Coraline didn't wait until morning.
I heard about it from Sena an hour after I'd left the courtyard. The healer came to the suite with her bag, ostensibly for the evening wellness check, but her face told me the real reason before she opened her mouth.
"Luna Davis requested an immediate consultation," Sena said quietly, setting her bag on the side table. "She wanted me to confirm the moonstones' authenticity."
I kept my hands steady as I adjusted Maia's wrap. "And?"
"I told her what I told you. True Luna moonstones respond to bloodline. They warm. They glow, faintly, when the right wearer holds them." Sena's voice was flat, clinical. "Hers are cold."
I looked up. "She believed you?"
"She held her wrists out for examination." Sena's mouth thinned. "The stones sat grey in their settings. Lifeless. She stared at them for a full minute. Then she ripped the cuffs off and threw them across my office."
Something cold and sharp settled in my chest. "What did she say?"
"That I was lying. That the relics were simply old. That she wanted a second opinion." Sena paused. "I retrieved the cuffs from the floor and set them on my desk. I said nothing further. She left wearing them again."
I closed my eyes. Pictured Coraline's face. The moment of realization. The denial that followed, instant and reflexive, because accepting the truth would mean accepting everything else that came with it.
"Thank you," I said quietly.
Sena nodded and left. I stood alone in the suite, Maia drowsy against my chest, and felt the first crack in three years of careful control.
Not anger. Not yet. Just a cold, distant satisfaction that tasted like vindication and ash in equal measure.
That night, Duncan held a meeting.
I didn't hear about it directly. Ethan didn't tell me. But the lodge had thin walls in the east wing, and one of the Silverfang warriors who attended had a voice that carried when he was nervous.
I caught fragments through the nursery window while I fed Reuben at midnight. Alpha authority. Emergency bloodline protection. Temporary custody pending formal determination.
The words didn't surprise me. I'd been expecting something like this since the moment Duncan's custody petition was denied. He was spiraling. Desperate wolves made desperate moves.
I set Reuben back in his cradle and stood at the window, looking out at the dark courtyard, and opened the bond.
Caleb's presence flooded through immediately — not his voice, just the sensation of him, close and getting closer, a heat that had stopped pacing and started moving with purpose.
I didn't mind-link him. I didn't need to. He already knew.
I closed the bond and went back to the cradles. Maia's small fist was curled against her cheek. Reuben's mouth worked in his sleep, dreaming.
I stood over them a long moment, just breathing them in, and felt something shift deep in my chest. Not my wolf. Not yet. But the space where she'd been — dormant, collapsed, silent for three years — felt less empty than it had yesterday.
Like something very large was turning over in sleep.
I noted it without alarm. I'd been waiting for this.
I didn't sleep that night.
At three in the morning I fed the twins again, sitting in the dark nursery with only the moonlight through the window for company. Reuben wrapped his small fist around my finger while he nursed, his grip surprisingly strong for something so tiny.
I looked down at him and thought about Duncan's plan. About the emergency bloodline-protection clause he was going to invoke. About the moment he would cross the threshold of this suite and reach for my children.
My wolf stirred again. Deeper this time. A low, distant pulse that felt like a warning and a promise rolled into one.
I set Reuben back in his cradle and went to the sitting room. The asset-reclamation decree sat on the table where I'd left it, every page stamped and sealed, the Lycan crest dark against the pale paper.
I picked it up. Read through it one final time. Then I set it aside.
I didn't need it anymore.
Whatever was coming — whatever Duncan thought he was going to do when the sun came up — the decree wouldn't stop it. Words on paper never stopped desperate men. Only power did. Only the kind of truth that couldn't be argued or bribed or shouted down.
I went back to the nursery and stood between the cradles, one hand on each rail, and waited for dawn.
The bond pulsed once, warm and steady. Caleb was close now. An hour out, maybe less.
I closed my eyes and felt my wolf stir again, closer to the surface than she'd been in three years, and thought about the look on Duncan's face when he finally understood what he'd thrown away.
Not a broken, wolfless Omega.
Something else entirely.
The sky outside the window started to lighten. Grey, then pale blue, then the first edge of gold.
I stayed where I was, hands on the cradle rails, and waited.
