"Step away from her, Alpha."

Noah planted himself between my chair and the collection cart. His voice was controlled, but the tendons in his neck stood out beneath his skin.

Adrian's expression darkened. "Move."

"No."

The single word stunned the room into silence.

Dr. Miller cleared his throat and lifted the chart. "The donor screen from last quarter shows Elena is an exact match. Given the emergency—"

"That screen is months old," Noah cut in. "Her medical status changed this morning. She is not cleared to donate."

Adrian looked at me then, but not with concern. With impatience.

"What changed?"

My fingers curled over the edge of the examination chair.

This was the moment. I could still tell him. I could take the ultrasound photo from my handbag and force him to look at it.

"I was trying to tell you in the corridor."

Another alarm sounded beyond the wall. Someone called for vasopressors in Celeste's trauma bay.

Adrian flinched toward the door.

"We don't have time for a long conversation, Elena."

"You have time for one sentence."

"Then say it."

Before I could, Dr. Miller shoved a fresh set of numbers toward him.

"Alpha, Celeste's pressure is sixty over thirty-eight. If we wait for a donor to arrive from another territory, she may not survive the transport delay."

Adrian's attention left me again.

Noah swore under his breath.

"Call the northern reserve," he ordered Miller. "And the human blood bank under our medical compact. We have alternatives."

"Those alternatives could take an hour," Miller replied.

"Then stabilize her for an hour."

Adrian stepped closer to Noah. "You're letting personal sentiment interfere with treatment."

Noah gave a short, humorless laugh. "I'm the only physician in this room whose judgment isn't compromised by personal sentiment."

Gold flashed in Adrian's eyes.

"Careful."

"You want careful? Read Elena's chart before you order a needle into her arm."

My pulse kicked hard.

Miller reached for the file, but Adrian slapped his hand down over it.

"Celeste is dying. Elena is healthy, young, and standing in front of us. One standard unit won't kill her."

"You do not know that," Noah said.

"I know enough."

That was the sentence that broke something small inside me.

Not because he was cruel.

Because he sounded certain.

I had spent three years believing Adrian's certainty meant safety. That his decisiveness was the reason the pack trusted him, the reason I could trust him.

Now I understood the other side of it. When he decided what mattered, everything else became expendable.

Including me.

"Adrian," I said, "if I say no, what happens?"

He finally looked at me fully.

The pause lasted only a second.

It was enough.

"I would ask you to reconsider," he said.

"Ask?"

His jaw flexed. "This is a life-or-death emergency. You're the Luna. People sacrifice for this pack every day."

There it was.

Duty, sharpened into a weapon.

Noah turned toward me. His expression had gone pale with anger. "Elena, don't do this."

I knew he wasn't talking only about the blood.

He had been the one to confirm the pregnancy that morning. He had pointed at the grainy screen and shown me the tiny flicker of cardiac activity. He had made me promise to eat more protein, stop skipping breakfast, and call him if the cramping I'd mentioned returned.

I had walked out of his office smiling.

Hours later, I was sitting beneath fluorescent lights while my husband threatened to turn my body into emergency inventory.

"How much?" I asked.

Miller hesitated. "One unit to start."

Noah's stare could have cut steel. "She is not cleared even for that."

"One unit," I repeated.

Adrian exhaled as if I had finally become reasonable. "Thank you."

The words hurt more than I expected.

"Don't thank me."

I rolled up my sleeve.

Noah caught my wrist before Miller could tie the tourniquet. His grip was careful, warm.

"Last chance," he murmured. "I can stop this."

I looked past him at Adrian.

He was already checking the clock above the door.

"Let them do it."

Noah released me slowly.

Miller tied the rubber band around my upper arm. The needle bit into my vein. Dark blood rushed down the clear tubing.

I leaned my head against the chair and stared at the ceiling.

The room began to feel distant after only a few minutes.

"Slow the flow," Noah said.

"Her pressure is stable," Miller replied.

"It's dropping."

Adrian moved to the foot of the chair. "Is the bag full yet?"

Noah rounded on him. "Look at her."

"I'm looking."

"No. You're looking at the blood."

I swallowed against a wave of nausea.

"Adrian."

He glanced at me.

"I feel dizzy."

"It'll pass," he said. "Celeste is fighting for her life."

The words landed cleanly, leaving no room for misunderstanding.

Noah reached for the clamp. "That's enough."

Miller blocked him. "The unit isn't complete."

"Her pressure is ninety over fifty-four. Stop the draw."

"Finish it," Adrian ordered.

Noah went still.

For one dangerous second, I thought he might attack his Alpha in the middle of the clinic.

Then the collection bag reached its mark.

Miller withdrew the needle.

Adrian took the labeled unit before the gauze was taped to my arm.

He turned and left.

No question about whether I could stand. No hand on my shoulder. No backward glance.

The door shut behind him.

I tried to rise and nearly folded.

Noah caught me around the elbows. "Easy."

"I'm fine."

"You're not."

A cramp twisted low in my abdomen.

I sucked in a breath.

Noah's face changed instantly. "How bad?"

"Just a cramp."

"Elena."

"I need the restroom."

He followed me into the hall, keeping close without touching me. Inside the restroom, I gripped the sink until the pain eased.

