— Cole —

I couldn't settle.

That was the only word for it. I'd been pacing the same stretch of living room floor for the better part of an hour, and Talia kept looking at me with those soft, patient eyes, and I kept not feeling whatever I was supposed to feel.

"Cole." Her voice was gentle. Careful. Like she was handling something that might break. "She's gone. Come sit with me."

I sat.

I put my arm around her the way she wanted and stared at the TV screen and told myself this was what I'd been waiting for. Talia, finally. The girl I'd spent two years thinking about while lying next to someone else.

I told myself that.

It didn't help.

Talia reached up and touched my jaw. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

She smiled — the soft, sad smile she'd always been able to do so well. "It's her, isn't it? You're thinking about her."

I didn't answer.

Which was its own kind of answer.

"She'll be fine," Talia said. She curled closer into my side. "She always is. You know how Omegas are — resilient little things."

I thought about the way Sera had looked at me right before she left. Not crying. Not yelling.

Just — empty. Like I'd already been gone for a long time and she'd only just realized it.

I picked up the Xbox controller.

"Let's play something," I said.

* * *

— Sera —

I told myself I was going back for my things.

That was the only reason. My textbooks. My winter coat. The rest of my clothes. Practical things. Things I needed.

I was not going back because some stupid part of me still wanted to see his face.

I used my key. The door opened quietly.

And then I stopped.

The Xbox was on.

Cole was on the couch, controller in hand, Talia tucked in front of him. And he had his arms around her — both of them — the way he used to hold me when we played golf. His chest against her back. His chin close to her hair. His hands covering hers on the controller.

Showing her how to swing.

I stood in the doorway and watched and felt something inside me go very, very cold.

That Xbox had been my birthday present. He'd shown up at my door with it in a big stupid bow and said, "You need a hobby that isn't medicine." And I'd laughed because who gives their girlfriend a gaming console for her birthday, and he'd said, "Trust me."

And I had.

God help me, I had.

We'd spent entire weekends on that couch. I was the one who hated the gym — too many wolves, too much posturing, everyone clocking the wolfless Omega who had no business being there. So Cole started bringing games home instead. Tennis. Bowling. Basketball. I was terrible at all of them and we both knew it and neither of us cared.

But golf.

Golf I'd pretended to be worse at than I was, just to feel him wrap around me from behind. His arms over mine. His hands covering my hands. His voice low against my ear, saying "like this, watch the follow-through" while I stood completely still and forgot about the club entirely.

I'd thought that was ours.

I'd thought a lot of things were ours.

Talia laughed at something — bright and delighted — and leaned back against Cole's chest, and I watched him smile down at the top of her head with an expression I recognized.

It wasn't borrowed.

It was the same one.

The exact same one.

My stomach turned. Every soft memory I'd been carrying — every quiet Sunday, every whispered joke, every time I'd thought this is real, this is mine — curdled all at once into something rotten. Like reaching into a drawer for something you love and finding it full of rot.

I had treasured garbage.

I had held it close and called it everything.

Talia spotted me first.

Her eyes found me across the room and something quick and sharp flickered through them. Not guilt. Not surprise.

Amusement.

"Hi, Sera." Sweet as anything. She sat up a little, like she wanted a better view. "I didn't know you were cleaning houses now. If Uncle Jack isn't giving you enough, you should tell me — you know he listens to me. I can put in a word."

Uncle Jack.

My father. Who had not called me in four months. Who had a new wife now, a Beta from the Thornhill pack, and was probably going to have the Alpha sons he'd always wanted and forget I'd ever existed.

I pulled my mouth into something that felt like a smile. "No need. I'm just here for my things."

I moved toward the hallway.

"Actually —" Talia's voice followed me, light and easy, like she was asking about the weather. "Could you make the tomato veal before you go? The braised one. I've been thinking about it for weeks." A small laugh. "Cole can't cook to save his life, and I never really learned. We'd pay, obviously. You're so good at it, Sera, honestly."

I stopped walking.

The tomato veal.

My mother's recipe. The one I'd spent three years perfecting in a pack kitchen I was barely allowed to use, learning to cook on scraps and leftovers while the real pack daughters ate in the dining hall. I'd been an Alpha's daughter and I'd lived like the help — worse than the help, actually, because at least the servants got paid.

I'd had to earn every pen and notebook I owned. Twelve years old, scrubbing floors to get fifty cents toward a composition book. Fourteen, running errands for the housekeeper just to afford a highlighter.

