"Iris, get to the kitchen and start the evening meal. The moon's already high, and the den is hungry." Agata's voice cut through the great room like a dull blade, more habit than authority behind it.

I didn't spare her a glance. Instead, I turned to Tessa with a smile so polished it could have graced the front of the spirit network. "Tessa, you and Lena ran together as pups in the old territory. I imagine you used to take your meals here all the time back then?"

"Of course!" Tessa's voice lilted with practiced sweetness, that honeysuckle scent of hers laid on thick enough to mask whatever sat beneath it. "Back in those days, Lena and I shared nearly every meal. Her mother's cooking, the full-moon feasts, all of it."

"So after all those moons away, you must really miss Agata's cooking." I let my gaze drift to the pack matriarch, my tone warm as honey poured over a blade's edge. "Agata, shouldn't you start the meal for your guest? She's traveled such a long way to be welcomed back."

I crossed the room, settled into the worn leather of the long couch, and reached for the crystal screen's control. The screen hummed to life, filling the silence I'd left behind me. I could feel the air in the den shift, the quiet recalibration of everyone's expectations, the way lower wolves sense a current change before they understand it.

It didn't take long. Lena appeared beside me within minutes, jaw tight, irritation simmering behind dark eyes, that stale-leather-and-souring-wine scent curling off her in waves. "How could you make my mother cook? You know her health isn't what it used to be." Her voice dropped low, meant to sound commanding but landing somewhere closer to petulant. "Get up and handle the meal."

I widened my eyes, letting just the right amount of concern bleed through. "Agata, you're unwell? Is it serious? Why didn't anyone tell me? We should send for the pack healer at once."

Agata's face twisted. "Who's unwell? There's nothing wrong with me! Don't you dare speak ill-fortune over this den with that kind of talk."

"Then why don't you want to cook for Tessa?" I tilted my head, amusement threading through every syllable. "You don't feel like it?"

The old she-wolf's expression curdled like milk left out in the Sicilian sun. Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, the bitter-herb-and-chalk scent of her sharpening. "Who said I wouldn't cook?"

She pushed herself up from her chair and marched toward the kitchen with the stiff pride of a she-wolf who still believed the Greyhollow name alone could fill a room. For the next two hours, the sounds of clattering pots and sizzling fat drifted through the den-estate. The smell of garlic and braised meat filled the corridors, rich enough to stir even a dampened wolf, and for a moment the place almost felt like a home that functioned on something other than resentment.

When the long table was finally set, Rowan took Tessa by the arm and guided her into my chair at the head of the family side. The pup didn't even look at me as she did it. "Sis, Tessa is our guest. You don't mind giving up your spot, right?"

Agata materialized beside me, pressing a bowl into my hands the way one might toss scraps to a packless stray. "If sitting at the edge of the table is uncomfortable for you, why don't you take your plate to the kitchen and eat there? And while you're at it, clean up a bit."

I stared at the bowl in my hands. So now I wasn't even permitted at the table. The table I paid for. In the den my bloodline's strength kept standing. Eating meat bought with tribute drawn from hunting grounds the Ravenfall name controlled.

I set the bowl down on the counter with a quiet, deliberate click. Somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf went very still, watching, the way she does before a kill.

"No need. You all enjoy yourselves." My voice was flat, stripped of everything but finality. "A friend asked me to run with them tonight. I'll eat with them."

Lena's brow furrowed, that familiar crease of irritation forming between her eyes. "We leave for the coastal den tomorrow, and you're still going out? Have you even packed your things yet?"

"Don't you have hands?" I met her gaze without flinching, and for half a breath I let her feel the weight of mine. "Pack your own things, Lena."

The silence that followed was exquisite. She stood there, mouth half-open, as though the concept of fending for herself had short-circuited something fundamental in that weak Alpha brain of hers. I didn't wait for a recovery. I picked up my coat and walked out the front door, the cold night air carrying my scent of black cedar and cold iron out ahead of me into the dark.

