After My Mate Let My Mother Die

The grease under my nails never quite washed out anymore. I'd stopped trying.

Three weeks at Rustgate, and I'd fallen into a rhythm: strip engines during the day, sleep in the back room at night, keep my head down. The neutral border pack didn't ask questions. They paid cash weekly and didn't care that I had no references, no pack affiliation, nothing but the clothes on my back and hands that knew their way around a transmission.

I was good at this. Fixing things that were broken. Taking apart complicated machinery and putting it back together in working order. Engines made sense. They had rules. Cause and effect. No betrayal. No severed bonds.

No dead mothers.

I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my wrist, leaving a smear of oil across my skin. The Chevy's engine block gleamed under the fluorescent lights. I'd been working on it for six hours straight. My back ached. My hands were raw. I didn't care. The work kept my mind quiet.

Except it wasn't quiet anymore.

Little things had been changing. My hearing was sharper—I could track conversations three garage bays over, pick out individual heartbeats in a crowded room. My sense of smell had become almost painful in its intensity: motor oil, coolant, the tang of rust, and underneath it all the complex scent signatures of every person who'd passed through today. I caught things before I saw them—a wrench falling, my hand shooting out to grab it mid-air before my brain registered the movement.

And there was something else. A presence. A warmth that wasn't quite mine, sitting just beneath my ribs.

I'd been ignoring it. I was good at ignoring things.

The garage emptied out around sunset. The other mechanics clocked out, voices fading as they headed to the pack house for dinner. I stayed. I always stayed. The silence was easier than the questions I saw in their eyes: Why was I here? Where had I come from? Why did I smell like I'd been scrubbed clean of pack affiliation?

I didn't have answers I wanted to share.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. I leaned over the engine block, adjusting the timing belt, when the voice spoke.

*Indie.*

I dropped the wrench. It clattered against concrete, the sound too loud in the empty garage. My heart slammed against my ribs. I spun, scanning the shadows, but there was no one. Just me and the half-assembled Chevy and the buzzing lights.

"Who's there?" My voice came out rough.

Silence. Then—

*It's just me. Just us.*

The voice was feminine. Warm. It came from inside my chest, not from the garage. I pressed my hand to my sternum, feeling my heart race beneath my palm.

"I'm losing it," I whispered. "I'm actually losing it."

*You're not.* The voice was patient, achingly gentle. *I've been waiting a long time. I'm sorry it hurt so much, getting here.*

My legs gave out. I sat hard on the concrete floor, my back against the Chevy's tire. My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the cold ground, trying to anchor myself.

"What are you?" I asked the empty garage.

The answer came with a flood of warmth through my chest—silver and bright and overwhelming, like something locked away for years finally breaking free.

*Your wolf. My name is Selene.*

I couldn't breathe. My wolf. My wolf. Seven years I'd believed I didn't have one. Seven years of being called wolfless, defective, Omega. Seven years of Callan's contempt and Paige's mockery and my own creeping certainty that I was broken in some fundamental way.

And she'd been there the whole time.

*They poisoned us,* Selene said softly. *Kept me dormant. Kept me silent. But you're free now. We're free now.*

A sound escaped me—not quite a sob, not quite a laugh. I pressed my fist against my mouth, trying to hold it in. My shoulders shook. I wasn't crying. I didn't cry anymore. But something was breaking open inside my chest, and I couldn't stop it.

*It's okay,* Selene murmured. *I've got you. I've always had you.*

I sat there on the garage floor for a long time, shaking and not crying, while my wolf—alive, real, enormous—settled inside me like a missing organ sliding into place. She was patient. She didn't push. She just... waited. Let me feel her presence, solid and warm and undeniably mine.

When I finally spoke, my voice was barely a whisper. "Why now?"

*The poison's finally clearing. It takes time.* Her tone shifted, something darker threading through. *And we're going to make them pay for every second they stole from us.*

I closed my eyes. Leaned my head back against the tire. "I don't know how to do this."

*You'll learn. We'll learn together.*

The fluorescent lights buzzed. The garage smelled like oil and metal and possibility. For the first time in seven years, I wasn't alone in my own head.

I didn't know if that was a gift or another trap waiting to spring.

But I was too tired to care.

---

Two days later, Paige walked into my garage.

I was under a Ford pickup, replacing the oil pan, when I heard the door open. Multiple footsteps. Heavy boots. The scent hit me first—Ironhold Pack, unmistakable, the territorial markers I'd lived with for seven years. My hands stilled on the wrench.

*Don't,* Selene warned. *Not yet. Not here.*

I slid out from under the truck slowly, wiping my hands on a rag. Paige stood in the center of the garage flanked by four Ironhold warriors—all male, all Delta-ranked, all watching me with expressions ranging from curiosity to contempt. Behind them, I could see other garage workers pausing mid-task, heads turning. A neutral-pack Gamma leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, observing.

Paige looked perfect. Designer jeans, fitted leather jacket, her hair glossy and styled. The Luna pendant—Callan's gift—glinted at her throat. She smiled when she saw me, slow and venomous.

"There you are," she said, her voice carrying across the garage. "We've been looking everywhere for you, Indie."

I stood. Didn't respond. Just met her eyes and waited.

Paige's smile widened. She walked closer, her heels clicking on concrete, and I could feel every gaze in the garage fixed on us. She'd planned this. An audience. Witnesses.

"You left in such a hurry," Paige continued, her tone syrupy with false concern. "Didn't even say goodbye. After everything Ironhold did for you. Seven years of charity. Feeding you. Sheltering you. And you couldn't even keep your dying mother alive."

Something inside my chest snarled. Selene pressed forward, her aura beginning to leak at the edges—heat and pressure building beneath my skin. I forced it down. Not yet. Not here. Not without understanding what we were becoming.

"Nothing to say?" Paige tilted her head. "That's new. You always were so good at begging."

One of the warriors behind her snickered.

I wiped my hands on the rag slowly, deliberately. Kept my voice level. "You should leave."

Paige laughed—that high, brittle sound I remembered from a hundred humiliations. "Leave? Oh, sweetie. We came all this way to check on you. To make sure you weren't spreading lies about Ironhold. About Alpha Callan." Her eyes glittered. "About me."

She stepped closer. Too close. I could smell her perfume, cloying and sharp, and underneath it something sour. Fear. She was afraid.

Good.

"You're nothing," Paige said softly, just for me. "A wolfless runaway. A disgraced Omega who leeched off our pack for years and fled when the bill came due. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows what you are."

Inside my chest, Selene's growl deepened. My vision sharpened. I could see Paige's pulse jumping in her throat, could smell the adrenaline spiking in her blood. My hands curled into fists.

*Not yet,* I told Selene. *Soon. But not yet.*

I met Paige's eyes. Held her gaze until she blinked first.

"Are you done?" I asked quietly.

Paige's smile faltered. Just for a second. Then she recovered, stepping back, her voice rising for the audience again. "Just remember, Indie. You have no pack. No family. No wolf. You're nothing. And nothing is all you'll ever be."

She turned on her heel, motioning for the warriors to follow. They filed out, boots echoing, leaving the garage door swinging open behind them.

I stood there, grease-stained and silent, while the other workers slowly returned to their tasks. The neutral Gamma was still watching me, his expression thoughtful.

Inside my chest, Selene settled. Waiting.

*Soon,* she promised.

I picked up my wrench and slid back under the truck.

My hands didn't shake.