How ironic.

I yanked the bedroom door open and stormed out. The moment I reached the main hall of the den, one of the house wolves hurried over, her head lowered, eyes averted. "Luna Ironmaw, you're awake! The second Luna went into labor suddenly. Alpha Ironmaw took her to the Healing Hall!"

I stopped dead. My wolf, who had been coiled tight and restless beneath my ribs since the moment I'd seen that group chat, went utterly still.

"'Second Luna'?" The words came out quiet. Dangerously quiet. "Who told you to call her that?"

I grabbed the ceremonial stone vase beside me and hurled it to the floor. It shattered across the slate, fragments spinning into the walls. The sound cracked through the den like a bone breaking. My chest heaved. The house wolf flinched so hard she nearly dropped to her knees, her wolf's submission rolling off her in waves.

"It was Ms. Thornveil's instructions," she whispered, throat bared. "She said Alpha Ironmaw agreed that she's also the lady of the den. You're the first Luna, and she's the second..."

She was still talking when I snatched my keys and drove to the Healing Hall.

By the time I arrived, Corvina had already delivered.

The scent hit me before I reached the room. Scorched iron and dry cedar bark, Theron's scent, threaded so tightly with that cloying honeysuckle-and-vanilla sweetness that they'd become almost indistinguishable. My stomach turned. My wolf pressed against the inside of my chest, not growling, not whimpering. Just pressing. Like she was trying to brace me for what came next.

The room was packed. Nearly all of Theron's inner circle had crowded inside, laughing and talking over each other like it was a celebration. Their combined scents filled the corridor, warm and boisterous, the smell of pack wolves at ease. As if this were a bonding ceremony. As if this were something to honor.

"Theron, does your mate even know Corvina's had the pup?"

"Don't bring her up." Theron was leaning over the bassinet, teasing the sleeping newborn with one finger. The pup smelled of milk and new wool and a faint trace of pine, clean and innocent and entirely unaware of the wreckage his arrival had caused. A soft, doting smile tugged at the corner of Theron's mouth. "This pup's gorgeous."

"Seriously, Theron. If you look closely, he even looks a little like you!"

"Keep it down. If Seraphina hears that kind of talk, she'll overthink everything."

Corvina lay propped against the Healing Hall pillows, her makeup still flawless, not a strand of hair out of place. She didn't look like a she-wolf who'd just labored through a birth. The honeysuckle scent was thicker here, almost suffocating, layered so heavily it made the air feel syrupy. "Overthink what? Whether she agrees or not, I'm keeping my promise. This pup will carry the Ironmaw name and be added to the pack bloodline registry."

"But you'd have to sever the mate bond with Seraphina first. That doesn't feel right..."

"It's not a big deal. Once the pup's registered under my name, I'll sever the bond with Corvina and re-bond with Seraphina. Simple. If she won't agree, I'll just do it without her knowing."

Corvina sniffled, dabbing at the corner of her eye with practiced delicacy. "Seraphina is so kindhearted. She'll say yes. I'd be so grateful to her. Honestly, however long I get to carry the Luna title, even just on paper, I'd be more than happy."

"Relax. You all know how devoted she is to Theron. Remember when she went to that alliance summit and sang for those visiting Alphas just so Theron could secure the territory pact?"

"And that time Theron was brought to the Healing Hall for a gut infection? She thought it was something serious. Got on her knees and begged the moon-healer, then knelt outside the healing chamber for hours until the treatment was over. She's bound to him body and soul. She'd never leave. A little thing like this is nothing compared to losing Theron."

"Exactly what I was thinking."

Theron's lips curved. He pulled Corvina closer against him, his arm tightening around her shoulders. His Alpha aura settled over the room, warm and satisfied, the aura of a wolf who believed he owned everything in it. "No matter what it takes, I'll give Corvina and this pup a home."

I stood in the doorway and watched the man I'd loved for seven years hold another woman in his arms.

My fingers curled at my sides until my nails bit into my palms.

Something deep inside me made a sound. Not my voice. My wolf. A low, thin keening that vibrated through my bones and never reached the air, the kind of sound a wolf makes when it finally understands that the bond it has been pouring itself into has been hollow for a long, long time. I felt it in my sternum, in the backs of my teeth, in the place behind my ribs where the mate bond lived. The bond that should have been a golden thread between us. It had been fraying for years, I realized. I just hadn't wanted to look at it. And now, standing in that doorway with the scent of scorched iron and honeysuckle filling my lungs like poison, I could feel every remaining thread pulling taut, ready to snap.

