The infirmary smelled like mineral water and antiseptic. I'd spent half my life in this room, back when I was training to be a healer, back when I thought I had a future that belonged to me.

Kaizen was sitting by the springs when I arrived, his bare feet dangling in the glowing water. The healing properties made it shimmer faintly in the dim light, like liquid moonstone. He looked up when I walked in, and his smile was tired but genuine.

"You didn't have to come," he said softly. "I know you're busy with the festival."

I knelt beside him and pressed two fingers to his wrist, checking his pulse out of habit. Steady. Weak, but steady. "I always have time for you."

He didn't argue. He knew better.

I was reaching for the blood pressure cuff when the door slammed open.

Mackenzie Rogers strode in like she owned the place, flanked by two Delta warriors I barely recognized. Young ones. The kind who followed orders without asking questions.

"Security check," Mackenzie announced, her voice sharp and bright. Too bright. Like glass about to shatter.

I stood slowly. "This is a restricted healing area. You need authorization from Dr. Warren to—"

"I have authorization from the Beta." She pulled a folded paper from her pocket and waved it lazily in my direction. "Abram's concerned about... vulnerabilities in the pack's medical facilities."

Kaizen's hand found mine. His fingers were cold.

Mackenzie's eyes tracked the movement, and her smile widened. She took three steps closer, close enough that I could smell that gardenia perfume again, and then she tilted her head to the side.

The mark on her neck was fresh. Angry red, still bruised at the edges. A claiming bite, or something meant to look like one.

"Oops," she said, touching it with one finger. "Didn't mean for you to see that, Luna." The title dripped from her mouth like poison. "But I suppose you should know. Since we're going to be... family."

My throat closed.

"He's been so attentive lately," she continued, her voice dropping to a whisper meant only for me. "Especially since I told him about the baby. His heir. The future Alpha."

The room tilted.

No. No, that wasn't possible. Callan would have told me. He would have—

But he wouldn't have. Of course he wouldn't have.

"You're lying," Kaizen said. His voice was thin but steady, and he was trying to stand, his legs shaking with the effort. "My sister is the Luna. You're nothing but a—"

"Kaizen, don't—"

"A homewrecker," he finished, his pale face flushed with anger I'd never seen before. "You have no honor. No shame. You're not fit to—"

Mackenzie's face twisted. "How dare you."

And then she moved.

It happened so fast I almost didn't see it. Her right arm rippled, bones cracking and reforming, skin splitting to reveal dark fur and claws. A partial shift. Illegal inside pack buildings. Illegal without Alpha permission.

She raked those claws across her own shoulder.

Blood sprayed across the white tile floor.

Mackenzie screamed. High and piercing and theatrical. "She attacked me! The Luna and her cripple brother attacked me!"

The two warriors rushed forward, and one of them grabbed Kaizen's arm, yanking him away from the springs. He cried out, his legs buckling.

"Don't touch him!" I lunged forward, but the other warrior caught me, his grip iron-hard on my wrist.

"She's trying to kill the Alpha's heir!" Mackenzie shrieked, clutching her bleeding shoulder. "She's jealous! She's insane!"

"That's not—" I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. "Let go of my brother, he needs the water, he'll—"

Pain.

It hit me like lightning, white-hot and vicious, tearing through my abdomen. I gasped, doubling over, and the warrior released me in surprise. I hit the floor hard, my knees cracking against tile.

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

The pain came again, sharper this time, and I felt it—the terrible, unmistakable sensation of something tearing loose inside me. Warmth spread down my thighs, soaking through my dress.

No.

I looked down. Saw the blood pooling beneath me, dark and damning.

No. No, no, no—

"Aria?" Kaizen's voice, distant and terrified. "Aria, what's—"

I'd been pregnant.

I hadn't known. Hadn't even suspected. But my body knew. My body had been holding on to this one last piece of hope, this one last thread connecting me to the mate who'd abandoned me.

And now it was gone.

The room spun. Voices shouted. Someone was calling for Dr. Warren. Mackenzie was still screaming about being attacked, her voice high and victorious.

I pressed my hands to my stomach and felt the life draining out of me onto the cold infirmary floor.

And I understood, with perfect clarity, that I had nothing left to lose.

The sound of boots on tile cut through the chaos.

I was still on the floor, hands pressed to my stomach, when Callan burst through the infirmary doors. His Alpha presence filled the room instantly, that commanding energy that made everyone straighten, made the air itself feel heavier.

