005

Dorothy's POV

I had exactly four days of peace.

Four days of sleeping in my old bed, of eating meals that weren't scheduled around Isolde's needs, of walking through halls that smelled like home and family and everything Silver Creek had stripped from me. Four days of being Dorothy McAllister again.

I should have known it wouldn't last.

It started with a phone call.

I was in my father's study, hunched over a stack of quarterly reports Lucian had dumped on my desk with a grin that said welcome back to the real world, little wolf, when my personal assistant, Wren, knocked twice and stepped in.

"Miss McAllister." She kept her voice carefully neutral, the way she did when she had news she wasn't sure how to deliver. "There is an Alpha at the gates requesting an audience with your father."

I didn't look up from the report. "Which Alpha?"

A pause. Just long enough to make my stomach drop.

"Alpha Darius Silverclaw of Silver Creek Pack."

The pen slipped from my fingers.

I heard it hit the floor but I didn't move to pick it up. I sat very still, the way prey sits when it scents a predator nearby, every muscle locked, every nerve ending suddenly, painfully awake.

He was here.

He had found me.

How?

"Miss McAllister?" Wren's voice came from somewhere far away. "Your father is requesting your presence in the main hall."

I forced myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way my wolf trainer had taught me as a pup when fear threatened to override everything else.

You are not Dorothy Miller anymore, I reminded myself. Dorothy Miller was pale and hollow eyed and grateful for scraps. Dorothy Miller bled quietly and asked for nothing.

She is gone.

I stood up, smoothed the front of my blazer, and walked to the door.

***

I heard his voice before I saw him.

That deep, winter-cold timbre that had once made my wolf instinctively lower her head. It carried through the walls of the Blackwood manor the way Alpha voices always did, filling space, demanding attention, brooking no argument.

But something was different now. Here, in the heart of Blackwood territory, surrounded by my father's ancient, immovable power, Darius Silverclaw's voice sounded smaller than I remembered.

I paused at the top of the staircase, looked down.

He stood in the center of the main hall, Beta Charles at his right shoulder, two Silver Creek enforcers flanking them both. He was dressed the way he always dressed, dark suit, sharp lines, every inch the commanding Alpha. His jaw was set. His shoulders were rigid.

My father stood opposite him, arms folded, his expression carved from stone. Lucian leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes cold and unreadable, watching the scene the way a wolf watches something walk into a trap it has already set.

Darius was speaking. "...made a mistake. I need to speak with her directly. I need to know she is safe and that she left of her own accord without any outside influence."

Outside influence. As if the only reason I could have possibly walked away was because someone had manipulated me into it.

My jaw tightened.

My father's voice came back low and dangerous. "You are standing in Blackwood territory, Alpha Silverclaw. You will choose your next words very carefully."

"I only want to speak with Dorothy Miller—"

"There is no Dorothy Miller here."

The words came from me.

I hadn't planned to speak. But my feet had carried me down the staircase without my permission, and now I was standing on the bottom step, my hand resting on the carved banister, looking directly at Darius Silverclaw for the first time since the hospital elevator doors had closed between us.

The effect was immediate.

I watched it move across his face like a slow wave. The confusion first, because I was standing in a Blackwood manor, dressed in Blackwood colors, with a Blackwood pack insignia on the lapel of my blazer. Then the recognition, the shape of my face, the line of my jaw, the eyes he had looked through for three years without ever really seeing.

Then the realization.

It hit him like a physical blow. I saw it in the way his body went still, the way his nostrils flared as he scented the air and found, beneath the cedar and jasmine of the Blackwood manor, the unmistakable trace of the omega he had married.

"Dorothy." My name in his mouth sounded different now. Uncertain. Almost fractured.

"My name," I said quietly, descending the final step until I stood on level ground, "is Dorothy McAllister. Heir to the Blackwood Pack." I kept my voice even, every word placed with the precision of someone who had rehearsed this moment in the dark for years without knowing it. "Daughter of Alpha Matthias McAllister. You are standing in my family's home."

The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

Beta Charles had gone rigid. The two enforcers behind him exchanged a look. Lucian hadn't moved from the wall, but something in his stillness had sharpened, the way a blade sharpens when it is pulled from its sheath.

Darius stared at me. Something was working behind his eyes, some calculation, some reckoning, something I couldn't fully name and wasn't sure I wanted to.

"You never told me," he said finally. His voice had lost its Alpha command, stripped back to something rawer underneath. "Three years, Dorothy. You never said a word."

"You never asked." I tilted my head slightly, holding his gaze without flinching. "You never asked my surname. You never asked where I came from. You never asked what pack I belonged to or why I was alone when your enforcers found me." I let the words settle between us. "You confirmed my blood type and decided that was enough to know."

I watched the truth of that land on him.

My father stepped forward, placing himself at my shoulder, his Alpha presence a wall of quiet, immovable power behind me. "You have your answer, Silverclaw. My daughter left your territory of her own free will. She is home. She is safe." His voice dropped, each word deliberate and final. "And she is no longer your concern."

Darius's eyes moved from my father's face back to mine. There was something in them now that I had never seen there before, not in three years of living under the same roof, of offering my arm and my blood and my silence.

It looked almost like pain.

I turned away before it could reach me.

"Wren," I said, my voice steady as I walked back toward the staircase. "Please see our guests out."

I didn't look back. I climbed the stairs one step at a time, my spine straight, my hands loose at my sides, my wolf finally, mercifully, quiet.

It was only when I reached the top and turned the corner into the hallway that I pressed my back against the wall and let out the breath I had been holding since the moment I heard his voice.

My hands were shaking.

But I was still standing.

And this time, I had walked away on my own terms.