I sent the message through Thornfield's relay just after sunrise, tapping it out on the burner phone Sera had pressed into my hand before I left her house. Wolfsbane. Diluted. Hidden behind the biscuit tin. Photos attached. I kept it short. Border relays weren't as secure as mind-links, and I didn't trust anything longer than facts.

Her reply came within the hour.

*Got it. This is enough to move on, but not enough to bury him. I need two more days on the transfer volumes—dates, headcounts, the border crossings. If we go to Council with half a case, they'll pick it apart and Philip walks. Don't touch Camille. Don't touch anyone. Let them think you're still just folding napkins.*

I read it twice, then deleted it the way she'd taught me.

Two more days. My whole body wanted to argue with that math, wanted to walk into the dining hall and put the jar on the table in front of Gerald and Marilyn and let them see it. But Sera had never once been wrong about what a pack would forgive itself for, and I understood, in the cold part of my mind that had learned to wait, that half a truth was worse than no truth at all.

I sat on the edge of the guest bed and opened my notebook to the log I'd started keeping when Peyton was two, back when it was only sleep charts and teething and how many ounces of milk. I turned to the newest pages and began cross-referencing. The grey undertone in his skin—that started nineteen days ago, the same week Camille began bringing him the gummies himself instead of leaving them with the nursery maid. The flinching—eleven days ago. The weight loss around his collarbones—visible in the last week alone.

It wasn't anxious mothering anymore. It was a timeline. And timelines, Sera always said, were what convicted people.

The next morning I asked one of the housemaids—not the one who'd looked through me in the hallway, a younger one who still met my eyes—if I could go up to collect Peyton's winter things before the weather turned. She shrugged and said Camille hadn't given any instructions against it, so I supposed it was fine.

Peyton's room smelled like him still, underneath the rose-and-herb wrongness that had crept in from the rest of the house. I went to the closet first, pulled down two sweaters and his heavy coat, laid them over my arm like I had all the time in the world. Then I crossed to the toy chest.

I told myself I was looking for his snow boots.

Wedged between a stuffed bear and a wooden train set sat a book I had never seen before. Thick. Leather-bound, dark as dried blood. A seal pressed into the cover in wax the color of a fresh wound, and even from a foot away I could feel it—a low, humming pressure against my skin, the unmistakable weight of Alpha energy locked into something small.

I did not touch it.

I memorized its position instead. Second layer down, spine facing the hinge, half-covered by a folded quilt. I set the bear back exactly where it had been. I closed the chest.

I was almost to the door, boots in hand, when Peyton's fingers closed around mine.

"Mama." His voice was very small. His chin tucked left. "My tummy hurts a lot."

I went down on my knees so fast the boots dropped from my arm. I cupped his face in both hands. His skin was cool and damp under my palms.

"I know, baby." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I know it does. I'm going to fix it. But I need you to be brave for just a little longer. Can you do that for me?"

He nodded. He pulled Shadow up against his ribs and squeezed until his knuckles went white, and I memorized that too—filed it away with the seal and the timeline and everything else I was building, brick by brick, into something no one would be able to argue with.

Gerald arrived the day before the banquet with six warriors in Shadowmere colors, and the whole pack house rearranged itself around him like iron filings finding a magnet. Camille met him at the door, and I watched her warmth sharpen into something with edges—the sweetness she performed for Peyton gone, replaced by a cool, assessing calm that looked far more like her father's face than her own. Marilyn escorted Gerald through the halls with her hand nearly at his elbow, laughing at things that weren't funny, showing him renovations like she owned them.

Philip shook Gerald's hand in the front hall, and it wasn't a greeting. It was two men closing a deal.

I moved through the dining room adjusting place settings, invisible in my apron, and I saw it—Philip passing Gerald a folded document across the corner of the table, low, quick, Gerald's eyes flicking once toward the doorway before he tucked it into his coat.

I kept folding napkins. But something in my chest, low and old and patient, marked the moment and did not let it go.

The morning of the banquet started like every other morning in the pack house—too early, too quiet, the kind of silence that made my skin crawl. I was in the kitchens by dawn, arranging platters and checking the roast that had been turning since midnight. Marilyn wanted everything perfect. Gerald was leaving tomorrow, and this was Philip's final performance, the grand closing ceremony of an alliance built on my erasure.

I had just set down a tray of crystal glasses when I heard it.

A thud. Soft. Wrong.

I turned toward the pantry corner, where Peyton's small counter sat tucked against the wall. The morning light slanted through the high windows, pale and cold, illuminating the space where he usually sat with his cereal bowl.

He wasn't sitting.

He was on the floor.

