Dex called on a Tuesday afternoon.
I was in the garden, pretending to deadhead the roses. Holden was inside on a call with one of the visiting Alphas, his voice carrying through the open window — warm, easy, the voice of a man who had nothing to hide.
I walked past the hedge to where the signal was clearer.
"Got it," Dex said. "Juice box. School yard. He tossed it in the bin, I walked by ten seconds later. Clean sample."
"And?"
"Ninety-nine point nine. I'll send the paperwork tonight."
I didn't answer right away. A bee moved across the rose in front of me. I watched it land, lift, land again.
"Luna?"
"Thank you, Dex."
"You okay?"
"Send the paperwork."
I hung up.
The document arrived that evening in an encrypted file. I opened it at my desk in the training annex with the door locked. Read the top line. Read it again. Then I just held the page. I don't know how long. Long enough for the light outside to shift, for the sparring grounds below the window to empty out, for the building to go quiet around me.
Seven years old. My husband's son.
Sable did not speak. She didn't have to. She was simply there, awake now, watching with me.
I slid the page into the folder with the rest. Closed the binder. Set it in the bottom drawer.
Then I opened my closet and started choosing a dress.
The one I picked was deep red. Floor-length. A neckline that would draw every eye in the room. I hung it on the back of the door and looked at it for a long time.
Then I went downstairs and asked Holden if he'd like tea.
---
The next twelve days were the hardest performance of my life.
I ran with him in the mornings. Three miles through the eastern trails, the way we always did, my breath matching his stride. When he reached for my hand at the turnaround point, I let him take it. When he kissed my hairline at the end, I smiled.
I ate dinner with him in the pack dining hall. I laughed at the right moments. I touched his arm when he made a joke. I let him rest his palm on the small of my back when we walked out together, and I did not flinch.
I met with Marcus every afternoon to review the warrior rotation, both of us pretending the file between us was schedules. We spoke in normal tones. We complained about the visiting Alpha from the Saltridge Pack who'd requested a vegetarian menu on short notice. We laughed once, briefly, about something I cannot now remember.
At night I went to the annex.
I did not sleep. Not really. I lay on the narrow bed with my eyes closed and listened to my own heart and felt Sable pacing inside me — not loud, not frantic, just restless. A long, slow circle. The wolf who had been still for seven years was awake again, and she could not settle.
*Soon,* I told her.
*Soon,* she agreed.
Three hours a night. Sometimes less. I drank coffee at dawn and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and practiced. A soft smile for Holden. A warmer one for the pack. The Luna's neutral, attentive face for elders and visitors. I worked through them like scales until they came automatically.
The cost was real. My ribs ached from holding my breath in his presence. My jaw was sore by mid-morning every day. Once, in the corridor outside the kitchen, I heard him laugh at something one of the warriors said — that easy, throaty laugh I had loved for fifteen years — and I had to step into the pantry and brace both hands on the shelf and breathe through my mouth until it passed.
Then I went out and asked if anyone wanted more coffee.
I did not waver. Not once.
---
Four days before the Banquet, Mia came to the gate.
I was in the upstairs corridor, walking back from a meeting with the kitchen staff about table arrangements, when I saw the movement through the tall window that overlooked the front drive.
A dark car. Two of our gate security flanking it. And stepping out, in a cream coat and tall boots, a woman I had only ever seen in surveillance photos.
She was smaller than I expected. Pretty in a careful, well-maintained way. She lifted her chin to speak to the guard, and even from three floors up I could see the proprietary ease of her — the way she touched the gate post lightly with one gloved hand, the way she glanced up at the pack house with the expression of a woman appraising a property she already considered hers.
She did not look nervous. She looked as if she'd been to the gate before, in her head, many times.
I stood at the window and watched.
Inside me, Sable went very still. Not the dormant stillness of the last seven years. A different kind. The stillness of a wolf gathering herself before a strike.
Then — quieter than the stillness — she settled.
*Soon,* she said again.
I watched a moment longer. Mia laughed at something the guard said, a light, airy laugh, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
I turned away from the window.
I walked down the corridor to my room, took the red dress off the back of the door, and laid it flat on the bed to begin the final alterations myself.