Noah appeared in the doorway with a paper cup of warm glucose solution.

"Drink."

My hand shook as I accepted it.

His gaze dropped to the protective way I held my stomach.

"If you keep letting Adrian's obsession decide what happens to your body," he said quietly, "you are going to lose far more than blood."

An hour after I left the clinic, the bedroom door opened without a knock.

I was sitting on the small sofa near the windows, one hand pressed to my lower abdomen. The cramps had eased to a dull ache, but Noah's warning still echoed in my head.

Celeste walked into my private quarters as if she had never left them.

She wore an ivory robe borrowed from the estate linen closet. Her blond hair was damp from a shower, and the fresh bandage at her wrist looked far more dramatic than the bruising beneath it.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Get out."

She ignored me and wandered toward the dresser. "The room changed."

"That's what happens when someone is gone for four years."

"The curtains used to be blue."

"They aren't anymore."

Celeste smiled at my reflection in the mirror. "Adrian never liked gold."

"Then he survived three years of it."

Her smile sharpened.

I should have called security. I should have ordered a guard to escort her back to the medical wing.

Instead, my attention caught on the chain around her neck.

A tarnished crescent pendant rested against her collarbone, scratched deeply along the left edge.

My stomach tightened.

I knew that necklace.

Four years ago, Adrian had searched the forest until dawn after Celeste disappeared. He returned soaked through, mud to his knees, carrying that pendant in his fist. On the night before our mating ceremony, I had finally asked why he kept it in his desk.

He had taken it outside.

He had come back ten minutes later empty-handed.

I threw it into the river, he'd told me. She is the past. You are my future.

"Where did you get that?"

Celeste touched the pendant lightly. "This?"

"Don't play games."

"Adrian gave it back to me tonight."

The ache in my abdomen became distant.

"You're lying."

"Am I?"

She unclasped the chain and held the pendant out between two fingers.

The scratch was exactly where I remembered it. So was the tiny dent at the bottom point, where Adrian once told me Celeste had dropped it on a stone floor during their first year together.

"He kept it," she said. "All this time."

I forced myself to stand.

My knees felt weak, but I refused to let her watch me fold.

"Why are you here, Celeste? You got the blood. Adrian spent the night at your bedside. What else do you want?"

Her expression lost its false sweetness.

"I wanted to see what he chose after I left."

"I'm not an object he chose."

"No?"

She glanced around the room again, taking in the framed wedding photo, the books on my nightstand, the perfume bottles on my dresser.

"You live in the suite I designed," she said. "You sleep in the bed he ordered for me. You wear his mark, but not his ring."

"You rejected him."

"I was twenty-two and terrified of becoming Luna to a warlord who thought love meant possession. I left because I wanted him to chase me."

The admission was so absurd I almost smiled.

"Four years is a long time to wait for a chase."

"He never stopped."

"Then why come back now?"

For the first time, Celeste's confidence slipped. Her fingers tightened around the pendant.

"Because I heard he had consolidated the eastern packs. I heard he had become everything people said he would become."

"So you came back for the title."

Her mouth curved. "I came back to see whether he still wanted me."

"And collapsing at the border was part of the experiment?"

She did not answer. She didn't need to.

"He married me."

"He marked you. There's a difference."

That landed because it was cruelly close to a fear I had never spoken aloud.

Adrian had given me his name, his mark, his place at the head table. But the family Luna ring remained locked in the council vault.

Every time I asked about it, there was a reason.

The setting needed repair.

The elders needed to approve the ceremony.

The old band had to be resized.

Three years of reasons.

Celeste stepped closer.

"Do you know why it was never resized for you?"

I said nothing.

"Because he couldn't bring himself to change it."

"You don't know that."

"I do. He told me."

My fingers went cold.

"When?"

"Tonight."

"Adrian barely left the trauma bay."

"Exactly."

She smiled without warmth.

"He sat beside me for almost an hour after the transfusion. He apologized for what happened four years ago. He said he should have come after me sooner."

I wanted to dismiss it as manipulation. Celeste had every reason to hurt me.

But the necklace lay between us, heavy and real.

"Why would you tell me this?"

"Because I don't want another performance at breakfast where you pretend you're secure and he pretends he doesn't look at me. It's exhausting."

"Then leave the estate."

"He asked me to stay."

The room went quiet.

I heard the faint ticking of the clock on the mantel.

"He what?"

"He said I could recover here as long as I needed."

"This is my home."

"It was mine first."

My wolf pushed restlessly beneath my skin, not with jealousy but warning. The mate mark at my neck gave a faint, unpleasant throb.

Celeste fastened the necklace again.

"There's one more thing you should know."

"I'm done listening."

"No, Elena. You really aren't."

She walked to my jewelry cabinet and tapped the empty velvet tray in the top drawer—the place I had once imagined keeping the Luna ring.

"Adrian never had the ring resized because it already fits the woman he wanted to wear it."

I stared at her, no longer sure which hurt more—the lie or the fact that I believed her.

Celeste lifted her left hand.

On her ring finger was a pale indentation, old but unmistakable, the exact width of the Blackwood Luna band.

"He brought the ring to my room tonight," she said softly. "And he asked me whether I still remembered how it felt."