The reassignments started small.

Two days after Bianca's return, Jonas called a morning briefing in his office. I arrived early with the summit coordination binder I'd been maintaining for three months—seating charts, dietary restrictions for the Council delegates, security rotations. I'd color-coded the tabs.

Jonas barely glanced at me when I walked in. He was standing by the window with Bianca beside him, her hand resting lightly on his forearm. She wore one of my old cardigans, the soft gray one I'd left in the Luna suite when he'd ordered me out. It hung loose on her smaller frame.

"Seraphina," Jonas said without turning around. "Bianca's offered to take over the summit logistics. She has experience with Council protocol from her time in Europe."

I stood there holding the binder. "The delegates arrive this afternoon. Everything's already arranged."

"Then it'll be easy for her to pick up." He finally looked at me, his expression flat and administrative, like I was a junior pack member questioning an assignment. "Bianca needs something to focus on. It'll help her reintegrate."

Bianca turned toward me with those wide, apologetic eyes. "Only if you don't mind, Luna. I just want to be useful. I know I've caused so much trouble already."

Her voice was so soft. So careful. The kind of voice that made you feel cruel for saying no.

I set the binder on Jonas's desk. "Of course," I said. "Whatever helps."

Jonas nodded once, already turning back to the window. Dismissed.

I left the office and walked straight to the eastern perimeter, where the forest was thick enough that no one would see me press my forehead against a tree trunk and breathe until the tightness in my chest loosened.

That afternoon, I learned about the anniversary hunt from Eli, one of the junior warriors.

He caught me in the hallway outside the kitchens, his face uncertain. "Luna, should I still prep the western trail for tomorrow's run, or—"

"What run?"

Eli blinked. "The anniversary hunt. Alpha Jonas marked it on the patrol schedule three weeks ago. I just assumed—" He stopped, reading my face. "You didn't know."

I kept my voice level. "Plans change during summit week. Don't worry about it."

He nodded slowly, but his eyes lingered on me a beat too long before he walked away.

I found Jonas in the training yard an hour later. He was running drills with the Deltas, his shirt damp with sweat, his commands sharp and clear. I waited at the edge of the yard until he noticed me.

He jogged over, wiping his face with a towel. "What is it?"

"The anniversary hunt," I said quietly. "Were you going to tell me it was cancelled?"

He frowned, like he was trying to remember what I was talking about. Then his expression cleared. "Oh. Right. I moved it. Bianca's still adjusting, and I didn't want to leave her alone in the pack house with strangers arriving. We can reschedule after the summit."

"You scheduled it three weeks ago."

"Things change, Seraphina." His tone was patient, almost condescending. "You understand that."

Behind him, a few of the Deltas had stopped mid-drill to watch. I felt their eyes on my back.

"Of course," I said.

Jonas nodded and turned back to the yard without another word.

I walked back to the pack house alone. No one called after me.

That evening, Bianca found me in the kitchen.

I was prepping vegetables for the delegates' welcome dinner, my hands moving on autopilot. The kitchen had always been my refuge—the one place where my work was visible, tangible, something I could point to and say *I did this.*

Bianca slipped in quietly, carrying a ceramic bowl. Steam rose from the surface. She set it on the counter beside me and smiled, hesitant and hopeful.

"I made you some broth," she said. "You've been working so hard, Luna. I thought you could use something warm."

I looked down at the bowl. It smelled like chicken and herbs, rich and comforting.

"You didn't have to do that," I said.

Her smile widened just a fraction. "I want to. Please. Let me do something useful. I know I've caused you so much pain already, and I—" Her voice caught. She pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes welling. "I just want to make it right."

She looked so small standing there. So earnest.

I picked up the bowl and took a sip. The broth was warm and savory, exactly what I needed.

"Thank you," I said.

Bianca's whole face lit up. "I can make your meals from now on. If you'd like. Just until you're feeling stronger."

I hesitated. But she was watching me with such raw, fragile hope, and I was so tired.

"That would be kind," I said.

She nodded quickly and slipped back out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with the bowl.