He looked at me. For one heartbeat, our eyes met.

Then Mackenzie wailed, "The baby—" and his head snapped toward her.

I watched him cross the room. Watched him kneel beside her where she sat clutching her self-inflicted shoulder wound, blood smeared dramatically across her warrior's uniform. Watched him cup her face with both hands, his expression twisted with something that looked almost like fear.

"Is the pup—" he started.

"I don't know," she sobbed, leaning into his touch. "She attacked me, Callan. She went crazy. Her and that—that thing she calls a brother."

The Omega healer beside me pressed a towel between my legs, her hands shaking. The fabric turned red almost instantly. She made a small, frightened sound in her throat.

Callan still hadn't looked at me again.

"Get Dr. Warren," he ordered one of the Delta warriors. Then his eyes—cold, gray, empty—finally found mine. "Aria. You're confined to your quarters until we sort this out. You endangered the pack's future."

I tried to speak. Tried to tell him. But my voice came out as nothing more than a whisper. "Callan—"

"That's an order." His Alpha Voice slammed down, and even through the haze of pain, my body responded. Tried to obey. Tried to stand.

I couldn't. My legs wouldn't hold me.

The Omega healer looked up at him, her face pale. "Alpha, she needs—"

"Take her to her room," he said. "Now."

Two guards hauled me up by my arms. My feet dragged across the blood-slicked floor as they carried me out, and the last thing I saw was Callan cradling Mackenzie against his chest, whispering something into her hair.

He never once asked if I was hurt.

---

They locked me in.

I heard the bolt slide home from the outside, heard their footsteps retreat down the hallway. Then silence. Just me and the four walls of the room I'd been sleeping in for the past year, the room that wasn't really mine, in the house that had never felt like home.

I made it to the bathroom before I collapsed.

The fever came fast. One moment I was shivering on the cold tile, the next I was burning, my skin too hot, my head pounding. I crawled into the shower and turned the water on cold, but it didn't help. Nothing helped.

I'd lost a baby I hadn't known I was carrying.

I'd lost it because of stress. Because of Mackenzie's lies and Callan's cruelty and my own powerlessness.

I pressed my forehead against the shower wall and let the water run over me until I couldn't tell what was water and what were tears.

Sometime after midnight, the delirium took me.

---

I was standing in a forest I didn't recognize.

The trees were massive, ancient things with silver bark that gleamed in the moonlight. The ground beneath my bare feet was soft with moss, and the air smelled like winter—clean and sharp and impossibly cold.

I wasn't alone.

She stood twenty feet away, watching me with eyes that glowed violet in the darkness. A wolf. Massive. Easily twice the size of any pack wolf I'd ever seen, with fur so white it seemed to absorb the moonlight and reflect it back brighter.

I should have been afraid.

I wasn't.

"You," I whispered.

The White Wolf took a step forward. Then another. Her movements were fluid, predatory, nothing submissive or gentle about her. When she was close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from her body, she lowered her head and looked directly into my eyes.

*You called me,* a voice said. Not out loud. Inside my head. Inside my chest. *You finally called me.*

"I didn't—"

*You did.* She circled me slowly, her tail brushing against my legs. *When you had nothing left. When they took everything. When you finally stopped begging and started wanting blood.*

My hands were shaking. "I don't know how—"

*You know.* She stopped in front of me again, and this time when she looked at me, I saw myself reflected in those violet eyes. Saw what I could become. What I would become. *I am not the wolf they wanted for you. I am not gentle. I am not forgiving. I am vengeance, Aria. And I have been waiting.*

She pressed her massive head against my chest, right over my heart.

And I felt it. The bond snapping into place. The power flooding through me like ice water in my veins, sharp and clean and utterly merciless.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the shower, the water long since gone cold.

But I wasn't alone anymore.

---

I was still sitting there, feeling the new presence coiled inside me like a sleeping serpent, when I heard the scream.

Kaizen.

I was on my feet and at the door before I consciously decided to move. I slammed my shoulder against it, but the bolt held. Slammed again. Again.

"KAIZEN!"

Footsteps in the hallway. Voices. Then Mackenzie's laugh, high and brittle.

"Take him to the dungeons," she said. "The Luna needs to learn what happens when she threatens the Alpha's heir."

