I sat in the darkness of my room, waiting.

Five years. Five years of waiting for Colt to come back to me. Five years of living in this suffocating blackness, my world reduced to sounds and touches and the phantom ache where my eyes used to work. Five years of telling myself it was worth it—that saving his life, losing my sight, was the greatest act of love I could give my fated mate.

And today, he finally came home.

Except he didn't come to me. Not right away.

Instead, I'd been dragged to the pack training grounds this afternoon, my hand gripped too tightly by some omega whose name I couldn't remember. The sun had been warm on my face, but the laughter surrounding me was cold. Cruel.

"She's pathetic," someone whispered, not bothering to lower their voice. "Still wolfless after all these years."

"And blind. What kind of Luna would she make?"

I'd stood there, my fingers twisted in the fabric of my worn dress, trying to locate Colt by sound alone. I knew his footsteps, his breathing, the particular way he moved through space. But when I finally heard him speak, his voice wasn't directed at me.

"A bet?" he'd said, laughing. Laughing. "Sure, why not. If I lose this match, Travis can have her."

The words hadn't made sense at first. Have her. Like I was a possession. A prize in some twisted game.

"Colt?" I'd whispered, reaching out blindly. "What are you—"

"Don't worry about it, Melody," he'd said, his tone bored. Dismissive. "Just stand there and look pretty. Well, as pretty as you can manage."

More laughter. A woman's high-pitched giggle that made my skin crawl. I didn't recognize the voice, but I felt the malice in it like a physical touch.

The match had been brief. Too brief. And then Colt's hand was on my arm, shoving me forward into someone else's grip.

"She's all yours, Beta," Colt had announced. "Try not to break her. She's fragile."

I'd been too shocked to speak. Too humiliated to cry. Travis had led me away in silence, his hand gentle on my elbow, guiding me back to the omega quarters—a place I hadn't lived in years, not since Colt and I had been promised to each other.

But that was this afternoon. Hours ago.

Now, I sat in the dark and waited for answers.

The door creaked open. I didn't move, didn't acknowledge the intrusion. Footsteps crossed the room—measured, careful. Then I smelled it. Colt's cologne. That expensive, woody scent he always wore, the one that used to make my heart race.

"Melody," the voice said softly. His voice. Colt's voice.

Relief flooded through me so intensely I nearly sobbed. He'd come. He'd come to explain, to apologize, to tell me this was all some horrible misunderstanding.

"I'm here," I whispered.

He moved closer, and I felt the bed dip as he sat beside me. His hand found mine in the darkness, fingers intertwining. Warm. Familiar.

"I missed you," he murmured, leaning in. His breath ghosted across my cheek. "Every day I was gone, I thought about you. About coming back to you."

The words were right. Perfect, even. But something felt wrong. Off.

I pushed the feeling away. This was Colt. My mate. The man I'd sacrificed everything for.

His lips found mine, and I kissed him back, desperate to feel the connection I'd been missing for five years. His hands moved to my waist, pulling me closer, and I let him. Let him lay me back against the pillows, let him whisper promises against my skin.

"I'll make everything right," he breathed. "I swear it."

But then—

Light.

Not from a lamp or candle. Light from my own eyes, piercing through the darkness I'd lived in for so long. The transformation Elena had triggered earlier today, the excruciating ritual that had awakened something primal and powerful inside me—it had worked. My wolf had finally emerged, and with it, my sight had returned.

I could see.

And what I saw shattered everything.

The man above me, the man whose hands were on my body, whose lips had just been on mine—he wasn't Colt.

Dark hair instead of golden brown. Broader shoulders. A face I knew, but not the face I'd expected.

Travis.

Travis Knight. Colt's Beta. The man who'd been handed me like a piece of property just hours ago.

I froze, every muscle in my body locking up. He must have felt it because he pulled back slightly, his brow furrowing in concern.

"Melody? Are you alright?"

His voice. I'd thought it was Colt's voice, but now I heard the difference. Deeper. Rougher around the edges.

How long? How long had this been happening?

The mate bond I'd felt, the connection I'd been so sure of—it crashed over me now, but it wasn't coming from some distant place where I'd imagined Colt to be. It was coming from the man right in front of me. From Travis.

My stomach turned. My vision blurred—not from blindness this time, but from tears.

"Get off me," I whispered.

He didn't move, confusion flickering across his features. Features I could now see clearly in the darkness, thanks to my wolf's enhanced vision.

"Melody—"

"Get. Off. Me."

