Collin didn't stand when I came back into his office that evening. He was signing something, the same pen he'd used three days ago when he told me I was useful here and nowhere else. The vault key hung against his chest on a silver chain, catching the lamplight every time he breathed.
I stopped three feet from his desk. My hands were at my sides. I made them stay there.
"The banquet starts at seven," he said without looking up. "You'll kneel in the center of the hall, before the entire pack. You'll address Shay by her rank. You'll say: 'I acknowledge Gamma Shay Howell as the rightful Luna of Ironhold Pack. I thank Alpha Collin Baker for his wisdom in this matter, and I renounce any claim to the Luna title I have held these five years.' You'll say it clearly. You'll mean it."
He capped his pen and finally looked at me.
"After that," he said, "I'll open the vault."
My mother's pulse had been skipping every third beat when I left her twenty minutes ago. The wolfsbane was in her blood, in her organs, breaking down the places where her wolf should have been protecting her. I'd done the math three times on the walk over. She had hours, not days. Maybe six if I was lucky. Maybe four.
The banquet was in two hours. The antidote synthesis would take another two after that. The first dose needed to be administered within six hours of catastrophic organ involvement or the damage would be permanent.
I was calculating whether she could survive until I could kneel.
"Yes," I said.
Collin smiled. It was a small thing, barely a movement, but I saw it.
"Good," he said. "Wear something appropriate. This is a formal occasion."
I turned and walked out. My boots on the hardwood were the only sound. The bond sat in my chest like a stone, warm and present and utterly silent. It didn't pull. It didn't ache. It just was.
The wolf inside me didn't move.
She was so still I thought for a moment she'd gone dormant again, slipped back into that cold quiet place she'd lived for five years. But then I felt it — not movement, but attention. She was watching. She was waiting. She was counting something I couldn't see yet.
I went back to my mother.
---
The Omega grounds were quiet in the late afternoon. Most of the residents were at the pack house already, setting up for the banquet — Omegas did the setup, always, the tables and the candles and the flowers no one would notice until they were gone. My mother's door was still open. Iris had left. It was just the two of us.
I sat on the floor beside the couch and took my mother's hand.
Her eyes opened. They were clearer than they'd been an hour ago, which meant nothing. Wolfsbane poisoning came in waves. The clarity was temporary. A false dawn.
"Freya," she said. Her voice was thin but steady. "You're back."
"I'm here."
She looked at me for a long moment. Her hand tightened around mine, just slightly.
"You've been a healer since you were sixteen," she said. "I watched you learn every herb in that clinic. I watched you sit up all night with wolves who wouldn't have made it without you. You saved that Delta's life when he came back from the rogue ambush with wolfsbane in his blood. You knew what it was before anyone else did."
I didn't say anything. I didn't trust my voice.
"You've always had a wolf," she said. "I don't care that she hasn't shifted. I don't care what anyone in this pack says. I've seen her. She's in the way you move through a room. She's in the way you don't break."
My throat closed.
"Mom—"
"I'm proud of you," she said. "I need you to know that. Whatever happens. I'm proud of the wolf you are."
I memorized it. Every word. The way her hand felt in mine. The way the light came through the window and touched her face. I put it all somewhere deep and I locked it down because I couldn't afford to feel it yet.
"I have to go," I said. "There's something I have to do. But I'll be back. I'll have the antidote. I promise."
She nodded. She didn't ask what I had to do. She'd lived on pack grounds for thirty years. She knew how things worked here.
I kissed her forehead and stood up and walked back to the pack house to get dressed for my own humiliation.
---
The banquet hall was full.
Every ranked wolf in Ironhold was there — Betas, Gammas, Deltas, the senior Omegas who'd earned a seat at the long tables. Candles lined the center aisle. The Alpha's table sat elevated at the far end, Collin in the center, Shay at his right hand. She was wearing red. Her hair was down. She looked like a Luna.
I walked down the center aisle in a plain grey dress and bare feet. I'd left my shoes at the door. Kneeling is easier without them.
The room went silent as I approached. Not the comfortable quiet of a meal about to start. The breathless, watchful silence of a pack that knows something is about to happen and doesn't want to miss it.
I stopped in the center of the hall, three feet from the Alpha's table, and I knelt.
The stone floor was cold against my knees. I kept my head up. I looked at Shay.
"I acknowledge Gamma Shay Howell as the rightful Luna of Ironhold Pack," I said. My voice carried. I made sure of it. "I thank Alpha Collin Baker for his wisdom in this matter, and I renounce any claim to the Luna title I have held these five years."
Shay stood. She stepped down from the elevated table and walked toward me, slow, her heels clicking on the stone. She stopped in front of me and placed one hand on top of my bowed head.
"I accept," she said.
The pack exhaled.
Collin nodded to Kannon. The Beta rose and left the hall. I stayed on my knees. I counted my heartbeats. I counted the seconds. I thought about my mother's pulse and the synthesis time and the six-hour window and I did not move.
Kannon returned. He was carrying a small glass vial, sealed with wax. Moonstone extract. He set it on the table in front of Collin.
Collin looked at me.
"You may go," he said.
I stood. I walked to the table. I took the vial. And then I ran.
I ran through the pack house, through the front doors, across the gravel drive, my bare feet slapping stone and dirt. I ran to the clinic and I locked the door behind me and I pulled out every intact jar from the upper shelves Collin hadn't bothered to destroy. White sage. Spring water. The burner. The mortar and pestle.
My hands didn't shake. I worked fast and clean and precise, the way I'd been trained, the way I'd done this twice before. Crush the sage. Distill the moonstone extract. Combine in the spring water at exactly the right temperature. Let it cool. Seal it.
Two hours and fourteen minutes.
I ran back to the Omega grounds with the vial in my fist.
My mother's door was open. Iris was inside, standing by the couch, her face pale.
"Freya," she said. "She stopped talking ten minutes ago."
I dropped to my knees beside the couch. My mother's eyes were closed. Her breathing was shallow, irregular, each breath a little shorter than the last. I uncapped the vial and tilted her head back and poured the first dose between her lips.
"Swallow," I said. "Mom. Swallow."
She didn't.
I tilted her head further. I massaged her throat. I whispered things I don't remember. The antidote ran down the corner of her mouth and onto the couch cushion and I poured the second dose and she still didn't swallow.
Her pulse stopped at 11:52.
Twelve minutes after I'd given her the antidote.
Twelve minutes too late.
