CHAPTER 9

"I'm the daughter! You can't cast me out! Dad, stop it! You're hurting me!"

Victoria’s heels scraped against the gravel of the driveway, leaving jagged white ruts in the stone. Gregory Cain didn't slow down. His fingers remained locked around her upper arm, his grip so tight the skin was already mottling into a bruised purple. He dragged her toward the iron maw of the pack gates like a piece of refuse destined for the incinerator.

Madison leaned against the stone pillar of the gate, her arms crossed over her chest. The cool morning air bit at her skin, but she didn't move. She watched.

"Dad, please! What the fuck are you doing?" Victoria shrieked, her voice cracking as she stumbled over a loose rock. "I'm a Cain! I'm the true heir! You said so!"

Gregory stopped. He didn't let go. He spun her around, his chest heaving, his face a mask of broken capillaries and raw, pulsing veins. "True heir? You're a curse. You've brought nothing but ruin to this house since the day you crawled back into it."

"It’s not my fault!" Victoria pointed a shaking finger at Madison. "She’s the one! She’s the one who faked the documents! She’s the one who stole the money! Dad, look at me!"

Madison uncrossed her arms. She reached into the pocket of her tailored wool coat and pulled out a crisp, white envelope. She didn't hand it to Gregory. She tossed it. It fluttered through the air, landing in the dirt at Victoria’s feet.

"Pick it up, Vic," Madison said. Her voice was flat. Empty. "Read the second page. Not the one your mother forged twenty years ago. The real one."

Victoria stared at the envelope as if it were a coiled viper. Gregory snatched it from the ground, his knuckles popping. He ripped the paper out, his eyes darting across the lines of text.

The silence that followed was heavy. Suffocating. Gregory’s hand began to shake. The paper rattled in the wind.

"Zero percent match," Gregory whispered. The words seemed to physically drain the blood from his face. "Not just to me. Not to any Cain bloodline in the registries."

He looked at Victoria, his eyes widening as they landed on the base of her neck, where a faint, dark mark was beginning to rise—a byproduct of the stress forcing her true scent to leak past the suppressants she’d been taking for years.

"Shadow-Claw," Gregory gasped, his voice a ragged hole in the air.

Madison took a step forward, her boots crunching on the gravel. "She isn't just a random stray you picked up, Gregory. She’s the daughter of Silas Vane. The Alpha of the Shadow-Claw. Your greatest enemy. The man who has been trying to dismantle this pack for three decades."

Victoria’s sobbing stopped. The change was instantaneous. The trembling girl vanished, replaced by something jagged and cold. She straightened her back, jerking her arm out of Gregory’s loosening grip. She wiped a smudge of dirt from her cheek and let out a laugh—a sharp, manic sound that echoed off the surrounding trees.

"God, finally," Victoria spat, her voice dropping an octave into a gravelly, mocking tone. "I thought I’d have to keep up the 'spoiled princess' act for another ten years. You people are so easy to bait. A few fake tears, a forged test, and Gregory Cain throws his own Royal blood into the trash just to feel like a big man again."

She looked at Gregory, her eyes flashing a dark, murky amber. "Silas says thanks, by the way. While you were busy doting on me, I was opening your back doors. I leaked your patrol routes. I drained your secondary vaults. I ensured every single pup born in the last five years was fed a diet of suppressants so they'd never shift into anything stronger than a house cat."

Gregory fell back, his legs hitting the bumper of his SUV. He looked like a man who had just seen the world turn inside out. He turned his head slowly toward Madison, his eyes wet and pleading.

"Madison," he wheezed. "Madi, I... I didn't know. I was protecting the legacy. I thought you were... I thought she was..."

Madison didn't move. She didn't offer a hand. She watched him crumble, his body collapsing onto his knees in the dirt. He reached out, his fingers brushing the hem of her coat, but she stepped back.

"You threw away a Royal Lycan for a spy," Madison said. The wind caught her hair, whipping it across her face. "You chose a parasite because she was easier to control than a daughter who actually had power. You wanted a legacy? Look at it."

She gestured to the packhouse behind them—a crumbling monument to a man who had traded his soul for a lie.

"Madi, please," Gregory begged, his forehead hitting the gravel. "Forgive me. Help the pack. You're the only one left."

Madison looked down at the man who had been her father for twenty years. She gathered the saliva in her mouth and spat. The glob landed in the dust inches from his nose.

"The Silver Moon is dead," Madison said. "And I'm the one who buried it."

She turned and walked toward the waiting black sedan at the end of the drive. She didn't look back at Victoria’s laughter or Gregory’s sobbing. The scent of the Shadow-Claw was thick in the air, but the scent of her own white wolf was stronger.

As the car door closed, she tapped her phone screen.

"Elias? Send the demolition crews. I want the gates torn down by sunset."

The penthouse was quiet, the only sound the steady hum of the city forty floors below. Madison stood by the window, the leather jacket from the morgue still draped over her shoulders. She could still smell the bleach. Still feel the cold steel of the slab.

Ethan was there. He didn't approach. He stood by the mahogany desk, his shadow long and imposing against the wall. The golden eyes were steady, watching the tension in her shoulders.

"It’s done," she said, her reflection in the glass looking like a stranger.

"It's just the beginning," Ethan replied. He walked over, his heavy footsteps muffled by the rug. He stopped a foot away, the heat of him radiating through the air. "The Shadow-Claw won't stop at the Cains. They’ll come for you now. They know what you are."

Madison turned, her eyes flashing silver. "Let them come. I've spent twenty years being the 'wolfless freak.' I think it's time I showed them what happens when the moon actually bites back."

Ethan reached out, his hand hovering near her face before his fingers settled on her jaw. He didn't pull her in. He just held her. The weight of his touch was a grounding force, a promise of a different kind of war.

"You're not alone in this, Madi. Even if you want to be."

Madison leaned her face into his palm, the rough skin scratching against her cheek. She didn't say thank you. She didn't have to. She grabbed his wrist, her grip bruising, and pulled him toward the bedroom.

The air in the room was electric, the ozone of the coming storm thick enough to taste. She needed to forget the morgue. She needed to forget the dirt at the gate. She needed to feel the raw, visceral reality of being alive.

She pushed him onto the bed, her movements frantic as she ripped at his shirt. Ethan didn't fight her. He met her hunger with his own, his hands finding the curve of her waist and pulling her down.

"Now," she whispered against his mouth. "Make me forget their names."

The sheets were a tangle of dark fabric and white skin. Ethan’s weight was a crushing, welcome pressure as he moved over her. He entered her with a low, animalistic growl, his cock thick and unyielding as it drove into her heat.

Madison’s head hit the headboard, a sharp, broken moan escaping her lips. This wasn't about love. It was about survival. It was about reclaiming the body they had tried to freeze and bury. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her heels digging into his glutes as he pounded into her, each thrust a hammer blow against the memory of Gregory Cain’s betrayal.

The sweat was salt on her lips. The sound of their bodies hitting was a rhythmic, messy heartbeat. She felt the stretch, the stinging friction, and the absolute power of his movement. He pounced again and again, his hands bruising her thighs as he held her open for him.

"Mine," he grunted, the word a vibration in her chest.

"Yours," she gasped, her vision fracturing into silver sparks.