The howl of the Obsidian Shadow Pack tore through the night air, signaling the start of the Full Moon Run. For the first time in ten years, the sound didn't make me cower in the corner of my cell. It was my signal.

I stood by the heavy oak door, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The lock clicked—a sound so soft I almost missed it. The handle turned, and the door creaked open just an inch.

Gamma Remi stood in the shadows of the hallway. He didn't look at me. He couldn't. Shame radiated off him in waves, but so did something else: pity. He dropped a bundle of dark fabric on the floor and walked away without a word, disappearing into the chaos of the shifting wolves outside.

I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the bundle—a heavy wool cloak soaked in river water and crushed pine needles. A scent masker. I threw it over my thin, trembling frame and slipped out into the night.

The forest was a blur of shadows and silver light. My legs, atrophied from a decade of confinement, burned with every step. My lungs screamed for air, but I forced myself to keep moving. I couldn't shift. My wolf was buried deep under layers of grief, silent and cold since Lennox took his last breath. I was just a human woman running through a predator’s playground.

I stopped by the creek, smearing freezing mud over my face and neck, layering the scent of the earth over my own fear. I wasn't just running away; I had a destination. Before I disappeared into the Northern Territories, I needed the one thing Elias hadn't stolen yet.

My grandmother’s grimoire.

It took hours to reach the ruins of the Silver Lake Pack territory. The burned-out skeletons of cabins stood like gravestones in the moonlight. I made my way toward the main house—my childhood home. It was the only structure still fully standing, claimed by the Obsidian Pack as an outpost.

I expected darkness. Instead, a warm glow flickered in the living room window.

I crept closer, pressing my back against the rotting wood of the porch. Through the grime-streaked glass, I saw her. Giselle.

She was lounging in my father’s old armchair, a glass of wine in one hand. A fire roared in the hearth, but she wasn't burning wood. She was tossing handfuls of yellowed parchment into the flames.

I squinted, my breath hitching. I recognized the seal on the papers. The Beta seal. My father’s private logs.

“So easy,” Giselle murmured to herself, tossing another stack into the fire. “Treason… honestly, Elias will believe anything if it keeps his precious reputation clean. Goodbye, proof.”

Rage, hot and blinding, surged through me. Those papers proved my father was innocent. They proved my pack was destroyed for nothing. And she was burning them like trash.

I didn't care about the papers anymore. They were ash. But the grimoire was hidden beneath the floorboards in the hallway. It held generations of healing knowledge—my legacy. I couldn't leave it to her.

I eased the front door open. It groaned, the sound echoing like a gunshot.

Giselle spun around. Her eyes, glowing with the amber hue of her wolf, locked onto me. She didn't look surprised. She looked delighted.

“Well, well,” she drawled, setting her wine glass down. “The stray got out.”

“Get out of my house,” I rasped, my voice raw.

“Your house?” She laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “Everything here belongs to the pack, Maeve. Which means it belongs to me.”

I lunged for the hallway, desperate to reach the loose floorboard. But I was weak, starved, and exhausted. Giselle was fed, rested, and fueled by malice. She caught me before I made it three steps.

She grabbed a handful of my hair and slammed me into the wall. Stars exploded in my vision. I slid to the floor, gasping for breath.

“You smell like mud and desperation,” she sneered, looming over me. “Did you really think you could just walk in here and take what you wanted?”

“It’s mine,” I spat, trying to push myself up. “The grimoire… you can't use it. You don't have the gift.”

Giselle’s face twisted. I had struck a nerve. The fraud. The pretender.

“I don't need the gift,” she hissed, stepping closer. “I have the title. And I have the Alpha. That’s all that matters.”

She looked down at my hands—my trembling, dirt-stained hands that had saved hundreds of lives before Elias locked me away. Her eyes narrowed.

“You know,” she said softly, “Elias always talks about your hands. ‘Maeve’s magic touch.’ It makes me sick.”

She lifted her boot. A heavy, steel-toed combat boot.

Realization hit me a second too late. I tried to pull my right hand back, but she was faster.

**CRUNCH.**

The sound was wet and sickening, like stepping on dry twigs. Agony, white-hot and electric, shot up my arm and exploded in my brain. I screamed, a guttural sound that tore at my throat.

Giselle ground her heel down, twisting it into the shattered bones of my hand. I could feel the delicate metacarpals—the channels for my healing energy—grinding into dust.

“Oops,” she whispered, smiling down at me as I writhed on the floor, clutching my mangled hand to my chest. “Looks like the Healer is out of commission.”

I couldn't breathe. The pain was a living thing, consuming me. My gift. My life. My only way to fix the world. Broken.

“Run along now, stray,” Giselle said, kicking me in the ribs. “Before I decide to finish the job.”

I didn't look back. I couldn't. clutching my ruined hand, I scrambled out the door and into the darkness, leaving my history, my proof, and my future burning in the hearth behind me.

The world had narrowed down to the screaming agony in my right hand. I curled into a ball on the dusty floorboards of my childhood home, clutching my wrist to my chest, trying to keep the shattered pieces of my fingers from moving.

“Pathetic,” Giselle sneered, her voice vibrating above me. I heard the scrape of her boot as she drew her leg back for another kick. “You should have stayed dead, Maeve. It would have been cleaner.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the impact.

It never came.

The front door slammed open with a force that rattled the windows. The sudden draft of cold air smelled of lavender and old steel—a scent I hadn’t encountered in years, but one that commanded instant respect.

“That is enough!”

Giselle froze, her foot hovering in the air. She stumbled back, her amber eyes widening as she took in the figure standing in the doorway.

Mrs. Wilson. The former Luna. Elias’s mother.

