I didn't sleep.

I sat on the edge of my bed with Buster's head in my lap, my fingers moving through his fur in slow, steady strokes. The mark on my neck was still cold. Not painful anymore—just absent, like the place a tooth used to be. Every so often I felt a faint pulse of something that wasn't mine bleeding through what should have been a broken line: satisfaction, warmth, the low hum of a body pressed against another body.

Colton. With her. Still.

I closed my eyes and let it pass through me. It hurt less than I expected. Or maybe I was just getting better at not showing it, even to myself.

Gray light was leaking through the curtains when the knock came. It wasn't really a knock. It was the sound of a man announcing that the door was about to open whether I answered or not.

Colton walked in first. April walked in second. She was already dressed for the ceremony—pale silk, hair pinned up, the neckline low enough to show the unbroken skin where a mark would go.

"The ceremony will proceed at noon," Colton said. No preamble. No good morning. "April will be marked as Luna before every allied Alpha in attendance."

Buster's low growl started somewhere in his chest. I laid my hand on his shoulder.

"You will accept the rejection quietly," Colton went on. "You will relinquish any claim to Ironridge—territory, resources, standing. You will be off pack land by midday."

Then he pulled the Alpha tone.

It hit me like a hand pressing down on the top of my skull. My spine wanted to fold. My knees, still braced against the bed frame, buckled inward. Air left my lungs in a small, involuntary sound. Every wolf in the pack, from Delta to Gamma, would have been on the floor by now.

I wasn't on the floor.

I was trembling. My hands were shaking so hard Buster whined and pressed his flank against my leg. But I was still upright. Something inside my chest—something older than the broken bond, something that had been sleeping under my skin my entire life—pushed back. Not loudly. Just enough.

Colton's face changed.

It was the smallest shift, but I saw it. A flicker of confusion in the line of his mouth. He pushed the tone harder. The pressure doubled. My vision grayed at the edges. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, and I did not drop.

April noticed before he did. Her eyes narrowed—two flat, calculating slits. Her head tilted a fraction, the way a person tilts their head when a piece on the board has moved in a direction it shouldn't be able to move.

Colton let the tone go.

The pressure lifted so suddenly I almost fell forward. I caught the bedpost with one hand. Straightened. Made myself look at him.

"Understood?" he said. His voice was rougher than before.

I didn't answer that question. I answered a different one.

"I know the truth about April's body." I kept my voice low. Almost gentle. "I know what she sacrificed—and what she didn't."

Colton froze.

I mean physically froze. His mouth was still open around a word he had not finished saying. His hand, half-raised to gesture at the door, stopped in the air.

April's composure fractured for exactly one second. I watched it happen—a hairline crack running across a porcelain surface. Her lips parted. Her weight shifted onto her back foot. One second. Then the mask snapped back into place, smoother than before.

"She's grasping," April said lightly. She touched Colton's arm. "Colton. Look at her. She's been rejected in front of the entire pack. She'll say anything."

Colton's hand lowered slowly. He looked at me for a long moment, and I could see him trying to decide what I could possibly know, and how, and whether it mattered.

"Lock the door behind us," he said finally, without taking his eyes off me. "She stays in this room until the ceremony is over."

April lingered a beat longer after Colton stepped out. She studied me the way you study a lock you intend to pick later. No anger in her face. Just assessment.

"Whatever you think you know," she said quietly, "you won't get a chance to say it."

"I already have a chance," I said. "You just haven't noticed yet."

She smiled—thin, sharp—and left.

The lock clicked.

I sat back down on the bed. My hands were still shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs until they stopped. Buster jumped up beside me and laid his head on my knee, brown eyes fixed on my face.

"It's okay," I whispered. "It's okay."

I listened to Colton and April's footsteps fade down the hall. I listened to the pack house begin to wake—doors opening, voices in the kitchens, the distant sound of chairs being arranged in the amphitheater.

Then I heard something else.

A soft, rhythmic scraping at the base of the door. Wood splintering, small and patient. I looked down at Buster and realized he had jumped off the bed at some point without my noticing.

He was on the other side of the door.

I don't know how long it took him. Maybe forty minutes. Maybe an hour. Long enough that when the latch mechanism finally gave with a small dry crack and the door swung inward on its hinges, the light in the room had shifted from gray to pale gold.

Buster stood in the doorway. His tail moved once.

I crossed the room and knelt down and scratched behind his ears the way I always did—at eye level, the way no one else in this pack had ever bothered to do with him.

"Good boy," I whispered. "Good, good boy."

I pulled on my jacket. I checked the inside pocket for my phone—the one with the photographs of my journal, the dates, the supply route numbers, the overheard conversations I had been writing down for two years without knowing why. It was still there.

I took the small recorder out of the drawer and slipped it into the other pocket.

Then I opened the door the rest of the way and stepped into the hallway. Buster fell into step at my heel.

I didn't run. I didn't hide. I walked toward the amphitheater the way a person walks toward a place they have every right to be.

Somewhere below the ceremonial terrace, a microphone was already live. I could hear the faint hum of it through the open windows.

Good.