I finished it standing at the counter, then went back to chopping vegetables.

Two days later, I woke up wrong.

The fatigue was heavier than it should have been—bone-deep, dragging. My senses felt muffled, like I was hearing the world through water. I stood in front of the mirror in the guest room and stared at my own face. My skin looked pale. Dull.

I pressed a hand to my chest. The small furious thing that had stirred the night Bianca returned—the flicker of heat I'd felt beneath my sternum—was quieter now. Almost silent.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out my ledger. My hand shook slightly as I wrote:

*Day 4 since reassignments. Fatigue worsening. Senses duller. Something is wrong with my body and I don't know what.*

I stared at the words for a long time.

Then I closed the ledger, hid it back in my bag, and went downstairs to eat the breakfast Bianca had left warming on the stove.

In the pack meeting that afternoon, Jonas didn't address me once. Not to ask my opinion. Not to confirm a detail. Not even to acknowledge I was in the room.

When I stood to leave, one of the younger wolves—a girl named Mara who used to ask me for advice about her training—looked at me, then quickly looked away.

I walked back to the guest room and lay down in the narrow bed, staring at the ceiling.

Downstairs, I could hear Jonas laughing. Bianca's voice, soft and musical, answering him.

I closed my eyes and pressed my palm flat against my chest, searching for that flicker of heat.

Nothing.

Just cold. Just silence.

And somewhere deep inside, buried under the wolfsbane I didn't know I was swallowing, something that should have been waking up went still.

The morning of the Council welcome feast, I woke before the sun and moved through the kitchen like a woman running on borrowed strength.

My hands knew the work. Eight years of feast-days had trained them. I braised the venison in red wine and juniper, the way Jonas's grandmother used to when she was still alive to teach me. I roasted root vegetables until their edges caramelized. I baked the traditional honey bread — three loaves, braided by hand — and set them to cool on the long counter while I polished the good silver, the pieces engraved with Ironveil's crest.

The Omega staff moved around me quietly. I gave instructions in a low voice, pointing where the crystal should go, which side of the plate held the salad fork, how to fold the napkins into the crescent shape the Council favored. My hands didn't shake. They hadn't shaken in eight years.

But something under my ribs felt slow. Heavy. Like a stone sitting where my breath should have been.

By late afternoon, the great hall was ready. Twelve place settings gleamed down the length of the leadership table. Candles burned in the iron holders I'd chosen. The scent of rosemary and roasted meat drifted through every corner of the pack house.

I changed into the deep green dress I'd bought for the summit — modest, formal, Luna-appropriate. I braided my hair back myself because there was no one to help me. In the mirror, my face looked pale. I pinched color into my cheeks and told myself it was enough.

Jonas arrived first. He wore his formal Alpha coat, the one with the silver embroidery I'd commissioned two years ago. He walked past me to the head of the table without a word and took his seat. Chase followed a moment later, dressed in his Silvercrest Academy blazer, his jaw set in the same distant expression he'd been wearing all week.

He didn't look at me either.

I stood at my end of the table with my hands folded, waiting for the Council observers to be shown in. The pack Beta was making the introductions in the foyer. I could hear their voices — polite, measured, the careful diplomacy of wolves who had come to evaluate whether Ironveil was worth an alliance.

Then Jonas's face changed.

His eyes went unfocused in that specific way that meant a mind-link had opened. His mouth tightened. Across the table, Chase's head snapped up at the same instant, and I knew — before either of them moved — that it was a pack-wide link.

I felt the edge of it brush my consciousness a half-second later. Weaker than it should have been. Muffled, like everything else these past four days.

*Jonas — please — I can't breathe — the walls — I need you, I need Chase, please don't leave me alone —*

Bianca's voice, thin and gasping, threaded with sobs.

Jonas stood.

He didn't look at the table. Didn't look at the candles I'd lit or the food I'd cooked or the Council observers whose footsteps were already audible in the hallway. He stood, dropped his napkin onto his plate, and walked toward the door.

Chase followed him.

"Jonas." My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "The delegates are here."