Talia had grown up in the same pack and never noticed.

Why would she. I was just the background.

I turned around slowly.

Cole still hadn't looked at me. He was staring at the TV screen with his jaw set, controller loose in his hands. He'd been quiet since I walked in.

Then he spoke.

"It's just a meal, Sera." Flat. Unbothered. Like he was asking me to pass the remote. "Talia wants it. Go ahead and make it."

Something clicked off inside me.

I thought about Dr. Ellis. No stress. No overexertion. Rest.

I thought about the tiny thing inside me that was eight weeks old and had no idea its father was sitting five feet away asking his side piece's new girl to cook dinner.

I thought about every floor I had ever scrubbed to buy a fifty-cent notebook.

I smiled.

A real one, this time. Calm and clean.

"Fine," I said. "I'll cook."

Talia brightened.

"But," I said, turning to her, "you said you'd pay. Right, Talia? As Alpha Zane's future Luna, Uncle Jack's favorite, Cole's — what was it — favorite friend?" I let that land for exactly one second. "You keep your word, don't you?"

She blinked. "Of course I —"

"Ten thousand dollars a dish," I said. "I'll make a full spread. Eight courses. That's eighty thousand total." I pulled my phone out of my pocket and held it up — the banking app already open, my account number on screen. "I accept transfers. Prepayment, please."

The room went very quiet.

Talia stared at me. Cole had finally looked up.

His expression was one I'd never seen on him before. Not anger. Not amusement.

Something that looked almost like — recognition.

Like he was seeing me for the first time.

Or realizing he'd been looking without seeing for a very long time.

I kept my phone extended. Steady. Eyes on Talia.

"Whenever you're ready," I said pleasantly.

* * *

— Caelum —

I called Zane at nine that evening.

"There's a student on campus," I said, when he picked up. "Sera Lane. Second-year healer. She's had a difficult few weeks and she has no reliable support around her. I want you to check in on her."

Silence on the other end. The specific silence of my son organizing what he actually wanted to say.

"Check in on her," he repeated.

"She's under Greymoor protection. It's a reasonable thing to ask."

"Sure." A pause. "What's her connection to you?"

"She's a student in difficult circumstances. That's sufficient reason."

"Dad."

"Zane."

Another silence. Longer this time. I knew what was coming. He'd always been good at this — at sitting with a question until he found the real one underneath it.

"I saw her photo," he said finally. "In your file on her. And I've been thinking about the watch. The one you've kept since before I was born."

I said nothing.

"She looks like her," Zane said. Quiet. Careful. Like he was carrying something fragile. "She is that woman, isn't she. The one in your heart. All this time."

The line was very quiet.

I could have said yes. The word was there, available, and it would have been the truth.

"No," I said.

"Dad —"

"She's a student in difficult circumstances," I said again, even, final. "Keep an eye on her. That's all I'm asking."

I hung up.

I sat at my desk for a while after, in the quiet of the evening, with the pocket watch on the table in front of me.

I didn't open it.

I didn't need to. I'd had the photograph memorized for twenty years.

No, I had said.

I was a man who had built his entire life on decisions made cleanly, with full information, for the right reasons.

I put the watch back in my drawer and went back to work.

— Sera —

"Talia." I let the name sit in the air for a second, warm and pleasant, like we were old friends catching up. "A Luna should be generous, right?

Something flashed behind her eyes.

"Fine." Her voice came out flat. "I'll pay."

She looked at Cole. One of those looks — the kind that meant do something. He stared at her for a moment, jaw working, and then he picked up his phone and tapped a few times without a word.

My PayPal buzzed.

Eighty thousand dollars. Received.

I looked up at him.

"Sure, Alpha Cole," I said. I kept my voice soft. Walked close enough that only he could hear. "Happy to be of service."

His eyes dropped. Just for a second. Then back up.

I turned and walked to the kitchen.

Anger is a funny thing. At its worst it's loud and ugly and it makes you do things you can't take back. But when it peaks — when it goes past the point of sound — it gets very, very quiet. Almost peaceful.

That was where I was.

I stood at the kitchen counter and thought, with total clarity: so this is what I was. This is the full picture. Not his girlfriend. Not his Luna. Not even someone worth a real conversation.

A toy. A maid. A cook. A body.

All for free.

Until today.

I went to my room.

I opened my drawer.

The lingerie was still there. Valentine's Day, limited edition — his words, not mine. Ivory lace and thin straps and not much else. He'd watched me unwrap it with that slow smile and said, "I thought you'd look good in it."

