I spent three hours on the cake.
Not baking it — I'd ordered that from the bakery in town, a three-tier vanilla buttercream with pink frosting roses and a sugar wolf howling at a crescent moon on top. Daisy had described it to me no fewer than eleven times since March. "Mama, the wolf has to be white. And the moon has to be the skinny kind, not the fat kind." I'd sketched it on a napkin and handed it to the baker myself.
The three hours were for everything else. The streamers — lavender and silver, because Daisy had changed her mind from pink two days ago and I was not about to argue with a girl who knew what she wanted. The balloon arch over the entrance to the Alpha suite's living room. The little party crowns I'd made by hand from gold cardstock and stick-on gems, one for each of the six pack pups Daisy had invited. And the big crown. Daisy's crown. Gold glitter, purple ribbon, and a plastic jewel the size of my thumbnail that she'd picked out at the dollar store with the seriousness of a jeweler selecting a diamond.
I set the crown on the kitchen counter and stepped back to look at the room.
It was good. It was exactly what she'd asked for.
My phone buzzed.
Scott.
*Emergency border patrol. Rogue activity near the eastern ridge. Taking a team out tonight. Probably won't be back until Sunday. Tell Daisy I'm sorry.*
I read it twice. Then I set the phone face-down on the counter and adjusted a streamer that didn't need adjusting.
It was Friday. The party was Saturday. He knew that. He'd known for two months, because Daisy had told him at dinner every single night, counting down the days on her fingers. "Fourteen more sleeps, Daddy. Thirteen more sleeps."
I picked up the phone and typed: *It's her birthday tomorrow, Scott.*
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
*I know. Can't be helped. Victor Crane's rogues don't check the calendar.*
Victor Crane. Alpha of the Blackmoor Pack. Our ongoing territorial headache — one I had personally mapped every strategic response to, including the eastern ridge patrol rotation that I had designed to require exactly four wolves and a Gamma, not the Alpha himself.
I typed: *The eastern ridge rotation doesn't need you. Send Ethan.*
Ethan Howell. Scott's Beta. Perfectly capable.
A longer pause this time.
*I'm the Alpha, Madelyn. I decide what needs me.*
I stared at the screen. There it was. That tone, even in text. The subtle pull of rank. The reminder that questioning him was the same as questioning the pack's chain of command.
I deleted the three responses I drafted in my head and sent: *I'll tell Daisy.*
He didn't reply.
The party was everything Daisy wanted it to be.
Six pups in gold crowns chasing each other through the living room. Cake smeared on faces. A game involving a blindfold and a stuffed wolf that devolved into cheerful chaos within thirty seconds. Daisy stood in the middle of it all wearing her big crown, cheeks flushed, laughing so hard she hiccupped.
She asked once.
Only once.
"Where's Daddy?"
I was cutting cake. My hand didn't pause. "He had to go help the pack with something important, baby. He's really sorry he couldn't be here."
She looked at the door. Then she looked back at me. "Will he come for cake later?"
"I'll save him a piece."
She nodded. Accepted it the way five-year-olds accept things — completely, because they have no reason yet to doubt the people they love. Then she ran back to her friends and forgot about it, or seemed to.
I finished cutting the cake. My hands were steady. My chest was not.
By nine o'clock the pups were gone, the living room was a disaster of streamers and frosting, and Daisy was asleep on the couch with her crown still on. I carried her to bed. She weighed almost nothing. I tucked the blanket around her and set the saved slice of cake on the nightstand — a fat piece with an extra frosting rose, wrapped in plastic, with a note she'd dictated to me before her eyes got heavy.
*For Daddy. From Daisy. Happy birthday to me. I love you.*
She'd signed it with a wobbly D and a drawing of a wolf that looked like a potato with legs.
I stood in the doorway and watched her sleep for a long time.
I cleaned up alone.
It took an hour. I swept frosting off the floor, popped balloons, stuffed streamers into trash bags. The suite was quiet. The kind of quiet that presses in.
I was carrying the last trash bag to the hallway when I saw it. Scott's patrol jacket, tossed over the bench by the front door. He must have changed before he left. He did that sometimes — swapped his good jacket for the field one, left the other behind like a shed skin.
I picked it up to hang it in the closet.
The scent hit me before I'd lifted it past my waist.
Sweet magnolia. And underneath it, cheap vanilla — the synthetic kind, the body spray you buy at a drugstore for six dollars.
I stopped.
My fingers tightened on the collar. I brought it closer. Slowly. The way I'd been trained at Silvercrest Academy to parse a scent — not just the top notes but the layers beneath. Duration. Intensity. Source proximity.
This was not a casual brush in a hallway. Not a handshake. Not a crowded room.
This was hours. Hours of skin-to-skin contact. The magnolia had settled into the fabric the way a scent only does when it's been pressed there — by a neck against a collar, by hair against a shoulder, by a body curled close enough and long enough to leave a stain.
I stood in the hallway holding my mate's jacket and breathing in another woman's scent, and the world went very, very still.
My wolf, Sera, stirred.
*Madelyn.*
I didn't answer her.
*Madelyn. That's not ours.*
I know.
*That's —*
I know.
I hung the jacket in the closet. I closed the door. I walked to the bathroom, washed my hands, and looked at myself in the mirror. My face was calm. My eyes were dry.
Inside, Sera was pacing. I could feel her — restless, agitated, her hackles up in a way I hadn't felt since the last real territorial threat two years ago. But this wasn't a threat from outside the borders.
I went to bed. I did not sleep.
Sunday morning, I made Daisy pancakes.
She ate them with syrup on her chin and told me about a dream where Buster — a dog she'd seen in a picture book — could fly. I listened. I smiled. I poured her juice.
Then I dropped her at the pack's pup-care center, walked back to the pack house, and followed the scent.
It wasn't hard. Silvercrest had trained me to track a single scent thread through a battlefield. A pack house hallway was nothing. The magnolia-vanilla trail was faint here — older, layered under cleaning products and foot traffic — but it was consistent. It moved through the east corridor, past the meeting rooms, down the stairs to the main floor.
It converged at the front desk.
A she-wolf sat behind it, filing paperwork. Young. Dark hair pulled back. Omega rank — I could tell from the way she held herself, the slight deference in her posture that pack hierarchy drills into the lowest-ranked wolves from childhood. She wore a name tag.
Camila Flores.
She looked up as I approached. Her smile was automatic — the front-desk smile, polite and practiced.
Then she saw who I was.
The smile didn't drop. It shifted. Just slightly. A flicker behind the eyes, like a door closing.
"Luna Madelyn," she said. "Good morning."
I looked at her. I took in the magnolia perfume — stronger here, at the source. The vanilla body spray underneath. The way her fingers paused on the file she was holding, just for a half-second, before resuming.
Sera growled low in my chest.
I said nothing.
I held Camila's gaze for exactly three seconds — long enough for her to understand that I knew, short enough that she couldn't be sure what I knew — and then I turned and walked away.
My phone was already in my hand. I opened the pack's financial portal — full Luna-level access, every ledger, every line item — and began to scroll.
Behind me, I felt Camila's eyes on my back.
Good. Let her watch.
I had work to do.
