His friends all wore expressions that said they'd seen this coming a mile away.
"Really."
I nodded. "Have the dissolution documents drawn up and signed for me. Theron, the pack you lead now is one we built together. If we're severing the bond, I'm taking half the territory. 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 packmates a cocky look, and the whole group burst into applause and low howls of approval.
"Theron, you absolute legend! Living the dream with a she-wolf on each arm. Can't even be jealous!"
My eyes were ice. He didn't notice.
Something deep in my chest stirred, a cold, quiet thing. My wolf, who had been silent for so long, pressed against the inside of my ribs. Not in grief. In focus.
Corvina said she was hungry. She wanted some bone broth.
Theron rounded up his packmates and left immediately to get it for her. On his way out, he turned back to me. "Sera, are you hungry? Want me to grab you something?"
"I'm fine. Don't bother."
"Then take good care of Corvina for me, will you? She said her chest is sore from the milk coming in..."
The door clicked shut. Just the two of us now.
The room changed the instant they left. The air thinned. Corvina's scent, that honeysuckle and warm vanilla layered over something cloying and faintly chemical, spread without restraint, no longer tempered by the performance she put on for Theron. It was the scent of a she-wolf who had stopped pretending.
She turned to me with a look that was pure provocation.
"Well, well. I have to say, I'm impressed. Your mate is bedding another wolf, talking about dissolving your bond to register someone else's pup under his bloodline, 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.
"You know what the difference between us is, Seraphina?"
The figure she revealed made my brow tighten.
"Your body? Let's see how long that lasts after you're done nursing."
"Oh, I won't be nursing. You think these are natural? Why would I ruin them? You know what Theron told me?" She tilted her chin up. "He said you're boring. No fun at all. And your body doesn't compare to mine. I'm an E cup, sweetheart."
So even her chest was fake.
Theron really had no standards.
"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 Theron is the Alpha 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 rang through the Healing Hall room like a thunderclap. Sharp. Clean. Final. My wolf surged to the surface so fast my vision flickered gold at the edges, and for one heartbeat the room smelled like ozone before lightning, cutting straight through the cloying sweetness of Corvina's manufactured scent.
"You hit me?!" She froze, one hand flying to her cheek. She lunged to hit me back, but I caught her arm and swung again.
"You—"
"Yeah, I hit you." My voice was steady. Low. The kind of steady that five years of silence had forged into something harder than iron. "That first one was for being shameless enough to seduce another she-wolf's mate."
A second slap landed clean. The crack echoed off the stone walls, and I felt my wolf settle into my spine like a blade sliding into its sheath. Not raging. Not desperate. Present. For the first time in years, fully and completely present.
"That one's for climbing into a bonded Alpha's bed when your own mate hasn't been dead five moon cycles and you were carrying his pup to term."
Then a third. I put the weight of my bloodline behind it. Not the meek, muted Omega who had swallowed wolfsbane tinctures to keep her scent small and her wolf quiet. The daughter of the Silvercrest line. The Alpha-blooded Omega whose wolf had been caged so long it had forgotten the shape of its own teeth.
"And that's for destroying a pack bond and not feeling an ounce of remorse."
Three slaps. She stood there, stunned stupid.
The red marks bloomed across her cheek like brands. My hand didn't shake. My breathing didn't waver. My wolf sat behind my ribs, calm and watchful, and for one crystalline moment I understood what it felt like to stop being afraid.
Then she screamed, clawing her way off the bed. "Seraphina, I'll kill you!"
She shoved me hard. I hit the ground, and a sharp pain shot through my lower abdomen. Dread flooded through me instantly. Cold, immediate, animal dread that had nothing to do with Corvina and everything to do with the life I was carrying. I gritted my teeth and dragged myself up, bracing against the wall to stay on my feet. My wolf whimpered, curling inward, pressing protectively toward the place where the pain bloomed.
She swung at me, her palm connecting with my face. "You hit 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 strike, but footsteps echoed in the hallway outside.
Her arm froze mid-swing.
The shift was instantaneous. So fast it would have been impressive if it weren't sickening.
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 pup's screams tangled with hers, filling the room. The tiny thing reeked of milk and new wool and a faint ghost of pine, Fenris Greyfang's blood crying out from a body too small to understand what had just happened to it.
I stood there clutching my stomach, my body locked in place. I couldn't process what I'd just witnessed.
Corvina had hurt her own pup.
He'd just been born, and she'd thrown him on the ground without a second thought. No wolf, no matter how broken, no matter how far fallen, did that. Even rogues guarded their young. Even the mad ones. The instinct was older than language, older than pack law, older than the Moon Goddess herself.
And Corvina had snuffed it out like a candle flame between her fingers, because footsteps were coming and she needed a story to tell.
