Florence POV:

Three weeks later.

The glass doors of the Carroll Architecture Firm slid open. I walked in, my heels clicking rhythmically against the marble floor. I wore a simple black dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, hiding the healing puncture wound on my hip.

My ID was deactivated, naturally. The receptionist, Betty, looked up and paled.

"Mrs. Car— I mean, Florence. You can't be here."

"I'm just here to pick up my personal sketches, Betty," I lied smoothly. "Unless Julius wants a lawsuit for intellectual property theft on top of everything else?"

"Let her in."

The voice came from the mezzanine. Kenzie stood there, looking radiant. She leaned over the railing, smiling down at me. She looked remarkably healthy for someone who supposedly needed a life-saving transplant weeks ago.

"Let her come up," Kenzie said. "I want to thank her personally."

I took the elevator. When the doors opened, the office fell silent. My former colleagues stared at their screens, terrified to make eye contact.

I walked to my old office. It was already changed. My awards were in a trash bin. The walls were painted a garish pink. And Kenzie was sitting in my chair.

Julius stood by the window.

"You look terrible," Julius said without looking up.

"And you look incompetent," I replied.

The room gasped.

Julius turned slowly. "Careful, Florence."

I pointed at the blueprints on the desk. "That's the Lunar Temple project. You've placed the load-bearing pillars on a ley line. The magical interference will collapse the atrium within six months."

Kenzie laughed. "Listen to the human trying to teach us pack magic. I redesigned it. My intuition told me the flow was better this way."

"Your intuition is going to kill people," I said flatly.

"Enough!" Julius slammed his hand on the desk. "Get out. You have your sketches. Leave."

Kenzie stood up and walked around the desk. She stopped in front of me, invading my personal space.

"You know, Florence, you really are pathetic," she whispered. "You couldn't keep your man, you couldn't keep your house. You're just... empty."

She raised her hand and slapped me.

The sound cracked like a whip.

My head snapped to the side. My Inner Wolf didn't just growl; she roared against the cage of my mind. Kill her. Paint the walls with her.

I slowly turned my head back. I tasted copper.

"Do you feel better?" I asked softly.

Kenzie smirked. "Much."

I looked at Julius. He was watching, arms crossed. He approved of this.

"Get out," Julius said.

I nodded. "Gladly."

I walked to the elevator. As the doors closed, I let a small, cold smile play on my lips.

They thought they had humiliated me. They didn't know that while Kenzie was posturing, my phone had been cloning the localized server.

I had just downloaded ten years of financial records, illegal trade deals, and the original blueprints.

And before I left my office, I had dropped a small, silver USB drive behind the server rack.

The Trojan Horse was in the city.

Florence POV:

"Mommy, are the bad men coming?"

Ava sat on the cot in the basement safe house, clutching her stuffed rabbit. We were underground, in a property my father bought through shell companies.

"No, baby," I soothed, brushing her hair. "We're playing a game. Hide and seek."

My phone rang. Blocked number.

"Hello?"

"I know where you are." Julius.

My blood ran cold. "How?"

"You really thought you could hide? You're still wearing the necklace I gave you. Tracker."

I ripped the silver chain from my neck and threw it across the room.

"What do you want, Julius?"

"The Lunar Temple blueprints," he snarled. "The contractors are refusing to build Kenzie's version. They say it's unstable. I need your original files. The ones you stole."

"I didn't steal them. I created them."

"Bring them to me. And bring Ava. The courts awarded me full custody this morning. Abandonment looks bad on a mother's record, Florence."

"You signed away your rights!"

"I'm the Alpha. I do what I want. You have one hour."

I hung up. I grabbed my laptop.

"Okay, Julius," I muttered. "You want the designs? I'll give you a fix."

I opened the CAD files. I adjusted the ventilation specs. To the untrained eye, it looked like a stabilization fix. In reality, I was creating a sonic tunnel. When the autumn winds hit the building, it would emit a high-frequency screech that would drive every wolf inside into a migraine-induced madness.

