So much so that when we died miserably in my past life, he didn't shed a single tear.

If anything, he was relieved he wouldn't have to write up divorce papers after all. Relieved the mating bond would simply rot away with my corpse, no Moonfire Ritual required.

This time, no matter what it took, I would change my daughter's fate and my own.

Hildegarde and I knelt at the gates of the Silvercrest compound. The territory sentries couldn't bear the sight of us and reported our arrival five or six times. Two hours later, my father finally came out.

"Reduced to this sorry state, and NOW you remember you have a father?"

He stood in the archway, shoulders filling the frame, his aura pressing outward like the weight of a coming storm. The scent of ancient pine and frozen granite rolled ahead of him. He held no weapon, but his claws had half-extended, the tips catching the light.

"Your daughter knows she was wrong. Beat me, kill me, do whatever you see fit."

"I regret not listening to you back then. I put my trust in the wrong man."

Tears streamed down my father's weathered face. He didn't strike me. His claws retracted. He threw nothing to the ground because there was nothing to throw, but his hands were trembling when he pulled me to my feet.

"You were so heartless back then. You severed your own blood-bond and abandoned your pack for a man. But since you know you were wrong, cut those ties clean and come home where you belong!"

"As long as you sever that cursed mating bond completely, you are still a daughter of the Silvercrest bloodline, and this territory is still yours."

He told me to change out of my rags, but I shook my head.

His expression shifted. "Don't tell me you still intend to have dealings with that man?"

I smiled faintly. "He wronged me this deeply. You think I can just turn the page? I need to make him pay first."

That same day, I took Hildegarde to the Thornwood Pack compound and sent word inside.

"Tell Finn Thornwood his mate has come home."

The guards at the gate took one look at my tattered clothes, wrinkled their noses, and moved to shove us away. I could feel them sizing us up, two wolves deciding we were beneath their notice. One of them bared his teeth.

"Where'd you rogues crawl out from? This is the Thornwood Alpha's compound!"

"The Luna is hosting a banquet for the most powerful Alphas in the capital. If you disturb her guests, you and your little runt won't have enough lives to pay for it!"

"Go on, get! Get out of here!"

I'd expected exactly this. I deliberately stepped back, dropped to my knees, and raised my voice for the whole street to hear.

"Someone help me get justice! Finn Thornwood mated me six years ago in a proper ceremony. I bore him a pup! He promised to bring me back within three years and make me his Luna. But now that he's the Alpha, he left me and my child in the borderlands eating scraps and foraged roots! Is that something a wolf with any honor does?!"

The compound sat on a busy thoroughfare near the market district. The commotion drew wolves from every direction, and whispers rippled through the growing crowd.

"They say the Thornwood Alpha is famously devoted to his Luna. He's got two pups with her and won't even take a second mate. So where did THIS mate come from?"

"Probably a fraud. I mean, look at her. The Thornwood compound is high-ranking territory. She claims to be his mate, but she looks like a feral rogue off the road. Bet she's just some packless grifter trying to latch onto a rising bloodline."

I listened without a flicker of emotion, then reached into the bundle I'd brought and pulled out a mating certificate.

"Take a good look. This is Finn Thornwood's own handwriting. If he refuses to acknowledge me as his mate, I'll take this certificate straight to the Grand Pack Council and demand justice before every Alpha in the realm."

The head steward, lurking in the shadows, caught a glimpse of the handwriting on the certificate from a distance. His brow furrowed.

He leaned toward the gate guard, voice low. "Stay here and watch her. I'm going in to inform the Alpha and the Luna."

I saw every bit of it.

Sure enough, before a quarter hour had passed, Finn Thornwood came striding out of the compound, and right behind him, draped in gold and silver, was Edith Ashvale. The cloying scent of overripe peaches and crushed oleander reached me before she did, sweet enough to turn my stomach.

The steward pointed at me. "My Alpha, this woman claims to be your mate. If she's a fraud, I'll have her thrown out at once."

