An old woman and a young girl, holding together a crumbling household in a circle of wolves.

So I threw everything I had into learning the only currency that mattered in our world: knowledge. Codes, ledgers, the architecture of power. Desperate to shoulder the Family's burden before the last of our name was swallowed whole.

Lydia Everett came from nothing. No Family name, no bloodline, no standing. At the gatherings of the Five Families, nobody gave her the time of day.

When I found out she was an orphan too, I felt for her. I reached out first, paid her way, brought her under the Ashford roof, and told her we'd get through the hard times together.

I never imagined she'd take my kindness as charity.

That she'd resent me for everything I had.

That she'd use every trick she knew to wrap my two blood-bound companions around her finger.

And then, together with them, destroy my life.

While I was still lost in those thoughts, the cars rolled to a stop at the ridge.

What had happened on the drive up had left both of them uneasy. They fell over each other to open my door and carry my things.

"Lydia, look. This is the overlook we used to come to as kids. Maeve and I bought the whole hillside. From now on, it's ours. Private ground. No one sets foot here without our say."

Maeve nodded. "I already had soldiers plant your favorite yellow roses across the ridge. By this time next year, there'll be a whole sea of them."

"Then the four of us can come up here together, drive around, watch the stars."

Their faces were bright with plans for the future.

I stood staring at the land in silence.

This really had been our secret place when we were little. Before blood oaths and Family politics turned everything sharp. It held every happy memory the three of us shared.

But I had never liked yellow roses.

I was allergic to pollen. All of it.

While I stood there turning that over, fireworks burst open across the sky above us. Brilliant colors spelling out a name in fire. Lydia's, not mine.

Under that dreamlike canopy, Daphne produced a ring box lined in black velvet and held it out to her. Inside, on a bed of silk, sat a signet ring bearing the Vale crest. Not his own. A woman's ring, smaller, older, the gold worn smooth by generations of Vale brides.

"Lydia, this is the Family heirloom. My parents told me to give it to the future lady of the Vale house. I've wanted to give it to you for a long time. I just had to wait for the right moment."

"Be with me instead, Lydia. Don't you remember? When you nearly drowned as a kid, I jumped in after you without thinking. I'd give you my life, let alone some ring!"

The night had gone very still around us, the kind of quiet where even the soldiers at the tree line stopped shifting their weight. In my last life, this was exactly what had fooled me. The two of them, performing devotion so convincingly.

Back then I was naive enough to believe it. Blood-bound companions, a happy ending waiting for us. My grandmother and the Ashford name would finally have someone to lean on.

I didn't learn the truth until the day I died.

Devotion that deep can be faked.

I was about to turn and leave them to it.

Then Lydia spoke up. "Vera, why did you tell people I've been spreading whispers about you? Now everyone's attacking me..."

She held her phone up to my face. Her ring finger drifted to the curve of her bottom lip and touched it once, soft, almost reverent, the way a woman blesses a lie she knows has landed.

Under the Westbrook feed, hundreds of comments called me shameless, said I'd sold myself for a seat at the Vale table. The handful of voices defending me became, in Lydia's telling, proof that I'd sent them to bully her.

Maeve snatched the phone from her hand. He cracked the knuckles of his right hand against his jaw, once, twice, the sound loud in that hushed dark, and his voice came out shaking with rage.

"Vera, how could you do something like this? Fine, you've got no shame. But why blame Lydia for it?"

Daphne, the calmer of the two, didn't explode. But his thumb moved slow along the inside of his signet ring, and his eyes pinned me with the same accusation.

I swallowed the storm inside me. "I didn't do it. If you don't believe me, look into it yourselves."

Neither of them heard a word I said. They were already busy comforting Lydia.

"Don't worry, Lydia. I'll have our people scrub it by morning."

"Sweets always help. Come on, I'll take you for something."

One on each side, they flanked Lydia and walked away.

Neither of them looked back.

I let out a long breath and watched the ash drifting down where the fireworks had been. The Vale ring box sat on the stone wall where Daphne had set it down, forgotten, the worn gold catching the last of the light.

Compared to life and death, this much hurt was nothing.

At least I was still alive. I still had a brand-new life ahead of me.

I had no choice but to follow the three of them.

As I passed a thicket of old oaks, Maeve's voice carried through the dark, impatient and unchecked.

"Babe, how much longer do we have to keep up this act? I seriously can't take it anymore. Tommaso been spreading her legs all over the Territory. Who knows what she's caught."