He had it all figured out. He'd been planning to give Corvina a home all along.

Well then. Who was I to stand in his way?

I stepped into the doorway and spoke quietly. "A boy? Congratulations."

The moment I appeared, every face in the room went white. The laughter died. The warmth in the air curdled. I could smell the shift, the sharp spike of unease cutting through the easy camaraderie like a blade through cloth. Every wolf in that room felt it: the Luna had heard everything.

Theron released Corvina instantly and crossed the room in three quick strides. His scent shifted, the acrid edge buried beneath something deliberately softened, the way an Alpha smooths his aura when he's trying to manage a situation. His voice turned gentle, almost tender. "What are you doing here? You're carrying a pup. You should be resting at the den."

"I heard everything you just said."

I looked up at him. My wolf was silent now. Perfectly, terribly silent, the way a forest goes silent before a storm breaks. I held his gaze and did not lower mine.

"You want to sever our mate bond so you can register Corvina's pup under the Ironmaw bloodline."

"Seraphina, I just feel sorry for her. You know she has no pack. I'm only doing this because she was Fenris's mate. He was like a blood-brother to me. He saved my life..."

He scrambled to explain, the words tumbling out with that practiced urgency I'd heard a hundred times before, the voice he used when he needed me to be understanding, to be patient, to be the good mate who swallowed her pain so he could have what he wanted. I cut him off, my expression blank. "I agree. Let's sever the bond."

"Really?"

His eyes lit up. He hadn't expected me to say yes that easily.

And there it was. The truth of it, laid bare in the fraction of a second before he remembered to rearrange his face. Not relief that I understood. Not guilt. Not even surprise, not really. Joy. Pure, uncomplicated joy, bright as a flame in his eyes, there and gone in a heartbeat. The joy of a wolf who had just been handed exactly what he wanted without having to fight for it.

My wolf did not keen again. She did not howl, did not snarl, did not throw herself against the cage of my ribs. She simply lay down. Quietly. The way a wolf lies down when it has decided that something is dead and there is no longer any reason to stand guard over the body.

I held his gaze and felt nothing at all.

His friends all wore expressions that said they'd seen this coming a mile away.

"Really."

I nodded. "Have the dissolution documents drawn up and signed for me. Theron, the pack you lead now is one we built together. If we're severing the bond, I'm taking half the territory. That's fair, isn't it?"

"More than fair. Take all of it if you want. It's just a formality anyway!"

He shot his packmates a cocky look, and the whole group burst into applause and low howls of approval.

"Theron, you absolute legend! Living the dream with a she-wolf on each arm. Can't even be jealous!"

My eyes were ice. He didn't notice.

Something deep in my chest stirred, a cold, quiet thing. My wolf, who had been silent for so long, pressed against the inside of my ribs. Not in grief. In focus.

Corvina said she was hungry. She wanted some bone broth.

Theron rounded up his packmates and left immediately to get it for her. On his way out, he turned back to me. "Sera, are you hungry? Want me to grab you something?"

"I'm fine. Don't bother."

"Then take good care of Corvina for me, will you? She said her chest is sore from the milk coming in..."

The door clicked shut. Just the two of us now.

The room changed the instant they left. The air thinned. Corvina's scent, that honeysuckle and warm vanilla layered over something cloying and faintly chemical, spread without restraint, no longer tempered by the performance she put on for Theron. It was the scent of a she-wolf who had stopped pretending.

She turned to me with a look that was pure provocation.

"Well, well. I have to say, I'm impressed. Your mate is bedding another wolf, talking about dissolving your bond to register someone else's pup under his bloodline, and you don't even flinch? That's some next-level doormat energy."

I watched her in silence.

Her lips curled. One by one, she undid the ties of her healing gown.

"You know what the difference between us is, Seraphina?"

The figure she revealed made my brow tighten.

"Your body? Let's see how long that lasts after you're done nursing."

"Oh, I won't be nursing. You think these are natural? Why would I ruin them? You know what Theron told me?" She tilted her chin up. "He said you're boring. No fun at all. And your body doesn't compare to mine. I'm an E cup, sweetheart."

So even her chest was fake.

Theron really had no standards.

"Are you done?"

"Not even close. I'm telling you to get lost. Stop standing between us, or I'll make your life a living hell. My mate is dead. I need a new one, and Theron is the Alpha I picked. I'm never letting him go—"

Before she could finish, my hand was already in the air.

The slap cracked across her face.

