The bucket hits the floor before I do.

One second I'm scrubbing the same three tiles I've been working on for the past hour, mind blank and body numb. The next, something in my chest snaps—not breaks, snaps, like a rope pulled too tight finally giving way.

The pain is instant and absolute. Not physical. Worse than physical.

I know, before I even understand what I'm knowing, that my mother is gone.

I'm running before the mop hits the ground. My shoes slip on the wet marble and I go down hard on one knee, but I don't stop. Can't stop. The hospital is three corridors away and I take them at a sprint, my lungs burning, that severed bond screaming in my chest like an open wound.

The elevator takes too long. I slam the button six times, seven, then abandon it for the stairs. My legs are shaking—twelve hours of serving and scrubbing and pretending to be invisible—but I force them to move. Three flights. Two. One.

The ground floor opens into chaos.

Pack members crowd the main entrance, their voices a dull roar that makes no sense. Someone's crying. Someone else is on their phone. I shove through them, using my elbows, my shoulders, anything to get past the wall of bodies blocking my path to the courtyard.

"—jumped, I swear, I saw her—"

"—third floor window—"

"—call the Alpha—"

No.

No no no no no.

I break through the crowd and the world stops.

Mama is lying on the pavement in a position that bodies aren't supposed to make. Her hospital gown is bunched around her waist. One of her slippers is missing. Her eyes are open, staring up at the night sky like she's searching for something she'll never find.

The scream that comes out of me doesn't sound human.

I collapse onto her, my hands hovering over her broken body because I don't know where to touch, where it's safe, how to fix this. Her skin is still warm. Still warm, like maybe if I just—if I could just—

"Mama." The word is a sob. "Mama, please, wake up, please—"

Her eyes don't blink.

I press my forehead to hers, and the bond that's supposed to be there—that golden thread connecting mother to daughter—is just gone. Severed. Empty space where her presence used to live in my chest.

Someone tries to pull me away. I snarl at them, actually snarl, and they back off.

I don't know how long I stay there. Could be seconds. Could be hours. Time has stopped meaning anything.

Then I hear his voice.

"What the hell is going on out here?"

Marcel pushes through the crowd with four warriors at his back. He's still in his dinner clothes—the treaty delegation must have just finished dessert. His eyes scan the scene with the detached efficiency of someone assessing property damage.

They land on me. On Mama's body beneath me.

His jaw tightens.

"Macy." He says my name like a command. "Get up."

I can't move. Can't breathe. Can't do anything except hold my mother's cooling hand and wish I'd been faster, smarter, strong enough to stop this.

"Macy." He's closer now. "I said get up."

His hand locks around my upper arm and he hauls me to my feet. I stumble, my legs refusing to hold me, but his grip is iron.

"You're making a scene," he hisses, low enough that only I can hear. "The Granite Ridge delegation is fifty feet away. Do you understand what this looks like?"

I stare at him.

At this man who is supposed to be my mate. My protector. The one the Moon Goddess chose for me.

He's worried about appearances.

"She's dead," I whisper.

"I can see that." He releases my arm and turns to the warriors. "Get this cleaned up. Now. I want the body removed and the courtyard cleared in the next ten minutes."

"Alpha," one of them says carefully. "Shouldn't we wait for the Council investigators? Suspicious death protocol—"

"It was a suicide." Marcel's voice carries Alpha Command, making it truth by decree. "An Omega with a fading aura. It happens. There's nothing suspicious about it."

He looks at me then, and his eyes are flat. Empty.

"Burn the bedding from her room," he adds. "All of it. I don't want any trace of this incident lingering."

Incident.

He called my mother's death an incident.

The warriors move past me, lifting Mama's body with the casual efficiency of people removing furniture. Her head lolls to the side. Her arm dangles.

I watch them carry her away, and something inside me that was already broken shatters into pieces too small to ever put back together.

Marcel is saying something else—something about discretion and pack image and controlling the narrative—but I'm not listening anymore.

I'm looking at the window three stories up. The one that's still open.

And I'm thinking about the scalpel Raquel left on the bedside table.

The choice she forced my mother to make.

The video she made her watch.

Marcel's hand is on my shoulder now, steering me away from the courtyard, away from the crowd, back toward the servants' quarters where I belong.