"Tommaso pathetically stupid. Can't even tell a real alliance from a setup. No wonder some older man talked her into bed with a few pretty words. A woman like that doesn't deserve to stand beside the Vale name. The family heirloom bracelet, the real one, only you deserve to wear it, Ivy." Daphne ran his thumb slowly along the inside of his signet ring as he said it, the way he did when a decision had already been made and only the blood remained to be spilled.

Ivy gazed up at them with that wounded, fragile look of hers.

"Vera has done a lot of awful things, that's true. But she helped me once. How could I just abandon her? If you two don't do what I say, I'll never speak to either of you again!" Her ring finger drifted to her bottom lip, brushing it once, soft as a benediction over the lie.

At that, both of them, heirs who answered to no one, sons of the two most dangerous families on the Eastern Seaboard, fell over themselves apologizing to her.

They'd have trampled me into the dirt if it meant lifting her higher.

Over a decade of knowing each other, of growing up side by side, of bread broken at the same table and oaths sworn on the same saints, and none of it weighed as much as a few words from Lydia Everett.

I forced the tears back and turned away.

The night stretched endless around me as I walked toward the Ashford house, every step heavy with exhaustion. The streets were empty. Even the soldiers who used to patrol our block when I was a child were long gone, reassigned to families that still mattered.

By the time I reached the house, my twisted ankle had swollen beyond recognition.

Nonna's face crumpled when she saw it. She brought out liniment and knelt to rub it in herself, her hands shaking but sure, the way they'd always been.

I didn't want her worrying, so I told her about the invitation from The Order instead.

Her expression shifted from shock to pure joy.

"My Tommaso really made something of herself! Nonna's getting old. You're the only one left who can carry the Ashford name."

I nodded, blinking hard against the sting in my eyes.

"It's been so many years since this family had anything to celebrate. Nonna's going to throw you a proper feast. A real celebration!"

The smile on her face was identical to the one she'd worn the day she sent me off to my blood-bound union in the last life.

Back then, she'd believed I'd found a good man. She'd been so happy.

Then Daphne fled the altar, and the shock killed her right there in front of the gathered Families.

This time around, I would never let either of us walk that road again.

Nonna was too frail for the work, so I handled every detail of the feast myself. I booked the private back room at Ashford's, the old restaurant on Mulberry Street that still bore our name even though we hadn't owned it in years. The current owners let us have it for nothing. They remembered my grandfather, and what the Ashford name had once meant on this stretch of the Seaboard.

When my two blood-bound companions heard about the feast, they both showed up volunteering to help.

They even brought a strawberry cake, my favorite since I was little, as a peace offering.

"Vera, you haven't answered a single message in days. Are you still upset about what happened?"

"We weren't trying to blame you. We were worried you'd go down the wrong path. For people in our position, reputation matters." Daphne's thumb moved once over the inside of his ring, then went still.

I didn't forgive them. But I let them stay and help.

In our last life, they owed me more than they could ever repay.

No settling that ledger.

All I wanted in this life was to never see them again.

After my parents died, the Ashford family declined until no one bothered to pay respects at all. The old alliances dissolved. The seats at our table stayed empty.

Now that I'd finally done something worth celebrating, this was our chance to show the Five Families that the Ashfords still had an heir. That we were no longer a bloodline anyone could push around.

Nonna understood that. She treated this feast like the most important evening of her life, refusing to cut a single corner. Before she gave each instruction to the kitchen, she folded her hands over the worn silver crucifix at her neck, not in prayer but in purpose. This night had to be perfect.

The night of the feast, the back room filled with every name that mattered in the Territory.

Ivy glided in behind both Daphne and Maeve, wearing a gown that cost more than anything a girl with no family name should have been able to afford, perfectly at ease.

She took in the lavish room, the crystal, the white linen, the old Ashford crest mounted above the fireplace, and jealousy burned behind her eyes.

"Vera really does have all the luck."

"But so what if you were born into a bloodline and caught the eye of The Order? I can still make sure you spend the rest of your life wishing you were dead." Her ring finger touched her lip again, that single reverent press, blessing the thing she was about to set loose.

The words had barely left her lips when the screen at the front of the room lit up with my photos.

One after another. Every single one showing me naked in bed with a different man.

The room went very still. A glass was set down somewhere too carefully.

"Isn't that the Ashford heiress? Dio, she really gets around. Figures. No parents to raise her right."

"No wonder everyone says Vera spread her legs to get that invitation. Looks like it's true after all."

