The ceremonial hall of Silvercrest smelled like cedar smoke and crushed autumn leaves. The Elders had ordered the chandeliers dimmed to candlelight, the way they did every year for the Autumn Moon Banquet. Soft gold light pooled on the dark wood floor. Soft gold light made everything look gentler than it was.
I stood near the long banquet table in the Luna gown I had chosen three weeks ago. Deep green silk. High collar. Long sleeves. I had picked it because it covered the marks on my collarbone — the bite Rhodes had given me three years ago, the night he had made me his.
I had picked it because some part of me had already known.
The pack moved around me the way pack always moved around a Luna: a half-step of distance, a half-second of hesitation before speaking. I caught the scents of five allied Alphas in the room, and their Lunas, and the Silvercrest warriors in formal black. I caught my husband's scent too. Pine. Iron. The faint, wrong note underneath that only I could read.
Then I caught another scent layered over his. Jasmine. Heavy, sweet, deliberate.
I turned my head before I could stop myself.
Rhodes stood at the center of the hall with Giuliana tucked under his arm. His hand was on the side of her throat. Not resting. Working. His thumb stroked slowly down the line of her unmarked neck, and I watched my mate scent-mark another woman in front of every Alpha who had ever bent their head to him.
Giuliana laughed. The sound carried, the way she meant it to.
My name is Taylor Wright. I am the youngest Chief Healer ever appointed to the Lycan King's medical council. I have held men's hearts in my hands and brought them back from the edge of the Goddess's door. I have stitched gut wounds at three in the morning with my own blood running down my wrist. I do not faint in ballrooms.
I pressed two fingers to the inside of my wrist. Pulse. Steady. Mine.
A she-wolf two steps to my left turned to look at me. Then another. Then half the room. They were not looking at Rhodes. They were looking at me, the way wolves look at a deer that has not yet started to run.
I did not run. I did not move. I let them look.
Rhodes' eyes found mine across the hall. There was no apology in them. There was something worse — relief. The relief of a man who had been waiting a long time to be seen doing exactly this.
He stepped away from Giuliana. He stepped toward the center of the floor. The musicians stopped without being told.
When he spoke, he spoke in the Alpha tone. The full weight of it. Every wolf in the room felt their knees lock.
"I, Rhodes Silvercrest, Alpha of the Silvercrest Pack —"
I knew the words before he said them. I had treated three rejected she-wolves in my career. I had held their hands while their bodies tried to die around the severing.
"— reject you, Taylor Wright, daughter of the Wright healer line, as my mate and as my Luna of Silvercrest."
The bond tore.
There is no language for it. Fire is the closest word, but fire is clean. This was a hand reaching into my chest and pulling out a length of something that did not want to come. It went through my ribs. It went through my spine. My vision whited at the edges and my knees thought, very briefly, about giving.
I did not let them.
I pressed my fingers harder against my wrist. Pulse. Still there. Still mine.
The hall was waiting for the scream. I could feel them waiting. Three years of watching me carry his children, run his infirmary, smile beside him at every banquet — and now, finally, the show they had been promised.
I lifted my chin.
"I accept the rejection." My voice came out the way it came out at the Institute, across a desk, after a diagnosis. Cool. Even. "On one condition, witnessed by this hall and every Alpha present."
Rhodes blinked. He had not planned for a condition.
"Full custody of Lochlan." I let the name land. I watched Edmund Silvercrest's head come up sharply from his seat at the Elder table. "Full. Uncontested. Permanent."
"Taylor —"
"Say yes, Alpha." I did not raise my voice. I did not need to. "In front of your allies. Now."
A long, ugly silence. Giuliana's jasmine bloomed across the room like she was sweating it.
"Yes," Rhodes said.
"Thank you." I inclined my head the precise depth a former Luna owes a former mate at a public severance. Not a degree more.
Then I turned and walked out of the ceremonial hall of the Silvercrest Pack, past the Elders, past the allied Alphas, past the woman in jasmine, and I did not stumble once.
I made it to the corridor outside before the second wave hit. I caught the wall with my shoulder. I breathed through my teeth until the white at the edges of my vision went back to gold.
My son was upstairs. My son was asleep in the nursery on the third floor, and I had until morning to pack what was his and leave this house forever.
I straightened. I pressed two fingers to my wrist one more time.
Then I went up the stairs to get Lochlan.
