Three months.

That was how long I had carried Ethan's child. Three months of hiding morning sickness behind closed doors, of pressing my palm to my stomach when no one was watching.

And now my stepsister stood at the top of the grand staircase, smiling down at me like she'd already won.

"Aurora," Isabella sang. "You look pale. Is the baby giving you trouble?"

I gripped the banister. "What do you want, Isabella?"

She tilted her head. Her blonde hair was pinned up perfectly, the way she always wore it to pack dinners. The way she wore it when Ethan was in the house.

"Want?" She laughed softly. "Nothing. I just came to say congratulations."

She held out her hand.

I didn't take it.

So she took mine.

Her fingers clamped around my wrist, sharp nails biting into my skin. Before I could pull back, she yanked me forward and shoved.

The world flipped.

My shoulder struck the first stone step. Then my hip. Then my back. Each landing cracked through my bones. I curled around my belly on instinct, arms locked tight, as I tumbled to the bottom.

The cold floor slammed into my cheek.

For a second, there was nothing. No sound. No air.

Then the pain came.

It ripped through my stomach like claws, low and deep and wrong. I gasped and wrapped both hands over my belly.

*No. No, no, no. Please, baby. Stay with me.*

"Are you insane?" I choked out. I pushed up on one trembling elbow. My arm buckled. I tried again. "You could have killed—"

"The baby?" Isabella floated down the stairs, one slow step at a time. Her silk dress whispered against the stone. "Yes. That was the idea."

She stopped above me and crouched, close enough that I smelled her rose perfume.

"Sister," she said sweetly, "did you honestly believe a wolfless nobody deserved to give the Alpha an heir?"

Every muscle in my body went rigid.

Wolfless.

The word had followed me since I was twelve. Since my first full moon came and went and nothing answered inside me. No voice. No shift. No wolf.

My father had looked at me like I was a stain on his name. My stepmother had moved my bedroom to the servants' wing. And Isabella, perfect Isabella with her gorgeous silver-white wolf, had laughed.

"Ethan chose me," I whispered.

"Ethan was forced to take you." Her smile sharpened. "Your mother's old bargain with his father. That's all you ever were. A debt."

Another wave of pain tore through me. I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted blood.

Footsteps echoed from the main hall.

Heavy ones. Familiar ones.

Isabella's face changed in a heartbeat. Her lips trembled. Her eyes went glossy. She stumbled backward against the wall with a tiny cry.

"Ethan!"

He came around the corner, tall and broad in his dark suit, his Alpha aura rolling ahead of him like a storm front. Ethan Blackwood. Alpha of Silver Ridge. My mate.

Relief flooded my chest so fast it hurt.

"Ethan." I reached for him. My fingers shook in the air between us. "Ethan, please. The baby—our baby—something's wrong."

He stopped.

He didn't kneel. Didn't run. He just stood at the edge of the hall and studied me on the floor, his gray eyes flat and unreadable.

Then his brows pulled together.

"Again?" he said.

The word hit harder than the stairs.

"What?"

"This again, Aurora?" He exhaled through his nose and turned his head. "Isabella. Are you hurt?"

My stepsister pressed a hand to her chest. "I'm fine. I tried to help her down the stairs, I swear. She grabbed me and then she just… fell."

"That's a lie," I rasped. "She pushed me. Ethan, look at me. She *pushed* me."

He finally looked.

I wished he hadn't.

His jaw tightened, a muscle ticking under his skin. "If you can't stand your own sister being in this house," he said quietly, "then don't use your pregnancy as a weapon."

"A weapon?"

"You think carrying my child locks you into the Luna seat?" His voice dropped colder. "It doesn't. It never will."

I stared at him.

Somewhere above us, a servant gasped. Someone else whispered. I heard the shuffle of feet on the upper landing, half the household gathering to watch the wolfless Luna bleed on the floor.

My eyes burned.

I didn't argue. I didn't explain.

What was the point? I had tried for two years. Every bruise Isabella left, every cruel word, every "accident." He had never once believed me.

So I just lay there and let the tears slide sideways into my hair.

Ethan looked away first.

"Call the healers," he barked over his shoulder.

The house exploded into motion. Doors banged. Someone shouted for a stretcher. Isabella slipped closer to Ethan, her small hand settling on his sleeve.

He didn't shake it off.

I closed my eyes.

*I'm sorry,* I told the tiny life inside me. *I'm sorry I couldn't protect you better.*

A warm wetness spread beneath me. I knew what that meant. I'd read enough books in those quiet weeks to know.

