The medical wing smelled like antiseptic and wolfsbane. I'd been breathing it for six years.

I sat in the chair by the window while Healer Petra prepared the extraction kit. My hands were folded in my lap. My posture was straight. I looked like I always looked—calm, composed, a Luna performing her role. Inside, my wolf was counting.

Two thousand one hundred ninety mornings. Two thousand one hundred ninety nights. Today was the last one.

"Adelaide," Petra said quietly. She was holding the syringe, her eyes on Kashton's arm where the vein stood out beneath his skin. He was sitting in the other chair, scrolling through his phone, barely paying attention. He never paid attention to these extractions anymore. They'd become routine.

I nodded once. Petra inserted the needle.

Kashton didn't flinch. He'd stopped flinching after the first year. The dark red blood filled the vial slowly, methodically. I watched it the way I'd watched every extraction before this one—like I was memorizing it. Because I was. Every drop of his blood was another hour of Dawson's life. Every vial was another day my mate could breathe.

Petra withdrew the needle, pressed gauze to the puncture site, and labeled the vial with her precise handwriting. She set it in the insulated case with the others. Then she turned to me.

"This completes the transfusion series," she said. Her voice was professional, but her eyes held something else. Knowledge. She'd known from the beginning what I was doing here. She'd filled my suppressant prescriptions every month for six years without asking questions. "Dawson's wolf will be fully restored within seventy-two hours."

I felt nothing on my face. Inside, my wolf threw her head back and howled.

"Thank you, Petra," I said.

Kashton glanced up from his phone. "We're done already?"

"Yes, Alpha," Petra said.

He stood, rolling his shoulder where the needle had been. "Good. I have a conference call in twenty minutes." He looked at me briefly, the way he always looked at me—like I was a fixture in the room, something useful and expected. "Adelaide, I'll need the quarterly budget report on my desk by this afternoon."

"Of course," I said.

He walked out. The door closed behind him.

Petra and I stood in the sudden quiet. She was still holding the insulated case. Her fingers were tight on the handle.

"Adelaide—" she started.

I picked up my empty tea glass from the side table. "I'll see you at the pack run tonight, Petra."

I wouldn't. But she didn't need to know that yet.

I walked out of the medical wing and down the hall to the pack kitchen. My feet knew the route without thinking. Two thousand one hundred ninety mornings of the same path had worn it into my bones.

The kitchen was empty. It was still early. The rest of the pack wouldn't be awake for another hour. I moved through the space like I always did—pulling down the ceramic pot, measuring the dried wolfsbane root, heating the water to exactly the temperature Kashton preferred. Not boiling. Just below it.

The tea steeped for four minutes. I timed it without looking at a clock.

When it was ready, I poured it into his preferred mug—the heavy stone one with Shadowcrest's crest carved into the side—and carried it down the hall to his study. I set it outside the door the way I always did. He'd find it when he came out of his conference call. He'd drink it without thinking about who made it or why it was always exactly right.

I stood there for a moment, looking at the mug. Steam rose from the surface in thin curls.

Two thousand one hundred ninety-one cups of tea. This was the last one.

I turned and walked past the kitchen. I did not begin the breakfast rotation. I did not pull out the meal-prep schedule. I did not check the pantry inventory.

I walked to the private chamber on the east wing where the Elder Council's witness was waiting.

His name was Marcus. He was old, his hair silver, his posture bent from decades of pack service. He looked up when I entered. The Luna renunciation papers were already spread across the table. He'd prepared them three days ago, when I'd sent word through a Thornfield courier that the extraction series was complete.

"Miss Freeman," he said. Not Luna. Miss Freeman. The title I'd been born with. The title I was taking back.

I sat across from him. "I'm ready."

He slid the papers toward me. I read them once, carefully, even though I'd memorized every clause weeks ago. The renunciation was absolute. Irreversible. Kashton's consent was not required under the loophole Dawson's mother had given me—a clause buried in Elder law that allowed a Luna to sever a bond that had never been consummated by marking.

