Isabella's POV

The first thing I felt was cold stone under my knees.

The second was the weight of a hundred eyes.

I was kneeling in the middle of a long hall lit by iron chandeliers, and the smell of roasted meat and wax hung over everything. Two tables full of people in dark formalwear stared down at me. Nobody looked surprised. They looked bored, like this was a show they'd seen before.

A man stood over me. He was tall, with dark hair and a jaw that looked carved out of the same stone I was kneeling on. In his hand was a thin silver chain with a crescent moon pendant.

My hand went to my throat before I understood why. The skin there was bare.

"Noah," a soft voice said behind him. "You really don't have to."

"I want to." He turned and fastened the necklace around the neck of a slim blonde girl in a pale blue dress. She lifted her hair for him and smiled down at me.

Noah. Evelyn. The crescent necklace that belonged to Isabella's dead mother.

I knew these names. I'd read them at two in the morning on my phone, hate-scrolling through a werewolf romance called *Moonbound* and yelling at the screen every time Isabella Vale let her Alpha husband walk all over her.

I looked down at my wrists. A silver chain circled the left one, tight enough that the skin beneath it was red and raw. The chain kept her wolf quiet. Kept *my* wolf quiet.

On the far wall hung the pack's lunar calendar, the full moon circled in black ink. Three days away.

Three days until Evelyn's ritual. Three days until they pulled Isabella's wolf out of her body to save the girl wearing her mother's necklace, and Isabella bled out on an altar while Noah held Evelyn's hand.

The girl who dies first. That was what the comments had called her.

That was me now.

"Apologize, Isabella," Noah said. "Then we can discuss whether you eat."

Behind me, a guard was already lifting my plate from the table. Potatoes, a slab of beef, a bread roll. He carried it away without looking at me.

"Apologize for what?" My voice came out rough, like I hadn't used it in a while.

Evelyn's eyes widened. "It's okay. She's probably still upset about this morning."

"You told the kitchen staff not to serve her," Noah said to me, as if I'd done it. "You told half the pack she's faking her illness. You've made her life miserable since she got here, and you're going to fix it in front of everyone."

I hadn't done any of that. The original Isabella hadn't either. But I remembered how this scene went in the book. She cried, she apologized, and he still sent her to bed hungry.

Noah stepped closer, and something inside my chest lifted toward him.

I hated it immediately. He smelled like cedar and rain and something warm underneath, and this body knew that smell the way a plant knows the sun. My chin came up on its own. My shoulders softened.

*He's going to kill you,* I told myself. *He signs the consent form. He watches.*

My body didn't care.

There was a fresh split across his knuckles, the skin torn and still pink. Before I made any decision at all, my hand was already moving, reaching for it.

He flicked my fingers away like a fly.

Then he turned his back on me, picked up a napkin, and knelt beside Evelyn, whose skirt had a streak of red wine across the hem. Someone must have knocked her glass when he'd stood. He dabbed at the stain carefully, gently, like it was the most important job in the world.

"Noah, it's fine," Evelyn murmured, touching his hair.

My hand was still hanging in the air. I pulled it back into my lap.

*Please.* The voice was so faint I thought I'd imagined it. It came from somewhere behind my ribs, thin and tired. *Please don't make him angry.*

I went very still.

"Who is that?" I asked silently.

*It's me. Ceci.* A pause. *Are you... Isabella? You feel different.*

Ceci. The wolf. In the book she barely had any lines, just a whimper here and there, usually right before Isabella did something stupid for love.

"Why are we reaching for him?" I demanded.

The answer came soft and simple, like a child explaining the sky is blue.

*Because we always do.*

A side door opened, letting in a draft of cold air. A young guard stepped through in a gray-and-black pack uniform, his hair cropped short, a scar through one eyebrow. He took up a post by the wall and let his gaze settle on me a beat too long.

Owen.

In chapter thirty-two, Owen stood in front of the council and swore he'd seen Isabella sneaking out of the barracks at night. That was the story that made the whole pack stop pitying her. Adulteress. Liar. A wolf nobody would miss.

I stopped thinking about being believed. There was no point arguing my innocence to a man who'd already decided I was guilty. I needed to get out of this hall with as much as I could carry.

"I'm sorry," I said.

The room murmured. Noah glanced back at me, a little surprised.

