I didn't sleep. The dusty floorboards of the abandoned line-shack dug into my spine.

I lay in the dark, tracking the mate bond like a live wire.

It should be screaming guilt.

"Give me something real," I whispered to the empty room.

The bond ignored me. It broadcasted pure, raw confusion.

A hollow static hummed under my ribs.

"You're a coward," I told the bond, hoping he could feel the words. "You did this, and you can't even face it."

It felt exactly like Damian was standing in a room he didn't remember entering.

That hollow emptiness hurt worse than anger. I wanted clean rage. I wanted him to feel the devastation he just caused.

I wanted the bond to burn with his apologies.

Instead, I got this formless fog.

"Why aren't you fighting this?" I asked the silence.

My wolf paced in the back of my mind, agitated but silent.

She didn't have an answer either.

Every hour that ticked by felt like a physical weight pressing down on my chest.

I waited for the snap. The sharp, searing pain of a Rejection.

It never came.

By dawn, the entire Pack knew.

Two hundred wolves with excellent noses don't keep secrets. The scent of betrayal had carried on the morning wind.

The Elder Council dragged us both into the assembly hall before the sun even crested the horizon.

The circular room hummed with whispered gossip.

Elder Maren slammed her cane against the stone floor.

The sharp crack silenced the room instantly.

"There's a process for this," Maren snapped.

Her sharp, tired eyes darted between Damian and me.

"If the bond is broken, you Reject her."

She pointed a gnarled finger at Damian.

"Publicly. Clean. Honest."

Damian stood rigid in the center of the floor.

"The Pack deserves to know where their Luna candidate stands," Maren finished.

"I stand right here," I said, my voice ringing out.

Maren ignored me. Her eyes stayed locked on the Alpha.

"Well?" Maren demanded.

Damian's jaw worked, the muscle ticking fast. He stared at the podium, refusing to meet my gaze.

"I'm not rejecting her," he stated flatly.

A short, ugly laugh scraped out of my throat.

The sound echoed in the quiet hall.

"Then what the fuck are you doing, Damian?" I asked.

He flinched.

"Watch your tone, Elara," one of the junior elders warned.

"No," I fired back, keeping my eyes locked on my mate. "He doesn't get to hide behind right now."

I took a step toward Damian.

"You won't Reject me, and you won't throw her out either," I pushed.

"I need time to figure this out," Damian muttered.

"Time for what? To decide which one of us gets the bedroom?"

"That isn't fair."

"Fair?" I asked. "You're just leaving me hanging in front of everyone."

He dragged both hands over his face. He pressed his palms into his eyes like a man fighting a migraine that wouldn't quit.

"I don't even remember how it started," he said.

"Try," I challenged.

"One minute I was in my study, going over the patrol routes."

"And the next?"

"Next thing—" He cut himself off, his throat bobbing.

Even he heard how thin the excuse sounded out loud.

"You expect the Council to believe you blacked out?" I asked.

"It's the truth."

"She's been with this Pack six years," Damian added.

His tone shifted, turning defensive.

"I'm not tossing her on a hunch."

My voice dropped. It stayed perfectly quiet.

"A hunch?"

The silence in the hall thickened.

"I walked in on you, Damian."

"I know what you saw," he argued.

"Do you?"

The bond flared between us.

It wasn't guilt. It wasn't desire.

It was that same foggy confusion, mixed with a sudden, fierce protectiveness.

But he wasn't aiming that protectiveness at me. He couldn't even aim it properly. It was just a blind shield thrown up in the dark.

Maren watched the exchange, her mouth set in a grim line.

"Enough," she commanded.

She leveled a hard look at Damian.

"No Rejection today," she ruled.

Her voice echoed off the stone walls.

"No verdict."

A murmur rippled through the gathered wolves.

"Elara remains the Luna candidate."

Maren struck her cane against the floor again.

"Wren stays in the house. We will revisit this."