Finn looked down at me from the top of the steps. "Lift your head."

I tilted my chin up slowly, the ghost of a smile on my lips. My wolf was utterly still inside me, watchful, coiled, silent as a held breath.

The moment he saw my face, every drop of color drained from his.

"Narelle, is it really you? What are you doing here?"

He strode over and lowered his voice to a hiss.

"If you wanted to see me, you could have sent word through the servants. Why make a scene in front of everyone?"

"Besides, I told you in my letters not to come back on your own. When the time was right, I would have sent someone to bring you."

I held my daughter tight and stared at him in cold silence.

Five years apart, and Finn looked even more handsome than before. Younger, somehow. His wolf had clearly benefited from the life he'd stolen. His coat was cut from the finest cloth in the Territories, the cuffs stitched with silver-thread sigils marking the Thornwood Alpha line. A line he'd inherited only because I had stabilized his wolf with my Omega blood and given him the strength to shift at all.

My daughter and I, by contrast, were dressed in rags. Our rough-spun clothes had more holes than I could count. We carried no pack scent. We smelled like the wild, like dirt and hunger and the open road.

"Husband, didn't you promise me yourself? You said within three years, you would send someone to bring me back to the territory. It's been five."

Finn's expression darkened, though a flicker of panic crossed his eyes. I caught the subtle shift in his scent, that iron-rust sharpening beneath the damp bark, the way it always did when he was cornered.

"Narelle, I will bring you back. But not now. The den is hosting a feast for the Grand Pack Council delegates and visiting Alphas. Take the pup and leave. We'll talk later."

He slipped a heavy pouch of gold moons into my hands, expecting me to take the money, walk away, and pretend we had nothing to do with each other.

I smiled coldly, opened the pouch, and turned it upside down. Gold moons clattered across the stone ground.

"The Pack Alpha has done well for himself. And this is how you dismiss the mate who stood by you when you had nothing? A few coins?"

My voice carried just far enough for every pack member and guard within earshot to hear every word. Finn's face went darker still.

He clenched his jaw and leaned in close. "What do you want from me? I said I'd bring you back. Can't you just take the pup and wait a little longer? Just until tonight—"

I turned away with a cold smile, shifting my daughter in my arms as I walked toward the den gates.

"Our daughter hasn't eaten in three days. I'm afraid she can't wait."

"Tell me, my lord, why are you so desperate to keep your own mate from stepping through the door? Is there something in there you'd rather I not see?"

I knew exactly why Finn didn't want me inside. The feast hall was filled with the most powerful Alphas in the Territories, and among them sat Luna Consort Rosalind Nighthollow, the High Alpha's most beloved mate.

Every guest seated comfortably at those tables believed that Edith Ashvale, his brother's former mate, was the rightful Luna of the Thornwood Pack.

A mate appearing out of nowhere was a problem Finn had no idea how to explain.

And that was precisely why I was here. To make sure he couldn't.

Finn stared at me, his face drained of color, scrambling for a way out.

Edith's eyes darted, and then she stepped forward with a warm smile, reaching for my arm. Her scent hit me before her fingers did, overripe peaches and crushed oleander, sweet enough to choke on.

"Pack-sister, what are you saying? You're Finn's mate, which makes you family. You and the pup arrived so suddenly that Finn was simply overwhelmed with joy and didn't know what to say. He would never hide anything from you!"

She tried to steer me toward a side chamber.

I pulled my arm free. "You must be my mate's brother's former mate."

Edith's smile froze for a heartbeat before she forced it back into place with a nod.

In my previous life, I had pitied Edith for losing her mate so young. I never thought to guard myself against her. So when she led me to that side chamber and offered me pastries, I never once suspected her intentions.

I had no idea that the wolfsbane in those pastries was what killed my daughter and me. And the hand that placed it there was Edith's.

