Noah leaned into Ivy for the photograph.
I knew the exact weight of him against my side.
My empty arm ached.
The main screen looped Caleb, Ivy, and Noah under the caption Blackwood family.
Outside that frame, I reached up and tore the TBD strip off my own badge.
The charity auction ended.
Stage lights still burned white over the empty podium.
I handed the torn badge to the head greeter and turned for the side exit.
Noah tore free from Ivy’s arms and ran straight into the light.
His small hands locked around my uninjured left wrist.
The main hall mics were still live.
“Mom!” he shouted, head tipped back so the whole room could hear.
“You go divorce Dad right now—then Ivy can be my real mom!”
Half a second of dead silence hit the floor.
I had thought hearing him call Ivy Mom was the worst of it.
Now he was using the name to send me away.
Cameras swung from Ivy’s frozen smile to my face.
On the social sidebar, auto-tags rewrote themselves in real time: Elena Vale — Legal Luna of Blackwood Pack.
A guest near the champagne table whispered loud enough for three rows.
“Wait—she’s the Luna?”
Ivy stepped out of the family pose.
Caleb reached for Noah too late; the clip was already playing on the wall.
Reporters closed in.
Titles rolled across every phone screen in the room.
Matriarch Blackwood cut through them and stopped at my side.
“She never lost the legal seat,” she said for the record.
Then, lower, for me alone, she pressed a sealed elder-support packet toward my free hand.
“If you want to fight for Noah, I’ll put the Pack on the side of the facts.”
The file stayed in her hand.
I crouched until my eyes met my son’s.
I pried his fingers off my wrist one by one.
“Your dad and I will deal with the divorce,” I said.
“You don’t have to do it for us.”
“But I want—”
“I heard you.” My voice nearly failed.
I waited until it held.
“Go with the staff. You’re done answering questions tonight.” Visit g.com for the full chapter.
I stood and faced the nearest staffer.
“Return him to his current caregiver. Caleb Blackwood. Not Ivy Hale.”
The staffer guided Noah toward Caleb.
He looked back once.
I waited until he was clear of the microphones before following them into the side hall.
The side-hall door shut.
Sound dropped to a hard hush.
Caleb did not apologize.
“You used Noah to weld yourself back onto the Luna seat,” he said.
“Satisfied?”
I pulled the seven-day demand letter and the still-blank formal filing schedule from my clutch and pushed both against his chest.
“Give my lawyer a date,” I said.
“The settlement can be discussed. This can’t keep waiting on your calendar.”
He did not look at the papers.
“Group valuation is still open. Gala optics are a mess. Pack stability comes first. No dates.”
The pressure of a feral Alpha defending his territory rolled off him hard enough that a waiter near the door dropped to one knee.
One of my own fangs cut the inside of my lip.
I tasted blood and did not lower my eyes.
Caleb’s voice dropped into a dangerous, inhuman growl.
“Keep pushing the board and the child, and the lab seed money can be clawed back for breach.”
I held his eyes.
“Then say it plain. You are not delaying for money. You are delaying because you can.”
His mouth flattened.
“You are still my legal wife—until I say it is over.”
I looked at the papers he had not read.
In the laboratory that morning, his signature had failed to open a door.
Here he still expected it to close every one.
The door opened.
Matriarch stepped in and closed it behind her.
“If Blackwood will not fund her research or her safety,” she said, “she has every right to find other investors and other protection. You do not get to starve a path and then block every other door.”
Caleb answered before I could.
“She is not divorced. Blackwood does not hand its Luna to outsiders.”
I laughed once, short and ugly.
“You care about dignity now? In the main hall every guest called Ivy future Luna, and you corrected none of them.”
Only the same order, colder.
“All procedures move on my timeline.”
I took the blank schedule back out of his hand, folded it into four neat squares, and slid it into my pocket.
“You do not want a wife,” I said.
“You only refuse to lose something with your name on it.”
I opened the side-hall door myself.
Reporters hit the corridor like a wave.
“Luna! Mrs. Blackwood—Luna!”
“Ask him when he’s filing,” I said.
The microphones swung toward Caleb.
I kept walking.
The joint evaluation room smelled like cold metal and disinfectant.
I set my right hand on the precision plate and pressed the motor test key.
The first reaction curve stopped under the red line.
The second did the same.
The third barely climbed at all.
“Again,” the attending said.
I pressed.
The screen stayed red.
Grip.
Nerve response.
Precision touch.
I finished every test.
On the imaging wall, silver lay like a gray-white blade across the regenerative pathway.
A wolf-healed hand should have glowed at the edges.
Mine showed nothing.
The report loaded in bold blocks.
Normal regenerative cascade: blocked.
Precision motor return: unlikely.
Forced use may cause irreversible loss.
The attending tapped each line with a stylus.
“No more titration. No micro-suture. No nerve-level dosing. If you keep using it to prove yourself, that hand may not even hold a cup.”
I made myself look at him, not the screen.
“It’s not healing slowly. The old recovery path is cut, right?”
He did not soften it.