I was not Mae anymore.

I knew it the moment I opened my eyes in the pack infirmary and felt the difference — the absence of that soft, aching warmth that had lived in my chest for as long as I could remember. Mae's warmth. Mae's hope. Gone, like a candle snuffed between two fingers.

What remained was something colder. Cleaner.

Me.

I sat up slowly, taking inventory. The body was bruised, the ribs tender, the left ankle wrapped tight. Manageable. I rolled my neck once, felt the vertebrae settle, and folded my hands in my lap just as the infirmary door swung open.

Finnley.

He walked in with Silas at his shoulder, the Beta hovering half a step behind the way he always did — useful, obedient, invisible. Finnley's gaze swept the room with the practiced authority of a man who expected the world to rearrange itself around his arrival. When it landed on me, something flickered across his face. Surprise, maybe. He'd been expecting tears.

'Mae.' His voice carried that particular weight Alphas used when they wanted you to feel small. 'I'm glad you're awake. I wanted to speak with you about your position in the pack going forward.'

I said nothing. I let the silence stretch — three beats, four — and watched him fill it with discomfort.

'Given the circumstances,' he continued, jaw tightening, 'I'm prepared to allow you to remain in Moonveil as a mid-rank member. It's more than most would offer.'

More than most would offer. I turned the phrase over once, the way you'd examine something you found on the ground before deciding it wasn't worth picking up.

'Mae is gone,' I said.

My voice came out flat. Even. Not cold the way grief is cold, but cold the way stone is cold — indifferent to temperature entirely.

Finnley blinked. 'What?'

'The she-wolf you rejected.' I held his gaze without effort. 'The one who spent three years shoring up your crumbling leadership, who exposed Petra Voss when she tried to crawl into your bed, who folded your Luna gown and left it exactly where she found it because she still had more dignity than you deserved.' I paused. 'She's gone. You should be grateful. She would have forgiven you eventually. I won't.'

The silence that followed was a different kind. Heavier.

Silas had gone very still. Finnley's expression cycled through something I didn't bother to name before settling into the familiar architecture of his arrogance.

'This is another performance,' he said. 'Another manipulation. You've always been good at this, Mae — reinventing yourself when the last version stopped working.'

I smiled. It didn't reach my eyes. I knew it didn't, because I felt nothing behind it.

'Believe whatever helps you sleep,' I said, and swung my legs off the cot.

---

I was out of the infirmary within the hour.

The Alpha quarters were at the top of the east wing, all dark wood and high ceilings and the particular smell of Finnley's authority soaked into every surface. I had lived in the adjacent suite for two years. I walked through it now like I was walking through a building I'd never owned.

I packed with mechanical precision. Clothes, documents, the small locked box that held Mae's personal records. Nothing decorative. Nothing sentimental. The framed photograph of the pack's eastern border at dawn — Mae's favorite — I left on the dresser without looking at it twice.

Pack members clustered in the hallway as I moved through it, a rolling murmur of whispers trailing behind me like smoke.

'She's lost it.'

'Did you see her face? Nothing there.'

'Good riddance.'

I didn't slow down. Their words landed and slid off, finding no purchase.

The room I claimed was in the farthest wing of the pack house — small, neutral, smelling of nothing. A bed, a desk, a window facing north. It was perfect. I set my bag down, sat at the desk, and opened Mae's financial files.

---

I worked through the night.

Mae had always known this pack's numbers better than anyone — better than Finnley, better than his Beta, better than the pack treasurer who'd been cooking the secondary accounts for two years and thought no one had noticed. She'd never used that knowledge. She'd been saving it, the way you save something precious, for a moment that never came.

The moment had come.

By the time the sky outside my north-facing window began to lighten, I had the full picture. Total assets. Liquid holdings. Territory valuations. The offshore accounts Kamari had been quietly bleeding for eighteen months. All of it, mapped and calculated and reduced to a single, precise number.

Forty-nine percent.

Not fifty. Fifty would destroy the pack, and I had no interest in destruction for its own sake. Forty-nine would cripple Finnley's operations just enough that he would feel every single consequence of what he'd done — every morning, every budget meeting, every decision — for years.

I wanted him to live with it.