"I'm sorry Evelyn's had a hard time," I said evenly. "Now I want my mother's necklace back. And I'd like to stop scrubbing the floors with this chain on until my wrist heals."

Evelyn's fingers drifted up to the pendant. Her eyes went shiny on cue.

Noah stood and tossed the stained napkin onto the table. "That's not an apology. That's a list of demands."

"It's both."

"Where were you this afternoon? Why did Ruth find you by the east gate?" His eyes narrowed. "Who were you meeting?"

I lifted my wrist so he could see the raw ring of skin under the silver.

"I'll answer your questions when you take this chain off."

For a second the hall went quiet enough that I could hear the candles hiss. Something flickered across his face, too quick to name.

"The necklace stays where it is," he said. "The chain stays where it is. You can leave the table. That's what you get."

It was less than nothing. It was also exactly what I needed.

I got to my feet. My knees had locked from the stone and almost buckled, but I didn't let them. On my way toward the kitchen corridor, I passed Ruth, the gray-haired omega who ran the kitchens, standing by the serving cart with a basket of rolls. She didn't look at me. She also didn't move the basket when my sleeve brushed over it.

I walked out with a warm bread roll tucked against my forearm and nobody said a word.

---

The guard who followed me didn't bother with explanations. He shoved me into the back pantry, between shelves of flour sacks and jarred peaches, and the key turned in the lock.

I waited until his footsteps faded. Then I sat on an overturned crate and pulled out the roll.

It was still a little warm. I tore it in half and ate it slowly, because I had a feeling this body didn't get fed often, and throwing up the only food I had would be a tragic way to start.

"Ceci," I said out loud, quietly. "Do you know what happens at the full moon?"

*Evelyn's ceremony,* she said. *Noah says it will make her well.*

"Do you know what it costs?"

A long silence. *No. Nobody tells us things.*

"Okay." I brushed crumbs into my palm and looked at them. "What do you remember? About this whole year?"

*I remember trying.* Her voice wobbled. *I tried to be quiet. I tried to stay out of Evelyn's way. I tried so hard to make him stop being angry with us. Sometimes it almost worked.*

My throat tightened, and it wasn't from the bread.

"Listen to me," I said. "I know how this ends. He doesn't stop. He doesn't come back to us. So we're done. I'm never saving him, never forgiving him, never..."

*Will he come find us tonight?*

The question was so hopeful it stopped me cold.

*Sometimes he comes, after,* she went on softly. *When everyone's asleep. He doesn't say sorry, but he stays a little while.*

My hand had drifted up to my throat, to the empty place where the crescent necklace used to be. I left it there, feeling my own pulse under my fingers. Her pulse.

I'd come into this body ready to walk away from Noah without looking back. I hadn't counted on carrying someone who still loved him.

"If we leave," Ceci whispered, "who will take care of him?"

Isabella's POV

Ruth came for me at dawn.

She didn't knock. She unlocked the pantry, looked at me sitting on the crate with flour on my sleeves, and said, "Alpha's orders. You're on kitchen duty until noon."

"Good morning to you too."

She didn't smile, but she didn't shove me either. She just walked, and I followed her down a narrow corridor that smelled like old stone and yeast until it opened into the kitchen.

Warm steam hit my face. Three big pots were going on the iron range, and one of them held soup, thick and peppery, with onions in it. My stomach clenched so hard I almost bent over.

And then my head turned.

Not toward the pot. Toward the arched doorway that led to the dining hall, toward the head of the long table where Noah would sit. My body waited. It actually waited, still and quiet, for someone to say I was allowed.

Nobody was even in there.

"Sit," Ruth said.

She set a bowl on the corner of the prep counter, away from the doorway where anyone passing could see. Porridge, with a pat of butter melting into the middle. The rim was chipped on one side, a little crescent of bare clay where the glaze had broken off.

I reached for it and heard myself say, "I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm sorry."

Ruth's eyebrows went up a fraction.

I stared at my own hands around the bowl. I'd apologized twice for being handed oatmeal. That wasn't me. That was a year of this body learning that food came with a price.

*He's just been so tired lately,* Ceci said, very softly. *With Evelyn sick, and the council, and the border patrols. He doesn't mean to forget about us.*

"Ceci." I picked up the spoon. "Eat first. Then you can decide who you're worried about."

*But...*

"You don't have to earn breakfast, Ceci."