This time, he obeyed, pulling away and standing beside the bed. I scrambled backward until my spine hit the headboard, my breath coming in short, panicked gasps.

Five years. Five years of this. Five years of believing Colt was the one touching me, holding me, making love to me in the dark.

But it had been Travis all along.

And somehow, impossibly, my wolf recognized him. Wanted him. Called him mate.

I was going to be sick.

I kept my eyes shut when the morning light came through the curtains.

Not because I couldn't see it. I could. Every dust particle floating in those pale gold beams, every crack in the plaster ceiling above me, every detail of the room I'd spent five years navigating by touch alone—I could see all of it now, sharp and clear and almost unbearably real.

But Travis didn't know that.

And I needed him to keep not knowing.

My wolf snarled at the back of my skull, low and vicious. *Kill him. He touched us. He lied to us. Tear his throat out.*

I pressed my nails into my palm under the blanket. *Not yet,* I told her. *Not until we know everything.*

She didn't like that answer. She'd been raging since the moment my sight came back last night, since the moment I'd seen Travis's face above mine and understood what had been done to me. Five years. Five years of darkness, and someone had used that darkness as a weapon.

I needed to know who had built it. All of it. Every brick.

The door opened. I went still, softening my breathing into the slow rhythm of sleep.

His footsteps were quiet. Careful. He moved like he was afraid of waking me, which almost made me laugh. Almost.

I felt him sit in the chair beside the bed—not on the bed, just beside it. Like he was keeping his distance. Like he felt guilty.

Good.

"Melody." His voice was low. That same voice I'd mistaken for Colt's a hundred times in the dark. Now that I could think clearly, now that the shock had settled into something colder and sharper, I couldn't understand how I'd ever confused them. Travis's voice was rougher. Quieter. It didn't have Colt's easy arrogance in it.

I let my eyes flutter open, unfocused, aimed slightly past his shoulder the way I'd trained myself to look for years.

"Travis?" I made my voice small. Confused.

"Yeah." A pause. "I brought you breakfast."

I heard the soft clink of a tray being set on the nightstand. My wolf caught the scent—eggs, toast, something warm. He'd actually cooked.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

I watched him through my lashes as he stood and moved toward the window. He kept his back to me, his shoulders tense, his hands loose at his sides. He was holding something back. I could see it in the rigid line of his spine.

Good. Let him hold it back. Let him choke on it.

I ate slowly, listening to the sounds of the estate waking up around us, and I planned.

---

I waited until I heard his shower running before I moved.

Three minutes. That's all I gave myself.

I crossed the room in silence, my wolf lending me a grace I'd never had before—fluid, soundless, nothing like the careful shuffle I'd performed for five years. I slipped out the side door and into the cool morning air.

Colt's scent hit me almost immediately. That expensive woody cologne, layered over something I'd never noticed before—something lazy and self-satisfied, like a wolf who'd never been hungry a day in his life.

I followed it.

The Alpha's estate sat at the northern edge of pack territory, all stone and glass and deliberate grandeur. I kept to the tree line, moving through the shadows with my wolf's eyes cutting through the early morning dimness like it was nothing. Like I'd always been able to do this.

I heard them before I saw them. Laughter. A woman's voice, bright and sharp.

*Brittany.*

I crouched behind the hedgerow beneath the east-facing terrace and pressed my phone to record.

"—honestly, the look on her face when you shoved her at Travis." Brittany's laugh was the same as I remembered from school. That high, artificial sound. "I would have paid to see it up close."

"She didn't even fight it." Colt's voice, amused. Careless. "Just stood there with her mouth open. Pathetic."

"Five years of waiting for you to come home." Brittany made a soft, mocking sound. "And you spent them in my bed."

"Best five years of my life."

My jaw ached. I realized I was grinding my teeth.

"She actually believed you were the one in exile?" Brittany asked.

"Every single day." Colt's voice dropped into something that might have been pride. "Blind and wolfless and completely mine to manage. Travis did all the suffering. I just reaped the benefits."

I got every word.

---

The archives were in the lower level of the Castillo estate's east wing, behind a door that required a guard rotation and a key code.

It took me eleven minutes to get inside.

My wolf guided me past the two guards with an ease that felt almost insulting—like the pack's security had been built to stop the Melody they thought I was. The weak one. The blind one.

Not this.

The files were meticulously organized. Antonio Castillo was nothing if not thorough.

I found Colt's incident report first. The rogue attack, five years ago. The original account, before it was rewritten. I read Colt's name where it should have been. His negligence. His cowardice. The cover-up.