I signed my name at the bottom. Adelaide Freeman.

Marcus witnessed it, pressed the Elder Council's seal into the wax, and stamped the date. January fourteenth. The two thousand one hundred ninetieth day.

"It's done," he said quietly.

I stood. "Thank you, Marcus."

He looked at me for a long moment. "You're a stronger wolf than most Alphas I've known, Miss Freeman."

I didn't answer. I walked out.

That evening, I was in my quarters when the mind-link crackled to life. It wasn't Kashton's voice. It wasn't Shadowcrest's pack frequency.

It was Dawson.

His voice was rough, layered beneath his wolf's for the first time in six years. I could feel the strength in it—the restoration, the life flooding back into him like water into a riverbed that had been dry too long.

*"Adelaide,"* he said. *"I can feel him waking up. Come home."*

My wolf surged inside me. I closed the link gently, carefully, the way I'd learned to do everything in this pack house—without leaving a trace.

I pulled my single bag from beneath the bed. I'd packed it two days ago. It contained nothing that belonged to Shadowcrest. Nothing I couldn't walk away from.

Before I left, I walked to Titus's room. The door was open. He was at a friend's house for the night. I set a handwritten note on his desk—his school presentation topic, three research sources, a reminder about his allergy. The same care I'd given him for six years. The same care I'd given all of them.

Then I walked down the stairs, through the front hall, and out the door.

The night air was cold and clear. I could see my breath.

I got in my car, started the engine, and drove.

By dawn, I was across the state line. I pulled over at a rest stop, took out my phone, and sent my father a single word.

*Dawson.*

Then I kept driving west. Toward the mountains. Toward Crescentfall.

Toward home.

I was three hundred miles away when Kashton's world started to fall apart.

I didn't know it yet. I was driving through the mountains, windows cracked to let in the cold air, my wolf stretched out inside me like she hadn't been able to stretch in six years. The suppressants were wearing off. I could feel my own scent returning—wild jasmine and cold mountain air, the scent that belonged to Dawson and no one else.

Behind me, in the pack house I would never see again, the first morning without me was beginning.

Kashton woke at dawn the way he always did. His alarm went off. He silenced it. He sat up, rolled his shoulders, and reached for his phone on the nightstand.

There was no tea outside his study door.

He didn't notice. Not right away. He had emails to answer, a conference call with the Ironclaw Pack's trade liaison, and a stack of territory dispute reports that needed his signature. He walked to his study, sat down at his desk, and worked for two hours straight.

It wasn't until mid-morning that he realized his joints were aching.

It was a dull throb in his knees and elbows, the kind of low-grade pain that had been his constant companion before Adelaide arrived. Before the tea. He frowned, flexed his fingers, and told himself it was the weather. January was always hard on old injuries.

He went downstairs for breakfast.

The kitchen was chaos.

Two Omegas were arguing over whether the bacon was supposed to be crispy or soft. A third was staring at the industrial oven like it had personally betrayed her. The counter was covered in half-prepped ingredients—eggs still in their cartons, bread unsliced, a pot of oatmeal burning on the stove.

"Where's breakfast?" Kashton said.

The Omegas turned to him, wide-eyed and panicked.

"Alpha," one of them stammered. "We're—we're working on it. Luna Adelaide usually—"

She stopped. Her face went pale.

Kashton's expression didn't change. "Usually what?"

"She usually has it ready by now," the Omega finished quietly.

Kashton looked at the chaos, the burning oatmeal, the unsliced bread. He felt a flicker of irritation. "Then follow her schedule. It's not complicated."

"We don't—" The Omega hesitated. "We don't have the schedule, Alpha. Luna Adelaide kept it."

Kashton stared at her. The schedule. The meal rotations. The inventory lists. He'd never looked at any of it. He'd never needed to. It had simply appeared, morning after morning, exactly when it was supposed to.

He turned and walked out of the kitchen without answering.

By midday, the problems were multiplying.