The night air hit my skin like cold silk. I drove myself to the den-grounds beneath Moonscar's holding, a place tucked behind an unremarkable face on the high northern reach of the Sicilian Territories, where the cellar ran deeper than most pack archives and the clientele knew better than to scent too long at another's business. I ordered a bone-in cut, rare and bloody, a half-measure of the dark southern vintage, and fresh meat hauled up from the cold coastal grounds. I ate slowly, letting my wolf savor every bite with the quiet satisfaction of a she-wolf spending her own power in a world that wanted her grateful for scraps.

With my own tribute, my own earnings, I could feed wherever I pleased.

I stayed out well past the moon's high point, lingering over bitter dark roast and a second pour, watching the territory breathe through the tall windows. There was no rush. There was nothing to rush back to.

When I finally returned to the den-estate, every light was out. The house sat in total darkness, silent as a tomb. Despite me being gone for hours, not a single call on the crystal communicator. Not a single message. No one had checked in. No one had wondered if I was safe, if I'd been tracked, if I'd been run down on some lonely stretch of the territory. They had simply gone to their dens, each of them, without a second thought for the she-wolf who kept the roof over their heads and the rival packs from their throats.

I moved through the darkened hallway by memory, my fingers trailing along the cool plaster until I reached the bedroom. I pushed the door open, crossed to the bed, and sat down on the edge of the mattress.

A scream shattered the silence.

"Ah!"

My hand found the bedside lamp. Light flooded the room in a warm, merciless glow, and there she was. Tessa Thornvale, lying in my spot, her dark hair fanned across my pillow, the sheets pulled to her collarbone as though she belonged there. The scent hit me a half-breath before the light did — honeysuckle laid too thick over a faint trace of rot, soaked deep into my sheets, into the place that should have carried only black cedar and cold iron.

Something detonated behind my ribs. Five years of swallowed fury, of bitten tongues and clenched fists and quiet, corrosive patience. It all converged into a single, white-hot point, and deep inside me my wolf rose with it, hackles up, a snarl building where there had only ever been silence. Before I could think, before reason had any chance of intervening, my hand connected with her face. The crack of the slap echoed off the bedroom walls like a silver round going off.

Tessa crumpled, clutching her cheek, tears spilling instantly. Lena shot upright beside her, an arm sweeping around her shoulders like a shield. "Why did you hit her? We were just talking and must have fallen asleep. It was an accident."

"An accident." I tasted the word, and it was ash. "So you accidentally ended up in bed together. Holding each other. In my bed. That's the story you're going with."

"We were waiting for you!" Lena's voice rose, defensive and loud, the volume compensating for the weakness of the argument. "You were out until the Goddess knows when, so Tessa stayed to keep me company. We talked for a while, and then we fell asleep. It's perfectly normal."

"Then why didn't you call me? Why didn't you send a single message?" I held up my communicator, the screen bare, and let her see it. "Too busy catching up with your old scent-bond? And the two of you couldn't wait in the front room? You had to come to the bedroom, to my side of the bed?"

Lena's face darkened, her jaw set in that stubborn, cornered expression I'd come to know so well over five years. "You're being unreasonable, Iris."

I was done. Done arguing with someone who couldn't see what was right in front of her because she refused to open her eyes, refused to scent what hung thick in the air of this very room. I turned to Tessa, who was still curled against the headboard, tears tracking dark lines down her cheeks, thin and theatrical.

"I'm back now. So why don't you leave?" My voice was quiet, controlled, each word placed with surgical precision, even as my wolf paced behind my ribs, low and lethal. "Or were you planning for all three of us to share the bed?"

Tessa didn't acknowledge me. She didn't even look in my direction. She pressed her palm to her reddened cheek and turned her face toward Lena, her lower lip trembling. "Lena, it really hurts."

Lena's entire body softened. The anger, the defensiveness, all of it dissolved in an instant, replaced by a tenderness she had never once shown me. She cupped Tessa's face in her hands, her thumbs brushing the tears from beneath her eyes. "I'll get you something for it."