"You'll stay in your room tonight," he's saying. "No contact with other pack members until this blows over. Understood?"

I don't answer.

Because I'm realizing something.

Raquel didn't just kill my mother.

She killed the last reason I had to stay alive.

And Marcel—my fated mate, my Alpha, my supposed protector—just helped her cover it up.

The rain starts just after midnight.

I sit on the floor of the servants' quarters with a piece of paper in front of me and a pen I stole from the pack house office. The words won't come at first. How do you apologize to the Moon Goddess for giving up? For being too weak to survive what she asked you to endure?

In the end, I keep it simple.

*I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough.*

I fold the paper once, twice, and leave it on the cot where someone will eventually find it. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll just burn the room like Marcel burned Mama's bedding, erasing all evidence that we ever existed.

The storm is picking up by the time I slip out the back entrance. Thunder rolls across the sky, low and angry, and the wind tears at my hair as I make my way toward the border. No one stops me. No one even sees me. I've gotten very good at being invisible.

The cliffs are a twenty-minute walk through the forest. I've been here before—once, when Fletcher brought me to see the ocean when we were kids. He told me it was the edge of the world, and I believed him. It felt safer then, with his hand in mine.

Now it just feels like the right place to stop running.

The rain is coming down in sheets by the time I reach the precipice. The ocean crashes against the rocks three hundred feet below, violent and relentless. The wind is so strong I have to brace myself to keep from being pushed backward.

I walk to the edge.

The ground crumbles a little under my feet, sending pebbles tumbling into the darkness. I don't look down. I just close my eyes and feel the rain on my face, the wind pulling at my clothes like it's trying to make the decision for me.

Mama's face flashes behind my eyelids. Her broken body on the pavement. Her empty eyes.

I lean forward.

"Macy!"

The voice cuts through the storm like a whip.

I freeze, my heart lurching in my chest. I know that voice. Know the command buried in it even when he's not using his Alpha power.

Marcel.

I turn my head and see him emerging from the tree line, soaked through, his eyes blazing with fury. Not concern. Not fear for my safety.

Fury.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" He's shouting over the wind, striding toward me like I'm a disobedient child who wandered too far from the house. "You abandoned your shift. Do you have any idea—"

"Stay back," I say.

He doesn't listen. Of course he doesn't listen.

"You're coming back to the pack house," he snarls. "Right now. I don't have time for whatever breakdown you're having. The Granite Ridge delegation is still—"

"I said stay back!"

My voice cracks on the words, raw and desperate, but he just keeps coming. Keeps closing the distance between us like my pain is an inconvenience he needs to manage.

I take a step closer to the edge.

His eyes narrow. "Macy. Don't be stupid."

"Stupid?" I laugh, and it sounds unhinged even to my own ears. "You think this is stupid? You think I'm being dramatic?"

"I think you're wasting my time." His jaw clenches. "Get away from that edge. Now."

"No."

Something flickers in his expression. Not sympathy. Calculation. Like he's weighing his options, deciding the most efficient way to handle this situation.

Then his eyes flash gold.

Alpha Command floods the air between us, so thick I can barely breathe.

"I command you to kneel," he says, his voice layered with power that makes my bones ache.

My body betrays me instantly.

My knees buckle, slamming into the muddy ground with enough force to send pain shooting up my thighs. I try to fight it, try to stand, but the Command is absolute. It drags me down and pins me there like I'm nothing more than a puppet.

Marcel stalks toward me, his face twisted with rage.

"You don't get to make this decision," he hisses. "You belong to this pack. You belong to me. And I will not have you—"

He doesn't finish the sentence.

Because something massive slams into him from the side, sending him crashing into the mud with a force that shakes the ground.

I gasp as the Alpha Command shatters, releasing me from its hold.

Marcel scrambles to his feet, snarling, his claws extending. But before he can lunge, a new pressure descends over the clearing—something ancient and crushing and so powerful it makes Marcel's Alpha aura feel like a candle next to the sun.

Lycan Aura.

Marcel's eyes go wide. Then his knees give out and he slams face-first into the dirt, gasping for air like a fish out of water.

I look up.

And there, standing in the rain with his eyes glowing silver and his presence radiating enough power to make the air vibrate, is Fletcher Gibson.