Gamma Silas appeared at his study door, holding a tablet with the patrol assignments. His expression was carefully neutral.

"Alpha," Silas said. "We have a conflict in the northern sector. Delta Crews Four and Six are both scheduled for the same shift."

Kashton looked up from his reports. "Fix it."

"I would, Alpha, but the updated rotation schedule—" Silas paused. "Luna Adelaide maintained the master schedule. I don't have access to her system."

Kashton's jaw tightened. "Then pull the backup."

"The backup is three days out of date."

Kashton set down his pen. The irritation was sharpening into something else now. Something colder. "Where is Adelaide?"

Silas hesitated. "I haven't seen her today, Alpha."

"Find her," Kashton said. "Tell her I need the updated schedules on my desk within the hour."

Silas nodded and left.

Kashton returned to his reports. But the ache in his joints was worse now. And the study felt wrong somehow. Too quiet. Too still.

He worked until evening. Silas did not return with Adelaide.

That night, Kashton couldn't sleep.

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, his body restless in a way it hadn't been in years. The insomnia was back. He'd forgotten what it felt like—this wired, exhausted tension that made his wolf pace inside him like a caged animal.

He got up at three in the morning, went downstairs, and made himself tea.

It tasted wrong. Too bitter. He'd used too much wolfsbane root. Or not enough. He didn't know. He'd never made it himself.

He poured it down the sink and went back to bed.

By the third morning, the unease had become something sharper.

Kashton reached for the mind-link the way he'd reached for it a thousand times before. Adelaide's presence had always been there—quiet, steady, a constant hum at the edge of his awareness that he'd stopped noticing the way you stop noticing your own heartbeat.

He sent the command. *Adelaide. My study. Now.*

Nothing.

Not resistance. Not defiance. Not the sullen silence of someone refusing to answer.

Just—nothing.

He tried again, pushing harder, letting his Alpha authority flood the link. *Adelaide.*

The silence was absolute.

Kashton stood in the middle of his study, his hand braced against the desk, and felt the first cold thread of genuine unease slip down his spine.

He summoned Silas.

The Gamma appeared within minutes, his expression carefully blank.

"Where is she?" Kashton said.

Silas met his eyes. "Alpha, I checked the Luna's quarters this morning. They've been vacated."

Kashton went very still. "Vacated."

"Her personal belongings are gone. The closet is empty. There's no scent residue. Only—" Silas hesitated. "Only a faint chemical trace. Something medicinal. I can't identify it."

Kashton's wolf surged inside him, sudden and violent. "When was the last time anyone saw her?"

"Three days ago, Alpha. The night of the pack run."

Three days. Seventy-two hours. The same seventy-two hours Petra had said it would take for Dawson's wolf to fully restore.

The thought appeared in Kashton's mind unbidden, and he shoved it away immediately. Coincidence. It had to be.

"Find her," Kashton said. His voice was flat, controlled, but the Alpha tone beneath it was sharp enough to make Silas's wolf flinch. "Search the territory. Question every pack member. I want her location within the hour."

Silas nodded and left.

Kashton stood alone in his study. The tea mug sat on his desk, cold and untouched. The quarterly budget report Adelaide was supposed to deliver three days ago was still missing. The patrol schedules were still conflicted. The kitchen was still in chaos.

And the mind-link was still silent.

Kashton told himself it was administrative. A Luna's dereliction of duty. An inconvenience that needed to be corrected.

But his joints ached. His wolf was pacing. And he hadn't slept in three days.

Something was wrong.

He just didn't know yet how wrong it was.

I was three hundred miles west when Hallie made her move.

I didn't see it happen. I was crossing the Idaho state line, my wolf stretched out inside me like she'd been holding her breath for six years and could finally exhale. The suppressants were almost gone now. I could smell myself again—wild jasmine and cold mountain air. Dawson's scent. Not Kashton's. Never Kashton's.

But I knew Hallie well enough to predict exactly what she'd do the moment she realized I wasn't coming back.

She'd fill the space I left. She'd been waiting six years for it.

