Three days after the rejection, Vienna threw a banquet.

Not just any banquet. A formal installation ceremony. The kind reserved for new Lunas who'd earned their place through fated mate bonds and pack service. The invitations went out on cream-colored card stock with gold lettering. The great hall was decorated with winter roses—white and red, arranged in cascading sprays down the center tables. Candles everywhere. Music drifting from the gallery.

I was required to attend.

Beta Marcus delivered the order himself, standing in the doorway of the servant quarters with his eyes on the floor. "Alpha's command," he said quietly. "All pack members present."

I nodded. He left.

I dressed in the plainest thing I owned—a grey wool dress, long sleeves, high neck. I braided my hair back tight. I looked in the small mirror above the washbasin and saw a stranger. Pale. Hollow-eyed. The mark on my neck was still there, but it looked wrong now. Faded. Like an old scar.

I pressed my hand to my sternum. The cold was still there. The rot was still spreading. My wolf was silent.

I walked to the great hall.

---

The hall was full. Every ranked wolf in Silverfang, dressed in their formal best. The Gammas in their ceremonial leathers. The Deltas in pressed shirts. The Omegas serving from the kitchens, their eyes down, their movements quick and practiced.

Vienna sat at the head table in the Luna's chair. My chair. She wore a gown the color of fresh cream, her dark hair swept up, her throat bare except for a delicate gold chain. She looked radiant. Ellis sat beside her, his hand resting on the table near hers—not touching, but close enough that the message was clear.

Finnley sat on Vienna's other side. He was dressed in a small formal jacket I'd never seen before. Vienna must have had it made for him. He looked proud. Excited. He didn't look at me when I entered.

I took a seat at the far end of the lower tables. Near the Omegas. No one spoke to me. A few wolves glanced my way, then quickly looked elsewhere.

The feast began.

Servers moved through the hall with platters of roasted venison, root vegetables glazed with honey, fresh bread still steaming from the ovens. There was mulled wine, spiced and sweet, served in pewter cups. The scent was overwhelming. Rich. Heavy. My stomach turned, but I forced myself to take a plate.

I ate because not eating would draw attention. I lifted the fork. I chewed. I swallowed. The bread was soft. The gravy was thick and savory. The wine was warm going down.

Halfway through the meal, my hands started to tremble.

I set the fork down. I gripped the edge of the table. The trembling spread up my arms, into my shoulders. My vision doubled—two tables, two candles, two Viennas smiling at the head of the hall.

My wolf surged up inside me with a convulsive snarl.

Not a shift. Not a protest. A reaction. Violent. Desperate. She was fighting something.

I gasped. The sound was too loud. Several wolves turned to look.

My body convulsed. My spine arched. I tried to hold still, tried to breathe through it, but my muscles locked. My hands slipped off the table. I doubled over, my forehead nearly hitting the plate.

Someone said my name. I couldn't tell who.

Then Ellis's voice cut through the hall. Sharp. Cold. Wrapped in Alpha tone.

"Emily."

I looked up. The hall was silent now. Every wolf had turned to face me. Ellis stood at the head table, his jaw tight, his eyes hard.

"You will not disrupt this ceremony," he said. The Alpha tone pressed down on me like a weight. My wolf whimpered—a thin, broken sound I felt more than heard. "You will kneel. You will apologize to your Luna. And you will leave quietly."

The hall held its breath.

I gripped the table edge. My vision was still doubled. My body was still convulsing. The wolfsbane—because that's what it was, I knew it now, I could taste it under the gravy and the wine—was tearing through my already-weakened wolf like acid.

But I didn't kneel.

I forced myself upright. Slowly. My legs shook. My hands were white-knuckled on the table. The Alpha tone pressed harder—I could feel it in my chest, in my throat, trying to force me down the way it forced every other wolf in the room to lower their eyes.

I looked at Ellis.

Not a glare. Not defiance. Just—looking. Seeing him fully for the first time since the rejection. The man I'd loved. The man I'd nearly died for. The man who'd chosen a lie over a bond.

I held his gaze for three long seconds.

Then I turned. I walked toward the hall doors. My steps were measured. Straight. I didn't run. I didn't stumble. I kept my hand pressed to my chest and I walked.

Behind me, the silence was louder than any condemnation.

I pushed through the doors. The cold night air hit me like a fist. I made it five steps into the snow before my body gave out.