She went quiet. I ate standing at the counter, burning my tongue and not caring, and somewhere in my chest I felt her ease, just a little, like a dog finally lying down by a fire.

Ruth watched me scrape the bowl clean. She took it back without a word and dropped it in the wash basin.

---

I was elbow-deep in potato peels when Evelyn walked in.

She looked like a spring morning, pale yellow cardigan, the crescent necklace sitting in the hollow of her throat. One of the younger omegas trailed behind her carrying a tray with a single teacup on it.

"Isabella." She said my name like we were old friends. "I heard you had a rough night. I had the infirmary make you something. It's chamomile and valerian, for your nerves." She took the cup off the tray herself and held it out to me. "Noah worries that you get so worked up."

Everyone in the kitchen had stopped pretending to work.

If I refused, I was the jealous wife throwing the sick girl's kindness back in her face. That story would be all over the pack by lunch.

I dried my hands and took the cup. "That's thoughtful."

It smelled like flowers and something bitter underneath. I took one small sip.

Ceci's voice went thick, like she was talking through a pillow. *Isabella... that's... I feel heavy.*

I didn't let anything show on my face. In the book, Isabella had always been so foggy and slow in these last chapters. I'd assumed it was grief.

It could still be grief. One sip and a sluggish wolf didn't prove anything, and I didn't have the luxury of being wrong out loud.

"Thank you, Evelyn," I said. "I'll finish it while I work."

She studied me for a second, then smiled and left with her omega. The kitchen noise picked back up.

I carried the cup to Ruth, who was ladling soup into a row of small glass jars along the back shelf. Each jar had a strip of paper tied to it.

"You keep samples of everything that goes out of this kitchen," I said quietly.

"Since the Alpha's father was poisoned. Twenty years." She didn't look up. "Why?"

"I'd like you to keep one of this."

Now she looked up.

"I'm not accusing anyone," I said. "I'm asking for a jar. Keep the bottle. Write down who brought it."

For a long moment she just held the ladle. Then she took a clean vial from a drawer, poured a measure of tea into it, and corked it. She wrote on the paper strip in small, cramped letters: *Infirmary tea. Brought by Miss Evelyn. 7:40 a.m.*

*Isabella.* Ceci sounded clearer now that the cup was out of my hands. *The key. The spare key for the chain. I saw it once, in the infirmary. In the glass cabinet with the little hooks, on the left side.*

I glanced at Ruth. "Do you do the infirmary inventory?"

"Every Sunday. Bandages, tinctures, keys." Her eyes narrowed. "What are you after, girl?"

"Nothing yet. Next time you count, is there a spare silver key on the left side of the cabinet?"

Ruth tucked the vial onto the back shelf behind the soup jars. "I'll look," she said, and went back to ladling.

---

At noon a guard walked me upstairs to my old bedroom to collect clean clothes. Noah had moved me into the servants' wing months ago, but my things were still here, shoved into the bottom of a wardrobe like nobody wanted to deal with them.

The guard waited outside. I knelt and dug through folded sweaters until my fingers hit metal.

A tin box, the kind cheap cookies come in, with a dent pressed into the lid. I pried it open.

Inside were a dried flower, a ribbon, and a single strawberry candy wrapper, flattened and soft from being handled a thousand times.

I knew what this was. Readers had mocked it endlessly. Isabella kept the wrapper from the candy Noah gave her when they were kids, like it was a wedding ring. I picked it up, already turning toward the trash basket.

*No.* Ceci's panic hit me like cold water. *No, no, please, don't...*

And then I wasn't in the bedroom anymore.

I was seven, and my black dress itched, and I was sitting in wet leaves at the edge of the pack woods where nobody could see me. Behind me, at the house, grown-ups were eating little sandwiches. Every one of them had patted my head and told me to be strong. My mom would want me to be strong. Good girl, so strong.

I wasn't strong. I was shaking.

Footsteps crunched. A boy with scraped knees and hair sticking up in the back sat down next to me in the dirt. Ten, maybe. He didn't say anything. He didn't tell me to stop.

I cried until my nose ran and my chest hurt, and he just sat there, picking at a stick.

When I finally ran out, he dug in his pocket and pulled out two pieces of candy. Then he looked at them, put one back, and handed me the other. Strawberry.

"It's my last good one," he said. "The other's licorice. Nobody likes licorice."

