Sabrina's quarters are on the second floor, east wing. I know this because Elena's intelligence network is thorough, and because predators always know where their prey sleeps.

The door is unlocked—arrogance or carelessness, I don't care which. The sound of running water echoes from the bathroom. Perfect.

I step inside and close the door with a soft click.

Her room is a museum dedicated to theft. Photographs of me at nineteen line her vanity, edges worn from handling. My old dresses hang in her closet, altered to fit her smaller frame. On her nightstand sits a collection of my favorite books from before Seattle, pages marked with notes in her handwriting analyzing my personality.

It's not admiration. It's dissection.

I start with the closet. Silk and cashmere slide through my fingers as I gather armfuls of fabric—the pale blue dress from last night, the pink monstrosity from this morning, every piece she's stolen from my past. The window opens with a whisper of hinges.

Three stories down, the training courtyard is all mud and gravel.

I throw the first dress out. It catches the wind, billowing like a ghost before landing in a puddle. The second follows. Then the third. I work methodically, emptying her closet with the same precision I once used to plan charity galas.

The cosmetics come next. Bottles of my custom perfume—how did she even get these?—shatter against the stones below. Lipsticks in shades I wore as a girl. Eyeshadow palettes she's studied like battle plans.

All of it goes out the window.

The shower cuts off. I have maybe two minutes.

I save the photographs for last, tearing them from their frames and sending them fluttering down like broken butterflies. The shrine dismantled. The costume destroyed.

I'm halfway to the door when Sabrina emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, her wet hair dripping onto bare shoulders.

She sees the empty room. The open window. Me.

Her scream could shatter glass.

"What did you do?" She rushes to the window, staring down at the wreckage of her carefully constructed identity. "You—you destroyed everything!"

"I destroyed nothing." My voice is ice over steel. "Those were mine to begin with. I simply took back what you stole."

Her face twists, the innocent mask cracking completely. "You're insane. You're—"

Footsteps thunder in the hallway. Phoenix's voice cuts through her hysteria. "Sabrina? What's wrong?"

She looks at me. At the window. At the door.

Then she throws herself to the floor.

The impact must hurt—hardwood doesn't forgive—but she commits to the performance. Tears stream down her face as she clutches her ankle, her voice breaking into sobs. "She tried to push me! Vivienne tried to push me out the window!"

The door slams open. Phoenix takes in the scene—Sabrina on the floor, crying, me standing by the open window, my expression cold.

He doesn't ask questions. Doesn't pause. Doesn't think.

He lunges.

His hand closes around my throat, driving me backward. My spine hits the stone wall with a force that steals my breath. For a moment, I'm back in the cage, Cain's hands around my neck, squeezing until the world goes dark.

"You tried to kill her." Phoenix's face is inches from mine, his eyes wild. "You're so broken, so twisted, you'd actually—"

He shoves me harder against the wall. Something in my left arm gives way with a crack that echoes inside my skull. Pain explodes white-hot from shoulder to fingertips.

I don't scream. I learned not to scream.

Phoenix raises his hand again, and I see it in his eyes—he's going to hit me. Actually hit me. The man I saved is going to—

"Touch her again," a voice cuts through the chaos, low and deadly, "and I'll rip your throat out."

Nikolai Bell materializes from the shadows near the door. I didn't hear him arrive. Didn't sense him. But he's here now, and the temperature in the room drops ten degrees.

Phoenix's hand freezes mid-swing. "This doesn't concern you, Enforcer."

"It concerns me." Nikolai moves with terrifying speed, crossing the room in two strides. His hand closes around Phoenix's throat, yanking him away from me with enough force to lift him off his feet. "It has always concerned me."

He slams Phoenix against the opposite wall. The commander's face turns red, then purple, his hands clawing uselessly at Nikolai's iron grip.

"She is the Supreme Alpha's sister." Nikolai's voice never rises above a whisper, but it carries the weight of absolute authority. "She is a Moore. And you—" His grip tightens. "You are nothing."

Phoenix's eyes bulge. His wolf tries to surface, gold flickering in his irises, but Nikolai's dominance crushes it back down. Submission or death. Those are the only options.

Phoenix's body goes limp, his head tilting to expose his throat.

Nikolai holds him there for three more seconds—a lesson, a warning—then releases him. Phoenix collapses to the floor, gasping.

Then Nikolai turns to me.

His eyes—dark gray, storm-colored—scan my face, my throat, my arm hanging at an unnatural angle. Something raw and anguished flashes across his features before his expression smooths into professional concern.

"Vivienne." My name in his voice sounds like a prayer. "Let me see."

He approaches slowly, telegraphing every movement, giving me time to refuse. When I don't pull away, he gently—so gently—lifts my injured arm. His fingers are steady where mine would shake.

"Fractured," he says quietly. "You need a healer."

Behind him, Sabrina has gone silent, her performance forgotten. Phoenix is still on the floor, one hand pressed to his bruised throat.

Nikolai doesn't look at either of them. His attention is entirely on me as he carefully scoops me into his arms, cradling my injured arm against his chest.

"I've got you," he murmurs, so low only I can hear. "I've always got you."

And for the first time in five years, I believe it.

Diana Cross's clinic smells like antiseptic and mountain herbs. The healer works in silence, her hands steady as she manipulates my fractured arm into alignment. I don't make a sound—I learned that lesson in a cage—but sweat beads along my hairline.

Nikolai stands three feet away, close enough to intervene, far enough to give Diana space. His posture is rigid, hands clenched at his sides. Every time Diana's ministrations make me flinch, his jaw tightens.

"Almost done," Diana murmurs. The bone clicks into place with a sensation that makes my vision white out for a heartbeat. "You'll need to keep it immobilized for forty-eight hours. The wolf healing will handle the rest."

She wraps the splint with practiced efficiency, her dark eyes flicking between me and Nikolai. Whatever she sees there makes her mouth thin into a disapproving line.

"I'll give you two privacy." She stands, gathering her supplies. "But Vivienne needs rest, Enforcer. Not interrogation."

The door closes behind her with a soft click.

Nikolai moves immediately, closing the distance between us. He drops to one knee beside the examination table, bringing himself to eye level. His hand hovers near mine, not quite touching.

"I should have been there sooner." His voice is rough, scraped raw. "If I'd known he would—"

"How did you know to come at all?" The question emerges sharper than I intend. "You appeared like you'd been waiting. Watching."

Something flickers across his face. Guilt. Fear. "I'm always watching."

"That's not an answer."

He exhales slowly, his gaze dropping to my splinted arm. "I've had surveillance on Phoenix since you arrived in Seattle. When Elena contacted your brother about the mattress incident, she copied me on the message. I was already en route when Sabrina started screaming."

The pieces don't quite fit. There's something he's not saying, something hovering just beneath the surface of his careful words.

"You knew she would escalate," I say slowly. "You were expecting violence."

"I was expecting Phoenix to show his true nature eventually." Nikolai's hand finally settles over mine, his palm warm against my cold fingers. "I just hoped I was wrong."

His thumb traces an absent pattern across my knuckles. Back and forth. Soothing.

Then he stops.

His gaze fixes on my wrist, on the thin white scar that circles it like a bracelet. The mark left by shackles, back when they thought chains could hold me better than wolfsbane.

"The hinges were rusted through," he says quietly. "On the cage door. I remember thinking it was mercy—that you'd been spared that small indignity, at least. That the metal hadn't cut into you every time you moved."

The room tilts.

"What did you say?"

Nikolai's eyes snap to mine, and I watch realization dawn. Horror chases it immediately after.

"Vivienne—"

"The hinges." My voice emerges flat, emotionless, while my mind races. "You remember the hinges on the cage."

He goes very still. A predator caught in a trap of his own making.

"Phoenix told the story a hundred times," I continue, each word precisely placed. "At the medal ceremony. At our wedding. In every interview. He described kicking down the basement door. Finding me in the dark. Breaking the lock with his bare hands." I lean forward, ignoring the protest from my injured arm. "He never mentioned the hinges, Nikolai. Because he never saw them."

Nikolai's face could be carved from stone. "Vivienne—"

"It was you." The truth crashes over me like a wave, drowning and clarifying all at once. "You were the one who found me. You opened the cage. You—" My voice cracks despite my best efforts. "Why would you let him take credit?"

For a long moment, he doesn't answer. Then he stands, turning away, his shoulders rigid with tension.

"Because you needed a hero who could stand beside you in public," he says finally. "A decorated commander with political connections and a respectable bloodline. Not the pack's executioner. Not the bastard son of a disgraced family."

He turns back, and the raw emotion in his eyes steals my breath.

"I would have given you anything, Vivienne. Everything. But I couldn't give you legitimacy. Phoenix could." His voice drops to barely above a whisper. "So I let him have the glory. I thought it would protect you."

The splint digs into my arm as my hands clench into fists. Five years. Five years of marriage to a man who stole another's valor. Five years of being called tainted by someone who never even had the courage to face the Rogues.

Something inside me—something that's been dormant since the wolfsbane destroyed my connection to my wolf—suddenly ignites.

Power floods through my veins like liquid fire. The air pressure in the room drops. Diana's carefully organized supplies rattle on their shelves.

Nikolai's eyes widen. "Vivienne, your eyes—"

I don't need a mirror to know what he's seeing. Gold. Pure, undiluted alpha gold, the birthright of the Supreme bloodline.

The Moore legacy, finally awakened.

"I'm done protecting Phoenix's reputation," I say, and my voice carries an echo of power that makes even Nikolai take a step back. "I'm done being the broken princess who should be grateful for scraps of affection."

I slide off the examination table, steady despite the pain radiating from my arm. The power thrumming through me is intoxicating, terrifying, right.

"It's time Phoenix Evans learned what it costs to break a Moore."

Nikolai's expression shifts from concern to something fiercer. Anticipation. Pride.

"What do you need?"

I meet his storm-gray eyes and smile. It's not a kind expression.

"Everything."