Chapter 1

As Shawn’s stay-at-home Luna, I spent twelve winters scrubbing his floors and washing his clothes until my knuckles bled, and he called me Low-rent.

I bore his children. I forged his son’s armor with my own hands. I waited for him to take me back to my birth pack—but he chose his adopted sister, Marga, over me, even for a simple journey to my father’s coastal lands.

At dawn, I dried my tears and swallowed every ounce of bitterness. Then I returned to the territory I had abandoned and became the heir to the Pearlcoast Pack.

The wife Alpha Shawn discarded now rules everything he cannot touch.

And the word he feared most—alone—is the word I finally taste as power.

...

The water was freezing. My knuckles burned where the skin had split open again—same cracks I got every winter from scrubbing the floors, from washing the blood out of Shawn’s hunting gear, from doing everything that kept this packhouse running.

"Stella."

Shawn’s voice came from the living room. That low, commanding tone that used to make my heart race. Now it just made me tired.

I dried my hands on my apron. The fabric was thin, washed so many times it felt like paper. I caught my reflection in the oven door. Thirty-six years old. My hair was coming loose from its knot, strands sticking to my neck. I used to be beautiful. I used to be something.

Twelve years ago, I gave up everything for him—my family, my pack, my father’s protection. I followed him to this northern territory and built his life from nothing. He’d promised me, swore on the Blood Moon itself, that once Kurt came of age and took his place as heir, he would take me back to the Southern Coast. Back to my father’s lands. We would stay there, just us, away from the politics and the cold.

"You deserve to see your father again," he’d whispered into my hair that night. "You deserve to go home."

I’d held onto those words like a lifeline through twelve winters.

Now Kurt was eighteen. The Rite of Age was in five days.

I walked into the living room, drying my hands. Shawn stood by the window, fixing his cufflinks. Expensive. I polished them every week until I could see my face in them. My face, getting older every time.

"The preparations for Kurt’s initiation," I said, my voice careful. "After... after he takes the mantle. You remember your promise? About the Southern Coast?"

Shawn didn’t turn. "Stella. You’re not twenty anymore. Don’t be dramatic."

The stairs creaked. Kurt came down, eighteen and already carrying himself like an Alpha. He glanced at me, then through me.

"Mom. Someone has to watch the house while we’re at the ceremony." Like he was explaining something obvious to a child. "Dad’s negotiating alliances. I’m becoming a man. You stay here. That’s your job."

Your job. That’s your job. That’s all I was now.

"Mother!" Lydia’s voice pierced the air. She swept into the room, her fur groomed to silken perfection, fourteen and already perfected in cruelty. She was reaching for the cream-colored scarf on the bookshelf—the expensive one, the one that smelled of night-blooming jasmine and glacial ice. Marga’s. She’d left it here last time.

"Don’t touch that," I said.

Lydia pulled her hand back and wrinkled her nose. "You smell weird. Like old grease and—" she searched for the word, her eyes gleaming with malicious delight, "—like sweat. Marga smells like flowers. Everyone says so. The kids at school say you’re the weird mom who never leaves the house. They say you’re probably going crazy, staying inside all the time."

"Lydia." Shawn’s voice held no real warning. Just a lazy acknowledgment, like swatting at a fly.

Lydia laughed, low and lazy, mimicking her father’s tone. "Marga’s a ritual dancer, Mother. She’s got that high-blood pedigree, that perfect scent. You can’t just... decide to be like her." She checked her reflection in the mirror, preening. "You should take better care of yourself. You know. Not be so..." She smiled, friendly, devastating. "Low-rent."

The word landed like a slap.

Shawn walked over to me then. Stood close. I could smell him—cedar and musk, that imported shampoo Marga had brought back from her last trip to the coast. He used to smell like me. Like us. Like home.

He leaned in, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, close enough that my instincts screamed for the comfort of his scent-mark.

Then he turned his head away. Just slightly. Just enough.

"Kids say what they think," he said, his voice smooth, reasonable, final. "Don’t take it personally."

He didn’t say he’d talk to her. He didn’t say he’d take me south. He just walked past me, his shoulder brushing mine with deliberate indifference, and disappeared into his study.

That night, I lay in bed while Shawn showered. When he came out, he smelled like a stranger.

"Turn over," he said. "Your scent keeps me awake."

I stared at the wall. I didn’t cry. I was past crying.

But then, just as sleep was about to take him, he murmured into the darkness, half to himself, half to me. "Five more days. Then it’s done. Then we can breathe."

My heart stuttered. Five days. The Rite of Age. And then... the promise?

"Shawn?" I whispered. "Are we... are we going to the Southern Coast? After Kurt’s ceremony?"

He was already snoring.

But his words hung in the air like incense. Five days.

I rose before dawn, my hands shaking with a fragile, terrible hope. I pulled the old leather trunk from beneath our bed—the one I’d brought with me when I left my father’s house twelve years ago. I began to pack. Light dresses for the southern heat. The crystallized honey cakes my father used to love. A scarf my mother had woven, tucked away in tissue paper.

I was folding the third dress when I heard Shawn’s voice from the study, low and intimate, speaking into his communication crystal.

"Yes," he said. "Five days. The Southern Coast... I know, I know, she’ll be thrilled... No, she doesn’t know yet. I want it to be a surprise."

I froze, the dress clutched to my chest.

The Southern Coast. The warm waters. The place I’d dreamed of for twelve years.

He was planning the trip. He was really taking me home.

I pressed the fabric to my face and let the tears come, hot and grateful and blind.