He didn't promise me anything. He didn't say he'd marry me or protect me forever. He just gave me the better candy and walked me back when it got dark.

I came back to myself on the bedroom floor with the wrapper in my palm and my cheeks wet.

Slowly, I laid it on my knee and smoothed it out with my thumb, pressing the creases flat.

I'd spent hundreds of chapters calling her pathetic. A grown woman clinging to a piece of trash.

"She wasn't stupid," I told Ceci. "She was alone."

*He was the only one who let us be sad,* Ceci whispered.

"I know. I saw it." I swallowed. "That night was real. It's worth remembering. But the boy who sat in the leaves isn't the man who signs our name on the full moon. That man's orders are going to kill us, Ceci. Both of us."

Silence. Then, small: *I don't know how to leave him. I don't know how to stop wanting to.*

"I'm not asking you to stop today."

*Then what are you asking?*

"Help me stay awake. When something makes you feel heavy, like that tea, you tell me. When my body reaches for him, you warn me before I do something I'll regret. Can you do that much?"

A long pause. *Yes. I can do that.*

I folded the wrapper in half, then in half again.

"You loved him. I won't take that from you. But we don't die for him."

Three sharp knocks rattled the door. It opened before I answered, and Ruth slipped in, breathing hard like she'd taken the stairs fast. She shut it behind her.

"Owen just went up the east staircase toward your room in the servants' wing," she said low. "He was carrying a man's shirt. White. Folded under his arm like he didn't want anybody to see."

My heart started pounding.

Isabella's POV

Ruth saw the shirt with me. She wrote the time down twice, once on her apron's inventory slip and once on the back of a flour receipt, and that was all we could do before another night passed.

By noon the next day, I was carrying a silver tray into the great hall.

The visiting Alpha had arrived with six guards and a healer, and the whole house smelled like polish and nerves. Noah sat at the head of the table with Evelyn at his right hand. The seat at his left, my seat, held a stranger.

Alpha Roman of Redwater was broader than Noah and quieter, with gray eyes and a short beard. He watched me come in the way a man watches weather, without any hurry.

"My wife is learning the rules of this house," Noah said, as easily as he might comment on the wine. "Isabella. Pour for our guest."

The tray was heavy. The mulled wine was hot enough that steam curled off the decanter, and the silver on my wrist had chafed raw again overnight. I set the tray down at Roman's elbow and lifted the decanter.

The chain caught on the tray's raised edge.

The decanter tipped. Hot wine poured over the back of my hand, and pain shot all the way to my elbow. I didn't drop it. I set it down hard, and red liquid ran across the tablecloth toward Evelyn's plate.

Noah was out of his chair at once.

He turned to Evelyn. "Did it get you?"

"No, I'm fine." She held up her sleeve, spotless. "Poor Isabella."

My hand was already turning pink, then angry red, blisters rising where the silver had rubbed it open. I pressed it against my apron and said nothing.

Roman set his glass down. It wasn't loud, but every conversation at the table stopped.

"Noah," he said. "Stop serving your guests with an injured woman."

Noah's jaw shifted. "This is a household matter."

"You made it my matter when you put her at my elbow." Roman didn't raise his voice. He looked at my wrist, then back at Noah. "Take the chain off before you pour another drink."

*He's angry,* Ceci whispered. *Noah's so angry.*

"I know," I told her. "Let him be."

---

Everyone was waiting for me to cry, or to slip behind the stranger and let him fight for me. I'd read a hundred scenes like that. Isabella never asked for anything. She just hoped somebody would guess.

I turned to Noah.

"I need two things," I said. "I need my hand and wrist looked at by someone who doesn't answer to your infirmary. And I need Ruth with me while it happens."

Noah stared at me like I'd spoken another language. "Our infirmary is perfectly capable."

"Then you lose nothing by letting someone else confirm it."

Roman leaned back. "My healer travels with me. Mae can look at her now."

I watched Noah weigh it. Refusing in front of an allied Alpha would sound like hiding something, and Noah would rather hand me over for an hour than admit there was anything to hide.

"Fine," he said. "Mae can examine her. In the side room. With my guard."

Mae, a short woman with silver-streaked braids and ink stains on her fingers, was already writing on a notepad. She tore the page off, folded it once, and handed it across to Noah's steward. "Medical request. For the record."

I walked toward the side door. Halfway there, I stopped beside Ruth.