I'd felt beautiful in it.

I'd cooked in it that night. His idea. We'd started in the kitchen and ended up on every surface in the apartment and I'd felt — for the first and maybe only time — like I was something precious. Something he couldn't get enough of.

Now I put it on.

Took one long look at myself in the mirror.

Then I walked out of my bedroom and into the living room in nothing but ivory lace.

Talia made a sound like a cat that had been stepped on. "What the hell — how shameless —"

I didn't look at her. I looked at Cole.

"Like what you see?" I asked. Pleasantly.

Then I walked into the kitchen and started cooking.

I heard it all. Talia's whisper — sharp, insistent. Cole, come on, let's just go out, I know a steakhouse. Cole's silence. The shifting of weight on the couch. Talia again, louder, pulling at him, naming the restaurant like it was a reward for good behavior.

And then the door.

Click.

Gone.

I stood at the stove for a moment after the sound faded.

Then my legs gave.

Not all at once. Just — slowly. Like something structural had quietly failed. I slid down the cabinet until I was sitting on the kitchen floor, back against the cupboard, knees up, the lace hem of Cole's Valentine's gift pooling around me.

I cried.

I hadn't planned to. I thought I was past it. But something about being alone in that kitchen — my kitchen, the one where I'd cooked a hundred meals and hummed to myself and thought I was happy — cracked me open.

Valentine's Day.

I'd put on this exact outfit and cooked his favorite things and he'd come up behind me at the stove and slid his hands around my waist and told me I was perfect. We'd moved from the kitchen to the couch to the floor to the bedroom and back again and I'd thought: this. This is it. This is what being loved feels like.

His hands on my body. His voice in my ear. The specific weight of him. I'd felt wanted and real and like I finally, finally made sense to someone.

And the whole time — the whole time — I had been free labor.

A warm body with useful skills.

Nothing.

I stayed on the floor until I stopped shaking. Then I got up, washed my face at the kitchen sink, and went to pack the rest of my things.

I was fast. I'd learned how to pack fast a long time ago.

Twenty minutes later I walked out the door with everything I owned in two bags.

I didn't look back.

— Sera —

The room Zane had found me was on the third floor of a building I'd walked past a hundred times without ever noticing. According to him, the Academy set aside units for students in difficult circumstances — temporary housing, no questions asked.

I'd been at Silverclaw for two years and had no idea this existed.

Then again, I probably shouldn't have been surprised. Werewolf society didn't advertise its safety nets. Safety nets implied weakness, and weakness was something you were supposed to hide or overcome on your own. I'd known that since I was old enough to understand why the other pack kids didn't play with me.

But I also knew that sometimes the smartest thing you could do was accept a roof without asking too many questions about who built it.

I had a pup now.

That changed the math on everything.

I was sitting on the bed with my laptop open, scrolling through job postings, when the knock came.

Zane. Again. This time with a paper bag from the Thai place two blocks from campus and two bottles of water held against his chest with his forearm like he'd run out of hands.

I looked at him through the half-open door.

"You don't have to keep doing this," I said.

"I know." He held up the bag. "You like pad see ew?"

I stepped back and let him in.

We ate in silence for a few minutes. He sat in the chair by the window, I sat on the bed with the container balanced on my knee, and outside the campus went about its business like nothing had happened.

Like I hadn't spent the morning on a kitchen floor in lingerie crying about a man who'd just paid me eighty thousand dollars to remind me I was nothing to him.

I set down my fork.

"Why are you here, Zane?"

He looked up.

"You paid the hospital bill," I said. "You apologized. You found me a place to stay. That was already more than you owed me. So why do you keep showing up?"

He was quiet for a moment. Set his own container down on the windowsill.

Then he said, "I knew you. Years ago."

I stared at him. "We've never met."

"Not in person." He looked almost uncomfortable. Which was strange on a guy who looked like he'd been carved out of something solid. "I saw a photo of you. In my father's things."

"Your father."

"He has a pocket watch. Old one. He keeps a photo inside." Zane's jaw tightened slightly. "I was maybe eight years old. I found it and opened it — just curious, the way kids are. He came in and saw me and I spent two days in the basement for it."

I said nothing.