The sound rang through the Healing Hall room like a thunderclap. Sharp. Clean. Final. My wolf surged to the surface so fast my vision flickered gold at the edges, and for one heartbeat the room smelled like ozone before lightning, cutting straight through the cloying sweetness of Corvina's manufactured scent.

"You hit me?!" She froze, one hand flying to her cheek. She lunged to hit me back, but I caught her arm and swung again.

"You—"

"Yeah, I hit you." My voice was steady. Low. The kind of steady that five years of silence had forged into something harder than iron. "That first one was for being shameless enough to seduce another she-wolf's mate."

A second slap landed clean. The crack echoed off the stone walls, and I felt my wolf settle into my spine like a blade sliding into its sheath. Not raging. Not desperate. Present. For the first time in years, fully and completely present.

"That one's for climbing into a bonded Alpha's bed when your own mate hasn't been dead five moon cycles and you were carrying his pup to term."

Then a third. I put the weight of my bloodline behind it. Not the meek, muted Omega who had swallowed wolfsbane tinctures to keep her scent small and her wolf quiet. The daughter of the Silvercrest line. The Alpha-blooded Omega whose wolf had been caged so long it had forgotten the shape of its own teeth.

"And that's for destroying a pack bond and not feeling an ounce of remorse."

Three slaps. She stood there, stunned stupid.

The red marks bloomed across her cheek like brands. My hand didn't shake. My breathing didn't waver. My wolf sat behind my ribs, calm and watchful, and for one crystalline moment I understood what it felt like to stop being afraid.

Then she screamed, clawing her way off the bed. "Seraphina, I'll kill you!"

She shoved me hard. I hit the ground, and a sharp pain shot through my lower abdomen. Dread flooded through me instantly. Cold, immediate, animal dread that had nothing to do with Corvina and everything to do with the life I was carrying. I gritted my teeth and dragged myself up, bracing against the wall to stay on my feet. My wolf whimpered, curling inward, pressing protectively toward the place where the pain bloomed.

She swung at me, her palm connecting with my face. "You hit me? You think I'm someone you can push around? Those three slaps? I'm paying them back double!"

She raised her hand for a second strike, but footsteps echoed in the hallway outside.

Her arm froze mid-swing.

The shift was instantaneous. So fast it would have been impressive if it weren't sickening.

In one fluid motion, she snatched the pup from the bassinet, dropped him onto the floor from a low height, then threw herself down beside him, curling over the infant and wailing as if the world were ending.

The pup's screams tangled with hers, filling the room. The tiny thing reeked of milk and new wool and a faint ghost of pine, Fenris Greyfang's blood crying out from a body too small to understand what had just happened to it.

I stood there clutching my stomach, my body locked in place. I couldn't process what I'd just witnessed.

Corvina had hurt her own pup.

He'd just been born, and she'd thrown him on the ground without a second thought. No wolf, no matter how broken, no matter how far fallen, did that. Even rogues guarded their young. Even the mad ones. The instinct was older than language, older than pack law, older than the Moon Goddess herself.

And Corvina had snuffed it out like a candle flame between her fingers, because footsteps were coming and she needed a story to tell.

"I'm sorry, Seraphina. I was wrong. I wouldn't dare dream of mating with Theron anymore. I'll take the pup and go far away. Please, I'm begging you, just stop hurting us, okay?"

"What are you doing? Putting on another act?"

The pain in my abdomen was getting worse. A dark premonition crept through me, and deep in my chest, my wolf stirred from her long silence. Not in anger. In fear. She pressed against my ribs from the inside, whimpering low, her body curling around something she was trying to protect. Terrified that something was actually happening to my pup, I moved toward the door to find a healer, but it swung open before I could reach it.

A crowd stood in the doorway. At the front was Theron.

The moment he saw Corvina and the pup on the floor, the infant screaming in raw, bloodcurdling wails that cut through the room like a blade across bone, the color drained from his face. His Alpha aura surged outward in a violent pulse, thick enough to press against the walls, and the wolves behind him flinched back a step. He dropped the bowl of bone broth in his hands without a second thought and rushed over to scoop the pup up.

"What happened? We were gone ten minutes. What the hell happened?"

"Theron..."

Corvina lifted her face. The handprints across her cheek were vivid and unmistakable.

She was trembling, tears streaming down her face. The cloying sweetness of her scent, that honeysuckle and warm vanilla, thickened in the air until it was almost suffocating, wrapping around every wolf in the room like a snare. "It's my fault. I never should have come to you for help. If I weren't so afraid my pup would grow up without a pack, I'd never have degraded myself like this! Ms. Silvercrest, if you didn't want me and Theron to register the bond and place the pup under his bloodline, then why did you pretend to agree and then turn around and try to force us out? Hitting me was one thing, but throwing a newborn pup on the floor?"

