Chapter 3

On the third night, Shawn left his communication crystal upon the nightstand. A careless gesture, or perhaps simply one more display of contempt—the assumption that I was too dull, too broken, to look, to understand.

I did not hesitate.

My fingers moved across the crystal’s surface, unlocking the private archives where he stored his correspondence. The device hummed, casting a sickly blue light across the furs where we had once lain together. A notification blazed across the screen—crimson and official, stamped with the seal of the High Territory Travel Authority.

SOUTHERN COAST CHARTER — CONFIRMED.

Departure: Two days.

Passengers: Alpha Shawn Ravenshade. Kurt Ravenshade. Lydia Ravenshade. Marga Hartclaw.

I read the names once. Then again, forcing the letters to sharpen against my blurring vision.

Four names. Four tickets to the edge of the world.

Not five.

The Southern Coast. The crystalline waters Marga had described with such delight. The place I had believed was my homecoming, where my mother’s grave was marked with winter jasmine.

I knew these lands. I had traced their boundaries as a child. The Coast was a resort, a playground for high-blood aristocrats, a day’s journey from my father’s gates—close enough to see the same constellations, to smell the same salt air, yet worlds apart from the ancestral territories where I had been born.

They were going to the edge of my homeland without me.

They would smell the jasmine I had described to Shawn in our first year of marriage, walk the sands where I had played as a pup, drink from the same springs—and I would remain here, scrubbing their absence from the stones.

My hand trembled as I scrolled deeper. A secondary itinerary, hidden beneath layers of diplomatic encryption. My thumb brushed the screen, and another document bloomed into view—luxurious, intimate, devastating.

The Celestial Wolf. Private cabin. Solstice celebration.

The reservation bore Marga’s name. The date coincided with her birth-rite, the fortieth anniversary of her first shift.

I stared at the cabin designation. The Bridal Suite.

The voyage I had carried in my chest for twelve years—the promise whispered into my fur when I was eighteen, when he had sworn we would traverse the southern seas together—had been gifted to Marga as casually as one tosses a bone to a favored hound. He was taking her to the waters I had described, to the suite I had dreamed of, on the date that should have been mine.

I restored the crystal to its exact position, every movement mechanical, my pulse roaring like a wounded predator in my ears but my hands—my traitorous, obedient hands—steady.

Shawn emerged from the bathing chamber, his pelt damp, steam rising from his shoulders. He lay down and turned his back.

"You will arrange the formal gear," he said, his voice muffled by the pillow. "Kurt’s initiation armor. Lydia’s court dresses. Marga’s ritual silks—use the citrus soap, ensure your scent does not contaminate the fabrics."

I rose in the darkness and walked to the wardrobe. I began to pack his luggage anyway. Boots polished to mirror-brightness. Shirts pressed until the seams screamed. The silk gowns I had woven myself for Marga, folded with precision that mocked my devastation.

The communication crystal on the nightstand hummed to life. Shawn's voice, warm with a tenderness I had not heard in years, drifted from the speaker.

"—the villa on the Southern Coast, Marga. The one with the crystalline view. I reserved the entire west wing."

"And the Bridal Suite?" Her laugh chimed through the static, bright and intimate. "You shouldn't have, Shawn. I'll feel like a queen."

"You deserve nothing less," he murmured. "We'll have the Solstice dinner brought in. No servants. No interruptions."

I stood motionless, the half-folded shirt still in my hands. "What of me?" I whispered.

They didn't hear. The crystal hissed with distance and desire, their voices entwining over plans for the journey I had dreamed of for twelve winters—the warm waters, the jasmine-scented air, the private cabin.

"Shawn?" I tried again, louder this time. "Am I to be left here alone?"

He waved a dismissive hand in my direction, not turning from the glowing screen. "Quiet, Stella. Important matters."

I stared at the wall. The silence stretched, elastic and brutal.

I rose in the darkness and walked to the wardrobe. I pulled the old leather trunk from beneath our bed—the one I had brought with me when I left my father’s house twelve years ago.

I began to pack my own things.

Not five.