After they left the chamber, I shut the heavy oak door and drove the iron deadbolt home until it clicked into place. The sound was small, but it echoed through me like a declaration of war.

I stripped the bed down to the bare frame. Every sheet, every pillowcase that still carried even a trace of the evening's indignity, that honeysuckle laid too thick over copper and something faintly rotted, I tore free and replaced with fresh linens from the armoire. My wolf paced low beneath my skin the whole time, hackles raised at the foreign scent on my own den. Then I pressed in my earbuds, lay back against the cool pillow, and forced myself into a dreamless sleep.

The next morning, Lena found me in the corridor outside the kitchen. His jaw was set like cut marble, and the vein at his temple pulsed with a fury he didn't bother to conceal. The sour reek of cheap copper and wine gone bad rolled off him before he even spoke.

"What was that last night?" His voice was low, the kind of quiet that preceded violence in this den. "I scratched at that door for twenty minutes, Iris. Twenty. My mother and father woke because of it. You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

I met his gaze without flinching. "Yes, I did it on purpose. I thought I'd give you the chance to share quarters with Tessa. You should be thanking me."

Something shifted behind his eyes. He looked at me the way one might look at a packmate that had suddenly bared its teeth. "Are you out of your mind, Iris? Why would I bed Tessa? You're my mate. You're the Luna of this den."

"Oh, so you still remember that." I kept my tone flat, stripped of everything except cold fact. "I thought the moment Tessa Thornvale crossed our territory line again, I'd be cut out of the picture entirely."

As if summoned by the sound of her own name, Tessa appeared at the far end of the hallway. She moved with the practiced grace of a she-wolf raised among powerful Alphas, her dark hair swept over one shoulder, her expression arranged into something soft and concerned. Her scent reached me a breath before her voice did, that too-sweet honeysuckle masking the brittle rot underneath.

"Please, don't fight because of me." Her voice carried just the right tremor of guilt. "We're meant to leave for the gathering. I'd never forgive myself if my being here drove a wedge between you two. That's the last thing I want."

Lena turned to me, and I watched the last flicker of doubt leave his face. "You see? You see how she carries herself? Tessa has grace. She knows her place. Unlike you, with your petty games and bolted doors."

The click of Agata Greyhollow's heels preceded her arrival. The Matriarch filled the doorway, her posture rigid as forged steel, her eyes sweeping the scene with the cold efficiency of a she-wolf who had ruled this den's hierarchy for three decades. Withered lavender and bitter herbs trailed in after her, dry as chalk-dust.

"Iris." My name in her mouth was never a greeting. It was always a correction. "Your temper is becoming a problem. Barring your mate from his own quarters? In this den, that is unacceptable. We will overlook it this once, since we leave for the gathering. But do not test me again."

Adrian Greyhollow's voice rolled in from the adjoining room like distant thunder. He did not bother to step into the hallway. He didn't need to. The faint pressure of an old Alpha's aura crept under the door ahead of his words, thinned now by years of lost wars but still enough to make my wolf bristle. "This is what happens when you show too much leniency. A mate is the head of his den. He is the heir to this pack. And she seals the door against him?" A pause, heavy with contempt. "Disgraceful. A Luna like this needs reminding of her place. Sharply, if necessary."

Rowan materialized at her mother's elbow, a steaming cup cradled in her manicured fingers, green sap and sour milk hanging around her like ozone before a storm. She sipped, smiled, and slid the blade in with a giggle. "Careful, Iris. With that temper of yours, my brother might just sever the bond altogether. And then where would you be?"

I caught Tessa's eyes over Rowan's shoulder. The mask of the concerned peacemaker had slipped, just for a heartbeat. Beneath it was something triumphant. Something that glittered like a knife turned in lamplight. She held my gaze, and the corner of her mouth curled with the quiet satisfaction of a she-wolf who believed she had already won.

Lena said nothing in my defense. Not a word. He simply dragged all of the luggage across the foyer tiles and lined the cases up in front of me like a barricade.