The floorboard in the hall creaked once, then settled. Just the house breathing in the dark.

I stayed frozen for another ten seconds, my hand hovering over the velvet-lined trays of wolfsbane. The bitter herbal smell stung the back of my throat. My stomach churned.

Every single morning. Three years. He had uncapped a vial, swallowed the poison, and walked down to breakfast to kiss my forehead while his wolf went blind to mine.

A faint seam caught the light of my penlight on the wood paneling behind the cabinet. It wasn't flush with the wall.

I set the vial down and pressed my palm against the trim. A soft latch clicked. The false back slid open with a whisper.

My breath caught.

It wasn't another medicine safe. It was a shrine.

Dozens of items sat arranged on small glass shelves under battery-powered picture lights. In the center stood three sealed jars holding long strands of dark brown fur—Harper’s wolf coat, carefully labeled with dates from their first run together. Silk scarves hung from brass hooks along the side. Even across the room, the scent of jasmine and warm clover hit me like a slap. He had kept them sealed, perfectly preserved.

And then there were the photographs.

Hundreds of them lined the velvet backing. Harper at sixteen, laughing by the Nighthollow river. Harper at eighteen, her Come of Age ceremony, wearing silver ribbon in her hair. Candid shots taken from tree lines. Posed studio portraits.

Right in the middle of the wall, framed in black walnut, sat two photos pinned side by side.

On the left was Harper, smiling softly at the camera with her head tilted.

On the right was me.

My Dawnridge official portrait from the week before our mating ceremony.

I stepped closer, my throat closing up. We had the exact same high cheekbones. The exact same slight wave in our dark brown hair. The exact same delicate cut of the jaw. If you blurred the eyes, we looked like sisters.

I gripped the edge of the shelf so hard the wood bit into my palms.

I hadn't been chosen by fate. The Moon Goddess hadn't crossed our paths. Jack had looked at a grieving, broken daughter of Dawnridge whose wolf wouldn't wake, saw Harper’s face in my skin, and bought a substitute.

And every day he spent with me, he swallowed wolfsbane so his wolf wouldn't accidentally accept me. He made a conscious, chemical choice every morning at sunrise to kill our bond.

That was why he couldn't smell Alessia in the raid.

Alessia had my scent mixed with his. But his nose was dead to everything that belonged to me. He had tracked Harper across the eastern ridge because her scent was the only thing his wolf had left to cling to.

He didn't lose our daughter. He traded her life for an obsession.

Something inside my chest cracked.

It wasn't a metaphor. It was a loud, physical snap right beneath my collarbone, like an iron lock breaking in two.

A searing wave of heat rushed up my throat. My lungs burned. The thumb-to-wrist trick didn't work. The skin was numb. The whole world went blindingly, terrifyingly cold, and then the silver thing in my chest ripped out of the dark.

It didn't ask for permission. It surged into my veins with the force of an avalanche.

My head snapped back. A pure, blinding silver radiance poured from my eyes, painting the dark room in harsh, sharp white.

I opened my mouth, but no human scream came out.

What tore from my throat was a deep, subsonic howl. It didn't sound like a young she-wolf. It sounded ancient. Imperial. Lethal.

The sound wave slammed into the walls. The oak beams across the ceiling groaned and splintered, throwing sawdust into the air. A jagged crack ripped through the stone above the doorframe, spider-webbing straight up to the rafters.

The aura exploded out of me, a crushing wall of pure Alpha-blood pressure rolling down through the floorboards.

Downstairs in the great hall, three floors below, a heavy ceramic mug shattered on the tile.

I heard boots scramble. Through the floor, the terrified yips of Delta guards echoed as they hit their knees. Beta Reid’s sharp gasp carried up the stairwell—the sound of an officer clawing at his throat, pinned to the wall by a dominant pressure so heavy his lungs couldn't expand.

None of them knew what it was. None of them could name it.

To them, the pressure was rolling straight out of the Luna’s private quarters—from a woman whose wolf had been dead for ten years.

The silver light flashed one last time, searing the backs of my eyelids, and then snapped shut.

My knees gave out. I hit the floor hard, catching myself on one bruised elbow.

Hot blood dripped from my right nostril, splashing dark against the wood. My ribs ached as if a truck had hit me. My hands shook violently, but the room was silent again. The wood dust was still floating through the beam of my flashlight.

I looked at the photos. The scarves. The jars of fur.

My life here had been a lie from the very first hour. Every sweet word, every soft touch in the dark, every pack ceremony had been built on a corpse.

I didn't reach for my phone. I didn't take a picture. I didn't smash the glass cases.

None of it mattered anymore. Proof was for someone who wanted to argue. I was done arguing.

I stood up slowly, wiping the blood from my lip with the back of my sleeve. My legs were steady. The silver heat had retreated back beneath my ribs, but it hadn't gone to sleep. It was watching. Waiting.

I reached out and clicked the false panel shut. The wood settled into place with a quiet snap.

I turned off my penlight, stepped out into the hallway, and locked the master door behind me.

Downstairs, the pack house was dead quiet.

When I reached the second-floor landing, Reid and two Delta guards were standing at the foot of the main stairs, their faces pale as salt, their hands resting on their holsters. Their eyes were wide, darting toward the ceiling, looking for whatever monster had just shaken the foundations of the pack.

They saw me step into the hall light.

Reid blinked, his chest heaving, his wolf still bristling with panic. "Luna... did you feel that?"

I paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at him.

My face felt like stone. My eyes didn't blink. I didn't give him a tremble, a stutter, or a single drop of sweat.

"Feel what, Reid?" I said.

My voice was flat and quiet.

Without waiting for his answer, I turned down the west corridor toward my room, leaving them staring at the dark.