By the third morning, my body had stopped shaking, but the hollow place where the bond used to be still ached like a pulled tooth. I woke before dawn from habit—three years of grinding wolfsbane before sunrise doesn't leave a person easily—and found Maren already at the window, arms crossed, watching the tree line like it owed her something.

"You feel that?" she asked.

I did. It wasn't a scent. It was a pressure, faint and deliberate, like someone standing just outside a door and choosing not to knock.

Selene stirred low in my chest. *Not a threat,* she said. *Familiar.*

*Familiar how?*

She didn't answer. She rarely did when the answer would have cost her something.

The knock came at midmorning—three measured raps, not the frantic pounding Ironridge messengers used. Maren had her hand on the fire poker before I'd even stood up. When she cracked the door, a tall man stood on the porch in a plain gray coat, hands visible, posture too controlled to be anything but trained.

"Jade Ashford." He said my name like he already knew it wasn't the whole of it. "My name is Silas Vance. I mean you no harm. I'd like five minutes."

Maren didn't move from the doorway. "And if we say no?"

"Then I walk back into those trees and you never see me again." His eyes—gray, steady, too old for the rest of his face—found mine over her shoulder. "But I don't think that's what you want, Jade. I think you have questions, and I have answers I've been waiting twenty years to give you."

Something in my chest went very still. Selene didn't growl. She listened.

I let him in.

He didn't sit until I did, and even then he perched at the very edge of the bench like a man unused to comfort. "I've watched you since you were four years old," he said, no preamble, no softening. "I was there the week you were placed in Ironridge. I've reported on you every season since."

"Reported to who."

"Someone who couldn't come himself. Not yet." He held my gaze. "Someone who is, right now, receiving word of a silver wolf that dropped an entire pack hall to its knees, and who has not slept since he heard it."

The fire cracked. I said nothing, because my throat had closed around every question I had at once.

"He's furious," Silas said quietly, "but not at you. Never at you. At the mate who was supposed to prove himself worthy of what he didn't know he was holding—and failed in front of three hundred witnesses." A muscle worked in his jaw. "That's not a story I can finish today. I owe you more than a doorstep version of it. But I need you to understand something before tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"There's a summit. Alliance packs, hosted on Ironridge ground. A Lycan Prince is attending—officially for politics." His eyes didn't blink. "Unofficially, he's been sent to find you."

Maren's chair scraped back an inch. I didn't move.

"Ashley Voss has already had a security order drafted," Silas went on, flat, factual, a man delivering weather. "You're named a rogue-blooded Omega. Trespass charge if you're seen within a half-mile of the summit grounds. Gamma Voss is telling every visiting Alpha personally that Tripp's rejection of you was—his word—discernment."

I thought of the Quartermaster clapping along with his ledgers open on his desk. I thought of Ashley in ivory silk watching Tripp like a snare springing shut. Some small, tired part of me almost laughed.

"Let them post the order," I said. "I have no interest in her summit."

"You may not have to seek it out." Something almost like sympathy crossed his face. "Word travels faster than paper, Jade. What happened in that hall didn't stay in that hall."

He stood, buttoned his coat, and paused at the door. "I'll come back when I can tell you the rest properly. All of it. You deserve better than a doorstep, and so does he—the man I answer to." A beat. "He is not a good man, exactly. But he never stopped watching. That has to count for something, even if you decide later that it doesn't."

Then he was gone, folding back into the tree line as quietly as he'd come.

Maren rounded on me the second the door shut. "A Prince. Jade. A *Lycan* Prince, coming here, looking for—"

"I heard him."

She went quiet, watching me with an expression I didn't have a name for. Selene hummed low, unbothered, patient as stone.

That night, long after Maren's breathing evened into sleep, I stood at the window and let the cold air move against my face. Far off, past the tree line, past the border markers I could no longer see, something shifted on the wind. Not jasmine. Not Tripp's scent, dead and grey to me now. Something else—pine, cold rain, the electric hush before a storm breaks.

Selene lifted her head inside me, sharp and suddenly, entirely awake.

*There,* she said, and said nothing more.

The letter sat in my journal all night, pressed between dried wolfsbane and a page I'd written three years ago about how to make yourself smaller in a room full of wolves who wanted you gone.

*Your wolf always knew who she was. So did I.*

I traced the words with one finger in the dark. The handwriting was old-fashioned, careful, each letter formed like it mattered. Like the person writing it had been thinking about this sentence for a very long time.

Selene stirred low in my chest. *He watched,* she said simply. *He waited.*

*For what?*

*For you to be ready. For the bond to break. For the wolf who would throw you away to prove he was never worthy of what he held.* A pause. *For me.*

I closed the journal. Maren was asleep across the cabin, one arm flung over her face, snoring softly. I listened to her breathe and thought about the man in the gray coat who'd said he'd been watching me since I was four. About a father I couldn't remember who'd written a single line and thought it was enough.

It wasn't enough. But it was something.

I went to sleep with my hand on the journal, and I dreamed of high stone ceilings and a voice calling me *little moon*.