I hit send.

CRASH.

The door to the safe house splintered inward.

Three men in black tactical gear stormed in. Rogues. Mercenaries.

"Grab the girl!" one shouted.

"Ava, get behind me!" I screamed.

I grabbed a heavy iron lamp and swung. It connected with the first man's helmet with a satisfying crunch. He went down.

But the second man tackled me. His fist connected with my stomach. I doubled over, gasping.

"Mommy!"

I looked up to see the third man grabbing Ava. She was kicking and screaming.

Then, the air shimmered.

Ava's eyes glowed a bright, piercing gold. A low growl, far too deep for a five-year-old, erupted from her throat.

The Rogue holding her yelped and dropped her. Smoke rose from his arm where she had touched him.

"She's burning me!" he yelled.

Ava had manifested her aura. The Royal Aura.

"Forget the plan!" the leader shouted. "Gas them!"

One of them pulled a canister. Wolfsbane.

"No..."

Purple mist filled the tiny room. My lungs burned. My vision blurred.

The last thing I saw was Julius walking through the broken door, stepping over my body to pick up a coughing Ava.

"Good work," he told the Rogues. "Bring the mother. We'll finish this at the river."

Florence POV:

I woke up to the sound of dripping water and the smell of rot.

I was chained to a wall. Silver cuffs burned my wrists, neutralizing my strength.

"Ava?"

"Mommy..." A small voice whimpered from a cage across the damp room.

We were in the boathouse at the edge of the Carroll territory.

The heavy iron door creaked open. Julius walked in, followed by Kenzie.

"Look at this," Kenzie laughed, holding a flashlight to my face. "The Princess of Garbage."

"Let her go, Julius," I spat. "She's your daughter."

"She's an uncontrolled variable," Julius said coldly. "Burning my men? Glowing eyes? She's dangerous. Probably a Rogue mutation."

He held up a tablet. "I saw the 'fix' you sent for the Temple. Nice try. My engineers caught the sonic trap."

"Your engineers are smarter than you," I said.

Julius backhanded me. My head cracked against the stone wall.

"Sign the confession," he said, holding out a document. "Admit to corporate espionage. Admit to being an unfit mother. Then I hand Ava over to the state ward, and you... you disappear."

"And if I don't?"

"Then we have a hunting accident," Kenzie giggled. "Rogues are so unpredictable these days."

They left us in the dark. "You have until midnight."

Hours passed. The silver burned.

Suddenly, a hatch in the door slid open.

"Mrs. Carroll?"

Alfred. The pack's elderly butler.

"Alfred," I whispered. "Help us."

"I cut the power to the cameras," he hissed. "I can't open the main door, but I stole the key to the cuffs."

He slid a key across the floor. I stretched my leg, barely catching it with my toe.

I unlocked myself. I rushed to Ava's cage and picked the simple lock.

"We have to run, baby."

We slipped out the back, into the service tunnels.

We burst out into the night air near the riverbank. Freedom.

But as we scrambled up the muddy bank, floodlights blinded us.

"Did you really think the old man could outsmart me?" Julius's voice boomed from a loudspeaker.

We were surrounded. Not by pack warriors, but by mercenaries holding leashes attached to starving, feral wolves.

Julius stepped out of a black SUV. Kenzie was filming with her phone.

"Run, Florence," Julius smiled. "Let's make this sport."

He nodded to the mercenaries. "Release the hounds."

Five massive, skeletal wolves surged forward.

I looked at the river. Too far. I looked at Ava.

I couldn't hide anymore. The silver cuffs had burned the last of the suppressants out of my system.

I felt it. The ancient power. The moon was calling me.

"Close your eyes, baby," I whispered.

"One," Julius counted. "Two..."

My bones began to heat up. It wasn't painful. It felt like coming home.

"Three..."

I stood up. I turned to face them.

And for the first time in ten years, I let the White Wolf out.