Then I found Travis's exile records.

Five years of documented brutality. Locations logged. Injuries noted in clinical, detached language—lacerations, silver exposure, starvation protocols. Someone had been keeping track of exactly how much damage was done to him.

I stood in the dark archive with the files in my hands and felt something shift inside me.

Not softness. Not forgiveness.

Just a new, colder kind of fury, with a sharper edge than before.

I photographed every page.

I had everything I needed. Almost.

Travis's quarters smelled like him—that scent I'd mistaken for Colt's in the dark, now unmistakable in the daylight I could finally see. Earthy. Restrained. Nothing like Colt's expensive cologne.

I shouldn't have been here. But my wolf pushed me forward, hungry for answers I wasn't sure I wanted.

The room was sparse. Functional. A bed made with military precision, a single chair, a desk with nothing on it but a lamp. No photographs. No personal touches. Like he'd never allowed himself to settle anywhere, even in his own space.

I moved quickly, checking drawers, the closet, under the bed. Nothing. Just clothes and weapons and—

My fingers caught on something beneath the nightstand. A loose floorboard.

I pried it up.

The wooden box was small, worn smooth by years of handling. My hands trembled as I lifted the lid.

Inside: tiny carved wolves. Dozens of them, each one different. Some running, some howling, some curled in sleep. The craftsmanship was crude but careful, like someone had spent hours on each one with nothing but a knife and too much time alone.

Beneath them, folded carefully, was a piece of fabric. Faded blue cotton, torn at the edges.

Bloodstained.

I lifted it, and the world tilted.

*A little girl's voice, high and determined: "It's okay. I won't hurt you."*

*A wolf pup, ribs showing through matted fur, wearing a torn blue shirt someone had tried to fashion into a collar. Shaking. Starving.*

*"Here. Take this." Small hands offering bread stolen from the pack kitchens. "You can't stay here, but... come back tomorrow. I'll bring more."*

*Golden eyes, too old for a pup, staring up at her like she'd hung the moon.*

I dropped the fabric like it had burned me.

That pup. That starving rogue pup I'd found on the edge of pack territory when I was ten years old. The one I'd fed in secret for weeks until he disappeared.

Travis.

My stomach lurched. I pressed my hand against the wall, breathing hard.

He'd loved me since then. Since I was a child. Since before I even knew what a mate bond was.

And he'd let Colt use him. Let Colt send him into exile. Let Colt put him in my bed under a lie—all for the chance to be near me.

That wasn't love. That was sickness. Obsession wrapped in devotion, toxic and suffocating.

I shoved the box back under the floorboard and left before I could do something stupid. Like cry. Like scream.

Like forgive him.

---

The nausea hit me halfway back to my room.

I barely made it to the bathroom before I was on my knees, retching into the toilet. My wolf whined, pressing close, and I felt her concern like a physical weight.

*What's wrong with us?*

She didn't answer in words. Instead, she showed me.

A pulse of awareness, deep in my belly. Two tiny sparks of life, barely formed but unmistakably there.

Pups.

I sat back against the cold tile, my hand pressed to my stomach.

No. No, no, no.

My wolf pushed forward again, insistent. She flooded my senses with Travis's scent—not the cologne or the soap, but something underneath. Something primal and earthy, like ancient forests and stone. Lycan.

And she recognized it. Claimed it.

*Mate,* she insisted. *Our mate. Our pups.*

"He lied to us," I whispered.

*He suffered for us.*

"He touched us under a lie."

*He loves us.*

"That's not enough!"

But she wouldn't listen. She was a wolf, not a woman. She didn't care about betrayal or manipulation or the five years I'd spent in darkness believing a fantasy. She only cared about the bond, the scent, the biological imperative screaming that Travis Knight was ours.

I pressed my forehead against my knees and tried to think.

I was pregnant. With Travis's pups. In a pack that had treated me like garbage for years, led by an Alpha who'd gambled me away like property, surrounded by wolves who'd laughed while it happened.

I couldn't stay here. Couldn't let my children be born into this.

But I couldn't leave yet either. Not until I'd burned it all down.

I stood slowly, rinsing my mouth, meeting my own eyes in the mirror. Silver now, like my wolf. Like the Luna bloodline Elena had awakened.

I had evidence. I had power. I had a wolf who was finally, furiously mine.

And I had a choice to make.

Stay and destroy them. Or run and protect what was growing inside me.

My hand settled over my stomach, protective and possessive.

Maybe I could do both.