"No!" I threw myself against the door hard enough that pain exploded through my shoulder. "NO! He'll die without the springs! He'll—"

But they were already gone.

I sank to my knees, pressing my hands flat against the door, and felt the White Wolf stir inside me.

*Let me out,* she whispered. *Let me show them what we are.*

Not yet, I thought. Not yet.

But soon.

The lock shattered under my hands.

I didn't know I had that kind of strength. Didn't know the White Wolf could lend me her power even before I'd fully shifted. But the metal bent like paper, and then I was running—down the hallway, down the stairs, my bare feet slapping against stone.

The dungeon entrance was guarded by a single Delta. He saw me coming and reached for his radio, but I was faster. My hand closed around his wrist, and I felt bones grind together under my grip. He dropped to his knees with a choked sound.

"The key," I said.

He gave it to me.

The dungeon smelled like mold and old fear. The stairs went down forever, each step colder than the last, and by the time I reached the bottom my breath was coming out in white clouds.

Kaizen's cell was at the end of the corridor.

I knew before I opened the door. Knew from the silence. Knew from the way the air felt too still, too empty.

He was lying on the stone floor, his body curled on its side like he'd been trying to get warm. His lips were blue. His eyes were open.

I dropped to my knees beside him and pulled him into my lap. His skin was ice-cold, his chest utterly still.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no—"

I pressed my hands to his chest, tried to push healing energy into him the way I'd been taught, but there was nothing there. No spark. No life. Just cold flesh and empty eyes staring at nothing.

"Kaizen, please—"

His hand twitched.

I grabbed it, pressed it between both of mine. "I'm here. I'm here, I've got you—"

His lips moved. The sound that came out was barely a whisper, more breath than voice.

"Burn it," he said.

I leaned closer, my forehead pressed against his. "What?"

"Burn it all... down."

His hand went limp in mine.

I sat there for a long time, holding my brother's body in the dark. I didn't cry. Couldn't cry. There was something hard and cold forming in my chest where my heart used to be, something that felt like the White Wolf's teeth.

The mate bond with Callan was still there, that golden thread connecting us. But it felt different now. Rotten. Necrotic. Like a wound that had festered too long.

I laid Kaizen down gently, crossed his hands over his chest. Then I stood.

There was a torch burning in a bracket on the wall. I took it down and held the flame to the hem of my dress until it caught. Watched the fire crawl up the fabric. Then I dropped it on the floor and walked out, leaving my brother's body in the cell.

Let them find him. Let them see what they'd done.

I had work to do.

---

I left the pack territory before dawn, carrying nothing but a small vial of Kaizen's ashes that I'd scraped from the dungeon floor and a silver dagger I'd stolen from the armory. The guards at the border were changing shifts. No one saw me slip through.

The Neutral Zone was a three-hour walk through the forest. By the time I reached the edge of pack lands, my feet were bleeding and my dress was in tatters, but I didn't stop. Couldn't stop.

The White Wolf paced inside me, restless and hungry.

*Soon,* I told her. *Soon.*

The tavern was exactly where Elara had told me it would be, years ago when I'd healed her pup and she'd whispered secrets in gratitude. A squat building made of gray stone, sitting at the crossroads where three territories met and none had jurisdiction.

I pushed open the door.

The interior was dark and smelled like stale beer and wet dog. A dozen pairs of eyes turned toward me—Rogues, mostly, and a few Omegas who'd been cast out. The kind of wolves who had nothing left to lose.

I walked to the bar.

The woman behind it was ancient, her face a map of scars and wrinkles. She looked at me for a long moment, then her eyes widened.

"Little healer," Elara said softly. "What did they do to you?"

"I need to find him," I said. My voice sounded strange. Flat. "The Shadow King."

She went very still. "That's not a name you speak lightly."

"I know what he is." I leaned forward, my hands flat on the bar. "I know he's the late Alpha's bastard. I know he has Lycan blood. I know he was exiled for being too powerful." I met her eyes. "And I know he wants revenge just as badly as I do."

Elara studied me. Then she reached under the bar and pulled out a scrap of paper, scribbled an address.

"He's in the Wild Lands," she said. "Three days north. But child—" She caught my wrist as I reached for the paper. "The Shadow King doesn't help people out of kindness. If you go to him, you'll owe him. And his debts are paid in blood."

I took the paper.

"Good," I said. "So are mine."