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.

I was five hundred miles away when Kashton's memory betrayed him.

I didn't know it was happening. I was crossing into Washington state, the Cascades rising ahead of me like a wall of white and gray, my wolf so close to the surface I could feel her claws flexing under my skin. Another hour. Maybe two. Then Dawson.

But Kashton was alone in his study at three in the morning, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep for the fifth night in a row.

I knew what insomnia did to wolves. It stripped away the present and left only memory. The mind went searching for patterns, for explanations, for the moment everything went wrong.

He would be searching now. Trying to reconstruct the last few weeks. Trying to find the sign he'd missed.

And he would find the wrong one.

Three weeks before I left, our convoy was ambushed on the highway coming back from the Winter Solstice Banquet. Rogues. Six of them, coordinated, targeting the Alpha's vehicle. They came out of the tree line fast, claws extended, going straight for Kashton's window.

I was in the passenger seat. I saw the lead rogue's trajectory half a second before impact.

I threw myself across Kashton.

The claws that were meant for his throat tore through my jacket, my shirt, the skin across my shoulder blades. I felt them drag deep, felt the hot rush of blood, felt my wolf snarl inside me in fury and pain.

Kashton's warriors killed the rogues in under two minutes. Efficient. Brutal. The kind of response Shadowcrest was known for.

But in those two minutes, something happened that I hadn't accounted for.

The pain spiked. My suppressants—always carefully timed, always perfectly calibrated—faltered. Just for a moment. Just long enough.

My scent leaked through.

Not the neutral, medicinal nothing I'd been projecting for six years. My real scent. Wild jasmine. Cold mountain air. The scent that belonged to Dawson and no one else.

Kashton had been pinned beneath me, his hands braced on my waist to steady me, his wolf surging in response to the attack. And he'd caught it. Just a thread of it. Just enough.

I'd felt him go still.

I'd pulled back immediately, pressed my hand to the wound on my shoulder, and let the pain mask everything else. The suppressants kicked back in within seconds. The scent disappeared.

But Kashton had smelled it.

And he'd interpreted it exactly the way I'd been afraid he would.

In the days after the ambush, he'd been—different. Gentler. He'd checked on my injuries himself instead of sending Petra. He'd asked if I needed anything. He'd looked at me the way you look at someone you're starting to see for the first time.

He'd thought the bond was forming.

He'd thought the Moon Goddess was finally answering his assumption that I was his.

I had not corrected him. I had smiled politely, thanked him for his concern, and made sure my suppressant dose was doubled for the next three weeks.

My demeanor had not changed by even a fraction.

Because there was no bond forming. There never had been. That scent he'd caught wasn't meant for him. It was meant for the wolf three states away whose blood was still flowing through Kashton's veins, keeping him alive long enough to keep Dawson alive.

But Kashton wouldn't understand that. Not yet.

Right now, lying awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling, his joints aching and his wolf howling, he would be remembering that moment. The scent. The stillness. The way I'd looked at him afterward.

He would be telling himself it had been real.

He would be telling himself I had felt it too.

And he would be wrong.

I crossed the state line as the sun came up. The light was pale and cold, turning the snow blue. I pulled into a rest stop, parked, and checked my phone.

Three new messages. All from my father.

*Elder Council delivered the papers.*

*Blockade activated.*

*He knows.*

I stared at the messages for a long moment. Then I typed back: *Good.*

I put the phone away and got out of the car. The air was sharp and clean. I could smell pine and snow and something else—something wild and familiar that made my wolf lift her head inside me.

Crescentfall territory. We were close.

I got back in the car and kept driving.

Behind me, Kashton was being summoned to the Elder Council.

I imagined him walking into that chamber—the old stone room with the high ceiling and the carved wolves on the walls. I imagined the Council representative, Marcus, sitting at the head of the table with the papers spread in front of him.

I imagined Kashton's face when Marcus slid the Luna renunciation document across the table.

Formally executed. Witnessed and stamped. Three days old. Irreversible without the renouncing Luna's consent.

I imagined Kashton picking up the paper. Reading it once. Twice. Looking for the loophole, the error, the way to undo it.

There wasn't one.

His mother had made sure of that.

I imagined Marcus's voice, calm and formal: "The clause was identified and verified before Miss Freeman's departure, Alpha Cunningham. She is no longer bound to Shadowcrest. She is no longer your Luna. The bond you believed was forming—" A pause. "—was never sanctioned by the Moon Goddess."

I imagined Kashton staring at the paper. His wolf, silent for days, would produce a sound then. A low, confused whine of anguish. The sound of something breaking that he didn't know how to name.

And then, while he was still sitting in that chamber, still holding the renunciation papers, the second blow would land.

Alpha Freeman's blockade.

Every southern trade checkpoint held by Thornfield warriors. Medicine shipments suspended. Construction materials rerouted. Luxury supply lines—the ones that kept Shadowcrest's treasury fat and its alliances comfortable—cut off completely.

Kashton's phone would buzz. His Beta would send the notification. The treasury bleeding. The pack murmuring. The discontent sharpening into something audible.

I imagined him sitting there, the renunciation papers in one hand, the blockade report in the other, trying to understand how his world had collapsed in the span of a single afternoon.

I didn't feel sorry for him.

I felt nothing.

I kept driving west, into the mountains, toward the only wolf who had ever been mine.

The road curved higher. The trees thickened. And somewhere ahead, just beyond the next ridge, Dawson was waiting.

I pressed harder on the accelerator.

I was almost home.