The courtyard was full of witnesses.

Thirty-seven pack members, arranged in a loose semicircle around the stone platform where Jace stood with Lorelai at his side. I counted them as I walked forward. Gareth. Sable. The Gamma and his mate. Omegas from the kitchens. Warriors from the patrol rotation. All of them watching.

Jace's voice carried across the courtyard, formal and absolute. "Teagan Snyder, you stand accused of forcing wolfsbane tea on Lorelai Flores in an attempt to abort the heir she carries. Do you deny this?"

I looked at him. His face was carved from stone. His aura pressed down on the assembled pack like a physical weight. Lorelai stood beside him with one hand resting on her flat stomach, her expression carefully composed into wounded dignity.

I had not forced wolfsbane on anyone. I had not been near Lorelai's quarters. I had witnesses who could confirm I'd been in the library during the time she claimed the incident occurred.

None of that mattered.

"I deny it," I said. My voice was steady.

Jace's jaw tightened. "Lorelai has provided testimony. The pack healer found traces of wolfsbane in her system."

Of course she had. Lorelai had likely dosed herself—just enough to register on examination, not enough to cause real harm. It was elegant. Efficient. The kind of lie that required planning.

"Then someone else gave it to her," I said. "It wasn't me."

"Enough." Jace's Alpha tone slammed into me like a fist. My knees buckled. My body moved without my permission, sinking down onto the cold stone platform. The compulsion locked my spine straight, my head bowed, my hands flat against my thighs.

I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. My wolf clawed at the inside of my chest, snarling, but the Alpha tone crushed her.

"You will apologize to Lorelai," Jace said. His voice was calm. Patient. "You will beg her forgiveness for this accusation and for the distress you have caused her and the child she carries."

My mouth opened. The words came out in my voice but they weren't mine.

"I apologize," I said. Each word felt like swallowing glass. "I was wrong. Please forgive me."

Lorelai stepped forward. She reached down and placed one hand on my shoulder. Her touch was light. Gentle. Performed for the witnesses.

"Of course I forgive you, Teagan," she said softly. "I know you're grieving. I know this has been hard for you. But you have to let go of the past and accept what's happening now."

Her fingers pressed down just slightly. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just enough for me to feel.

I looked up at her. Her face was serene. Sympathetic. Her eyes were empty.

Something inside me went very still.

Not broken. Not shattered. Still.

I felt the mate bond's phantom—the cedar-and-rain scent that had once pulled me like gravity, that had made me believe the Moon Goddess had blessed me—fade into something cold and structural. Not love. Not connection. Just a scar. A mark on my neck that meant nothing.

I didn't look at Jace. I looked past him, past the assembled pack, to the forest line beyond the courtyard wall.

The Alpha tone released. My body was mine again.

I stood slowly. My knees were scraped from the stone. I could feel blood seeping through my jeans. I didn't brush it away.

"Thank you for your forgiveness, Lorelai," I said. My voice was hollow. Empty.

She smiled. "Of course."

Jace dismissed the assembly with a gesture. The pack dispersed in silence. No one met my eyes. Gareth lingered near the platform, his expression carefully neutral. Sable had already disappeared.

I walked back to the room near the service corridor. My hands were steady. My breathing was even. I felt nothing.

That night, I sat at the small desk by the window and added thirty-seven names to the evidence packet's contextual record. I wrote down the date, the time, the exact wording of Jace's command. I noted Lorelai's hand on her stomach, the way she'd touched my shoulder, the performance of forgiveness.

I didn't know yet what I would use it for.

I knew only that I would use it.

My wolf stirred in the hollow space behind my ribs. She didn't snarl. She didn't howl. She just waited.

She was learning patience.

---

Lorelai began visiting my mother three days later.

I heard about it from one of the omegas who worked the border cottages. She mentioned it in passing while folding laundry in the service corridor—how kind it was that the new Luna was checking on Maryam, how Lorelai brought tea and sat with her for hours.

My mother lived in a small cottage at the edge of Shadowridge territory. She'd moved there two years ago when her mind-link disorder made pack house life too overwhelming. The cottage was quiet. Isolated. Close enough to pack lands that she was technically under protection, far enough that she didn't have to endure the constant mental noise of pack consciousness.

I visited her twice a week. We sat together in silence mostly. She didn't always remember my name. Sometimes she thought I was her sister. Sometimes she knew exactly who I was and looked at me with a clarity that hurt.

The idea of Lorelai sitting in that cottage made my skin crawl.

I went to see my mother the next afternoon. She was sitting by the window when I arrived, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes unfocused.

"Mom," I said softly.

She turned. Her face brightened. "Teagan. You came."

"I always come," I said. I sat down beside her and took her hand. Her fingers were cold.

"That girl was here," she said. Her voice was thin. Uncertain. "The one with the dark hair. She brought tea."

"Lorelai?"

"Yes." My mother's grip tightened. "She talked to me. In my head. I couldn't make her stop."

My blood went cold. "What do you mean, in your head?"

"She pushed into the link," my mother whispered. "The broken one. The one I can't close anymore. She told me things. Terrible things."

"What things?"

My mother's eyes filled with tears. "About you. About the babies. About what he did."

I went very still.

Lorelai had forced a partial mind-link onto my mother. She'd used her fractured consciousness—the disorder that left her unable to ground herself, unable to close mental channels—to whisper poison directly into her mind.

"Mom," I said carefully. "When she comes again, don't let her in. Lock the door. Don't answer."

My mother looked at me. For a moment, her eyes were completely clear.

"She's going to kill me," she said.

The words landed like stones.

"No," I said. My voice was shaking. "I won't let that happen. I'll talk to Jace. I'll—"

"He won't help you," my mother said. "You know that."

I did know that. But I couldn't say it out loud.