My body understood before my mind did. I was moving—crossing the kitchen in three strides, my apron catching on the edge of a prep table, the sound of shattering porcelain somewhere behind me as I knocked something over and didn't care.

Peyton's small body jerked against the tile. His limbs moved in sharp, violent spasms that looked nothing like the way a child should move. His eyes had rolled back, showing only white. Foam gathered at the corners of his mouth, pink-tinged and wrong. His fingers clawed at nothing, scrabbling against the floor with a sound that made my stomach turn.

"Peyton!"

I dropped to my knees so hard the impact shot pain up through my spine. I caught his head before it cracked against the tile again, cradling it in my lap. His skull felt too hot under my palms. His whole body was burning.

And I could smell it.

Beneath the lingering sweetness of the gummy bears, beneath the honey and sugar and food coloring, the acrid burn of wolfsbane rose like smoke. Potent. Acute. Not the faint trace I'd found in the jar three nights ago. This was concentrated. This was a dose meant to do damage.

My wolf slammed against the inside of my skull with an impact that blurred my vision. For six years she had been dormant, weak, barely a whisper. Now she was screaming. The sound filled my head until I couldn't hear anything else—not the clatter of pans behind me, not the startled cry of the housemaid in the doorway. Just her. Just rage.

I gathered Peyton against my chest and stood. He was too light. His head lolled against my shoulder. His breath came in shallow, rattling gasps that sounded like drowning.

"Hold on," I whispered. "Hold on, baby. I've got you."

I ran.

The corridor stretched ahead of me, impossibly long. My feet pounded against the polished wood. Peyton's body jerked in my arms with every step, his small hands fisting weakly in the fabric of my shirt. I could feel his heartbeat against my ribs—too fast, irregular, skipping beats like a stone thrown across water.

I was halfway to the healer's wing when Philip stepped into the hall.

He wasn't alone. Gerald stood behind him, dressed in formal Shadowmere colors, his arms crossed over his chest. Two of Gerald's warriors flanked the doorway. They were blocking the path.

Philip's eyes flicked to Peyton, then back to my face. His expression didn't change.

"Madeline." His voice was level. Calm. The voice of a man who had already decided how this conversation would go. "Put him down."

I stopped. My arms tightened around Peyton's trembling body.

"He's dying," I said. My voice came out flat. Empty. "Move."

"You're overreacting." Philip took a step forward. His shoulders squared. His aura began to press against the air—the familiar weight of an Alpha preparing to command. "He ate something that disagreed with him. The healer will see him after the banquet. Right now, we have guests, and you will not cause a scene."

Behind him, Gerald's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.

My wolf stopped screaming.

She went silent. Completely, utterly silent. And in that silence, something else rose—something I had never felt before, something that didn't ask permission or wait for my body to catch up.

"Move," I said again.

Philip's eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth, and I felt it coming—the Alpha tone, the command that would force my wolf to her knees, the weight that had silenced me a hundred times before.

"Stop. Put the boy down. You will not—"

My right arm erupted.

I didn't choose it. I didn't think it. One moment I was holding Peyton with both arms, human and weak and exactly what Philip expected. The next, my right hand was gone—replaced by something massive, clawed, covered in silver-white fur that gleamed under the corridor lights. My fingers had become talons, each one as long as a knife. Strength poured through me like water breaking a dam, hot and absolute and mine.

Philip's command died in his throat.

I shifted Peyton's weight to my left arm—my human arm, still cradling his head—and swung.

My claws caught Philip across the forearm he'd raised to block me. They tore through fabric, through skin, through muscle. Four parallel gashes opened from his wrist to his elbow, deep enough that I saw bone. Blood sprayed across the wall, dark and immediate.

Philip staggered back. His mouth opened. No sound came out.

I didn't stop. I shoved past him, my clawed hand leaving gouges in the doorframe as I pushed off it for momentum. Gerald pressed himself against the wall, his face gone pale. His warriors didn't move. They stood frozen, staring at my arm like they'd forgotten what a wolf was.

I ran.

The healer's wing doors slammed open under my shoulder. Owen looked up from his desk, his eyes going wide. I crossed the room and laid Peyton on the examination table. My clawed hand was already shifting back—fur receding, talons shrinking, the strength draining away as fast as it had come. By the time I stepped back, my arm was human again. Shaking. Slick with Philip's blood.

"Wolfsbane," I said. My voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. "Acute poisoning. He's been getting it for weeks, but this dose—" My throat closed. I forced the words out. "This one was concentrated."

Owen didn't ask questions. He moved.

I stood at the foot of the table and watched my son seize, and I pressed my fingers to the cold scar on my neck, and I did not look away.