Her shrill sobs and accusations sent a chill through the room.

Everyone turned to look at me. "Seraphina, you..."

"Seraphina!"

Theron walked toward me with the pup in his arms and struck me across the face.

The blow sent my vision black. I nearly passed out.

My wolf howled. Not outward, not in any way anyone else could hear. The sound was inside me, reverberating through my bones, through the hollow place where the mate bond lived. It was a sound I had never heard her make before. Not rage. Something worse. Something that had no name, a keening that started in the marrow and didn't stop.

I was already unsteady on my feet. My body crumpled and I hit the floor.

The stone was cold beneath my palms. The impact jarred through my knees, my wrists, my belly. The pain in my abdomen sharpened into something bright and terrible. I pressed both hands against my stomach, hard, while cold sweat beaded across my forehead and rolled down my temples. Inside me, my wolf had gone completely still. Not calm. The kind of still that comes before something breaks apart.

"I thought you were actually being generous when you agreed to the severing! How can you be this two-faced? The pup is so small. He isn't even a day old, and you threw him on the ground! You're going to be a mother yourself. Aren't you afraid your own pup will pay for what you've done?"

My cheek burned. I turned my head slowly and saw the hatred carved into his face. I could barely process what I'd just heard.

For the sake of Corvina's pup, he had cursed ours.

The mate bond between us, that fraying thread I had held onto for five years, pulsed once. Weak. Sickly. Like a heartbeat trying to keep going when the body around it had already given up. My wolf pressed her nose against it from the inside, and I felt her recoil. His end of the bond tasted like ash. Like scorched iron gone cold.

"Yeah, Seraphina, how could you do that? She just gave birth. You shouldn't have hit her!"

"No wonder Theron says he's more comfortable with Corvina. Seraphina's temper is way too much."

They all talked over each other, a chorus of noise that split my skull open. My breathing turned shallow and ragged. Their voices blurred into a single wall of sound, and beneath it, I could hear my own pulse. Too fast. Too thin. My wolf was pacing now, frantic circles in the dark, her claws scraping against something inside me that felt like it was coming apart.

"Enough! All of you, shut up! 'Seraphina' and 'Corvina'? Do none of you have any sense of right and wrong? This isn't the dark ages. An Alpha doesn't get to keep a mate and a mistress! Theron broke the bond. That's on him! And even if I did hit Corvina, she had it coming!"

My outburst stunned the room into silence. For one breath, the Alpha aura that had been pressing down on everyone wavered. Theron's eyes narrowed.

"Theron was only kind to me and the pup because of my late mate!" Corvina sobbed, crawling to Theron's legs. The scent of vanilla and honeysuckle surged again, so thick it coated the back of my throat. "The pup fell from a height. I don't even know if he'll survive. Theron, please, don't waste any more time. Call a healer!"

"Don't be scared. I won't let anything happen to him."

Theron turned to leave with the pup in his arms.

And in that moment, I felt something warm and wet sliding down between my legs.

The sensation froze me with terror.

My wolf went silent. Completely, utterly silent. As if she had stopped breathing. As if she already knew.

I looked down. A shock of red was spreading beneath me.

"Theron, my pup... our pup!"

The words tore out of me, raw and broken, and I reached for the bond. Reached for it with everything I had left. Pulled at it like a rope in the dark, desperate for him to feel what I was feeling, desperate for his wolf to hear mine.

He didn't turn around. He didn't even slow down.

"Seraphina, I've never been more disappointed in you. Get yourself home. I'll be staying at the Healing Hall with Corvina and the pup for the next few days. And you'd better pray her pup is all right. Because if he's not, I won't let you off."

Every last one of them followed him out the door.

The room emptied. The silence that filled it was absolute. Not peaceful. The kind of silence that exists inside a wound.

I stayed on the floor. The cold seeped through my clothes, through my skin, into the place where my wolf had been pacing only moments ago. She wasn't pacing anymore. She lay curled at the bottom of me, nose tucked against her tail, and she would not lift her head. The blood kept spreading, warm against the cold stone, and I pressed my hands harder against my stomach as if I could hold everything inside me together by force.

The bond stretched thin toward the door Theron had walked through. I could still feel him at the far end of it. Moving away. His wolf hadn't even flinched.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking.