I made it three steps into the hallway before Seraphine hit me.

It wasn't a thought. It was a wave — hot, red, so complete it took my knees out from under me. I caught the wall with my shoulder and the vials clinked against my chest.

*Every capsule.* Her voice was raw, like she had been screaming for three years and only just now found the air to do it. *Every morning. Every 'treatment.' Every time the healer put her hand on my ribs and said 'a little more time, Hadley' — he was in the next room, Hadley, he was watching —*

"I know," I whispered.

*We are going to burn what he built.*

I pressed my forehead to the cool paint of the wall. My reflection in the little framed picture across the corridor caught my eye — and the eyes looking back at me were amber. Not brown. Amber, and burning.

"Save it," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Save it for the tribunal. If you spend it here it's just noise."

She didn't answer. But I felt her sit down inside my chest — the way a wolf sits, tense, tail flat, ears still forward.

The amber did not fade. I could feel it in the hallway light. I walked upstairs anyway, put the vials in a canvas bag, and stood at the window until my hands stopped humming.

An hour later, they were still gold.

---

I heard her before I saw her.

The click of expensive heels on the hardwood, the little laugh she gave to whoever she passed — Aya walking through the pack house the way a woman walks through a store she has already decided to buy.

I was standing in the doorway of the Luna suite when she rounded the corner.

She stopped.

She was wearing cream. Her hair was down. She had a garment bag over one arm and a small overnight case in her hand, and the smile she had prepared for the moment died halfway across her face.

Her wolf pulled back inside her chest so hard I saw her flinch.

"Hadley." She recovered fast. She was good at that. The smile came back, thinner. "You shouldn't be up here. Your things have been moved to — "

"March," I said.

She blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"March of last year. Eighteen thousand dollars. Logged in the treasury ledger as *diplomatic outreach — Carlson.* A pair of earrings. Sapphire. You wore them to the harvest run."

Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Behind her, at the top of the stairwell, I heard footsteps stop. Then another set. Someone had come up to see what the noise was, and someone else had followed.

"June." I did not raise my voice. I did not need to. "Twelve thousand. A watch. It's on your wrist right now."

Her hand moved. Just an inch. Then stilled.

"September. Forty-two thousand. A car. Registered to your father, driven by you. Logged as *inter-pack liaison vehicle.*"

More footsteps in the hall. I could smell them now — three, four wolves, none of them breathing loudly.

"December," I said. "Sixty-one thousand. Cash. No item attached. I looked for one. There isn't one. Do you remember what you spent it on, Aya, or was it just to see if he'd say yes?"

Her throat worked.

She had prepared for a fight. She had prepared for tears, maybe, or a scene — the kind of scene where the losing woman shouts and the winning woman gets to be gracious for the audience. She had not prepared for arithmetic.

"That was — " She wet her lips. "Those were pack funds, they were authorized by — "

"By him. I know. His initials are on every line." I tilted my head. "So are yours, on the receipts."

Something in her face went white around the edges.

I stepped aside.

I did it slowly, so she would see me do it. So the wolves in the hallway would see me do it. I moved out of the doorway of the Luna suite and gestured, once, with my open hand.

"Go on," I said. "It's yours."

She did not move.

"It's yours," I said again, softer. "The suite. The bed. The closet. Take it. I don't want it."

And she understood, then, what I was actually saying — that I was not fighting her for it because it was no longer worth fighting for. That the room she had spent a year positioning herself to enter had just, in the last thirty seconds, become the smallest room in the world.

She walked past me. She had to. There were four wolves watching.

The door closed behind her, and I turned and walked away without looking back.

---

He was waiting at the treeline.

He had chosen the clearing at the edge of Ironveil's territory — not the pack house, not a formal chamber. Neutral ground. He had left his guards a hundred yards back. When I stepped out of the pines he inclined his head once, the way one sovereign acknowledges another, and did not close the distance between us.

"Thank you for coming," the Lycan prince said.

I didn't sit. Neither did he.

"Moonflower and ancient frost," he said. "That's the scent your wolf carries. It has appeared exactly once in recorded Lycan history — in the direct bloodline of the ruling house. There was a child taken from the royal nursery twenty-three years ago. The search has never formally closed."

He said it plainly. No ornament. No claim.

"There is a blood-scent confirmation the Crown can perform," he continued. "It is not invasive. It is your right to accept or refuse. I am telling you this because you have a right to know it. Not because I am asking you for anything."

I listened. I did not let my face move.

When he finished, I asked him one question.

"Does the Lycan Crown have jurisdiction over an Alpha who suppresses a royal-blooded wolf with wolfsbane?"

Something flickered behind his eyes. Not surprise. Recognition.

"It is a capital offense against the Crown," he said.

I nodded, once.

He watched me — not the way Callum used to watch me, measuring what he could take. He watched me the way someone watches a person picking up a tool and testing its weight.

I turned and walked back into the trees without thanking him.

I was already making a list.