I collapsed onto my hands and knees and vomited.

The wolfsbane came up in bitter, burning waves. My wolf spasmed inside me, thrashing against the poison, trying to purge it. I retched until there was nothing left, until I was shaking and empty and gasping in the snow.

Footsteps behind me.

I turned my head. Healer Calla knelt in the snow beside me, her med kit already open. She didn't ask questions. She pulled a small vial from the kit, uncorked it, and pressed it to my lips.

"Drink," she said quietly.

I drank. The antidote was bitter, but it worked fast. The convulsions eased. My vision cleared. My wolf stopped thrashing and went still—not silent, but exhausted.

Calla corked the vial. She looked at me with that same expression she'd worn the night Finnley was born. Troubled. Determined.

"Wolfsbane," she said. "Trace amounts. In the food. Calibrated to be undetectable by scent but devastating to a weakened wolf." She paused. "This wasn't an accident, Emily."

I stared at her. My breath came in short, shallow gasps. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure." She pulled a small notebook from her kit and made a notation in tight, precise script. "I've been tracking this. The symptoms. The timing. This is the third exposure I've documented since the rejection." She looked up. "Someone is poisoning you."

I pressed my hand to my chest. The cold was still there. The rot was still spreading. But underneath it—underneath the poison and the severed bond and the exhaustion—something else stirred.

Not my wolf. Not yet.

Something deeper.

I stood. Slowly. Calla rose with me, her hand hovering near my elbow in case I fell.

I didn't fall.

I looked back at the great hall. Through the tall windows, I could see the banquet continuing. Vienna at the head table, smiling. Ellis beside her. Finnley laughing at something she'd said.

I turned away.

"Thank you," I said to Calla.

She nodded. "I'll keep the record."

I walked back to the servant quarters. I didn't go back inside the hall. I didn't kneel. I didn't apologize.

I carried nothing but the knowledge that someone wanted me dead.

And the certainty—cold and clear and absolute—that I would not give them the satisfaction.

The rabbit was small. Still warm. Blood matted the fur at its neck where Finnley's teeth had found the kill spot.

I was scrubbing the corridor floor outside the great hall when he came through the front doors. His face was flushed from the cold, his eyes bright with pride. He held the rabbit by its hind legs, the way Ellis had taught him.

My brush went still in the bucket. I looked up.

Finnley walked straight past me. Didn't even glance down. His boots tracked mud across the stones I'd just cleaned. He was heading for the sitting room, where Vienna took her afternoon tea.

"Luna Mom!" His voice rang clear down the corridor. Excited. Eager. "Luna Mom, look!"

I stood. Slowly. Water dripped from the brush in my hand onto the floor. My legs felt distant. Numb.

Vienna's voice drifted from the sitting room, warm and delighted. "Finnley! Oh, sweetheart, did you catch that yourself?"

"All by myself!" Finnley's words tumbled over each other. "I tracked it from the north ridge, just like you said. I stayed downwind. I waited until it stopped to eat, and then—"

"You were perfect." Vienna's voice was soft now. Tender. "I'm so proud of you."

Luna Mom.

The words echoed in my skull. Not Mother. Not Mom. Luna Mom.

I set the brush down. My hand was shaking. I pressed it flat against my chest—the cold was still there, the rot still spreading, but now something else pressed up beneath it. Not my wolf. Something sharper.

I walked toward the sitting room.

Finnley stood in the center of the room, the rabbit at his feet, beaming up at Vienna. She sat in the high-backed chair near the fireplace, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. She wore a soft blue dress. Her hair was loose. She looked like every picture of maternal warmth I'd ever seen.

I stopped in the doorway.

"Finnley," I said quietly.

He turned. His smile faltered. Just for a second. Then his face went carefully neutral—the expression of a child who'd been taught what to do when an inconvenient adult appeared.

"Emily," Vienna said smoothly. Not unkindly. Just—acknowledging my presence the way one might acknowledge a servant who'd entered at the wrong time. "We're having a private moment."

I ignored her. I looked at my son.

"That's a good kill," I said. My voice was steady. I made sure of it. "You tracked well."

Finnley shifted his weight. His hand moved toward Vienna's skirt. Not quite touching. Just—close.

"Vienna taught me," he said. His voice was small now. Defensive.