The healers arrived in a rush of white coats and herb smells. Hands pressed to my wrist. A voice counted my pulse out loud.

Then an old voice cut through all of it.

"Wait."

Elder Corwin. The oldest member of the pack council. He leaned on his carved cane at the foot of the stairs, his cloudy eyes fixed on the floor beside my hip.

"Move back," he ordered the healers. "All of you. Now."

They froze.

Ethan frowned. "Elder, she needs treatment—"

"I said *move.*"

The old man lowered himself to one knee, his joints cracking loud in the sudden silence. With a shaking finger, he pointed at the stone.

I turned my head.

A single drop of my blood sat on the gray floor.

It wasn't red.

It shimmered silver, glowing faintly, like a piece of the moon had fallen and cracked open.

Isabella's grip on Ethan's sleeve went white-knuckled.

Ethan took one step forward. Then another. The color drained from his face.

Nobody breathed.

Elder Corwin stared at the drop like it might rise up and bite him. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked down the middle.

"Impossible…" he whispered. "The Moonborn bloodline was wiped out decades ago."

The healer's hands were cold against my stomach.

"The heartbeat is there," she said. "Faint, but there."

I gripped the edge of the cot. "So my baby is alive?"

"For now." She pulled the blanket up to my ribs and wouldn't meet my eyes. "Luna, your body is very weak. You lost a lot of blood. If you fall again, or if you get too upset…"

She didn't finish.

She didn't have to.

I turned my face toward the door. Ethan stood just inside it, arms folded, his shoulder against the frame like he hadn't decided whether to come in or leave.

"Did you hear that?" I asked him. "Our baby is still fighting."

"I heard."

"Then stay." My voice cracked. I hated how small it sounded. "Just tonight. Please, Ethan. Sit with me."

He pushed off the frame. For one foolish second, I thought he was coming to me.

He stopped at the foot of the cot.

"The child can stay," he said. "But you don't get to use it to tie me down anymore."

The healer froze with a roll of gauze in her hand. Then she hurried out, eyes on the floor.

I stared at Ethan.

"Tie you down?" I laughed. It came out wrong, thin and shaky. "I'm lying here bleeding, and you think this is a trap?"

"I think you've learned what works."

"What works?" I pushed myself up. Pain bit into my belly and I sank back down. "Ethan, she pushed me. I watched her face when she did it. She *smiled*."

A soft sob drifted in from the hallway.

Isabella.

She stood just past the doorway, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, her eyes red-rimmed and wet. Perfect tears. She'd always cried beautifully.

But above the handkerchief, her gaze moved over me. Slow. Careful. It stopped on my hands. On my stomach. On the bandaged spot on my thigh where the healers had drawn blood.

She wasn't grieving.

She was measuring.

"Ethan," she whispered. "May I come in? I just want to know she's all right."

"Get out," I said.

Isabella flinched like I'd slapped her. Ethan's jaw went hard.

"Aurora."

"She is the reason I'm in this bed."

"I tried to *catch* her." Isabella's voice wobbled. She stepped closer to Ethan, not to me. "I know she hates me. I know she's jealous because you and I grew up together. But I would never hurt a baby. Never." She drew a shaky breath. "Ethan, she's been doing this for months. Making scenes. Waiting for you to walk in at the right moment. You've seen it yourself."

He didn't answer her.

But he didn't defend me either.

I watched his face. I watched him weigh her words against mine, and I watched the scale tip. It took less than a second.

Two years.

Two years of swallowing every insult so he wouldn't think I was difficult. Two years of covering bruises with long sleeves. Two years of believing that one day he would see me.

He had never believed a single word.

"Get some rest," Ethan said. He turned, and Isabella fell into step beside him like she belonged there.

At the door, she glanced back.

The tears were gone.

---

My father came an hour later.

Marcus Vale didn't knock. He never had. He crossed the room in three strides and dropped a thick folder on my blanket.

"Sign it."

I didn't touch it. "What is it?"

"Your release from the Luna line of succession. And a transfer of your Vale family shares." He uncapped a pen and set it on top. "To Isabella."

My fingers curled into the sheet. "You came here to take things from me. Tonight. While I'm lying in a hospital bed."

"I came here to protect the alliance with the Blackwood Pack." He adjusted his cufflinks. "Ethan's council is restless. A wolfless Luna embarrasses them. Isabella would steady things."

