Reed found me in the supply corridor three days before the annual Mate Ceremony.
I was checking inventory—another task Hadlee had abandoned after one week—when I heard his footsteps stop behind me. I didn't turn around. I kept counting boxes of medical supplies, my pen scratching against the clipboard.
"Luna." His voice was tight. Uncomfortable.
I set the clipboard down and turned. Reed stood five feet away, coffee cup clutched in both hands, turning it over and over. He wouldn't meet my eyes.
"I need to tell you something," he said. "I've been... I've been watching. For two years. What Hadlee's been doing."
I waited.
He exhaled hard. "Three warriors came to me after the pack run. They heard her. Laughing. After she collapsed. She told one of them it was 'performance art.'" His jaw clenched. "The whole thing was staged."
I already knew. But hearing it confirmed—hearing it from Marcus's own Beta—made something cold and sharp settle in my chest.
"What do you want me to do?" Reed asked. His knuckles were white around the cup. "I can file a formal complaint. I can bring the warriors forward as witnesses. I can—"
"How long have you known about the supply routes?" I asked.
He froze.
"The ones Hadlee has been rerouting away from the border patrol stations," I continued. My voice was calm. Steady. "The shipments that were supposed to go to the eastern perimeter. The medical supplies that disappeared from this very storage room. How long?"
Reed's throat worked. He didn't answer.
I nodded slowly. "Keep watching," I told him. "Keep records. Write down everything you see. Dates. Times. Witnesses."
I picked up my clipboard and walked past him. Behind me, I heard the coffee cup hit the floor and shatter.
---
I requested a private meeting with Marcus the next morning.
He granted it with the distracted air of a man indulging an inconvenience. I sat across from him in his study, my hands folded in my lap, and I asked him the only question that mattered.
"Do you still consider me your mate and your Luna?"
The silence stretched too long.
Marcus shifted in his chair. He looked at the papers on his desk. At the window. At the territorial maps spread across the wall. Anywhere but at me.
"Hadlee needs me right now," he said finally. "The pack needs stability. Your... situation... creates uncertainty."
He couldn't even say the word. Wolfless.
He was not answering my question. He had already made his decision. I could see it in the way he held himself, the way his eyes slid away from mine. He had made this choice weeks ago. Maybe months. Maybe years.
I asked him one more thing.
"Did you ever actually know what was holding your territory together?"
He frowned. Confused. Almost offended. "My strength," he said. No hesitation. Absolute certainty.
I looked at him for three full seconds. At the man I had spent nine years building a life with. The man I had sacrificed everything for. The man who genuinely believed he had done this alone.
I stood. Smoothed my dress. Walked to the door.
"Josie—"
I closed the door behind me and went directly to the secure communications room.
My fingers were steady as I unlocked the hidden panel and pulled out the encrypted ledger. I wrote the message in careful block letters: *Hold the pact records. Do not destroy them. I will need them soon.*
I sealed the message and sent it through the classified channel.
Then I locked the ledger back in its compartment and walked out.
---
I couldn't sleep the night before the Mate Ceremony.
I lay on my back in the dark, staring at the ceiling, my hand pressed to the mark on my neck. Still cold. Still hollow. The mate bond was a distant echo, faint and dying.
My wolf stirred.
She had been restless all evening—pacing, agitated, pushing against the mental walls with increasing desperation. I had spent seventeen years keeping her buried. Seventeen years of iron control. But tonight, something was different.
She broke through.
Not fully. Not a shift. Just a fragment—a raw, urgent voice pressing against the inside of my skull, cutting through the silence like a blade.
*Something is about to break. Let it break. Don't stop it this time.*
I sat up, breathing hard. My hands were shaking. The room was too small, too dark, the walls pressing in. I thought about the nursery. The name-plaque. The nine years. I thought about what would happen if I let the break come.
If I stopped fighting it.
If I finally let go.
My wolf's voice came again, softer this time. Almost gentle.
*Let it break.*
I pressed my palms to my eyes. My chest ached. The mate bond on my neck burned cold as winter stone.
Tomorrow was the annual Mate Ceremony. Marcus would be there. Hadlee would be there. The entire pack would be watching.
I lowered my hands and stared into the darkness.
I didn't sleep.