"I taught you too." The words came out softer than I'd intended. "Last summer. Remember? By the creek."

His face flickered. I saw it—the memory, brief and bright, before Vienna's hand tightened on his shoulder.

"Finnley's been working very hard," Vienna said. Her voice was still warm. Still kind. "He deserves to enjoy his success without—" She paused delicately. "—complications."

I took one step into the room. Just one.

"Finnley—"

Vienna stood.

She moved toward the sitting room door—toward the stairs just beyond it—with a grace that looked effortless. Her hand trailed along the doorframe. She glanced back at Finnley, her expression concerned.

"Sweetheart, why don't you take your trophy to the kitchen? Cook will want to prepare it for—"

Her foot caught the threshold.

She stumbled. Her hands flew out. Her body pitched forward toward the stairs with a sharp, breathless cry.

She fell.

Not a tumble. A fall. Down four steps, her body twisting, her hands scrabbling for the railing. She landed at the base of the stairs with a sickening thud, curled on her side, clutching her ribs.

Finnley screamed.

I stood frozen in the doorway. My hand was still pressed to my chest. I hadn't moved. I was three feet from the threshold. Nowhere near the stairs.

Footsteps thundered from the hall. Ellis appeared at a dead run, his face white. He saw Vienna crumpled at the base of the stairs. He saw me standing in the doorway above.

He didn't ask.

He crossed the distance between us in two strides. His hand closed around my upper arm—hard enough to bruise. He hauled me toward the front door.

"Ellis—" I started.

"Don't." His voice was flat. Cold. "Don't say a word."

He shoved the door open. Rain poured down outside—freezing, relentless. He pushed me through.

I stumbled onto the front steps. The rain hit me like a fist. No coat. No shoes. My dress soaked through in seconds.

Ellis stood in the doorway. His eyes were hard. Empty.

"You're done," he said.

Then I felt it. The mind-link command, sharp and absolute, cutting through every wolf in the pack house.

*Seal the house against Emily Voss.*

I heard the locks click. Every door. Every window. The lights in the upper floors went dark one by one.

Finnley's face appeared in the sitting room window. Pale. Frightened. Vienna's hand on his shoulder, pulling him back.

Ellis stepped inside. The door closed.

I stood in the rain. Shaking. The cold sank into my bones. My wolf was silent. The mark on my neck throbbed—a dull, rotting ache.

I pressed my hand to my chest.

I didn't cry.

I turned and walked into the rain.

---

I don't know how long I walked. Time felt strange. Distant. The rain was so cold it stopped feeling like cold and started feeling like nothing.

I ended up at the back garden wall. I don't remember deciding to go there. My body just—went.

A figure stepped out from the shadow of the wall.

Grandma Smith. She held a coat and boots. Her face wasn't soft. It was sharp. Furious.

"I saw," she said.

She draped the coat over my shoulders. She knelt and helped me into the boots. Her hands were steady. Efficient.

"Come," she said.

She led me through the garden, past the training grounds, to the healer's cabin at the edge of the territory. Calla was waiting. The Dowager must have sent word ahead.

Calla pulled me inside. Sat me by the fire. Wrapped blankets around me. Checked my hands, my feet, my core temperature. She worked in silence.

The Dowager stood by the window, her arms crossed, her jaw tight.

When Calla finished, she stepped back. "She'll be fine. No permanent damage."

I looked at the Dowager. My voice came out hoarse. "How long before you have enough?"

She turned from the window. Her eyes met mine—steady, unflinching.

"I already have the blade," she said quietly. "I need the salve. Give me two more weeks."

Two weeks.

I nodded.

The Dowager's expression softened. Just slightly. "Can you hold on that long?"

I pressed my hand to my chest. The cold was still there. The rot was still spreading. My wolf was still silent.

But underneath it all, something else was stirring.

Not rage. Not grief.

Clarity.

"Yes," I said.

The Dowager nodded once. "Then we wait."

Twelve days into the waiting, the smell of lavender and chamomile started to make my stomach turn.

I passed Vienna in the upstairs hallway most mornings. She drifted from the Luna's suite to the bathroom and back, a silk robe loose at her shoulders, her hair pinned up. She no longer bothered to acknowledge me. I'd become furniture. A grey shape scrubbing baseboards or carrying linens, useful only as a contrast to her radiance.