I stayed with her until sunset. When I left, I made sure the door was locked. I checked the wards around the cottage. They were weak—barely functional—but they were there.

It wasn't enough.

I knew it wasn't enough.

The neutral pack archivist's office smelled like old paper and cedar oil. I sat across from him with my hands folded in my lap, my face carefully blank. He was an older wolf, grey-muzzled and precise, bound by inter-pack law to provide documentation requested by a sitting Luna.

Even a Luna nobody wanted anymore.

"The footage you requested," he said, sliding a sealed drive across the desk. "Border camera seventeen, the night of Maryam Snyder's death. Time-stamped and unedited."

I took the drive. My fingers closed around the small metal case. It was cool. Solid. Real.

"Thank you," I said.

He nodded once. His eyes held something that might have been pity. I didn't want it.

I left his office and drove back to Shadowridge in silence. The drive sat in my pocket like a stone. I didn't look at it. I didn't need to. I already knew what it would show.

Omar's shifted form on the forest road. The exact time matching Lorelai's forced mind-link to my mother. The timeline that proved what everyone had decided was an accident was actually murder.

I added the drive to the evidence packet that night. My hands were steady. They didn't shake anymore. I was past the stage where my hands shook.

The packet was almost complete now. Wolfsbane purchase records. Healer's reports documenting three years of poisoning labeled as hormonal irregularities. Omar's rogue-payment ledger in Gareth's handwriting. Security footage. Witness lists. The Luna Accord clause I'd embedded in Shadowridge's alliance treaties two years ago, triggered automatically the moment I crossed pack borders without Council consent.

I sealed it. I addressed it to the Lycan Council. I did not send it yet.

I was waiting for one more thing.

---

Jace granted me a memorial pyre for my mother. I think he did it to make me stop asking. Or maybe he did it because even he understood that denying a Luna the right to honor her dead would look bad to the allied packs.

Either way, I got my pyre.

It was held on Shadowridge grounds at sunset. The platform was built near the forest line, away from the main pack house. Practical. Out of the way. The kind of location you'd choose for something you wanted to finish quickly.

Pack members arrived in small groups. They stood in uncomfortable silence, fulfilling an obligation. Gareth was there. Sable. The Gamma and his mate. Omegas from the kitchens. Warriors from the patrol rotation. All of them watching with the careful blankness of people who wanted to be anywhere else.

Lorelai stood beside Jace with her hand in the crook of his arm. She wore a soft grey dress. Her face was composed into quiet grief. Performed. Perfect.

I stood on the pyre's opposite side, alone.

The fire burned hot. The flames climbed high, consuming the simple wooden frame that held my mother's body. I watched the smoke rise into the darkening sky. I didn't cry. I had no tears left.

When the flames burned low, I stepped forward with the ceremonial urn. My hands were shaking now. Not from grief. From rage. From exhaustion. From the effort of holding myself together in front of thirty-seven witnesses who had watched me kneel in the courtyard three weeks ago and done nothing.

I gathered my mother's ashes with a small copper scoop. Grey dust. Fragments of bone. This was what remained of the woman who had raised me alone, who had sung to me when I was small, who had looked at me with perfect clarity in her final weeks and told me she knew what was happening.

The urn filled slowly. I worked in silence. No one spoke. The only sound was the crackling of dying embers and the wind moving through the trees.

I was gathering the last of the ashes when Lorelai moved.

She stepped closer to the memorial table—too close, her body angled wrong—and her elbow caught the urn's edge. The ceramic vessel tipped. Tilted. Fell.

My mother's ashes scattered across the wet mud.

Grey dust coated the ground. It mixed with boot prints and rain and the crushed grass where the pack had been standing. The urn rolled to a stop at Lorelai's feet. Empty.

The assembled pack went silent.

I lunged forward. I didn't think. I didn't plan. Something primal and shattered drove me. My hands reached for Lorelai's throat. My wolf slammed against the inside of my chest, snarling, awake, furious.

Jace stepped between us.

His Alpha aura hit me like a physical blow. The weight of it drove the air from my lungs. My body stopped moving. My hands froze mid-reach. My wolf was crushed back into silence.

I stood there, locked in place, staring at Jace's chest.

"Stop causing a scene at your own mother's memorial," he said. His voice was calm. Controlled. The tone you'd use with a child throwing a tantrum.

I looked down. My mother's ashes were on my shoes. Grey dust mixed with mud. Boot prints crossed through the scattered remains. Unrecoverable.

The Alpha aura pressed down harder. I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't even lower my hands.

Lorelai stepped back, her face carefully arranged into shock. "I'm so sorry," she said softly. "It was an accident. I didn't mean—"

"It's fine," Jace said. He didn't look at her. He was looking at me. "Teagan understands."

The aura released.

My body was mine again. My hands dropped to my sides. I looked at the mud. At the ashes. At the empty urn lying on its side.

Something inside me did not break.

It ceased to exist.

I turned and walked away from the pyre. I didn't look back. I didn't acknowledge the witnesses. I walked through the pack house, down the service corridor, to the small room with the window facing the laundry yard.

I sat on the bed with my mother's quilt pulled around my shoulders. My shoes were still covered in ash. I didn't take them off.

I pulled out the evidence packet. I added one final entry: Memorial desecration, witnessed by thirty-seven pack members. Alpha intervention to protect perpetrator. Ashes unrecoverable.

Then I sealed the packet for the last time.

Tomorrow, I would cross the border into neutral territory. The Luna Accord clause would activate automatically. The evidence would transmit to the Lycan Council. Every alliance Shadowridge held would dissolve simultaneously.

And I would be gone before anyone realized what I'd done.

I lay down in the dark with my mother's ashes still on my shoes and waited for dawn.