I waited until the third day after the Winter Solstice Banquet to make my move. Three days was enough time for the pack to forget I existed. Enough time for Cali to stop watching my door quite so closely.
I needed to get into the archive room.
The restricted archives sat in the east wing of the pack house, behind a door most wolves never thought about. Supply records. Territory contracts. Communication logs. The kind of paperwork that kept a pack running but bored everyone who wasn't managing it. I had managed it for three years. I knew exactly where Kian kept the documents he didn't want scrutinized.
The problem was access. My Luna codes should have been revoked the night of the rejection. Standard protocol. But Kian had been too busy marking Cali to think about administrative details, and no one else had authority to change the codes without his direct order.
I was counting on his arrogance. On the assumption that a broken, wolfless ex-Luna wouldn't dare try.
I dressed carefully that morning. Grey again. Soft cardigan. Hair loose around my face. I carried an empty box under one arm—the kind you'd use for packing personal items—and kept my eyes down as I walked through the pack house corridors.
Two Deltas passed me near the main staircase. They looked through me like I was furniture.
Perfect.
The archive door was at the end of a narrow hallway that smelled like old paper and dust. I pressed my palm to the access panel and held my breath.
The lock clicked green.
I slipped inside and closed the door behind me.
The room was exactly as I remembered. Shelves floor to ceiling. Metal filing cabinets along the back wall. A single desk with a chair that creaked. No windows. The air was stale and cold.
I set the box down and got to work.
I didn't have much time. Maybe an hour before someone noticed I wasn't in my room. Maybe less if Cali decided to check.
I started with the territorial contracts. They were filed by year, then by region. I pulled the northern border files first—three years' worth of sealed envelopes, each one stamped with Kian's Alpha mark.
I opened the first envelope and breathed in.
The scent hit me immediately. Faint. Chemical. Bitter at the edges.
Refined wolfsbane.
It was on the paper. Not just residue from handling. It was in the paper, woven into the fibers the way you'd watermark a document. Someone had treated these contracts with wolfsbane to mark them as part of a specific network.
I opened the second envelope. Same scent. Third. Fourth. All of them.
My hands were steady. My wolf was silent. I had trained for this without knowing I was training—three years of managing supply chains, cross-referencing shipment weights, memorizing patrol schedules. I knew how to read a ledger the way other wolves knew how to read a scent trail.
I pulled out the communication logs next. Encrypted crystal references. Each one linked to a specific contact outside the pack. Most of them were routine—allied Alphas, Council liaisons, trade partners. But three of them had no names. Just coordinates.
I memorized the coordinates. Then I cross-referenced them with the territorial contracts.
Northern border. Shadowmaw territory. Every contract with wolfsbane residue corresponded to a crystal reference with Shadowmaw coordinates.
The network was clean. Deliberate. Kian and Cali had been trafficking refined wolfsbane to the Shadowmaw rogues in exchange for territory promises. The contracts outlined the terms—supply quotas, delivery schedules, payment in land rights rather than currency.
And underneath it all, buried in the fine print of the third contract, was a clause I almost missed.
"Finalization contingent upon Luna transition completion and northern route security."
Luna transition. That was me. My removal. My exile.
They had written me into the contract as a condition of sale.
I stood very still and let that settle.
Then I kept reading.
Forty minutes. I spent forty minutes in that room, memorizing every number, every date, every encoded reference I could find. I couldn't take the documents. If anything went missing, Kian would know someone had been here, and he'd change the codes and move everything before I could act.
But I didn't need to take them. I just needed to remember.
When I finally left, I carried the box filled with old scarves and a pressed-flower book I'd pulled from a storage shelf. Props. Evidence of a grieving ex-Luna collecting memories.
I walked slowly back through the corridors. My face was blank. My eyes were dry.
Near the healer lodge entrance, I passed a Delta named Garrett. He glanced at the box, then at me, and his mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Still here?" he said.
I looked at the floor. "Just getting my things."
He shook his head and kept walking. I heard him mutter something to another wolf farther down the hall. The word "pathetic" carried.
I didn't react. I just kept walking.
Back in my room, I set the box down and sat on the bed. My hands were shaking now. Not from fear. From the effort of holding everything in.
Inside my head, I replayed every number. Every date. Every coordinate. I built the network in my mind the way I used to build supply routes—clean, organized, impossible to forget.
Kian and Cali had been planning this for over a year. Maybe longer. The contracts predated the rejection by months. They had been setting it up while I was still Luna, still managing the very logistics they were using to cover their tracks.
And the blood moon deadline was in three weeks.
I touched the cracked mark on my neck. It was still cold. Still empty.
But my mind was on fire.
That night, a Delta reported to Cali that he'd seen me in the east wing, carrying a box of old belongings. He said I looked like I was "spiraling over memories."
I heard about it the next morning from an Omega who overheard Cali laughing about it in the kitchens.
Let her laugh.
I had what I needed.
