My wolf surged.
It happened before I could think—before I could breathe—a violent spike of something I had never felt from her before. Not whining. Not pacing. Rage. Pure, protective, feral rage that slammed up against the suppressants like a fist against glass.
For three seconds, the glass cracked.
Heat flooded my chest. My vision sharpened. The pack house snapped into focus with a clarity I had never experienced—every face, every scent, every whispered insult suddenly loud and clear. My eyes burned. I felt something shift behind them, something silver and bright and utterly wrong for a woman who had spent six years hiding.
The two wolves nearest the door stepped back. Their heads tilted. Confusion flickered across their faces.
Then the suppressants slammed down again, and the silver died. My wolf was shoved back behind the walls I had built to keep her buried, and I was just Janelle again—bleeding, shaking, holding my daughter against my chest while the pack laughed.
I barely registered what had just happened. My attention was already locked on Luisa.
She was moving through the crowd.
Not hurrying. Not shoving. She walked with the composed elegance of a woman performing a civic duty, her cream silk gown flowing behind her, her gloved hands folded in front of her. The pack parted for her without needing to be asked. They always did.
She reached me at the doorway and stopped two feet away, her chin lifted, her expression polite and empty.
"Janelle." Her voice was soft. Almost kind. "Give me the child."
"No." My arms tightened around Aurelia. My voice came out hoarse. "She's mine."
"She is unverified." Luisa's tone didn't change. "And you are no longer Luna. You have no authority to keep her from examination."
"I just gave birth to her four hours ago." My legs were shaking. Blood was pooling under me. "She's mine. Don't—"
Luisa reached for her.
I tried to step back. My body didn't move. The labor had taken everything—my strength, my balance, my ability to do anything but stand upright and hold on. Luisa's hands closed around Aurelia's tiny body, and I felt my daughter being lifted away from me.
"No—" I grabbed for her. My fingers caught the edge of the sheet. "Please—"
Luisa pulled harder. The sheet tore. Aurelia screamed, a high, terrified sound that cut through the music and the murmurs and every other noise in the room.
Luisa turned away from me and held my daughter up for the pack to see.
Aurelia's face was red and wet, her mouth open, her tiny fists flailing. She looked so small in Luisa's hands. So breakable.
Luisa reached into her pocket with her free hand and pulled out a silver pendant.
It was small. Delicate. The kind of thing that might hang on a necklace. It caught the candlelight as she lifted it, and I saw the design etched into the surface—a crescent moon with a line struck through it. The mark of rejection. The mark of rogue blood.
She had brought it with her.
She had planned this.
"No." My voice broke. "Luisa, don't—please—"
Luisa pressed the pendant against my daughter's chest.
Aurelia's scream changed. It wasn't crying anymore. It was a sound I will hear for the rest of my life—a raw, animal shriek of pain that no newborn should ever have to make.
The smell hit me next. Burning skin. Sweet and sick and wrong.
I lunged.
I didn't think. I just moved. My hands reached for Luisa, for the pendant, for my daughter—
My fingers closed around the silver.
It seared into my palms. The pain was immediate and absolute, a white-hot shock that traveled up my arms and into my shoulders. I didn't let go. I tried to pry it away from Aurelia's skin, but Luisa held it there, held it down, her face calm and empty.
"This child is rogue-born," Luisa said loudly, addressing the pack. "Let the mark stand as witness."
I was three steps from my daughter when Thiago's voice dropped on me like a physical weight.
"Kneel."
It wasn't a request. It wasn't even a command in the human sense. It was his Alpha tone—the voice that bypassed thought, bypassed will, crashed through my nervous system and seized control of my body before I could resist.
My knees buckled.
I hit the stone floor hard. The impact sent a fresh wave of tearing pain up through my hips, and I felt something wet and warm spread beneath me. Blood. More blood. I was still bleeding from the delivery, and now it was pooling on the ceremony floor, dark and slick.
My hands—burned raw from the silver—pressed flat against the stone. My head bowed. Not because I chose it. Because the Alpha tone demanded it.
Aurelia was still screaming.
I looked up.
Luisa stood five feet away, holding my daughter at arm's length, the silver pendant still pressed to her tiny chest. The brand was visible now—a small, angry circle of burned skin, red and blistering. Aurelia's face was purple with the force of her crying.
"Please," I whispered. My throat was raw. "Please give her back."
Luisa didn't look at me. She turned back to Thiago and inclined her head, a gesture of respect and completion. "It is done."
Thiago nodded once. Then he stepped off the stage and crossed the room in long, confident strides. He didn't look at me. He walked past me, past the blood, past his newborn daughter screaming in his mother's arms, and stopped in front of Phoebe.
She was trembling. Her hand pressed against her flat stomach. Her wide, wet eyes lifted to his face.
"It's okay," Thiago murmured. His voice was soft. Gentle. The voice he used to use with me. "You're safe now."
He pulled her into his arms.
Phoebe buried her face in his chest and let out a small, shaking sob.
The pack watched. A few women sighed. Someone whispered, "She's so brave."
Marcus Thorne's laugh rang out from the front row. "Finally," he said loudly. "A Luna worth the title."
More laughter. Applause.
I knelt on the stone floor, my burned hands pressed flat, blood pooling beneath me, and watched my mate comfort another woman while our daughter screamed.
My wolf pressed against the inside of my ribs.
Not whining.
Not pacing.
Listening.
And then, from somewhere outside—far beyond the pack house walls, beyond the courtyard, beyond the territory line—I heard it.
A howl.
Not a wolf's howl. Something bigger. Deeper. A sound that shook the windows and made the candles flicker.
The pack went silent.
Thiago's head lifted. His arms dropped from around Phoebe.
The howl came again, closer this time, and every wolf in the room turned toward the door.
I lifted my head.
My wolf stopped pacing.
And for the first time in six years, she wasn't listening to Thiago.
She was listening to something else.
