The rogue attack hit Ironmaw three weeks after I left.
I heard about it from a traveling healer who passed through the settlement where Sable and I had been staying. He described the carnage in clinical detail: twelve dead, the northern homesteads burned, families fleeing south with whatever they could carry. Weston had doubled the patrols, tripled the shifts, and still the rogues poured through like water through a broken dam.
"The Alpha's looking for allies," the healer said, warming his hands by our fire. "Word is he's heading to the Lycan Court Summit. Desperate times."
Sable glanced at me across the flames. She didn't say anything. She'd learned not to.
I focused on Lila, who was trying to climb into Buster's fur. The vial of her baby hair swung at my wrist, catching firelight.
I felt nothing about Ironmaw's collapse. Not satisfaction. Not regret. Just the cold distant sense of a door I'd already closed.
---
Two days later, Sable and I packed what little we had and started moving north.
I hadn't planned to approach the Lycan Court. The thought of it made something tighten in my chest—old fear, old grief, the memory of a teenage girl who'd fled that place because love felt like a cage. But the neutral lands near the Court were known as refuge territory. Displaced wolves could shelter there without pack allegiance. It was the safest place I could think of for Lila.
Sable walked beside me, her dead mark still raw on her neck, her wolf still silent inside her. She carried half our supplies without complaint. She didn't ask where we were going. She just followed.
Buster ranged ahead, his golden fur bright against the gray trees.
Lila rode on my back in a sling I'd fashioned from an old cloak, her small hands tangled in my hair, humming a tuneless song only she understood.
We crossed into Court territory just before sunset.
I felt it the moment my feet touched the soil—a low vibration in my bones, something ancient and familiar rising up through the ground like a voice I'd forgotten I knew. My suppressed Lycan blood stirred, just barely, a thread of recognition I'd spent years burying.
I stopped walking.
Sable looked back. "You okay?"
I nodded, though my hands were shaking. I adjusted Lila's weight and kept moving.
The outer settlement appeared through the trees—a cluster of rough cabins and communal buildings, smoke rising from chimneys, the low hum of voices. Wolves moved between structures, carrying firewood, hanging laundry, living.
We were twenty yards from the first cabin when the patrol stepped out of the tree line.
Three wolves. Two men, one woman. All wearing the silver-edged armbands of Lycan Court border guards. The woman in front had sharp eyes and a scar across her jaw. She looked at me, then at Sable, then at Lila on my back.
"State your business," she said. Her voice was neutral, professional.
"Seeking refuge," I said quietly. "We're displaced."
The woman's eyes flicked to the mark scar on my neck. Then to Sable's. Understanding settled across her face, followed by something softer.
"You're rejected mates," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," I said.
She nodded once. "The Court grants shelter to displaced wolves. You'll need to register at the main hall, but you can stay in the outer settlement tonight. There's a communal house for she-wolves with pups."
"Thank you," I said.
She stepped aside to let us pass, but her eyes stayed on me a beat too long. Like she was trying to place something she couldn't quite name.
I kept walking.
---
The communal house was warm and smelled like bread and woodsmoke. A dozen she-wolves and their children filled the main room—some cooking, some mending clothes, some just sitting by the fire with the exhausted stillness of people who'd run too far too fast.
An older woman with graying hair showed us to a corner with two pallets and a small trunk. "Meals are communal," she said. "You're safe here. Court law protects refugees."
I thanked her and set Lila down. She immediately crawled toward Buster, who flopped onto his side with a long-suffering sigh.
Sable sat on the other pallet, her shoulders finally relaxing.
"This place feels different," she said quietly.
"It is," I said.
I didn't tell her why. I didn't tell her that the air here tasted like home in a way I'd been running from for years. I didn't tell her that my Lycan blood was humming beneath my skin, louder with every breath, like something waking up after a long sleep.
I just sat beside Lila and ran my fingers through her hair.
Outside, the sun set. The Summit would begin tomorrow.
And somewhere in that hall, Weston Cole would walk in looking for allies, looking for strength, looking for anything that would save the pack he thought he'd built himself.
He would not find what he expected.
I touched the scar on my neck one last time. Then I let my hand fall.
I was done hiding.
