files."

Behind me, Vanessa's heels scraped against the tile as she left without a word. My mother followed her.

My father stayed long enough to say, "Don't expect help from us," and then the door banged shut.

---

Grandma's office smelled like dust and peppermint. Her handwriting covered everything, from the patient cards to the cabinet labels to the sticky notes on the lamp.

I went through the equipment list first, then her personal ledgers. She kept records of everything she dispensed, even the small stuff. Willow bark. Burn salve. Sleep drops.

Three years ago. The morning of my first shift.

*V. Price. Moonveil tablets, 2. Requested for "cramping."*

I read it twice. Moonveil wasn't a cramp remedy. Grandma had taught me that when I was twelve. It suppressed the shift. Healers used it on pups who changed too early, to slow the bones down.

In the margin, in pencil, Grandma had written: *Dose seems high. Ask her again.*

There was nothing after that.

It didn't prove Vanessa had given it to anyone. It didn't prove she'd given it to me. But my hands weren't steady when I pulled the page from the binder and photographed it front and back.

I texted Eva. *Can you verify this entry and the dosage? I need to know what this dose would do.*

Her reply came in under a minute. *Bring the original. I'm at the guesthouse.*

For three years, I'd believed my body just failed. That I was the girl who couldn't shift.

Now I wasn't sure it had been my body at all.

---

The Northern delegation had taken over the entire second floor of the Moonridge guesthouse. Eva met me in the sitting room, reading glasses pushed into her dark curls, a laptop open on the coffee table.

She took the ledger page with gloved fingers and slid it into a clear sleeve.

"I'll have our lab look at the ink date and cross-check the batch," she said. "Don't tell anyone you have this."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Good." She turned the laptop toward me. "Now. The other reason you're here."

The screen showed a contract. *Appointment: Director, Northern Territories Rehabilitation Program — Moonridge Site. Aria Reed.*

My name, spelled right, above a signature line.

"The committee approved you six weeks ago," Eva said. "Before you ever bought your train ticket. The team's just been waiting for you to secure the building."

"I secured it about an hour ago."

She smiled for the first time. "Then sign."

I did. She countersigned, then scrolled to the site plan. Grandma's clinic was on the first page, with Northern funding and new equipment listed in neat rows.

"One change," I said. "I want thirty percent of the rehab slots kept low-fee. Sliding scale."

Eva raised a brow. "That'll cut into the budget."

"Grandma treated people nobody else wanted. Old wolves who couldn't pay. Pups whose shifts went wrong." I tapped the screen. "Vanessa wanted to put a marble desk where they sit. I'm keeping the bench."

Eva studied me, then typed it in.

"Done."

---

She left to take a call. I was gathering my folder when the door opened again.

Kael walked in, still in a dark suit from whatever council meeting he'd sat through, loosening his tie with one hand. He stopped when he saw me.

We'd emailed for months about the program. We had never been alone in a room.

The air changed. It was warm and sudden, like stepping too close to a fire. I felt it under my ribs, a pull so strong I had to lock my knees. He smelled like cedar and cold rain, and something in me recognized it before my mind caught up.

He took one step toward me.

My shoulders went rigid on their own.

Kael stopped. He didn't move closer. He just stood there, hands open at his sides.

"You feel it too," he said quietly.

"Yes."

"Then I'll say this once." His voice stayed even. "You don't have to decide anything today. Or this week. I'm not going anywhere."

My throat tightened. Nobody had given me room in a long time.

"Eva told me about last night," he said. "The video. The betting."

"It's still up. The poll's at ninety-four percent."

"And the Hunt's tomorrow." He watched my face. "What do you want me to do?"

I could've asked him for anything. He was the Northern Alpha, and one word from him would've shut the livestream down.

"Let me run it," I said. "All of it, on my own. Then come find me at noon."

He was quiet for a second. He didn't argue.

"Noon," he said. "I'll bring you a bottle of water."

The corner of his mouth lifted, and he stepped back to let me pass.

My legs were shaking by the time I reached the stairs. Tomorrow, the whole pack would be watching to see me fall again.

This time, someone would be waiting at the finish line.

I only went to the welcome dinner for the photos.

Grandma had kept a shoebox of pictures in her hall closet: her first patients, the clinic's opening day, me at six with a stethoscope around my neck. After the funeral, my mother had taken it "for safekeeping." Tonight she'd texted that I could pick it up if I came to dinner.

So I came.

The dining room was full of Maddox cousins and Price relatives, the long oak table set with the good china. My place card sat at the very end, next to the kitchen door. At the head, in the carved chair with the faded blue cushion where Grandma had sat every Sunday of my life, sat Vanessa.

She smiled at me over her wineglass. "Aria. You made it."

The shoebox sat beside my mother's plate. Her hand rested flat on the lid.

"I came for that," I said, nodding at it.

"Sit down first." My mother kept her voice light, for the guests. "And before we eat, I think you owe Cole an apology. The whole pack heard about this afternoon. The foreman told everyone you threw them out."

Cole leaned back in his chair and said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.

"I'm not apologizing for protecting my own property."

"Aria." Her fingers pressed down on the lid. "Don't do this at the table."

I didn't sit. I walked the length of the table, past the cousins who had gone quiet, and stopped beside her chair.

"Those are Grandma's pictures. She left everything in that house to me."

