Chapter 3

The white oaks around the estate had grown taller in the three years since I’d been home. A guard caught my scent and blocked the entrance.

“The Alpha’s order still stands. You can’t come in.”

“Move.”

“Aria, don’t make us—”

I looked up. Maybe my face frightened him. Maybe Silver Lung had made my scent close enough to death that his wolf recoiled. Either way, he hesitated, and I shoved past him.

Adrian and Serena were eating dinner. She sat in my old chair with my mother’s red-edged plate in front of her. The Pack portrait on the wall had been replaced, too. Serena now stood in the space where I used to be.

I tightened my grip on the crowbar and crossed the dining room.

Serena shrieked and stumbled backward. Adrian moved between us and seized my wrist.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I shoved Chloe’s video in front of him. “Make her give back my mother’s bracelet.”

He watched the screen, his brows drawing together.

Serena’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “I thought she’d stolen it from the Alpha House. She hired a stranger to sneak it into the family cemetery, and I was afraid she planned to do something to Mother’s grave.”

“You were afraid?” I stared at her. “So you drove over it?”

“I didn’t see the box under the wheel.”

“You had Chloe pinned down and backed over it twice.”

Serena went pale, then clutched Adrian’s sleeve. “I panicked. Aria has been using fake medical records and a fundraiser to manipulate you. I didn’t know what she might do next.”

Adrian kept hold of my wrist. “Put down the crowbar.”

“That bracelet belonged to Mom.”

“I know.”

“When you threw me out, I didn’t take money or clothes. For three years, it was all I had left.”

Something flickered in his eyes, but his expression hardened again. “Serena will replace it.”

I laughed because a jeweler could replace moonstone. They could copy the design. They couldn’t replace my mother’s fading scent or the warmth my wolf remembered.

Deep inside me, my wolf gave one last, faint cry.

“She can’t replace it.”

I tore my wrist free and swung the crowbar down on the keys to Serena’s sports car. The casing shattered.

“You’re insane!” Serena lunged for me, raking her nails across my hand.

I slapped her, and the sound cracked through the room. Adrian’s palm struck my face a second later. The blow sent me into the edge of the table, and blood filled my mouth.

Silence followed as Adrian stared at his hand as if it belonged to someone else, but Serena’s crying quickly filled the room.

“I was only trying to protect Mother’s grave.”

Gold flashed in Adrian’s eyes. He kept his voice low. “Look at what you’re turning into, Aria.”

I wiped the blood from my lip. “No. You stopped recognizing me three years ago.”

His throat worked. “Aria—”

“You said you’d celebrate when I died.” I dropped my cracked phone at his feet. “You can start chilling the champagne.”

His face changed. He reached for me, but I swung the crowbar into the wall beside him. Plaster fell between us.

“Don’t touch me.”

Adrian went still while I walked out of the Alpha House without looking back.

Cold air knifed through my lungs. Every step scraped inside my chest, but I didn’t return to the shack. There was nothing there anymore—no medicine, no money, nothing left to arrange.

My mother’s bracelet was gone. PackAid had returned the donations. My wolf no longer answered me.

I followed the highway to Moonfall Bridge.

The black river cut through Northpass below. When I was little, Adrian used to bring me here to watch the moon. He would hoist me onto his shoulders and promise that as long as he was Alpha, nobody would ever drive me from my home.

In the end, he was the one who did it.

I stopped at the railing without hesitation.

I wasn’t making the decision now. I’d made it when I called the cemetery, stopped treatment, and gave Chloe the bracelet. I had only been waiting for my last tie to this world to find a safe place.

Now it was gone, too, and my wolf slowly closed her eyes. She didn’t call for her Alpha this time. She lowered her head onto her paws.

[You can sleep now.] I told her.

Then I stepped into the dark.