I screamed through the mate bond with everything I had left.
Not words. I was past words. Just raw, animal terror — the sound Selah's breath made rattling in her chest, the gravel crumbling under my heels, the warriors closing in with their eyes flat and hungry. I shoved it all down the bond like a fist through a window.
*Dalton. DALTON. They're going to kill us —*
For one second, I felt him on the other side. His head snapping up. His wolf stirring. Through the bond I caught a flash of his suite — low lighting, silk sheets, the taste of wine — and then he was there, really there, feeling what I felt. Selah's fever. The ravine at my back. Marcus's hand reaching.
Something flickered in him. Something that might have been alarm.
Then a woman's hand slid up his arm.
"She's being dramatic," Lilia murmured. Her voice drifted through the bond like smoke, sweet and poisoned. "You know how she gets."
The flicker died.
I heard rustling. A phone being picked up. Lilia's voice again, but sharper now, not meant for Dalton — she'd put it on speaker.
"Marcus?" She sounded delighted. "Stop indulging the Luna's theatrics and bring her back. Now."
I was still connected. I heard everything. Dalton's silence. The soft sound of him settling back against the pillows. Lilia's quiet, satisfied laugh.
The line clicked dead.
The bond went cold.
He chose. Again.
Marcus's hand closed around my wrist.
I twisted away, spinning to shield Selah, and my spine hit the ravine wall so hard I saw stars. The two Gamma wolves flanked Marcus, growling low, their eyes reflecting starlight like coins. Marcus's grip tightened. He wasn't hurting me — not yet — but his face was set, resigned, a man following orders he hated but couldn't refuse.
"Luna," he said quietly. "Don't make this harder."
I opened my mouth to scream, to beg, to do something —
The forest detonated.
A wolf exploded from the treeline — no, not a wolf, something bigger, something *wrong* — silver fur catching the starlight, shoulders twice as broad as any Gamma I'd ever seen, moving with a speed that didn't belong to anything that size. Silent. Utterly silent. No warning growl, no snapping branches, just sudden, devastating violence.
The first Gamma didn't even see it coming. The silver wolf hit him mid-leap and hurled him into a tree trunk with a crack that echoed through the ravine. The second wolf lunged — teeth bared, going for the throat — and the silver wolf pinned him in two seconds flat, jaws clamped around his neck, holding but not tearing.
Marcus spun, releasing my wrist, his whole body dropping into a fighting crouch —
And froze.
The silver wolf turned its head toward him. Slowly. Gold eyes blazing in the dark, brighter than any wolf's eyes should be, and the *aura* — oh god, the aura rolled off it in waves, a pressure that hit my chest like a physical weight and drove Marcus to his knees. He didn't fight it. He just dropped, belly to the ground, head down, the absolute submission of a wolf who knows he's outmatched by something ancient and unchallengeable.
The silver wolf released the Gamma under its jaws. Stepped over him. Turned to me.
And lowered itself to the ground.
I stared. My brain wasn't working. This wasn't a pack wolf. This was a *Lycan* — the kind you only heard about in old stories, the kind that served the King, the kind that could tear through a pack's entire warrior line without breaking stride.
It looked at me. Waiting.
Selah whimpered against my collarbone. "Mama..."
I moved without thinking. Instinct. Desperation. I climbed onto the Lycan's back, one arm locked around Selah, the other hand fisting in silver fur —
The scent hit me.
Cedar. Winter storm. Not a phantom trace, not a ghost I'd been chasing through empty rooms for three years. *Real.* Undeniable. A wall of scent so strong it cut through the adrenaline and the wolfsbane stench and the blood pounding in my ears. My wolf surged inside me, not slamming anymore but *reaching,* frantic, desperate, like she'd been clawing at a locked door for years and it had finally opened.
My heart lurched. I didn't understand. I didn't —
The Lycan rose. I gripped tighter, Selah pressed between us, and he *ran.*
The forest blurred. Trees whipped past in streaks of black and silver. The wind tore at my hair, my clothes, but the Lycan's gait was smooth, effortless, eating up ground faster than any wolf I'd ever ridden. We crossed Shadowvale's dead border — I felt it, the absence of my ward like a missing tooth — and plunged into unclaimed territory.
I didn't know where we were going. I just held on.
The cedar scent wrapped around me the entire way, and my wolf wouldn't stop reaching for it.
---
The Lycan King's stronghold rose out of the forest like a fortress from another age. Stone walls. Iron gates. Lycan guards whose auras alone made my knees weak standing sentinel at every entrance. The silver wolf carried us straight through, and not one guard challenged him. They just stepped aside. Bowed their heads.
We stopped in a courtyard lit by torches. The Lycan lowered himself again and I slid off, stumbling, Selah limp in my arms.
A healer appeared — older, gray-haired, moving with calm efficiency. She took one look at Selah's wolfsbane veins and nodded.
"The antidote's ready," she said quietly. "This way."
I followed her into a stone building, too numb to ask questions, and watched her tip amber liquid into a syringe. The same color as the one Dalton stole. She pressed the needle into Selah's arm.
My daughter's eyes fluttered open. Just for a second. "Mama?"
"I'm here, baby." My voice broke. "I'm here."
The healer stepped back. "She'll sleep now. The wolfsbane will clear in a few hours."
I sank into the chair beside the bed, still holding Selah's hand, and finally let myself shake.
Behind me, the door opened. I smelled cedar before I heard his voice.
"Quinn."
I turned.
A man stood in the doorway. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark hair, gold eyes, the same eyes as the silver wolf. He was dressed now — black shirt, tactical pants — but the aura was the same, that crushing, undeniable weight of a Lycan who could flatten an Alpha without trying.
I knew that face.
"Joaquin," I whispered.
My foster brother. The one Dalton banished three years ago for opposing our mating ceremony. The one I hadn't seen since.
He stepped into the room. His eyes swept over Selah, over me, and something in his expression cracked.
"You're safe now," he said quietly. "Both of you."
The cedar scent rolled over me again, and my wolf *howled.*