"I'm your mother."

"I know." I slid the box out from under her hand. She let it go, but only because the alternative was pulling against me in front of twenty people. "And from now on, nobody in this family makes decisions about the clinic for me. Not you. Not Dad."

Her face went very still. For three years I'd waited for her to choose me over looking good in a room.

She picked up her fork instead.

I held the box against my chest. The cardboard corners were soft from Grandma's hands.

---

I was halfway to the door when Cole's chair scraped back.

"Hang on," he said. "Since everyone's here, let's settle this like adults."

I turned.

He spread his hands, reasonable, charming, the way he got whenever he wanted a room on his side. "You entered the Hunt. Fine. But let's put something real on it. If you can't shift tomorrow, you give the clinic to Vanessa. No more drama. Everybody moves on."

"That's fair," someone murmured.

Vanessa was already reaching into the tote bag at her feet. She pulled out a stapled document and slid it down the table, and it stopped against the bread basket in front of me.

*Conditional Transfer Agreement.*

She'd typed it before dinner. She'd planned this.

"All you have to do is sign," she said. "It's just in case."

I set the shoebox down, picked up the papers, and walked them back to her. I laid them beside her plate, facing her.

"No."

Cole laughed. "So you know you're going to fail."

"I know the clinic isn't a poker chip." I kept my eyes on him. "You want a bet? Make it about the shift. That's what this is actually about, isn't it?"

The room waited.

"If I can't shift tomorrow, I'll say so. Out loud, on camera. I'll admit I failed again."

"And if you can?" Cole asked, smirking like the question was a formality.

"Then you stand in front of that same camera and tell everyone what really happened three years ago. That I begged you for help and you walked away. You take that video down everywhere it's posted. And you apologize. Publicly."

His smirk slipped. It was small, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but I saw it.

"That's not the same thing," Vanessa said quickly.

"It's exactly the same thing. You want me humiliated if I lose. I want the truth if I win."

Cole glanced around the table. Every face was on him now. Backing down would look worse than any bet.

"Fine," he said. "Deal. You're not going to make it anyway."

"Then you've got nothing to worry about."

I picked up the shoebox and left.

---

The next morning, the starting field behind the ranger station was crowded before seven. Runners stretched in the wet grass. Two volunteers were setting up the timing gate, and someone's speaker played music too loud for the hour.

Vanessa found me within five minutes, phone raised, the ring light clipped to it glowing in my face.

"Good morning, everyone! We're here with Aria before the big run." Her voice turned syrupy. "So, Aria, real question. Do you want us to arrange someone to carry you back? Cole already offered, but we could get a stretcher on standby. You know, just in case."

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Because last time—"

"I'm sure."

She tilted the phone toward herself. "She says she's sure, guys." Then back to me. "What about the first checkpoint? Should medics wait there, or will you not make it that far?"

The comments scrolled across her screen faster than I could read them. I didn't try.

My mother came up behind Vanessa in a fleece jacket, a thermos in her hand. She didn't offer me any.

"Aria, sweetheart." She touched my elbow. "Nobody would blame you if you withdrew now. You'd keep a little dignity. Once you're out there, you can't take it back."

"I know."

"Then be smart about it."

"I am." I stepped around her toward the registration tent, where a staff volunteer in an orange vest was checking bib numbers. "Excuse me. Could you record something for me? For the official file."

She looked surprised but pulled out a tablet. "Sure."

I waved Cole over. He came. Vanessa's camera was on him, and walking away would've looked like fear.

"Just confirm it," I said. "The terms from last night."

He sighed like I was wasting his time, then looked into the tablet. "If she doesn't shift, she admits she failed. If she does, I admit what happened three years ago, take the video down, and apologize. Happy?"

"Thank you," I told the volunteer. "Please keep that."

She nodded and tapped save.

I crouched and retied my laces, double knots on both shoes. Then I unfolded the route map from my bib packet and traced the course with my finger: creek crossing, the ridge, the pine switchbacks, the final clearing. I'd run trails like this every morning for two years, but nobody here needed to know that.

When I stood, Vanessa's camera was still on me. I looked straight into it and didn't say a word.

---

Vanessa lowered the phone long enough to fix her lip gloss.

"Anyway," she told her viewers, "after this, I have a little surprise. The Alpha King's arriving for the closing ceremony, and I'm getting a photo with him at noon. Cole's family set it up." She winked at the screen. "Stay tuned."

My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.

A private message, no preview, from a number I'd saved only yesterday.

*I'll be there at noon. You won't have to stand alone.*

I read it once and something in my chest settled, quiet and warm.

*See you then,* I typed back.

Then I walked to the equipment table and handed my phone to the event custodian. She sealed it in a labeled pouch and dropped it into a lockbox with the others.

"Runners to the line," the announcer called. "Two minutes."

Cole stepped in front of me as I crossed the grass. He'd traded his suit for running gear, but he still stood like he owned the space.

"Last chance, Aria," he said, low enough that the camera wouldn't pick it up. "Do you really want to embarrass yourself again? In front of everybody?"

I didn't slow down.

I passed his shoulder, passed the other runners bouncing on their toes, and stopped at the very front of the starting line, where the official livestream camera sat on its tripod, its red light steady.

Behind me, I could hear Vanessa laughing. I could hear my mother say my name.

I looked into the lens.

"Keep filming."