"I think I'll skip the side chamber. Didn't my husband just mention there's a feast going on? My daughter and I are starving. We'll eat there. And while we're at it, my mate can introduce us to everyone."

"Narelle!"

Finn's voice dropped to a sharp growl, low enough that his wolf bled through it. "You want to walk into that feast dressed like that? You'd humiliate the entire pack on purpose?"

"At least change your clothes first. Edith, would you take her to—"

Finn froze the moment the words left his mouth. When I said nothing, he rushed to explain.

"Narelle, don't misunderstand. Edith is the only family I have left in this pack. I think of her as my own sister. That's why I call her that."

"There is absolutely nothing between us!"

His frantic explanation only made my stomach turn.

I would never forget what I saw in the moments before I died.

Edith had wept and lied, claiming that my daughter and I had been greedy and eaten wolfsbane-laced pastries by mistake, and that was how we'd died.

Finn hadn't shed a single tear for us. Instead, his face had softened with tenderness as he pulled Edith into his arms, slipped the clothes from her shoulders, and held her close.

He kissed the tears from her cheeks, murmuring comfort.

"Dead is dead. Even if she hadn't died, I would've served her the bond dissolution in a few days anyway."

"For years now, the only people in my heart have been you and the two pups. There's no room for anyone else, and I won't let anyone disturb our life in this territory."

From that moment on, everything I'd ever felt for him was gone.

Edith brought me back out once I'd changed. Finn was crouching in front of Hildegarde. "Don't you remember your father?"

Hildegarde stared at him in terror, shrinking back step by step, then ran to me and clung to my leg. I could feel the small tremors running through her body, and the faint wild-clover scent of her fear sharpened against my senses.

"She was only a few months old when you left. You didn't come back for five years. How would she possibly remember you?"

Hildegarde was only five, but with the grime washed from her face, she looked like a little porcelain doll.

Finn scooped her up and tried to coax her. "Be a good girl, Hilda. Say 'Daddy.' I'm your daddy."

She only found him strange. Her small lips pressed into a thin line as she studied him with wide, cautious eyes. Even at her age, something instinctive in her pulled away from him, the way a pup recoils from a scent it doesn't recognize as pack.

He hadn't raised her. After a few more attempts with no response, his patience ran out.

"Narelle, you've come and you've been seen. When are you planning to go back?"

I stared at him, stunned. Then I laughed.

"You mean you want me to take our daughter back to that miserable den and keep waiting, day after day, for you to come get us?"

Finn's brow furrowed, a shadow of irritation crossing his face.

"I told you, when the time is right I'll bring you both home. The time isn't right yet."

"I know this territory compound looks grand, but there are a lot of wolves living here. There really isn't a spare den for you and Hilda. Once the outer quarters are renovated, I'll send for you..."

I cut him off, my voice flat and cold. "Give it up."

"My daughter and I have stripped nearly every root and herb off that hillside. Then the floods came, and even the rogues passing through can't find food. We were on the verge of starving to death. I wouldn't take her back to that place if you made me a servant in this pack."

It was laughable, really. The compound had dozens of dens and quarters, crawling with attendants and lower-ranked wolves.

And Finn claimed he couldn't spare a single room for his own mate and pup. Did he truly think I was that stupid?

In my last life, I never told him, not even on my deathbed, that my father was the Alpha of the Silvercrest Pack.

I had believed that standing by love meant something. That my devotion proved my worth.

In the end, I was nothing but a joke to them.

Five years rotting in that den, and none of it had mattered at all.

Finn's face went white. "What are you talking about? You were foraging scraps to eat? I had a hundred gold moons sent to you every moon cycle!"

I stared at him. "When did you ever send money?"

"In five years, all I received were your letters every few days. Not a single coin."

Finn whipped around, his eyes locking on Edith. The faint sour edge beneath his scent, that damp-bark and iron-rust smell, turned sharp with something new. My wolf stirred, quiet and watchful, reading the shift before his expression even changed.