"He wasn't usually like that," Zane added, not quite defending and not quite explaining. "Not with me. But that watch — he's never let anyone near it. My mother threw it at him once, during a fight. He caught it before it hit the wall. That's the only time I ever saw him move that fast over an object." A short pause. "My mother left when I was sixteen. Told him on his fortieth birthday that she'd been seeing someone else. Just — announced it. And walked out." He almost smiled. Not happily. "He didn't rage. Didn't chase her. Just let her go. Like he'd been waiting for permission to be alone."

I watched him.

"The photo in the watch," I said slowly. "What did she look like?"

"Like you," he said simply. "That's why I was scared when I saw you at the hospital. For a second I thought —" He stopped. "I don't know what I thought."

I thought about my mother. A woman I knew mostly from a small framed photo and the smell of the soap she used to buy. She'd left my father's pack when I was four. Or been made to leave. I'd never been sure which, and my father had never offered an explanation.

I wasn't going to say any of that out loud.

"I've never met your father," I said. "And I've never been outside this pack or Silverclaw."

"I know. It just —" He ran a hand through his hair. "It threw me. Seeing you."

"Which pack are you from?" I asked.

He hesitated. "A small one. Northern territory. You probably haven't heard of it."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"You're a terrible liar," I said. "If you don't want to tell me, that's fine. But don't make things up. I've had enough of that this week."

He had the decency to look caught.

"Some things are complicated," he said. "If it got out — it would create problems. Not for me. For you."

I considered that.

"Fine," I said. "So you're helping me because of an old photograph, and some feeling you can't explain, and something you won't explain."

"Yes and no." He picked his container back up, like having something to do with his hands helped. "You make me feel — I don't know. Like I should be better than I usually am."

"Stop." I held up a hand. "Stop right there."

He blinked.

"I don't do this," I said. "Whatever this is — mysterious feelings, special connections, unexplainable pull — I don't do it. I tried that once. I know exactly where it ends." I looked at him directly. "So if that's why you're here, you should leave now. I'm not being cruel. I'm being honest."

He opened his mouth.

"Don't," I said.

He closed it.

He stood up. Six feet something of Alpha, filling the small room, and he looked — for just a second — genuinely lost. Like he'd prepared for every response except this one.

Then his eyes went to my laptop on the bed. The job board still open on the screen.

"You're looking for work," he said.

"That's what people do when they need money."

"The emergency medical center," he said. "The one under the Board Secretary's office. They're taking on healer interns. Good hours, good pay, flexible enough to work around your classes."

I said nothing.

"I can write you a recommendation," he said.

"Why would your recommendation mean anything to a medical center?"

He paused just a fraction of a second too long. "I know people on the board."

Liar, I thought. But an oddly earnest one.

I looked at my laptop. Then at my stomach, still flat, nothing showing yet. Then at the paper bag from the Thai place that he'd shown up with without being asked.

I reached over and started pushing him toward the door.

"Hey —"

"Think about the pup," he said — slightly desperate now, one hand braced against the doorframe. His eyes were very wide. On a man that size, it was almost funny.

I stopped pushing.

He looked at me. Big and awkward and weirdly earnest, blocking my doorway like a very large, poorly trained dog that had decided to be loyal to the wrong person.

I laughed.

It surprised both of us.

"Fine," I said. "Write the letter. I'll go to the interview."

"Great." He straightened up fast, like he was afraid I'd change my mind. "I'll send it today. And Sera —" He paused at the door. "When you start — don't go above the top floor of the Violet Tower. That section isn't open to staff."

"Why?"

He was already in the hallway. "Just don't."

The door clicked shut.

I stood in the middle of my borrowed room, laughing a little, which was strange because nothing was funny.

But it was better than the alternative.

* * *

— Caelum —

"Sir."

My assistant appeared in the doorway at exactly seven-forty-five, as she did every morning. I didn't look up from the briefing on my desk.

"Alpha Zane has sent a request," she said. "He's asking whether the emergency center can open an intern position — healer track. He's submitting a candidate."

I turned a page.

"Name?"

"Lane. Sera Lane. Second-year student, top of her cohort in applied healing."

I was quiet for a moment.

"Approve it," I said.

"Yes, sir. And the salary tier?"

"Senior rate."

A pause. That was unusual for an intern position, and she knew it. To her credit, she didn't ask.

"Yes, sir."

She left.

I looked out the window at the Violet Tower across the courtyard. Thirty-two floors of administrative offices, medical facilities, research labs. The top three floors were mine — private, sealed, not on any public map of the building.

I'd told Zane to keep her away from the upper floors.

He'd done exactly that.

Good.

The less she knew about who had arranged her placement, the better.

For both of us.