I didn't wait for the formal dismissal. I turned and walked out.

Footsteps pounded the rug behind me.

Fingers wrapped around my wrist, halting my momentum.

Instant heat raced up my arm.

The bond sang. It hummed a perfect, sickening melody, pretending nothing was wrong.

It tried to tell me six years of shared life could override what I saw in my own bed.

I stared down at his grip.

"Elara," Damian pleaded.

I slowly met his eyes. The glassy haze from last night was gone, replaced by desperation.

"Release my arm," I warned.

"I need you to trust me," he said.

The words hung in the air.

Something inside me went cold and very calm.

"Trust you?" I asked.

He nodded once.

"I know how it looked," he tried to explain.

"I know how it looked, too."

"It wasn't me in that bed."

"It was your body."

"But not my mind," he insisted.

"You didn't choose her," I replied, my voice devoid of any warmth.

"I didn't," he agreed quickly.

"And you didn't choose me."

His grip loosened slightly. Confusion flashed across his features again.

"You just left me swinging," I continued.

"Elara, please."

"Do you get what that does to a person?" I asked.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He had no answer.

I twisted my arm, breaking his hold.

I didn't look back as I walked away.

I locked the door to the spare guest room and leaned against the wood.

The shake finally took me.

My hands trembled so violently I had to press them flat against my thighs.

"Stop," I ordered my own body.

The tremors ignored me.

Inside my chest, the bond pulsed.

It wasn't the singing warmth from the hallway. It was that wrong, new rhythm.

*Thump-thud. Thump-thud.*

It felt stronger now. Heavier.

Like something was testing the line from the other side, pushing against the mental barrier.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Get out of my head," I hissed.

The rhythm didn't break. It just beat harder.

I pushed off the door and stumbled into the attached bathroom.

I gripped the edges of the porcelain sink.

Dawn light crept through the frosted window, casting gray shadows across my face.

I stared at my own reflection. I looked exhausted. Hollowed out.

Then, I saw it.

The outer edge of my right iris flickered.

It flashed pure, glowing silver for half a second.

Then it vanished.

Before I could even process the color, the bond gave a hard, violent tug.

It wasn't a connection.

It was

Three weeks of dead air and hallway ghosts led us right here.

The Pack square buzzed under a hard, bruised sky. Two hundred wolves crowded the cobblestones, standing shoulder to shoulder. I stood at the edge of the wooden dais, the cold wind biting my cheeks.

Wren stepped into the center. She didn't look like a girl who had spent the last twenty-one days hiding in a guest room. She held her chin high, owning the ground beneath her feet.

"I am carrying the Alpha heir," Wren announced.

Her voice rang off the stone walls.

"I am pregnant."

The silence cracked.

A howl ripped from the back of the crowd. Then another joined it. Shock morphed instantly into the ugly, practical reality of Pack Law. Alpha blood is never cast out. An heir changes everything.

Elder Maren stepped forward, her cane thumping the wood.

"The law is absolute," Maren declared to the assembly. "The child belongs to the Pack. The mother remains inside the walls."

Fingers clamped around my wrist, sliding down to crush my hand.

"Give me time," Damian muttered.

He stared straight ahead at the cheering crowd, refusing to look at me.

"I'll fix this."

I stared at the side of his face. His jaw locked tight.

*Fix what?* I wanted to ask. *The baby? Or me?*

I kept my teeth shut tight. I let him crush my fingers until the joints ached.

By evening, the east wing belonged to her. The Luna's wing.

I stood at the top of the grand staircase, arms crossed, my spine straight like an iron rod. Below me in the foyer, Elder Maren fastened a simplified silver collar around Wren's neck. A temporary marker of status for the mother of an heir.

"Welcome to your new quarters," Maren told Wren.

"Thank you, Elder," Wren replied softly.

Every face in the foyer turned upward. Their eyes landed on me. Pity radiated from the older females. Amusement leaked from the younger guards. A few sharp sparks of genuine anger flared from my friends.

