I woke up on day two with my ribs feeling like they'd been cracked open and stitched back wrong.
The motel room was dim. Gray light filtered through the curtains. I'd slept maybe three hours total—short bursts of unconsciousness between waves of bond-sickness that left me curled on my side, teeth clenched, waiting for the pain to pass.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
I reached for it slowly. Every movement felt like dragging weight through water. The screen was too bright. I squinted at the notification.
Unknown number. A single image attachment.
I opened it.
The photograph showed the Luna shrine at Shadowridge. I knew that space better than I knew my own bedroom—the stone archway, the carved moon sigil above the entrance, the memorial markers arranged in careful rows. My mother's marker had stood in the center. Pale granite. Her name etched deep: *Seren Parker, beloved Luna, devoted mother*.
In the photograph, that marker was gone.
In its place stood a new one. Polished black stone. Fresh flowers arranged at its base. The inscription read: *Elara Morrison, cherished companion, loving mother to Viviana*.
My mother's marker—I could see the edge of it in the frame—had been moved to the perimeter fence. Face-down in the dirt.
I stared at the image until the screen went dark. Then I turned it back on and stared some more.
The shrine was sacred ground. Moon Goddess territory. You didn't move a Luna's memorial without pack-wide ceremony and formal blessing. You especially didn't replace it with the marker of an Elder's mistress.
But they had.
Ryan had.
I set the phone down carefully. My hands were shaking again, but this time it wasn't from the bond-sickness.
The presence inside my mind—the thing that had been pressing softly at the edges of my consciousness for days—slammed forward with a force that knocked the air out of my lungs. I gasped. My vision whited out at the edges. Something was trying to tear its way through my skin from the inside.
I gripped the edge of the bed and forced myself to breathe.
Six days. Four left.
I got dressed. Jeans. Dark sweater. Boots. I wrapped a cloth bundle in my bag—the same one I'd used years ago to carry my mother's things after the funeral. Then I drove.
---
The text came from Garrett midmorning.
I was halfway back to Shadowridge when my phone lit up. His name on the screen. I almost didn't answer.
"Caroline." His voice was tight. "Where are you?"
"Away," I said.
"Trevor's—" He stopped. I heard him exhale slowly. "Something's wrong. The mind-link is failing. Half the pack can't hear his commands. The ones who can say it sounds like he's underwater."
I said nothing.
"He tried to use Alpha tone on me this morning," Garrett continued. "It felt thin. Like he was shouting through a wall."
I kept my eyes on the road. "Four more days."
Garrett was quiet for a long moment. Then: "You weren't bluffing."
"No."
"What happens when the six days are up?"
I thought about Trevor's wolf—the one that had always felt too strong, too commanding, too perfectly calibrated to dominance. The one that had never been his.
"He goes back to what he was before me," I said.
Garrett didn't ask what that meant. He already knew.
I hung up.
---
I reached Shadowridge after dark. I parked a quarter-mile from the pack house and walked the rest of the way through the tree line. The forest was quiet. No patrols. Either Trevor had pulled them in close or they'd stopped responding to his orders entirely.
The Luna shrine sat at the eastern edge of the territory, tucked into a clearing surrounded by old-growth pines. The stone archway glowed faintly in the moonlight.
I stepped through.
The new marker stood exactly where my mother's had been. Black stone. Fresh roses. I walked past it without looking and went straight to the perimeter fence.
My mother's marker was there. Face-down in the dirt, half-covered by fallen pine needles.
I knelt and brushed the debris away. The granite was cold under my fingers. I worked carefully, clearing the soil, lifting it free. It was heavier than I remembered. I wrapped it in the cloth, never letting it touch the ground again, and stood.
"Caroline."
I turned.
Ryan stood at the shrine entrance. His face was shadowed, but I could see the careful neutrality in his posture. The Elder's composure he always wore like armor.
"You shouldn't be here," he said quietly.
I held the wrapped marker against my chest. "Neither should this."
He sighed. That long, mournful exhale he used when he wanted to sound reasonable. "You have to understand, it was a difficult decision. Viviana's mother deserved recognition. The pack needed to see—"
"That you could erase my mother completely?" My voice came out flat. "That the Luna shrine is just another political tool?"
Ryan stepped forward. His hand reached toward my arm. "Caroline—"
I pulled back before he could touch me.
"I'm signing the rejection acceptance," I said. "And I'm taking back my mother's name. I'm Caroline Parker now."
Ryan's face went white.
Not from the name change. Not from the rejection.
From the look on my face.
I wasn't angry. I wasn't hurt. I was simply done.
"You can keep Morrison," I said. "It was never mine to begin with."
I turned and walked out of the shrine. Ryan didn't follow.
Behind me, I heard him say something—a protest, a justification, some variation of *you have to understand*—but the words didn't land. They passed through the air where I'd been standing and dissolved into nothing.
I carried my mother's marker back to the car. The cloth was soft against my arms. The granite was solid and real.
Four days left.
I started the engine and drove away from Shadowridge for the second time in as many nights.
This time, I knew I wouldn't be coming back.
