Three days. Three days since I'd crawled through that tunnel and emerged into a world that felt both foreign and familiar. The human hospital in Ashford City smelled of antiseptic and despair, but it was freedom compared to that dungeon.
I stared at the ceiling tiles, counting the water stains while my wrists throbbed beneath fresh bandages. The silver burns were healing slowly—too slowly for a werewolf. But then again, I'd been weakened for so long that my body had forgotten how to repair itself properly.
"Mrs. Johnson?" The nurse's voice pulled me from my thoughts. I'd given them a fake name, paid cash for everything. In the human world, I was nobody—just another injured woman with a story about a car accident.
"Yes?"
"There's someone here to see you. A woman. She says she's family." The nurse's expression was carefully neutral, but I caught the slight furrow in her brow. "Should I send her in?"
My blood turned to ice. No one should know I was here. No one could know.
"What does she look like?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
"Blonde, pretty. Pregnant." The nurse glanced at her clipboard. "She seemed very concerned about you."
Serena.
My hands clenched into fists, sending fresh waves of pain through my damaged wrists. Of course she'd found me. The pack had resources, connections in the human world that I'd forgotten about in my desperation to escape.
"Send her in," I said, forcing my voice to remain steady.
The nurse nodded and left. I had maybe thirty seconds to prepare myself, to build whatever walls I could around the raw wounds in my soul. But when Serena Vale glided through the doorway, all my defenses crumbled.
She was radiant. That was the only word for it. Her golden hair caught the afternoon light streaming through the hospital window, and her skin had that luminous glow that came with a healthy pregnancy. The slight curve of her belly was visible beneath her designer dress—a deliberate choice, I realized. She wanted me to see.
"Oh, Willow." Her voice dripped with false sympathy as she settled into the visitor's chair beside my bed. "Look at you, poor thing."
I said nothing, just watched her with the wariness of a wounded animal. Every instinct I had left was screaming danger.
Serena's blue eyes swept over my bandaged wrists, the IV line in my arm, the pallor of my skin. Her lips curved into what might have been a smile if it had reached her eyes.
"You know," she said, smoothing her dress over her belly, "Killian never wanted to hurt you. Not really. He's not a cruel man by nature." She sighed, the sound perfectly pitched for maximum effect. "But I... I couldn't keep lying to him anymore. I had to tell him the truth."
"What truth?" The words scraped out of my throat like broken glass.
Serena's mask slipped for just a moment, and I saw something cold and vicious flash in her eyes. Then the concerned expression was back, but now I knew it for the lie it was.
"About how you killed your baby, of course."
The room tilted. The machines around me seemed to grow louder, their beeping more insistent. I gripped the hospital bed rails until my knuckles went white.
"I miscarried," I whispered. "It was an accident. The stress, the—"
"Oh, sweetheart." Serena's laugh was like tinkling glass, beautiful and sharp enough to cut. "You really think it was an accident?"
She leaned forward, and I caught her scent—vanilla and roses, the same perfume she'd worn since we were teenagers. Once, it had meant friendship and shared secrets. Now it made my stomach turn.
"Those prenatal vitamins you took so religiously every morning? The ones I specially prepared for you as the pack's healer?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It's amazing how easy it is to add a little something extra. Just a touch of wolfsbane extract. Not enough to kill you outright—that would have been too obvious. But enough to ensure that precious little heir of yours never had a chance."
The world stopped. Everything—my breathing, my heartbeat, the very air around me—went perfectly still. Then it all came crashing back in a wave of agony so pure it was almost cleansing.
"You..." I couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't form the words around the magnitude of her betrayal.
"I had to be sure," Serena continued, her voice now matter-of-fact, as if we were discussing the weather. "The pack can only have one heir, one true Luna. And that's my child." She placed a protective hand over her belly. "Not yours."
Tears burned behind my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Not in front of her. Not when she was watching me with such satisfaction.
"But the real masterstroke," she said, rising from her chair to move closer to my bed, "was convincing Killian that you did it on purpose. That you were so jealous of our love, so desperate to hurt him, that you killed your own baby rather than let him have an heir with another woman."
She leaned down until her lips were nearly touching my ear. Her breath was warm against my skin, and I had to fight not to flinch away.
"He believes every word," she whispered. "Because why would his childhood friend, his trusted healer, ever lie to him?"
Serena straightened up, smoothing down her dress again. The false sympathy was gone now, replaced by something cold and triumphant.
"So here's what's going to happen," she said, her voice crisp and businesslike. "You're going to disappear. Quietly. Permanently. Find some nice human city far from here and start a new life. Because if you ever—ever—try to come back, try to reclaim what you think is yours, I will destroy you so completely that even the Moon Goddess won't be able to find the pieces."
She moved toward the door, then paused, looking back over her shoulder.
"Oh, and Willow? Don't even think about revenge. You have nothing now. No pack, no mate, no child. No one would believe you even if you tried to tell them the truth." Her smile was razor-sharp. "I've made sure of that."
The door closed behind her with a soft click, leaving me alone with the antiseptic smell and the steady beeping of machines.
For a long moment, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Then, slowly, something shifted inside me. Not the broken whimper of a victim, but something harder. Colder. More dangerous.
I reached for my phone with steady hands and dialed a number I knew by heart.
It rang twice before he answered.
"Willow?" Killian's voice was sharp with surprise. "Where the hell are you?"
I let my voice shake, let it crack with perfectly performed desperation. "Killian... please. I know I don't deserve it, but... can I come home?"
Silence stretched between us. I could practically hear him thinking, weighing his options.
"I know I was wrong," I continued, pouring every ounce of false remorse I could muster into the words. "About everything. I'll do anything to make it right. Anything."
"You're not Luna anymore," he said finally, his voice cold as winter steel. "If you come back, you're nothing. A servant. You'll clean, you'll cook, and you'll stay out of my way. Is that clear?"
"Yes," I whispered. "I understand."
"Good. Be back by tomorrow night."
The line went dead.
I set the phone down and stared at my reflection in its black screen. The woman looking back at me wasn't the broken Luna who'd fled through a tunnel three days ago. This woman had fire in her eyes and steel in her spine.
Serena was wrong about one thing. I did have something left.
I had rage.
And I remembered exactly where Killian kept the key to his private study—the same study where he conducted all his most sensitive business. The same study that would hold evidence of whatever deals he'd been making behind the pack's back.
I was going home. But not as a servant.
I was going home as a hunter.