I set down my pen, flexed my fingers once, and looked at the contract I'd drafted.

Clean. Bulletproof. Devastating.

Finnley Lynch had no idea what was coming for him.

I had the contract ready before Finnley even sat down.

The Alpha study smelled the same as it always had — dark wood, old leather, the faint mineral edge of authority that soaked into every surface of this room. I'd stood in this space a hundred times as Mae, always slightly angled toward Finnley, always half-braced for his coldness. I stood differently now. Centered. Still.

Finnley took his chair behind the desk. Silas positioned himself to the left, arms folded, expression carefully neutral in the way of a man who had learned that neutrality was the safest place to be. Neither of them spoke first. They were waiting for me to perform the usual ritual — the hesitation, the softening, the careful management of his ego before any real conversation could begin.

I slid the contract across the desk instead.

Finnley looked at it. Then at me. Then back at it.

The silence lasted exactly as long as it took him to reach the number on page three.

'Forty-nine percent.' His voice came out low and strange, like something had snagged in his throat. He looked up. 'You're out of your mind.'

'The calculation is on the attached schedule,' I said. 'Territory valuations, liquid holdings, the secondary accounts your treasurer has been misreporting for two years. All documented. All verified.'

He stood so fast his chair scraped back against the floor. Both palms hit the desk with a crack that rattled the lamp.

'This is exactly what I said you were.' His voice had gone hard and hot, the Alpha tone bleeding into the edges of it. 'Every sacrifice, every move you made — it was always about this. The assets. The power. You never cared about me or this pack. You were running a long game from the beginning.'

I let him finish. I watched his chest heave and his jaw work and his hands press flat against the wood like he needed something solid to hold onto.

'Are you done?' I asked.

'Mae—'

'Reyna.' I said it without heat. 'And no, I wasn't running a long game. Mae wasn't capable of it. She loved you too much to think that clearly.' I tilted my head slightly. 'I don't have that problem.'

Silas made a small sound. I didn't look at him.

'You can refuse to sign,' I continued. 'That's your right. But I'd encourage you to read section four before you decide. Ancient pack law, pre-dating the Moonveil charter. A rejected mate who is denied fair severance can petition the Moon Goddess directly. The curse that follows an unsanctioned union—' I paused, just long enough. '—tends to be hard on Lunas.'

Finnley's expression shifted. Something moved behind his eyes that wasn't rage anymore.

The door opened.

I knew who it was before I turned around. I recognized the particular quality of his footsteps — unhurried, deliberate, the walk of a man who had spent decades making sure every room knew he'd arrived.

Kamari Henderson looked exactly as he always did. Composed. Concerned. Performing both with the ease of long practice.

'I came as soon as I heard.' He addressed the room rather than me, which told me everything about what he wanted. His gaze swept to Finnley with the practiced warmth of a man offering alliance. 'This situation has gotten out of hand. As Mae's father, I feel it's my responsibility to help manage—'

'Sit down, Kamari,' I said.

He blinked. 'Excuse me?'

'Or don't. It won't change what happens next.' I turned to face him fully. 'You're here because you heard forty-nine percent and started doing arithmetic. You want the settlement routed through your faction. Safekeeping, you'll call it. Temporary stewardship. You'll have a very reasonable-sounding name for it.'

His expression flickered. Just once.

'I'm going to save us both some time,' I said. 'On the fourteenth of March, eighteen years ago, Mae was held in a storage facility twelve miles from pack territory for nine days. You knew her location by day three. You waited six more days because the extraction would have cost you a political favor you weren't willing to spend.' I watched the color leave his face. 'She was eight years old. She was alone. And you did the math and decided she wasn't worth it.'

The room had gone absolutely silent.

'You don't get a single cent of this settlement,' I said. 'You don't get a seat at this table, or any table in this pack house. Effective today, your rank is Omega. You'll find your new quarters have already been arranged.'

Kamari opened his mouth.

'I'm finished speaking to you,' I said.

He closed it.

I turned back to Finnley. He was staring at me with an expression I hadn't seen on him before — not rage, not contempt. Something quieter and more unsettled, like a man who had just watched a wall come down and wasn't sure yet what was standing behind it.

'The contract,' I said, 'is still on your desk.'