---

The summit grounds were crawling with wolves by the time we arrived at mid-morning. Maren had argued for an hour about whether I should go at all, but I'd felt it the moment I woke—that pull, faint and deliberate, the same pressure I'd felt outside the cabin door before Silas knocked. Something was waiting for me there. Something that had been waiting a long time.

We stopped at the outer gate, where the Ironridge sentries stood with their chests puffed out like they were guarding something that mattered. One of them—a Delta named Rourke who used to smirk at me in the kitchens—saw me coming and grinned.

"Well, well." He stepped forward, one hand resting on the hilt of his blade like he thought I might run. "Jade Ashford. Funny seeing you here."

I stopped ten feet back. Maren moved half a step in front of me, her shoulders tight.

"We're here to observe," I said. Calm. Flat. The way I'd learned to speak when I wanted to disappear. "We won't cross the gate."

"You won't cross it because you're not allowed to cross it." Rourke pulled a folded paper from his coat and made a show of unfolding it, slow, enjoying himself. "Security order, signed this morning by Luna Ashley Voss. Let's see—'Jade Ashford, rogue-blooded Omega, poses a trespassing threat to alliance proceedings and is barred from summit grounds under penalty of detainment.'"

A few wolves had started to gather—Omegas, mostly, the ones who worked the kitchens and cleaned the halls, drawn by the sound of something happening. I saw their faces. Some looked uncomfortable. Some looked eager.

Rourke kept reading, louder now, playing to his audience. "'Subject has demonstrated unstable behavior and lacks verifiable pack standing. Approach with caution.'" He looked up, grinning. "That's you, sweetheart. Unstable. Unverified. Wolfless."

The last word landed like a stone thrown at glass.

Something moved inside me, sharp and sudden. Selene lifted her head, and I felt her amusement, cold and patient. *Let him finish,* she said. *Let them all finish.*

"I'll wait here," I said.

Rourke blinked. "What?"

"I said I'll wait." I didn't raise my voice. I didn't move. "I'm not crossing your gate. I'm standing right here. If that's a problem, you're welcome to explain why."

His grin faltered. He looked back at the other sentry, who shrugged, clearly unsure what to do with a wolf who wasn't arguing.

That's when Ashley arrived.

She came through the gate in a dress the color of cream, her hair pinned up in something elaborate, and she moved like she was walking onto a stage. The crowd parted for her automatically. She stopped just inside the gate and looked at me the way you'd look at a stain on expensive fabric.

"Jade." Her voice was sweet, light, almost friendly. "I didn't think you'd actually come. I mean, after everything, I thought you'd have more... dignity."

I met her eyes and said nothing.

She stepped closer, just enough that the sentries could hear her but the crowd couldn't. "You don't belong here. You never did. Tripp sees that now. Everyone sees it." She tilted her head, studying me. "You could have left quietly. You could have disappeared. But you had to come back, didn't you? You had to make it harder on yourself."

"I'm not here for Tripp," I said.

"Then what are you here for?" She laughed, soft and pitying. "There's nothing left for you here, Jade. No bond. No rank. No wolf. You're just—" She waved one hand vaguely. "Nothing."

Selene growled, low and unhurried, a sound only I could hear. *Not yet,* I told her. *Wait.*

I looked at Ashley—really looked at her, at the borrowed confidence and the carefully painted face and the dress that cost more than I'd ever owned in three years—and I felt something settle in my chest. Not anger. Not even hurt. Just clarity.

"I'll wait," I said again.

Her smile thinned. For just a second, something flickered behind her eyes—uncertainty, maybe, or the faint suspicion that she'd missed something—but then it was gone, smoothed over with that practiced sweetness.

"Suit yourself." She turned back toward the gate, then paused and looked over her shoulder. "Oh, and Jade? If you're still here when the summit ends, I'll have the sentries escort you off Ironridge land entirely. Rogue protocol. Just so we're clear."

She walked away, and the crowd slowly dispersed, disappointed there hadn't been more of a scene.

Maren exhaled hard beside me. "I want to break her face."

"Not yet," I said quietly.

Because inside the hall—past the gate, past the sentries, past Ashley's carefully constructed stage—I felt it again. That pressure. That pull. Stronger now, deliberate, moving closer.

And then the scent hit me.

Pine. Cold rain. The electric hush before a storm breaks.

Selene's head snapped up, fully awake, and I felt her recognition like a shock through my ribs. *There,* she said, and this time her voice was different—sharper, certain, almost eager.

The hall doors opened.

A man walked out—tall, dark-haired, moving with the kind of control that didn't need to announce itself. He didn't look at the sentries. He didn't look at the crowd. He looked straight past all of them, straight at me, and stopped.

For a long moment, neither of us moved.

Then he inhaled, slow and deliberate, and I watched something shift behind his eyes—something that looked like recognition and shock and something else I didn't have a name for.

He started walking again. Not toward the gate. Toward me. And every wolf between us stepped aside without being told, like they'd been pulled by an invisible string.

Behind him, through the open doors, I saw Tripp's face go white.