I couldn't sleep.
The bed was soft. The room was quiet. The Blackthorn pack house hummed with a low, steady warmth that should have made me feel safe. But every time I closed my eyes, I felt the ghost of my mark—cold, empty, like a hollow carved into my neck where something vital used to live.
I gave up at two in the morning.
I pulled on a borrowed robe and stepped into the hallway. The pack house was dark, silent except for the faint creak of old wood settling. I walked without direction, my bare feet soundless on the polished floor. I wasn't looking for anything. I just needed to move.
I turned a corner and saw a door slightly ajar, dim light spilling through the gap. I thought it was empty. I thought I could slip inside, sit in the quiet for a moment, and maybe breathe without feeling like my ribs were cracking.
I pushed the door open.
Ryland stood in front of a tall standing mirror, shirtless, his back to me.
I froze.
His back was covered in scars.
Not small ones. Not the kind you got from a training accident or a border skirmish. These were massive, jagged burns—thick raised ridges that twisted across his shoulders, down his spine, wrapping around his ribs like something had tried to consume him and failed. The tissue was pale and uneven, the kind of damage that came from prolonged exposure to fire. Severe fire. The kind that should have killed him.
My breath caught.
He turned at the sound.
Our eyes met in the mirror first. Then he turned fully, his expression calm, unreadable. He didn't reach for a shirt. He didn't try to hide. He just stood there, letting me see.
I should have looked away. I should have apologized and left. But I couldn't move. My wolf stirred uneasily inside my chest, whining softly, as though she recognized something I didn't yet understand.
"Do you need anything?" he asked quietly.
His voice was steady. No embarrassment. No explanation. Just the question.
I shook my head. "No."
I pulled the door shut.
I walked back to my room on unsteady legs, my hands trembling. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall. I couldn't stop seeing the scars. The geography of them. The severity. The age—they were old, at least a decade, maybe more.
A decade.
The rogue raid had been ten years ago.
The thought settled cold in my chest, but I didn't have the pieces yet. I didn't have the language to name what I was beginning to suspect. I just sat there in the dark, my wolf pacing restlessly, and tried to breathe through the hollow ache where my bond used to be.
---
In Ironveil, Maximus stood at the front of the banquet hall and conducted the formal ceremony to install Khloe as Luna.
The attendance was sparse. The hall that had been packed the night before—the night he rejected me—was now half-empty. The warriors who did attend stood in the back, their eyes down, their postures stiff. No one met his gaze directly.
Khloe stood beside him at the dais, wearing my pendant. She smiled. She touched his arm. She addressed warriors by name—warriors she barely knew, warriors who had served under me for years—and projected a warmth she had never bothered to practice before.
"Thank you for your loyalty," she said softly, her voice carrying just enough to reach the back rows. "I know this transition has been difficult. But I promise to serve this pack with everything I have."
Silence.
No one responded. No one howled. The mind-link during the blessing felt thin, disconnected, as though the pack consciousness itself was refusing to accept the transfer. Several senior warriors exchanged glances. One Delta shifted his weight and looked toward the door.
Maximus noticed.
He pulsed his Alpha tone once through the mind-link—a command for attention, for submission. The warriors stiffened. But the howl that should have followed, the instinctive pack response to a Luna's blessing, never came.
Khloe's smile faltered. Just for a moment. Then she recovered, turning to Maximus with a soft, adoring expression that looked rehearsed.
He said nothing. He concluded the ceremony with the formal words. He dismissed the pack. And as the warriors filed out, he stood at the dais and watched them leave in silence.
None of them looked back.
---
The next morning, Dorian Voss requested a private audience.
Maximus granted it without question. Dorian was his Beta—loyal, competent, steady. If anyone could help stabilize the pack after the transition, it was him.
Dorian entered the Alpha's office and closed the door behind him. He didn't sit. He stood in front of the desk with the controlled composure of a man who had chosen his words very carefully.
He placed a single sheet of paper on the desk.
Maximus glanced down. It was a tally. A list. Supply chain management. Healer schedules. Warrior rotation records. Inter-pack communication logs. Border patrol coordination. Every single operational function that kept Ironveil running smoothly.
Every single function Anastasia had managed personally.
None of them had a designated replacement. None of them had been transferred to Khloe. None of them had been documented in any way that allowed for continuity.
"She did all of this?" Maximus asked quietly.
Dorian's expression didn't change. "For ten years."
Maximus stared at the list. His jaw tightened. "We'll reassign—"
"To whom?" Dorian interrupted. His tone was respectful but firm. "Khloe has no knowledge of these systems. The Gammas don't have the administrative training. And the warriors who do have the experience are already requesting transfers to Blackthorn through covert mind-links."
Maximus's head snapped up. "What?"
"They're calling Anastasia their true Luna," Dorian said simply. "Quietly. Privately. But consistently."
The silence in the office was heavy.
Maximus's hands curled into fists on the desk. His Alpha tone pulsed once—sharp, commanding. "You will not speak of this again."
Dorian didn't flinch. He simply nodded once, turned, and walked toward the door.
He left the sheet of paper on the desk.
Maximus stared at it long after the door closed. The list sat there like an accusation. Every line a reminder of something he had never noticed. Something he had never thought to ask about. Something he had taken for granted for an entire decade.
He picked up the paper. His hands were shaking.
He set it down again. And for the first time since the rejection, he felt something other than certainty.
He felt afraid.