"I'm carrying the Alpha's heir."

"Which is exactly why you'll stay comfortable. Nobody's throwing you out, Aurora. You just won't hold anything that matters."

I pushed the folder off the bed. Papers spilled across the floor.

"No."

He looked down at them. Then at me. His face didn't change at all.

"You have no wolf," he said. "You have no right to inherit the Vale name. You never did."

The words should have broken me. I'd heard them in a hundred different forms since I was twelve.

Instead, something in my chest went quiet and very cold.

"Then why?" I asked.

He frowned. "Why what?"

"Why have you used me all these years?" I sat up, ignoring the stab in my side. "You sent me to Ethan. You made me the payment for Mom's bargain. You paraded me at dinners and told me to smile. If I'm nothing, Dad, why keep me around at all?"

For a long moment, he said nothing.

His eyes moved to my thigh. To the white bandage.

Then back to my face.

"Because you're worth more than Isabella," he said.

That was all.

He bent, gathered the papers, and stacked them neatly on the chair by the window. "I'll leave these. You'll sign eventually."

The door clicked shut behind him.

I sat there, my hand over my stomach, and I didn't cry.

That scared me more than anything.

---

I couldn't sleep.

Near midnight, the pain finally dulled enough that I could stand. I needed water. I needed to move. I needed to stop seeing that silver drop every time I closed my eyes.

I shuffled into the dim corridor, one palm braced on the wall.

Voices came from the study at the end of the hall. The door was cracked open, a stripe of lamplight spilling across the carpet.

"—told you not to push so hard," my father said. "Elder Corwin saw everything."

"How was I supposed to know her blood would do *that*?" Isabella hissed. "You said a fall would be enough to scare her into signing."

I stopped walking.

"I said a fall. Not a funeral. We need that child."

"You need it. I need her gone."

"Patience." Paper rustled. A glass touched wood. "The stairs did their job. Ethan believes you. The servants saw her accuse you and they saw him turn his back. She has no one now."

Isabella laughed softly. "She looked so pathetic on the floor. Like a kicked dog."

My hand slid down the wall.

*The stairs did their job.*

It wasn't an accident. It wasn't jealousy. It wasn't even Isabella alone.

It was a plan.

My father had planned it.

I pressed my fist against my mouth. My knees shook. I should have run. I should have screamed. But I stood there, frozen in the dark, because some broken part of me still waited for him to say he hadn't meant it.

Ice clinked in his glass.

"Keep her calm," Marcus said. "Keep her fed. Let Ethan keep her at arm's length."

"And then?"

His voice dropped low and even, the way it sounded when he closed a business deal.

"Once she gives birth, we get rid of her for good."

I made my decision before dawn.

I would leave. Tonight, or never.

I pulled on a coat over my hospital gown and cracked my bedroom door open.

Two warriors stood in the hall. One stood on each side of my door.

"Luna." The taller one straightened. "Do you need something?"

"Air."

"Alpha Vale's orders. You rest inside."

"Alpha Vale is my father, not my jailer."

He didn't blink. "Tonight he's both."

I shut the door and leaned against it. My heart pounded against my ribs.

*Keep her calm. Keep her fed.*

They weren't guarding me. They were guarding the baby.

---

Old Martha brought my breakfast at seven. She had served my mother before me. She was the only person in this house who still called me by my name.

"Aurora, you haven't touched last night's tray."

"Martha." I caught her wrist. "My mother's things. Where did Dad put them?"

Her eyes darted to the door. "Child, don't."

"Please."

She chewed her lip for a long moment. Then she bent and lifted the tray cover. Folded under the napkin was a small brass key.

"Cedar chest. Attic, east corner," she whispered. "I've kept that key for eleven years. Your mother told me to give it to you when you were ready."

"Why now?"

"Because I heard what they said in that study, same as you."

---

The servants' stair still connected to my old room in the back wing. Nobody had thought to guard it. Nobody had ever thought of me much at all.

The cedar chest was under a sheet of dust. Inside sat my mother's shawl, a silver crescent pendant, and a book of lullabies. I flipped through the pages until one stuck. The binding had been cut and glued shut again.

There was an envelope inside. My name was written on it in her handwriting.

The wax seal was already broken.

*He read it,* I thought. *He read it and hid it.*

My hands trembled as I unfolded the page.