I imagined her that morning—walking into the pack house common room, rearranging the furniture I'd positioned for optimal pack flow, announcing herself to the Omegas as the new administrative contact. I imagined her at Kashton's side during the morning run, her hand on his arm, her voice carrying across the training grounds with that practiced warmth she used in public.

I imagined Gamma Silas watching her with the same flat, contemptuous expression he'd worn every time she'd tried to give him orders over the last six years.

Silas had never liked Hallie. None of the ranked warriors did. They'd tolerated her because Kashton demanded it, but tolerance wasn't respect. And without me there to quietly smooth over the friction, to redirect conflicts before they became confrontations, that tolerance was going to fracture fast.

I wondered how long it would take.

Two days, I guessed. Maybe three.

I kept driving.

By the time I stopped for gas in Boise, my phone had six missed calls from a Shadowcrest number I didn't recognize. I deleted the voicemails without listening to them. Whatever was happening in that pack house, it wasn't my problem anymore.

I filled the tank, bought a coffee I didn't drink, and got back on the highway.

The mountains were getting closer. I could see them on the horizon now—the Bitterroots, dark and jagged against the winter sky. Crescentfall territory. Dawson's territory.

My wolf surged. I pressed harder on the accelerator.

I didn't think about Kashton. I didn't think about the tea I wasn't making, or the schedules I wasn't updating, or the patrol adjustments I wasn't entering into the system.

I didn't think about the border patrol that would go out tonight without the weather data I would have flagged.

I didn't think about the two wolves who would come back with frostbite because no one had told them the northern sector was dropping to negative fifteen degrees.

I didn't think about Silas standing in Kashton's study, holding the injury report, his voice quiet and deliberate as he explained that Luna Adelaide would have caught this.

I didn't think about any of it.

Because I was done thinking about Shadowcrest.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, my wolf was counting again. Not days this time. Miles. Every mile between me and that pack house was another mile I would never have to walk back.

I crossed into Montana as the sun set.

The sky was burning orange and red, the kind of winter sunset that makes the snow look like it's on fire. I pulled over at a scenic overlook, got out of the car, and stood at the guardrail.

The air was so cold it hurt to breathe. I loved it.

I pulled out my phone and opened the message thread with my father. His last text was from this morning: *Thornfield border secure. He won't get through.*

I typed back: *Two hours out.*

His response came immediately: *Dawson's waiting.*

I put the phone away and looked at the mountains. Somewhere in those peaks, Dawson was standing on Crescentfall's ceremonial grounds, his wolf fully restored, waiting for me the way I'd been waiting for him for six years.

I got back in the car.

I didn't think about Kashton searching my quarters.

I didn't think about him opening the dresser drawer and finding it empty except for one thing—the silk dress from the Winter Solstice Banquet, folded carefully, the burn marks from Hallie's wolfsbane wine still visible across the bodice.

I didn't think about him standing there with the dress in his hands, staring at the damaged fabric, trying to remember the expression on my face when it happened.

I didn't think about the way I'd stood motionless in the center of that banquet hall while burning wine soaked through silk to skin, the pack watching, Hallie gasping her practiced apology, and Kashton doing nothing.

I didn't think about the way I'd looked at him across the hall—one long, steady look that he'd interpreted as wounded devotion.

It hadn't been devotion. It had been inventory.

I'd been counting that night too. Counting how many more humiliations I had to endure before Dawson's wolf was strong enough to survive without Kashton's blood. Counting how many more nights I had to sleep in that pack house before I could walk out and never come back.

That look hadn't been love. It had been math.

But Kashton wouldn't understand that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I kept driving west, into the mountains, toward the mate who had always been mine.

Behind me, in a pack house I would never see again, Kashton was holding a burned dress and trying to reconstruct a memory he'd never actually understood.

Let him try.

I was done being his Luna. I was done being his medicine. I was done being anything to him at all.

The mountains rose ahead of me, dark and vast and waiting.

I was almost home.