The pack house doors closed behind me with a sound like a coffin lid. I stood on the front steps, my single duffel bag at my feet, and watched the wolves I'd healed for three years line the driveway like spectators at an execution.
"Omega trash," someone muttered. A younger wolf—barely past his first shift—spat at my feet. I didn't flinch. My healer's instinct cataloged the action with clinical detachment: territorial aggression, pack hierarchy enforcement, learned behavior from observing authority figures.
I'd stitched that boy's shoulder back together after a training accident six months ago. He'd cried and called me Luna. Now he looked at me like I was something stuck to his shoe.
"Move aside." The voice cut through the jeering like a blade. Cora Morales shouldered through the crowd with the kind of physical authority that made wolves twice her size step back without thinking. She grabbed my duffel bag, threw it into the back of her battered jeep, then turned to face me with her arms crossed. "Get in."
I climbed into the passenger seat. My hands were steady. Everything in me was steady, frozen in a way that felt less like shock and more like my body finally catching up to what my mind had known for months: this place had stopped being home long before today.
Cora drove in silence, her jaw set, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. We passed the healer's clinic—my clinic, until an hour ago—and I watched it disappear in the side mirror without feeling anything at all. The numbness was a gift. I'd take it.
Her quarters were on the eastern edge of pack territory, a small two-bedroom unit that smelled like coffee and weapon oil. She carried my bag inside, dropped it in the spare room, then turned to face me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"You can stay as long as you need," she said. "No questions. No judgment. And if anyone tries to give you trouble, they go through me first."
Something in my chest cracked, just slightly. "Cora—"
"I mean it." Her voice was fierce, absolute. "You saved my sister's life two years ago when every other healer said the infection was too far gone. You think I forgot that? You think I'm going to stand by and watch them destroy you for something that manipulative Beta bitch orchestrated?"
I pressed two fingers to the inside of my wrist, feeling my pulse jump and settle. "Thank you."
She nodded once, sharp and final. "I'm on patrol tonight. Lock the door. Don't answer the mind-link if anyone reaches out. And Leah?" She paused in the doorway. "Whatever you're planning—and I know you're planning something—I'm in."
Then she was gone, and I was alone.
The spare room was small, clean, impersonal. A bed. A desk. A single window overlooking the forest. I unpacked mechanically—clothes in the dresser, toiletries in the bathroom, medical journals stacked on the desk. The Lycan Fellowship letter I placed in the top drawer, smoothing the creases carefully before closing it away.
My hands found the lyre before I consciously decided to unpack it. The wood was cool under my fingers, familiar in a way nothing else in my life felt anymore. I sat on the edge of the bed and played the first piece my grandmother had taught me—a mourning song, slow and aching.
The notes filled the small room. My fingers remembered the patterns even after three years of silence. I played until my throat was tight and my vision blurred, until the song became something else entirely—not mourning anymore, but rage distilled into sound.
When the last note faded, I set the lyre down carefully and pressed two fingers to my wrist again. My pulse was steady. Controlled. And somewhere deep in my chest, something that had been dormant for far too long stirred with cold, crystalline clarity.
My wolf. Finally awake.
*They took everything,* she whispered, her voice sharp as broken glass. *Now we take it back.*
I stood, walked to the desk, and pulled out a blank notebook. At the top of the first page, I wrote two names: Wylder Wallace. Marlee Burns.
Then I began to document. Every false accusation. Every stolen opportunity. Every moment I'd dismissed as misunderstanding or bad luck, now reframed with the clarity of someone who finally understood she'd been systematically dismantled.
I was three pages in when the mind-link opened without my permission—a Beta override, cutting through my mental shields like they were tissue paper.
Marlee's voice slithered into my consciousness, soft and venomous. *Poor Leah. All alone now. Do you know where Wylder is right now? He's here. With me. Holding me. Telling me how sorry he is that you turned out to be such a disappointment.*
I kept writing, my pen steady on the page.
*You were always just a tool, you know. A useful healer. A convenient Luna. But you were never actually special. Not to him. Not to anyone.*
My wolf snarled, but I pressed two fingers to my wrist and breathed through the fury. Let her talk. Let her think I was broken.
People who thought you were broken stopped watching their backs.
*Sweet dreams, Omega,* Marlee whispered, and the mind-link snapped closed.
I set down my pen and stared at the pages I'd written. Evidence. Timeline. Pattern.
They'd made a mistake, exiling me. They'd given me time. Space. And most importantly, they'd finally given me nothing left to lose.
I picked up the pen again and kept writing.
