His pack-mates all wore expressions that said they'd scented this coming a mile downwind.
"Really."
I nodded. "Have the bond-rejection drawn up and sworn for me. Darius, the hunting grounds you hold now are ones we claimed together. If we're severing the blood-oath, I'm taking half. That's fair, isn't it?"
"More than fair. Take all of it if you want. It's just a formality anyway!"
He shot his pack-mates a cocky look, and the whole group broke into rough applause and whistles. The sound bounced off the tiled walls of the Healing Hall corridor, sharp and hollow, the way wolves bay when they think they've already won the kill.
"Darius, you legend! A she-wolf on each arm. Can't even be jealous of you!"
My eyes were ice. He didn't notice.
The warriors around him clapped his shoulders, grinning like a war-band after a clean border raid. Not one of them looked at me. Not one of them caught the shift in the air. They saw a Luna agreeing to step aside. They didn't scent the Ashthorne blood in my veins turning cold and quiet, the way it does before a reckoning. My wolf had gone utterly still beneath my skin, the stillness of something that has stopped pacing and begun to wait.
Vesper said she was hungry. She wanted some broth.
Darius rounded up his pack-mates and left at once to fetch it for her. On his way out, he turned back to me. "Selene, are you hungry? Want me to bring you something?"
"I'm fine. Don't bother."
"Then take good care of Vesper for me, will you? She said her chest is sore from the milk coming in..."
The door clicked shut. The warrior posted outside shifted his weight, leather creaking faintly, and then there was nothing. Just the two of us now.
The crystal-light hummed overhead. Somewhere down the hall, a healer's pulse-stone chimed in steady rhythm. The private wing Darius had secured for her was quiet as a den sealed for the night.
Vesper didn't have to pretend anymore. She turned to me with a look that was pure provocation. The softness she wore for Darius fell away like a mask lifted, and what was underneath had teeth. Beneath the cloying overripe jasmine and sugared honey of her, I caught it now: the faint trace of decay and cold iron she could never quite scrub away.
"Well, well. I have to say, I'm impressed. Your mate is bedding another she-wolf, talking of severing the blood-oath to put another wolf's pup under his name, and you don't even flinch? That's some next-level doormat energy."
I watched her in silence.
Her lips curled. One by one, she undid the ties of her healing-gown, slow and deliberate, the way she tucked her hair behind her left ear when she was performing. Everything about this she-wolf was choreography.
"You know what the difference between us is, Selene?"
The figure she revealed made my brow tighten.
"Your body? Let's see how long that lasts after you're done nursing pups."
"Oh, I won't be nursing. You think these are natural? Why would I ruin them? You know what Darius told me?" She tilted her chin up, the crystal-light catching her collarbone like she was posing for a portrait. "He said you're boring. No fun at all. And your body doesn't compare to mine."
So even that was glamour-bought.
Darius truly had no standards. The Alpha of the Ironclaw Pack, the male I had raised from nothing, couldn't tell the difference between a she-wolf who would die for him and one who was performing for his hunting grounds.
"Are you done?"
"Not even close. I'm telling you to get lost. Stop standing between us, or I'll make your life a living hell. My mate is dead. I need a new one, and Darius is the male I picked. I'm never letting him go—"
Before she could finish, my hand was already in the air.
The slap cracked across her face.
The sound was clean. Final. It cut through the hum of the crystal-light and the distant chime of the pulse-stone and left a silence so absolute that the room seemed to hold its breath. My mating mark warmed once at the junction of my neck, then went cold. I turned the thought over once. Twice.
Then I stopped.
"You struck me?!" She froze, one hand flying to her cheek. The red was already blooming across her skin, vivid against the white healing-sheets behind her. She lunged to strike back, but I caught her arm and swung again.
"You—"
"Yeah, I struck you." My voice was steady. Not raised. Not shaking. Steady the way my father's voice was steady when he passed judgment beneath the old cedar of the Ashthorne den, the way Ashthorne she-wolves have always sounded when they've stopped asking and started telling. "That first one was for being shameless enough to seduce another she-wolf's mate."
A second slap landed clean. Her head snapped to the side. The room was so quiet I could hear the warrior outside shift his weight again, uncertain, listening.
"That one's for climbing into a mated male's bed when your own mate hasn't been dead five moons and you were heavy with pup. Fenwick took a silver round meant for Darius, and this is how you honor his memory."
Then a third.
The sound of it hung in the air like the last note of a howl fading off the ridge.
"And that's for destroying a family and not feeling an ounce of remorse."
Three slaps. She stood there, stunned stupid. Her cheek was scarlet and swelling. Her gown hung open. The provocation was gone from her face, replaced by something raw and animal, the look of a she-wolf who had never been struck back before.
The silence settled over us like ash after fire.
Then she screamed, clawing her way off the bed. "Selene, I'll kill you!"
She shoved me hard. I hit the floor, and a sharp pain shot through my lower belly. Not a bruise. Not a cramp. Something deeper. Something wrong. Dread flooded through me instantly, cold and total, like ice water poured into my chest. Inside me my wolf came surging up out of her stillness, a low whine breaking from her that I felt in my own throat. I gritted my teeth and dragged myself up, bracing against the wall to stay on my feet. My hand pressed against my stomach. My fingers were shaking.
She swung at me, her palm connecting with my face. "You struck me? You think I'm someone you can push around? Those three slaps? I'm paying them back double!"
She raised her hand for a second blow, but footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. Multiple sets. Heavy. The sound of males returning.
Her arm froze mid-swing.
The rage vanished from her face so fast it was like watching the wind change. In one fluid motion she snatched the pup from the bassinet, dropped him onto the floor from a low height, then threw herself down beside him, curling over the infant and wailing as if the world were ending.
The transformation took less than three breaths. From fury to theater. From predator to prey. She tucked her hair behind her left ear with a trembling hand and screamed louder, the sound pitched to carry through the door and down the corridor to where Darius's footsteps were getting closer.
The pup's screams tangled with hers, filling the room.
I stood there clutching my stomach, my body locked in place. The pain in my belly pulsed in time with my heartbeat, but I couldn't move. I couldn't process what I'd just witnessed.
Vesper had hurt her own pup.
He'd just been born. Hours old. Still wrinkled and red and carrying that milk-warm cedar pup-scent that had barely begun to find itself. And she'd thrown him to the ground without a second thought, the way a warrior discards a spent silver casing. Not out of madness. Not out of desperation. Out of calculation. Because the footsteps were coming, and she needed a story, and her own newborn son was nothing more than a prop in the performance.
I stood against the wall with my hand pressed to my stomach, and I understood, with a clarity that cut through the pain like a silver-edged blade, exactly what kind of she-wolf had moved into my den.