My gift—the one that let me feel a room's mood like weather—hit me full force. Their collective pity pressed down on me until it was hard to breathe.

I dug my fingernails into my palms. The sharp sting broke the mental static. It gave me a solid anchor.

"Look at her," someone whispered below.

"Not a single tear."

"She has no pride left."

I turned and walked away.

I held the mask in place until my bedroom door clicked shut.

The second the lock engaged, my knees hit the floorboards. The furious tears came fast and hot, burning my skin. I refused to sob aloud. I scrubbed my palms over my cheeks, wiping the wetness away roughly.

"Stop crying," I ordered myself.

I pushed off the floor and faced the dark window glass.

My reflection stared back, hollow and exhausted.

Then, the outer edge of my right iris flared. Pure, burning silver illuminated the glass. Brighter than the morning in the bathroom.

"No," I whispered to the empty room.

I shoved the heels of my hands into my eyes, pressing hard. Bursts of static filled my vision, forcing the impossible color back into the dark where it belonged.

My hands needed dirt. They needed something real to tear apart.

I found the greenhouse empty. I plunged my hands into the potting soil, ripping up dead roots and crushing dry earth between my knuckles.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel path.

Damian crouched beside the wooden planter box. He watched my dirt-stained fingers for a long moment.

"She's settled in," he said.

"Congratulations," I replied, tossing a dried root aside. "You must be very proud."

"Stop it, Elara."

"Stop what? Acknowledging the mother of your child?"

He shifted his weight, his knee brushing my thigh. I flinched away, pulling my leg out of reach.

"I didn't want this," he insisted.

"But you have it."

"Listen to me," Damian started, his voice dropping low. "When the baby is born, I want you to raise it."

My hands froze buried in the soil.

"What did you just say?"

"You heard me," he urged, leaning closer. "You'd be its mother in every way that matters. Wren isn't built for this. You are."

I pulled my hands out of the dirt. I sat back on my heels and looked at him. I searched his face for a joke, a lie, anything. He sounded entirely serious.

"Let me get this straight," I said, keeping my tone deadly flat. "I get the baby."

He nodded eagerly. "Yes."

"And she gets the silver collar. The east wing. The title."

His eagerness faltered. "Elara, it's just protocol—"

"And you," I cut him off, my voice turning to ice, "get to feel like a decent man for handing me the consolation prize."

Damian's mouth opened. He searched the air for words. For the first time in six years, he found absolutely nothing.

"Get out of my greenhouse," I told him.

He stayed planted on the gravel.

"Leave," I snapped.

I turned my back to him and drove my fingers back into the cold earth. I listened to his heavy boots retreat down the path.

Midnight brought no peace.

I lay on my back in the center of my bed.The place where the bond lived began to throb—not the dull ache of heartbreak, but a deep, physical pounding, like something striking from the inside.

I pressed my flat palm over the center of my chest.

"Come on," I whispered.

Whenever pack members suffered pup fever or bone aches, I used this exact motion to call up my healing gift. A warm, golden bloom would spread from my heart down to my fingertips, easing their pain. I needed it now for myself.

I waited.

Nothing happened.

I pressed harder, my knuckles turning white against my shirt.

Just my own frantic pulse hammered against my skin.

"Where are you?" I asked the dark ceiling.

The gift was gone. Or hiding. Or broken completely.

Pure, icy fear slid under my grief. I was suddenly flying blind in a pack that worshipped power. A Luna without a mate was bad enough. A wolf without her gift was entirely useless.

Exhaustion finally dragged me down into a murky half-sleep.

An hour later, the bond gave a massive, violent yank.

My eyes flew open.

I didn't feel Damian's foggy confusion.

A second presence rode the tether between us. It slithered along the mental line, brushing against my consciousness like a physical touch.

It felt cold. Smug. Entirely satisfied.

And it was absolutely not my mate.