She stood tall despite her age, her silver hair pulled back in a severe bun, wrapped in a heavy fur coat. She didn’t look at me. Her gaze was fixed on Giselle like a laser sight.

“Luna Wilson,” Giselle stammered, dropping her leg and smoothing her skirt, her sociopathic mask sliding back into place. “Thank the Goddess you’re here. This… this rogue broke in. She attacked me. I was just defending the pack’s property.”

Mrs. Wilson stepped into the room. She didn’t walk; she marched. She passed me without a glance and stopped inches from Giselle.

“Defending property?” Mrs. Wilson asked, her voice dangerously calm. She glanced at the fire, where my father’s logs were turning to ash, and then down at my mangled, bleeding hand. “By destroying the only thing that has kept this pack alive for the last decade?”

“I—I don’t know what you mean,” Giselle lied, her voice pitching higher. “She’s a traitor’s daughter. She—”

*Crack.*

The sound of Mrs. Wilson’s cane striking Giselle’s temple was sharp and decisive. Giselle’s eyes rolled back, and she crumpled to the floor in a heap of unconscious limbs.

Silence rushed back into the room, broken only by the crackling fire and my ragged breathing. Mrs. Wilson turned slowly to face me. For the first time in ten years, she didn’t look at me with disdain. Her eyes were wet.

“I saw him,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Before the ceremony. I saw the boy in the annex garden once. He had Elias’s chin. He had my eyes.” She took a shaky breath. “He was my grandson, wasn’t he?”

I nodded, tears mixing with the dirt on my face. “Lennox. His name was Lennox.”

A sob escaped her throat, but she choked it down, her Alpha blood forcing her to remain composed. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a set of keys and a thick envelope. She dropped them onto my lap.

“My SUV is parked behind the woodshed. It has a full tank. The envelope has cash—untraceable.” She looked at Giselle’s unconscious body with pure revulsion. “When Elias finds out what she did… he will tear this world apart. You need to be gone before that happens.”

“Why?” I rasped, clutching the keys with my good hand. “You hated me.”

“I hated the lie I was told,” she corrected, her gaze hardening. “Go, Maeve. Run. And don’t let them find you.”

***

The drive north was a blur of torture. Every vibration of the steering wheel sent bolts of lightning up my right arm. I drove one-handed, my left hand gripping the wheel until my knuckles turned white, my shattered right hand cradled in my lap, wrapped in a scarf I’d found in the backseat.

I didn't stop for food. I didn't stop to sleep. I just drove until the trees turned into jagged pines and the air grew thin and biting.

Montana. The Rogue Territories.

By the time I saw the flickering lights of the settlement tucked into the valley, my vision was tunneling. I pulled the SUV up to the cabin Mrs. Wilson had described—a rough-hewn structure with smoke curling from the chimney.

I opened the door and fell out.

The snow was freezing against my cheek. I tried to crawl, but my body had nothing left.

“Well, shit,” a rough voice said above me.

Strong hands grabbed my shoulders. I was hauled up and dragged into the warmth. The smell of sage and antiseptic filled my nose.

“Elena?” I whispered, the name Mrs. Wilson had given me feeling heavy on my tongue.

“That’s me,” the woman grunted, lifting me onto a sturdy wooden table. She was older, her face lined with scars, her eyes sharp and assessing. She took one look at my hand and swore softly. “Who did this to you, girl?”

“The Luna,” I choked out.

Elena didn’t ask questions. She got to work.

The setting of the bones was worse than the breaking. I screamed until my voice gave out, and then I passed out from the pain. When I woke, the cabin was dark, lit only by a kerosene lamp. My hand was encased in a heavy plaster cast, elevated on a pillow.

Elena was sitting nearby, grinding herbs in a mortar. She didn’t look up when she spoke.

“I set the bones,” she said, her voice flat. “You’ll keep the hand. You’ll even get some movement back eventually.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Thank the Goddess.”

“Don’t thank her yet,” Elena said, finally looking at me. Her expression was grim. “ The metacarpals were pulverized, Maeve. The energy pathways are severed. I’ve seen this kind of injury in warriors before. You can hold a spoon, maybe drive a car. But you will never channel healing energy through that hand again.”

The words hit me harder than Giselle’s boot. My gift. The one thing that defined me, the one thing that allowed me to save lives… gone.

I stared at the ceiling, waiting for the tears. But I was dry. I was empty.

“Fine,” I whispered into the darkness. “Then I’ll use my mind. I’ll use herbs. I don’t need magic to be a healer.”

Elena smiled, a small, crooked thing. “That’s the spirit.”

Suddenly, a phantom pain ripped through my chest—not physical, but spiritual. It was a hollow, sucking sensation, like the air had been pulled out of the room. I gasped, clutching my heart with my good hand.

The bond.

Even dormant, even rejected in spirit if not in word, the mate bond was a living tether. And across hundreds of miles, I felt the exact moment Elias broke.

I could feel it as if I were standing in the room with him. The sudden, suffocating realization. The smell of stale air in the annex. The lingering scent of burnt pine and vanilla—Lennox.

*Maeve?*

His voice echoed in the deepest recesses of my mind, not a mind-link, but a soul-cry. It was soaked in panic. He was on his knees. I could feel his Alpha aura collapsing, imploding under the weight of a silent, empty room and a small pile of ash on the floor.

He was screaming my name. He was drowning in the grief I had lived in for years.

I closed my eyes and visualized a heavy iron door in my mind. I took all that pain, all that sudden, desperate regret flowing from him, and I shoved it behind the door.

*You’re too late, Elias,* I thought, as I slammed the mental door shut, severing the connection.

I turned my head to the window, watching the snow fall on the unforgiving mountains. I was broken. I was rankless. But for the first time in ten years, I was free.