“Older sister.
You look terrible.” The voice was warm and had always made Seren’s teeth ache.
Bianca Solvane entered in a gown the color of winter cream trimmed with deep Eldridge red.
Her eyes were mountain-sky blue.
She moved the way she always moved, unhurried, already at home in any room she entered, as if every space had been rearranged in anticipation of her arrival.
Behind her were two wolves in Eldridge colors.
Seren’s body locked.
“Sienna.
Yena.” Her cousins.
Women she had brought to every festival for fifteen years, whose positions in the pack she had argued for personally before Knox’s council.
She had sat across from Knox and said, with her hand pressed flat on the table.
My family is loyal.
Every last one of them.
“Why are you here?” “Knox brought us into the inner circle,” Yena said pleasantly.
“You’ve always been so kind about arranging things for us, cousin.
Turns out we could manage on our own.” Seren looked at them both, and understanding arrived the way it always did when it was too late to be useful—all at once, with perfect clarity.
“You delayed your matings.” It came out almost wondering.
“All this time.
You were waiting for this.” “Knox made an arrangement with our father early on,” Sienna said.
“Help without drawing attention, wait patiently, and there would be a place for us when it was finished.
You had everything, Seren, the name, the rank, the chosen bond.
The only advantage you ever had over us was being born to the First Branch.
That’s luck.
Not merit.” She smiled, cold.
“Our luck just arrived a little later.” “Sienna.” Seren’s voice cut through the chamber.
“Knox has destroyed the Hawthorne bloodline.
We are the same bloodline.
How are you standing here untouched?” “Because we were useful,” Yena said.
“The evidence of Uncle’s treason came from our family.
We chose the pack over family.” Something gave way in Seren’s chest—not grief, not quite, more like the sensation of a floor dropping out beneath her feet.
Every table she had set a place at for these women.
Every time she had told Knox her family was unified and could be trusted.
Every negotiation she had walked into believing she had support at her back.
She had been the bridge.
She hadn’t known what they were crossing toward.
The waste of it was the worst part.
Not the betrayal itself but the years she had spent defending them, the goodwill she had burned on their behalf, the times she had asked Knox to be lenient with her cousins specifically, to trust her read of her own blood.
All of it handed back to him as evidence.
Used against her father.
Used against Aldric.
Used to build the case that dismantled everything.
She had always believed her family was the one thing she read correctly.
It turned out she hadn’t been reading them at all.
She had been narrating a story she wrote herself, and everyone in it had known the ending except her.
“You understand you’re next,” she said, voice low.
“When there’s no First Branch left between you and Knox’s ambitions, he will find a reason.” “We’ll manage,” Sienna said.
Bianca stepped closer.
Her expression was sorrowful, which had always been the most infuriating thing about her, that she always looked like she meant it.
Some people wore grief like a weapon without knowing it.
Bianca had always known exactly what she carried.
“Older sister,” she said.
“The pack will be stable now.
You can finally rest.” Ten years.
Her daughter, her son, her bloodline, all of it reduced to this chamber and this cup.
“I won’t,” Seren said.
“I am Luna Queen of this kingdom—” “Peyton.” Peyton moved.
He lifted the stone cup from the floor and pressed it into Seren’s hands.
The chill of it cut through her palms.
Up close, the scent was almost floral.
Deceptive.
As poisons designed for wolves always were.
She looked at the cup.
Her wolf stirred—even now, even here, at the very end, crouching low, pressing its nose against the inside of her ribs, breathing and watching.
It had never left her.
Not in the Ashfen compound during the worst winters.
Not in the years of losing ground to Bianca.
Not the night she received word of Wendy.
The wolf had stayed, stubborn and warm, even when Seren herself had wanted nothing more than to stop.
You have been with me for thirty-eight years.
You have never left me.
The wolf pressed closer, as if it heard.
As if it were giving her everything it had left.
She raised the cup.
She made her vow first.
Not aloud.
Words were for courts and declarations and promises that needed witnesses.
This was older than that.
This was the kind of oath that wrote itself into bone and required no audience.
Aldric, my son.
Wendy, whom I could not reach in time.
Father, Mother, Brother, every wolf who trusted me and paid for it with their blood.
Knox, Bianca, Sienna, Yena, Peyton, all of you.
A debt written in blood does not dissolve.
I will not dissolve.
She drank.
The Bloodsbane was cold going down.
Then, within moments, everything else was cold too.
Her inner wolf went first—like a fire going out, not with a sound but with a sudden, absolute absence of heat.
Then her legs and her hands, the feeling draining out before she could close her fingers around anything.
She listed sideways and the stone floor caught her.
Through the slit window, the sky had gone deep red.
The color she had been told meant a Blood Moon was rising somewhere over the mountains.
She had always wanted to see one.
She watched it now, the last thing she would see.
Not yet.
Not like this.
Everything between us is not finished.
This is only the beginning.
The wolf in her chest sighed, one long shuddering exhale, and then the light in it went out like a candle in a closed room.