He paused at the threshold. Didn't turn around. "Handle it."

Then he was gone. Chase with him. The front door closed, and a moment later I heard the engine of Jonas's SUV start in the drive.

I stood very still at my end of the table.

The Beta walked in a heartbeat later with three Council observers in tow — two men and a woman, all of them in formal grays, all of them scanning the room and finding it empty except for me.

The woman's eyes moved from the two vacant chairs at the head of the table to my face. Her expression didn't change, but something in it noted the arithmetic.

I smiled.

I smiled the way I had learned to smile through eight years of being told to make myself smaller.

"Welcome to Ironveil," I said. "Alpha Jonas sends his regrets — an urgent pack matter has called him away. Please, sit. I've prepared the feast myself, and I would be honored to serve you."

The woman inclined her head slowly. "Luna Seraphina. The honor is ours."

I pulled out her chair with my own hands. I poured the wine myself because I didn't trust my voice to summon the Omegas. I served the venison and the honey bread and answered their questions about Ironveil's trade routes and border security and the ward-scent perimeter as though my chest were not hollowing out with every word.

They stayed two hours. They were kind. The woman — a Council envoy named Marisol — thanked me twice for the meal, her voice warm in a way that made my throat tighten.

When they retired to their guest quarters, I stood alone in the great hall and looked at the two untouched plates at the head of the table. The candles had burned down to stubs. Jonas's napkin was still crumpled on his chair.

I cleared the table myself.

Upstairs, in the guest room, I pulled out my ledger with hands that finally, finally, began to shake.

I opened to a fresh page and wrote:

*He left without looking back. Chase didn't look back either. I served the Council alone tonight and no one mentioned it.*

I stared at the words until they blurred.

And then — deep beneath my sternum, in the place that had been cold and silent my entire life, in the place the wolfsbane was trying and failing to smother completely — something moved.

Not a flicker this time. Not a stir.

A growl.

Low. Long. Furious.

I pressed my hand flat against my chest and held my breath, and for one shining, terrible second I felt her — whoever she was, whatever she was — pacing behind my ribs like a caged thing testing the bars.

My own voice came out of me in a whisper I didn't recognize.

"There you are."

The growl answered.

And then, quieter, receding as the drug in my blood pulled her back under: a sound that was almost, almost, a promise.

I closed the ledger. Set it on the nightstand. Lay down in the narrow bed still wearing my green dress and my braided hair, and stared at the ceiling until the pre-dawn light began to gray the window.

Three days until the summit.

Three days until the border patrol gathering Jonas had scheduled to impress the Council — the show of coordinated Ironveil strength, the display of the Alpha's authority, the fur cloak Bianca would wear at his side that I had bought with pack funds two winters ago.

I didn't know yet what was coming from the eastern tree line.

But something in my chest — something that had just found her voice for the first time — did.

And she was no longer sleeping.

The rogues came from the eastern tree line just as the sun began to set.

I saw them first—three shadows moving wrong through the undergrowth, their forms low and fast. My mouth opened to shout a warning, but Jonas was already barking orders, his voice cutting through the gathered pack like a blade. The Council observers stood frozen near the center of the clearing. Bianca was beside Jonas, her hand clutching his arm.

Everything happened too fast and too slow at once.

The rogues broke from the trees. Five of them. No—six. Their eyes were wild, their fur matted and filthy. The pack warriors shifted mid-stride, bones cracking, bodies elongating into wolf form. I felt my own muscles tense, my body moving on instinct even though I had no wolf to call, no shift to complete. I stepped forward anyway, putting myself between the rogues and the Council observers because that was what a Luna did.

Then Jonas's voice slammed into me.

"Seraphina—STAY."

It wasn't a request. It was the full weight of his Alpha tone, unrestrained and absolute, the kind of command that locked every muscle in a wolf's body and left them helpless. My legs stopped moving. My lungs stopped pulling air. I couldn't turn my head. Couldn't blink. My body was a statue, frozen mid-step, and the rogues were still coming.

I felt Jonas's hand close around my upper arm. Then Chase's hand on my other side.