She was standing by the serving cart, her apron dusted with flour up to the pockets. Her face gave away nothing.

"Bring the vial," I said quietly. "The one with your label on it."

Noah's voice cut across the room. "Ruth stays here. The kitchen needs her."

I didn't move from her side.

"She comes with me," I said. "I won't leave her here to answer for helping me."

Ruth's mouth pressed flat, and something in her eyes softened, just for a second. Then she untied her apron, folded it over the cart, and followed me out.

---

The medical room next door was small and cold, with a cot, a basin, and a high window. Noah's guard took the corner, rifle slung across his chest. Noah himself stood in the doorway with his arms crossed.

Mae unwound the gauze I'd wrapped that morning and sucked air through her teeth.

"Silver burn on top of a scald," she said. "This has been reopened every day for weeks." She glanced at Noah. "I need the lock opened. Temporarily."

Noah let the silence stretch. Then he tossed a small key onto the cot. "Ten minutes."

"The links are heavy against the wound," Mae said. "Roman, the linen. Hold the chain off her skin while I work the lock."

Roman picked up a folded square of soft linen from the tray. He came around the cot and crouched so he was below my eye level, not above it.

He didn't reach for me. He held the cloth between us and waited.

"Here?" he asked, nodding at the chain where it hung from my wrist. "Tell me if you want me to stop."

Nobody had asked me anything in this body. Not once.

I nodded.

He slid the linen under the links and lifted them, gently, taking their weight. Mae turned the key. The lock clicked, the chain fell open into the cloth, and Roman drew it away.

Cool air touched the raw skin. Then warmth came flooding back into my fingers, slow and stinging, like blood returning after a long winter.

His hand was still near mine, close enough that I could feel heat from it. My whole body went rigid. My shoulders locked. I stopped breathing.

Roman released the cloth and sat back on his heels at once, giving me the space without a word.

I waited for Ceci to surge toward him, or to shove him away. I waited for the pull I felt every time Noah walked into a room.

There was nothing like that. No new tug, no hunger.

But for the first time since I'd woken up on that stone floor, she didn't shrink back into the dark either. She stayed right where she was, quiet and present.

*He asked,* she said, sounding puzzled. *He asked us.*

---

Mae cleaned the wound and wrapped it in fresh gauze. When she finished, I held my good hand out to Ruth.

Ruth took the corked vial from her pocket and laid it in my palm. The label read in her cramped writing: *Infirmary tea. Brought by Miss Evelyn. 7:40 a.m.* I passed it to Mae.

"My wolf goes heavy whenever I drink that," I said. "I'd like it tested somewhere outside this territory. And I'm requesting a medical transfer to Redwater until this wrist heals."

"No," Noah said from the doorway.

Just that. No argument, no explanation.

"Noah..."

"She's my wife. She stays." He turned to the guard. "Chain her when they're done." His eyes moved to Roman. "My hospitality has limits."

He left. The guard stepped forward, picked up the chain, and closed it around my wrist again, over the clean gauze this time. The cold bit straight through.

Mae didn't even glance at him. "I need to do a private examination now. Ribs and back. Out you go."

The guard hesitated, gripping his rifle.

"Unless you'd like to explain to your Alpha why you watched his wife undress," Mae said.

He went. The door shut.

Roman spoke low and fast. "There's a medical supply truck leaving your territory tomorrow morning. Six-fifteen. My guards will be holding the vehicle yard."

"Why not now?"

"Because that chain answers to Noah, not to you." He glanced at my wrist. "If I force it today, he can drop you to your knees before we reach the gate. You'd be the first one hurt."

I swallowed. "Ruth comes too."

Ruth made a small sound. "Girl, I'm sixty-one years old..."

"You come," I said.

Roman nodded. "Both of you. Mae stays here tonight as your attending healer. Nobody can bar her from you without an open insult to Redwater."

Mae tore another page from her notepad and wrote on it. *6:15 a.m. East yard.* She folded it into my bandaged palm.

"I'll send word before I leave the territory tonight," Roman said, standing. "A clear answer, so you know it's still on."

At the door he stopped and looked back at me.

"I can get you out," he said. "You decide whether you come."

The door closed behind him.

I unfolded the paper and read the time again. Six-fifteen.

Deep in my chest, Ceci stirred.

*If we go,* she whispered, *he'll be alone on the full moon.*