That morning, I was on my knees outside the linen closet, wiping down the lower paneling. Vienna walked past me in running clothes, her braid swinging. She smelled fresh. Sharp. Lavender, chamomile—and under it, that faint, metallic green note I now recognized the way Calla had taught me to recognize it. Wolfsbane.

She didn't look down. She trotted down the stairs to join Ellis for the pack-run muster.

A minute later, the Dowager appeared at the top of the staircase.

She didn't speak. She didn't look at me. She walked to the Luna's suite, opened the door, and stepped inside.

I kept scrubbing. My heart hammered against my ribs.

She was inside for eleven minutes. I counted. I heard nothing—no drawers, no footsteps. The Dowager moved like a woman who'd spent fifty years learning to be quiet in other people's rooms.

When she came out, she crossed the hallway and stopped beside me. She crouched slowly, knees creaking, and pretended to inspect my work.

"Bone case," she murmured. "Bottom of the third drawer. Wrapped in a silk scarf." Her voice was barely louder than my brush. "I photographed the contents. I sent the request to Council Healer Mara this morning. The summit's in eighteen days."

I didn't look up. "And the case?"

"Still there. Exactly where she left it." A pause. "She doesn't think anyone's watching anymore."

I nodded once. The Dowager rose, patted my shoulder the way an old woman might pat a tired servant, and walked on.

Eighteen days.

I pressed my hand to my chest. The cold was still there. The rot was still spreading. But something underneath had started to feel less like dying and more like waiting.

---

Ellis called the winter run for that afternoon.

Mandatory. All ranked wolves, all able bodies. The mind-link command came through cold and brisk—a show of Alpha health for a pack that had begun to whisper about its leader's fading aura.

I was on the list.

I changed in the cabin behind the healer's quarters. Calla watched me with her arms crossed. "You don't have to make the full crossing," she said. "Stay at the back. If your wolf can't hold the shift, drop out at the first marker."

I didn't answer her. I walked out into the snow and tried to shift.

My wolf came up halfway. Smaller than she should have been. Thin in the shoulders. My paws sank too deep into the powder. When I looked at my own reflection in the frozen creek, I didn't recognize what I'd become—a grey, undersized thing with dim eyes and a faded coat.

The pack assembled at the tree line. Ellis at the front, his wolf still huge and black, though the silver streak at his shoulder had gone the color of old ash. Vienna ran at his flank in her sleek brown form, her tongue lolling, her tail high.

I took the last position. Behind the Omegas.

We ran.

The pack moved fast through the pines, snow spraying up behind them. I fell behind within the first mile. Within two, I'd lost sight of all but the slowest Deltas. My lungs burned. My legs shook. My wolf whined inside me, and I told her *keep going, keep going, eighteen more days.*

The river came up faster than I expected.

It was wide here. Frozen across, but the ice was thin in patches—dark grey where the current ran deep beneath. The pack had crossed in a single bounding line, each strong wolf clearing it in one leap.

I couldn't leap.

I tried to pick my way across at the narrowest point. My paws skittered. The ice held for three steps, four—

Then it cracked.

The sound was small. A clean snap. And then the world dropped out from under me.

The cold was not cold. The cold was a hand closing around my whole body and squeezing until I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't feel where my limbs ended. The current pulled me sideways under the ice. I clawed up at the surface—my paws struck solid white above me, the wrong side of the ice, no opening, no air.

My wolf surged. She thrashed. She drove me toward a darker patch of grey and broke through with my muzzle—one frantic breath, lungs burning—and then the current dragged me under again.

And then, through the cold, I felt it.

The thread.

The last thin filament of what had once been a mate bond. So faint I'd thought it was already dead. It pulsed against my chest—not from me. From the other end. From Ellis. He'd felt me.

I knew the exact second he felt it because, for one breath, the cold paused. He was listening.

*Ellis.*

The thought wasn't a plea. It was just a name. The name of the man who had been my mate.

The thread pulsed once more.

Then it went slack.

I felt him turn away. I felt Vienna's flank brush his. I felt him choose—not in words, but in the simple physical fact of his body continuing forward, paw after paw, while mine sank.

The cold closed over my head.

My wolf went still inside me. Not silent. Still. The way an animal goes still when it has decided, finally, what it is willing to die for and what it is not.

I was not willing to die for him.

I clawed upward one more time.