They lifted me—not gently, not carefully—and hurled me forward.

I hit the ground in front of the rogues.

The impact drove the air from my lungs. I heard something crack—ribs, maybe more—and then teeth closed on my shoulder and tore. Pain exploded white and blinding across my vision. I tried to scream but my throat wouldn't work. The Alpha tone still held me, even as the rogue's jaws shook me like a rag doll.

Somewhere behind me, Bianca was sobbing.

My left arm bent wrong. I felt it snap in two places, the bone giving way with a sound I would hear in nightmares for the rest of my life. Another rogue's claws raked across my side, and blood soaked into the dirt beneath me, warm and sticky and so much of it.

And then—deep in my chest, in the place where the mate bond had lived for eight years—something fractured.

It wasn't physical. It was worse. It was the sacred thread the Moon Goddess had woven between Jonas and me, the bond that was supposed to be unbreakable, snapping like a bone inside my soul. The pain of it was cold and hollow and so much worse than the teeth in my shoulder or the shattered ribs or the arm that wouldn't move anymore.

I closed my eyes.

The sounds of the fight went distant. Snarls. Yelps. The wet thud of bodies hitting earth. Jonas's voice, commanding the warriors, driving the rogues back.

When I opened my eyes again, the rogues were gone.

I was lying in the dirt fifteen feet from where the pack had gathered. My vision swam. Everything hurt in a way that made it hard to remember what not-hurting felt like. I tried to move my left arm and couldn't. Tried to sit up and my ribs screamed.

Jonas was crouched over Bianca.

She was sobbing—loud, gasping sobs—her hands pressed to her face. She wasn't bleeding. There wasn't a scratch on her. Jonas cradled her head in his lap, murmuring something I couldn't hear, his face twisted with worry.

I lay in the dirt and watched him hold her.

Elena, the pack healer, appeared at the edge of my vision. She ran toward me, her medical bag bouncing against her hip, her face tight with focus. She dropped to her knees beside me and reached for my shattered arm.

"Tend to Bianca's panic attack first."

Jonas's voice. Flat. Commanding. Not even looking at me.

"She's hyperventilating," he added. "Seraphina can wait."

Elena froze. Her hands hovered over my arm. She looked at me—really looked at me—and I saw it in her eyes. The calculation. The choice she was being forced to make.

She looked at Jonas. Then back at me. My blood was pooling under her knees.

"Alpha, she's—"

"Now, Elena."

Elena stood. She picked up her bag. She walked toward Bianca.

I closed my eyes again.

The ground was cold beneath me. My breath came in shallow, painful gasps. Somewhere far away, I could hear the Council observers murmuring, their voices low and careful. I wondered if they were writing this down. If they would note, in their formal reports, that the Luna of Ironveil had been used as a shield and left to bleed while the Alpha comforted his ex-mate.

I wondered if it mattered.

Eventually—minutes or hours, I couldn't tell—Elena came back. She didn't speak. She just knelt beside me and began working, her hands quick and practiced, splinting my arm, wrapping my ribs, packing the wound on my shoulder with gauze that turned red almost immediately.

Two warriors lifted me onto a stretcher. The movement sent fresh waves of agony through my body, and I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying out. They carried me to the pack house, up the stairs, into the healer's ward.

Elena worked in near-silence. She couldn't meet my eyes.

When she finally finished, she stood at the foot of the bed and stared at her own hands. They were still stained with my blood.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

I didn't answer. I didn't have the strength.

She left.

I lay in the narrow bed, my body splinted and bandaged and screaming, and stared at the ceiling. The mate bond pulsed in my chest like an open wound, sending cold nausea through me in waves. I pressed my good hand flat against my sternum and felt it—the fracture, the hollow place where Jonas's presence used to be.

And beneath it, buried deep, something else stirred.

Not a flicker this time. Not a stir.

A snarl.

Low and furious and so, so tired of being silent.

I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.

But even in sleep, I could feel her—my wolf, my dormant, poisoned, beaten-down wolf—pacing behind my ribs.

Waiting.