Chapter 1

The first time I realized my left hand might never recover, I was trying to drink a glass of water.

It was an ordinary morning. The glass stood on my bedside table, less than an arm’s length away.

It took three attempts to close my fingers around it.

Then I lifted it, my grip failed, and it shattered on the floor.

Darian came running.

“Don’t move. You’ll hurt yourself.”

He lifted me away from the edge of the bed before kneeling to collect the broken glass. Then he poured fresh water and held it to my lips.

He was so gentle that my eyes burned.

“Darian, what if I can’t go back into the field?”

He brushed my hair away from my face.

“Don’t talk like that. I’ll find the best doctors.”

“All you have to do is trust me.”

Back then, I did.

A vault-breaching assignment had left me with severe electrical injuries. Silver contacts embedded in the security mechanism had burned through my palm, destroying tissue faster than my body could repair it.

The doctors had removed damaged nerves to keep the injury from spreading.

Werewolves healed faster than humans, but healing had limits. Nerves destroyed by silver didn’t simply grow back.

I used to handle precision tools without thinking.

Now I couldn’t hold a glass.

Darian never seemed disgusted by my weakness. He postponed meetings to sit through my rehabilitation sessions. When nerve pain woke me at night, he fetched my medication before I could ask.

Once, a nurse found him asleep beside my bed, still holding my uninjured hand.

“Your Alpha loves you,” she whispered.

I thought so, too.

Sometimes I even felt guilty for taking so long to recover.

During one rehabilitation session, I tried to lift a wooden block with a small pair of gripping tongs.

My hand shook. The block slipped.

Again.

And again.

Darian had just reached to steady my wrist when his phone rang.

Vera.

He glanced at the screen but didn’t answer.

She called again immediately.

“You promised to help me choose a dress for my promotion banquet.”

Her voice carried clearly through the room.

“Her hand didn’t stop working today. What difference will one afternoon make?”

The tongs froze between my fingers.

Darian frowned, murmured something soothing into the phone, and hung up.

“Vera’s under a lot of pressure,” he told me, adjusting the blanket over my knees. “I’ll go see her.”

He kissed my forehead.

“Keep practicing. Don’t slack off.”

After the door closed, the block fell again.

This time, I left it where it landed.

A few days later, I learned that an independent security consultant was visiting Blackthorn territory.

I wanted to ask whether there was any realistic chance of regaining my former dexterity. More than that, I wanted to know why I kept failing assignments I should have been able to complete.

Darian was away, so I gathered the records I’d kept and went alone.

At first, the consultant simply read.

Then he stopped turning the pages.

“This is the equipment from the high-risk vault you mentioned?”

I nodded.

He circled a model number.

“It’s a standard commercial unit. With your previous performance record, this should not have happened.”

“Maybe the conditions were different on-site.”

“Then what about the simulations?”

He arranged several reports side by side.

“You were trained for conditions that didn’t match the actual equipment. Critical risk disclosures are missing.”

I stared at him.

“This isn’t a matter of you being insufficiently careful.”

For three years, Vera had questioned my commitment after every injury.

Had becoming Luna made me complacent?

Did I think being the Alpha’s wife meant I no longer needed to work as hard?

I’d responded by training longer.

When my fingers trembled, I practiced late into the night. When I lacked stamina, I sacrificed rest.

Now a stranger was telling me the requirements had been impossible from the beginning.

He tapped the planner’s signature.

“I suggest you request a different coordinator.”

Vera Blackthorne.

I knew that signature by heart.

Darian’s adopted sister. The person he had entrusted with my assignments because, as he’d once explained, the two women he trusted most were me and her.

I collected my records and left.

On the way to the operations room, memories began rearranging themselves.

Briefings changed immediately before departure.

Warnings missing from equipment lists.

Flowers arriving after each hospitalization.

Vera always wrote the same thing on the card.

*Be more careful next time, Leah.*

At the operations room door, I heard Darian’s lieutenant speaking quietly.

“Alpha, Leah’s body is at its limit.”

I stopped.

The door stood slightly open.

“The trigger in Vera’s modified system has been tampered with. With her hand in its current condition, she’s likely to sustain further electrical and silver injuries.”

A pause.

“Are we still proceeding?”

Darian leaned against the desk and rubbed his forehead.

“Vera saw me helping Leah with rehabilitation. She’s jealous again.”

“She’s always been like this. She’s sulking.”

His lieutenant hesitated.

“This isn’t Leah’s first injury.”

“I know.”

Darian answered without hesitation.

“If she gets hurt, we treat her. I can afford the best doctors.”

He turned a page in the authorization file.

“I love Leah. I’m not going to let her die.”

Cold spread through me.

He sounded so certain.

As though anything short of my death were an acceptable expense.

“Miss Blackthorne can’t keep doing this,” his lieutenant said.

Darian’s expression softened.

“When Vera was ten, she said she wanted to be my Luna. I promised her she could.”

His voice lowered.

“Then I met Leah. I broke that promise. Of course she resents it.”

He picked up his pen.

“I owe her.”

The tip touched the page.

“As long as it helps her get over it, the assignments she plans go ahead.”

I watched him sign.

Before every emergency surgery, every new scar, every night I’d spent trying not to scream, he had done this.

He hadn’t failed to notice.

He hadn’t arrived too late to stop her.

He had approved it.

I pushed open the door.

#