After My Mate Killed Our Pup

The memory shard sat in my palm like a piece of frozen glass, no bigger than a tooth. Sera had spent two nights building it, pulling Whitley's mind-link confession out of the air where I'd caught it and pressing it down, layer by layer, until it held. *This is the only copy,* she told me. *Don't lose it. Don't let him find it.*

I wrapped it in a strip of gauze and pressed it into the seam of a letter, the kind Dylan and I used to pass under our father's door when we were small enough to still believe in hiding places.

*Dylan. Listen to this before you do anything else.*

His voice came back rough, thinner than usual, like he'd been holding his breath. *Jolie, is this her? Is this actually her voice?*

*Keep it. Insurance.* I closed my eyes against the memory ward's hum. *Seventy-two hours. The Appalachian crossing, the low trail past the ridge marker. That's the route I'm taking.*

*You're leaving.* Not a question.

*I'm already gone. My body just hasn't caught up yet.*

A long pause. Then, quieter than I'd heard him since he was fourteen and scared of the dark: *I'll be there. I swear it, Jolie.*

I shut the link before my voice could betray anything else.

I found Maya an hour later, in the laundry corridor, pressed flat against the folding table with her sleeve pulled down past her wrist even though the room was warm enough to sweat in. She startled when she saw me, dropped a stack of towels, and bent to gather them too fast, favoring one leg.

"Maya."

"Luna, I'm fine, I just—" She winced reaching for the last towel.

I crossed the room and caught her wrist before she could tuck it away again. The fabric slid back an inch. The bruise underneath was already purpling, a neat oval with four smaller marks pressed into the edge—the exact shape of a ring I'd watched Whitley turn on her finger like a nervous tic for three months.

"Who did this."

Maya's eyes went to the door, then the floor. "Nobody, Luna. I fell."

*She's terrified,* Sera said, low and furious. *Terrified of who exactly.*

I knew the answer. I'd known it since the tea tray. I let go of Maya's wrist gently and straightened her sleeve myself, folding it down over the mark like it was something that deserved covering, not exposing—not yet, not until I could make the exposure count for something.

"Finish your shift," I said. "Come find me tonight. Bring nothing. Say nothing to anyone."

She nodded, eyes wet, and I walked away before either of us could say more than that.

Kolton's summons came before I'd made it back to the east wing. A runner, breathless, said the Alpha wanted me in his office, now.

He was standing behind his desk when I walked in, arms crossed, jaw set in the way that used to mean he was bracing for a fight he already thought he'd won.

"The warriors are talking," he said. "About this morning. About you refusing to acknowledge what you did to her."

"What I allegedly did."

"You'll apologize to Whitley," he said, like he hadn't heard me. "In front of the ranked lines. Tonight. For pack morale."

I studied him—the tight shoulders, the scar on his jaw he didn't know he was rubbing, the mate bond between us sitting cold and thin as a wire. Once I would have felt something reaching back down that wire even in anger. Now there was nothing. Just the shape of where something used to be.

"That's an Alpha directive," he added, when I didn't answer fast enough. "Not a request."

I let the silence stretch long enough that his jaw ticked.

"You'll remember this conversation," I said finally, flat and even, and turned for the door.

"Jolie." His voice cracked on my name, more startled than commanding. "I didn't dismiss you."

I didn't bow. I didn't stop. I walked out of his office for the first time in six years without giving him the obedience he'd never once had to ask for twice.

On my way back through the courtyard, I caught the shape of Vance Sterling near the south gate, head bent close to someone in a gray hood I recognized by the way she stood, weight always shifted to hide how steady she really was. My wolf's ears caught fragments on the wind—*border rotation*, *outside pack frequency*, *gift*—and I watched Whitley's mouth curve, slow and pleased, as she took whatever paper he was offering and tucked it against her ribs like something precious.

She didn't bother lowering her voice all the way. She never thought I was listening anymore.

I kept walking, my hand resting where my mark used to burn, already counting the hours.