"The Ashford name is finished. They're selling their own blood off as some made man's whore."

I'd lived through mockery like this twice in my last life.

Once at my own altar. Daphne walked out of the blood-bound union for Lydia, and the humiliation killed my grandmother. The Ashford name became a punchline whispered in every social club across the Seaboard.

Once at my funeral. My body wasn't even in the ground before Maeve offered Lydia an alliance pact right there beside my casket. My entire life, reduced to a joke between two heirs.

The memories hit me and I turned to find my grandmother. Her breathing was ragged, her eyes bloodshot as she stared at the forged proof on the screen. "My Vera would never do something like this!"

Something was wrong. I could see it in the way she swayed, and my heart seized. I begged the people around me to help me get her to the ward. Every single one of them stepped back, terrified of being tied to a woman like me. Men who had once sat at my grandfather's table, who had kissed his ring and sworn loyalty to the Ashford name, turned their backs and melted into the crowd like strangers. The room emptied of allegiance the way a glass empties of wine.

In the end, it was the two blood-bound companions who stepped forward.

Daphne drove. Maeve and I held my grandmother between us, and we raced for the ward.

"Good thing you got here when you did. Any later and we might not have saved her."

I thanked the doctor over and over.

Then I sat at my grandmother's bedside and pulled up the venue's tape. Just as I'd expected, there was Lydia on the footage, swapping the proof herself. Every single image was a fake. Forged composites, all of them.

I took the tape and went out to call the Feds.

The two of them blocked my path.

"It was just a prank. Do you really have to blow it this far out of proportion? Do you have any idea what you'll do to Lydia?"

I stood there, stunned. Then something inside me snapped loose and I screamed.

"What about me? My grandmother almost died! Didn't Lydia think about destroying me? Destroying the entire Ashford family?"

Maeve shoved Lydia behind him and pushed me hard enough to stagger. The corridor light caught the signet ring on his hand as he straightened, and I watched his right fist twitch at his side before it pressed flat against his thigh.

"Give it a rest, Vera! Your grandmother's fine, isn't she? Besides, where there's smoke there's fire. You must've done something shady first for word like that to travel!"

None of it could hurt me anymore. I pushed past them both, numb.

Daphne caught my wrist. His expression was unreadable. He was still. Perfectly, terribly still, the way only he could be, the kind of stillness that made soldiers lower their voices and consiglieri choose their words with surgical care.

"Vera. Don't make this harder on yourself. You know the weight our Families carry. No one on this Seaboard would touch this case."

When I still wouldn't let go, his grip tightened.

"Don't forget your grandmother is still in that ward. One word from me, and the doctors stop treating her."

The ring on his right hand was motionless. His thumb did not move along its inner edge. Not turning. Not restless. Already decided.

"I'll count to three. If you don't hand over the tape, I'll have them pull her off the ventilator."

He dialed a number right in front of me.

"Three."

"Two."

"I was wrong!"

I dropped to my knees, tears streaming down my face. I didn't dare. I didn't dare gamble with my grandmother's life.

Maeve snatched my line and hurled it at the ground. It shattered. Shards bit into my skin.

He looked down at me, cold. "As long as we're standing here, don't even think about touching Lydia."

I sat crumpled on the floor, and it wasn't until their backs disappeared around the corner that the pain finally broke through. Somewhere down the hall a monitor beeped, steady and indifferent. Two lifetimes of grief tore out of me at once, and I sobbed until I couldn't breathe.

The childhood promises were lies. The blood-bound oaths were lies. Only the pain was real.

I don't know how long it was before I dragged myself back to the ward. Terrified that Daphne or Maeve would tamper with her care, I stayed at my grandmother's side for days without leaving once.

The only messages I received were from Lydia. The two of them had taken her traveling, bungee jumping, doing every single thing they'd once promised me and never followed through on.

I blocked her number.

When I looked up, two men in crisp bearing stood at the foot of my grandmother's bed. They inclined their heads to me, the way men do on sovereign ground.

"Miss Ashford, we've been sent by The Order as medical personnel. Please rest assured. While you're away, we will guarantee your grandmother's safety and her health."

Only then did it hit me. It was time to go.

I went back to the Ashford house and threw away everything connected to those two men. Every photograph. Every token. Every memory that smelled of gunpowder and broken oaths.

Then I boarded a plane and never looked back.

Neither Daphne Vale nor Maeve Marlowe was someone I could depend on. I would depend on myself. For my grandmother, for the Ashford name, I would carve out a future worth having.