I arrived at the Ashwood pack house just as the sun touched the horizon. The building looked the same as I remembered — stone and timber, warm light in the windows, the kind of place that should feel like home. I stood at the door for three seconds before I knocked.
My mother opened it. Maren Ashwood, her hair graying at the temples now, lines around her eyes that hadn't been there seven years ago. She smiled. It was too wide.
"Bella," she said. Her voice caught on my name. "Come in. Please."
She stepped aside. I walked past her into the hallway. The house smelled like rosemary and old wood and something underneath that I couldn't name yet. My healer's nose catalogued it automatically: unfamiliar chemical compound, faint metallic edge, heat signature consistent with—
I stopped that thought. I kept walking.
Theodore met me at the entrance to the dining room. He was taller than I remembered, broader through the shoulders, with the same careful diplomatic warmth he'd always deployed when he needed something.
"Bella." He opened his arms. I did not step into them. He dropped them after a moment. "I'm glad you came."
"You invited me," I said.
He nodded. His eyes flicked to the silver collar at my throat, then away. "Dinner's ready. Mom made your favorites."
The dining room table was set for five. My father sat at the head — older, quieter, his hands folded in front of him. He looked up when I entered. He did not stand.
"Arabella," he said.
I sat in the chair Theodore pulled out for me. Across from my mother. Beside my brother. The fifth chair remained empty.
The food was correct. Roasted chicken with the specific herb blend I used to request. Root vegetables prepared the way I liked them. The tea was my childhood favorite, brewed to the exact strength I preferred. The accuracy of it sent something cold through my chest.
This was not the food of people remembering. This was the food of people performing memory.
We ate. My mother asked questions — careful, surface questions about my health, my duties at Silverfang, whether I was sleeping well. I answered in single sentences. Theodore filled the silences with pack news, alliance updates, the kind of neutral information that required no response. My father said nothing.
I finished the meal. I set down my fork. I waited.
Theodore cleared his throat. "Dad wanted to show you something. Downstairs. Some old healing supplies from when you were training. He thought you might want them."
I looked at him. Then at my mother. She was looking at the door, not at me.
"What kind of supplies?" I asked.
"Storage room," Theodore said. "Old inventory. Some of your original notes, I think. He's been saving them."
My father still had not spoken. My mother's hands were folded too tightly in her lap.
I stood. "Show me."
Theodore led the way. Down the hallway. Past the kitchen. To the basement stairs. The door was already open. The light was already on.
I went down.
The basement was colder than the rest of the house. Stone floor. Low ceiling. And in the center of the room, visible in one second of inventory: a portable forge with four silver brands heating to orange. Four rogues I did not recognize standing at careful intervals. A table with medical supplies laid out in surgical precision. And Emilia Jensen kneeling beside it, one hand resting on a glass vial of concentrated wolfsbane, her face composed in the expression of someone who had rehearsed this moment.
I turned.
Theodore was behind me. His hands closed on my shoulders before I completed the motion.
I did not scream. I drove my elbow back into his sternum with the precise force I had learned over seven years — exactly how much damage I could inflict without triggering the collar's suppression circuit. He exhaled hard. His grip loosened.
Three seconds. Not enough.
The rogues moved faster. Two of them caught my arms. The third forced me forward, down, my knees hitting stone. The fourth lifted the first brand from the forge.
I saw my parents at the top of the stairs. My mother's face was turned away. My father's was blank.
"Hold her still," Emilia said. Her voice was flat. Clinical. "Both sides."
The brand descended.
The pain was not like the collar. The collar suppressed. This obliterated. Silver searing into my left shoulder blade, into the channels where my aura should flow, destroying not just skin but the structure beneath. I heard myself make a sound I did not recognize. My vision whited out.
"Second one," Emilia said.
The rogue on my right lifted the brand. I tried to pull away. Theodore's hands pressed down on my shoulders, holding me in place. His grip was steady. He did not flinch.
The second brand pressed into my right shoulder blade.
This time I screamed.
The basement tilted. I felt hands forcing my head back, my jaw pried open. The glass vial at my lips. Concentrated wolfsbane flooding my mouth, my throat, burning all the way down.
Emilia's face was close to mine. "This ends it," she said quietly. "Your wolf. Your formulas. All of it. You should have stayed gone."
The wolfsbane hit my bloodstream.
And something inside me that had been silent for seven years — something I thought was dead, something I had mourned and buried and learned to live without — woke up.
It was not gentle. It was not gradual.
It was a detonation.
White fur erupted along my spine. My bones shifted. The rogues' hands were thrown off me like they weighed nothing. I heard Theodore hit the wall. The brands clattered to the floor.
A voice that was not mine and was entirely mine howled inside my skull.
*Seraphine.*
My wolf. My Lycan wolf. Massive and white and blazing with an aura that sent every wolf in the basement to their knees.
Then the wolfsbane caught up.
My vision collapsed. My half-shifted body convulsed. I felt myself hit the stone floor. I heard footsteps running. I heard Emilia's voice, sharp and panicked: "She's shifting — that's not possible —"
I tried to hold onto Seraphine's presence. I tried to stay conscious.
The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was my mother's face at the top of the stairs, still turned away.
And the last thing I felt was Seraphine's voice, fierce and ancient and furious, whispering one word before the wolfsbane pulled us both under.
*Survive.*