*My Aurora,*

*If you are reading this, I am gone, and your father has kept you small. Forgive me. It was the only way to keep you safe.*

*Your wolf is not missing. She is sleeping. Our blood sleeps until it carries new life. If you ever become pregnant, it will begin to wake.*

*When that happens, the Blackwoods must never know. Not the Alpha. Not his council. They would take your child, and they would not need you.*

*Wear the pendant. Go north.*

*Your mother, Selene.*

I read it three times. Then I pressed my palm flat against my stomach.

Silver blood on gray stone.

*No wolf.* They had told me that for eleven years. I had believed it every single day.

"You're not empty," I whispered to the baby. "And maybe I'm not either."

I fastened the pendant around my neck and tucked it under my collar.

---

The bells rang at noon. The pack was called to the courtyard.

I slipped onto the balcony behind a pillar. Below me, hundreds of wolves gathered in the snow-dusted yard. Ethan stood on the steps. Isabella stood at his side in pale blue silk.

"Silver Ridge deserves a Luna who can run with it," Isabella called out. "A Luna who can shift and defend it. A Luna whose blood is clean."

A murmur rolled through the crowd.

"I'm not saying anything cruel," she went on softly. "But a wolfless female, carrying a child no healer can explain? Silver blood isn't in any of our lines. Some of you are asking what that baby really is." She paused. "Some of you are asking if it's even a pure wolf at all."

*Mongrel.* I heard someone mutter it near the fountain.

I waited for Ethan to speak.

He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His eyes were fixed somewhere over the crowd's heads.

He said nothing.

His silence felt worse than the stairs.

I turned away from the railing. My nails had carved crescents into my palms.

Fine. Let them have each other.

---

At dusk, I wrapped the shawl around my shoulders and took the servants' stair down to the kitchen door. Martha had left it unbolted.

The cold hit my face. Twenty steps across the yard and I would reach the trees.

I made it eight.

Torches flared to life all around me.

"Going somewhere, sweetheart?"

My father stepped out of the shadows. Six warriors fanned out behind him.

"Move, Dad."

"Aurora Vale." He raised his voice so it carried to the windows above us. "You are under arrest for treason against the Silver Ridge Pack."

"Treason?" I laughed. The sound came out sharp and strange, and it startled even me. "For walking out a door?"

"For attempting to flee with the Alpha's heir. Take her."

Hands grabbed my arms. I twisted and kicked. One warrior reached for my waist, and I curled forward and slammed my elbow into his throat.

"Don't touch my stomach!" I screamed. "Don't you *dare* touch my baby!"

"Then stop fighting," my father said calmly. "You'll hurt it yourself."

They dragged me across the stones by my wrists.

---

The judgment hall was packed to the rafters. The council sat in a curved row. Elder Corwin was among them, gray-faced and silent.

Ethan stood at the center of the dais.

They forced me to my knees in front of him.

"Ethan." My voice was raw. "Look at me."

He did. His gray eyes were colder than the floor under my knees.

"Aurora Vale tried to steal my heir from this pack," he said. "She has lied, she has accused my family, and she has shamed this house."

"Your family pushed me down the stairs!"

He lifted his hand, and the hall went silent.

"From today," Ethan said, "Aurora is no longer my mate."

The words hit my chest like a blow. I felt something thin and invisible snap.

Gasps spread across the room. Then whispers rose. Then someone near the back started to laugh.

Isabella stood just behind Ethan's shoulder. She didn't cry this time. She smiled, slow and satisfied, like a cat in the sun.

The head elder struck his staff against the floor.

"For treason, the accused is exiled to the Northern Reaches. She leaves tonight."

"And the child?" someone called.

"The child will be recovered when it is born," my father answered smoothly.

*Recovered.* Like a lost coin.

I pushed myself to my feet. The guards let me.

"Ethan."

He had already turned to leave. He stopped.

"What if one day you find out you were wrong?"

For a heartbeat, his shoulders went still.

Then he spoke without turning around.

"That day will never come."

---

They marched me through the city gates in chains. Snow stung my cheeks. The torches behind me shrank to orange pinpricks.

I didn't look back.

Under my shawl, my mother's pendant grew warm against my skin.

Then it grew hot.

I gasped and pulled it free. The silver crescent was glowing, bright as moonlight. It lit my chained hands and the snow and the stunned faces of the guards.

"What the hell is that?" one of them hissed.

---

Hundreds of miles north, deep beneath a mountain of ice, a man lay on a stone slab.

He had not moved in twenty years.

His eyes snapped open. They were burning silver.