Chapter 4: Banished 

The words landed like a verdict from the executioner's block.

She should be banished.

Roxie felt the floor tilt beneath her, though she didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't give her father or the Alpha king the satisfaction of watching her break in front of them. She'd already broken once tonight, on the floor outside Jaxon's quarters. She wasn't going to do it twice.

Alpha Thomas didn't hesitate. That was of the part that would stay lodged in her chest long after tonight, longer than the slap, longer than the rejection, longer than anything Jaxon or Chloe had done to her.

"It will be done, Your Majesty." His voice came out fast, almost eager, relief flooding his face now that he understood exactly what price would satisfy the King and save his own skin. He turned to her, and there wasn't a flicker of a father left in his expression. Just a man protecting his position, his pack, his precious bloodline growing in Chloe's stomach. "Roxie. You heard him. You're banished. Effective immediately."

"Dad." The word slipped out before she could stop it, small and cracked, the last foolish reach of a girl who still wanted to believe her father might choose her, just once, over his own fear.

"Don't." He didn't even look at her fully. "You've humiliated this family enough for one night."

Something in her chest went numb. Not broken, she was already broken. Just numb, the way a wound goes quiet after the initial shock wears off, right before the real pain sets in.

"Strip her rank," Thomas ordered one of the warriors, voice hardening back into its usual cold authority now that the danger to himself had passed. "She leaves the territory before sunrise."

Roxie said nothing. There was nothing left to say to a man who'd handed her over so easily, so completely, without so much as a second's hesitation.

She turned and walked back toward the workshop, her workshop, the only place in this entire territory that had ever felt like it belonged to her, to gather what little she owned. The mechanical bird was still in her bag, its wings bent now from being crushed against her side all night. She didn't take it out. She couldn't look at it yet.

She packed quickly. A few tools. A change of clothes. The small savings she'd hidden in a tin beneath her workbench, tips from repair jobs she'd done for pack members too proud to admit a wolfless girl had fixed their trucks. It wasn't much. It was enough to survive on for a few days, maybe.

No one came to say goodbye.

She hadn't expected anyone to.

By the time she reached the northern border, the sky was still dark, stars fading slowly toward a gray, colorless dawn. The pack house lights glowed behind her, warm and distant, a home that had never really been hers. She didn't look back at them either.

Roxie walked. One foot in front of the other, the cold biting through her thin jacket, her chest hollow in a way that felt almost peaceful compared to the screaming grief of a few hours ago. There was nothing left to feel. Jaxon was gone. Her father was gone. The pack, the workshop, the only life she'd ever known gone, all of it, in the space of a single night.

She was alone now. Completely, utterly alone.

She told herself that was fine. She'd survive. She always had.

Alpha King Magnus watched the pack house shrink in his rearview mirror as his car pulled away from the territory, his expression as unreadable as it had been all evening.

Beside him, one of his enforcers, a broad, silent man named Vale kept his eyes on the road, waiting, as he always did, for the Alpha King to speak first.

Magnus didn't speak until they were well past the border, the Blackwood territory nothing but a smear of light behind them.

Then he pulled out his phone.

The line connected on the second ring.

"It's done," Magnus said, voice low and satisfied in a way it hadn't been all night. "The old fool actually did it."

A pause, a voice crackling faintly on the other end.

"The mechanic," Magnus confirmed. "She's been banished. Exactly as planned."

Vale glanced sideways at him, the faintest flicker of understanding crossing his face. He'd wondered, during the long, tense standoff in that hallway, what game his Alpha King was playing. Now it was becoming clear.

"Track her down," Magnus said into the phone, voice cooling into something colder, more precise. "Abduct her alive. Do not let her get hurt."

He paused, listening to a question from the other end, and something almost like the ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth, there and gone in an instant.

"I don't care what it costs," Magnus said. "Her skill is worth more to me than that entire pack combined. Bring her to me unharmed."

He ended the call and slid the phone back into his jacket, gazing out the window at the dark countryside blurring past.

He hadn't lied to Thomas back in that hallway. Roxie truly did lack discipline, storming past an Alpha king without so much as an apology was reckless, foolish, exactly the kind of behavior that got lesser wolves killed.

But that wasn't why he wanted her banished.

He'd heard about her for months. Whispers traveling through supply chains and black markets, rumors of a wolfless girl in the Blackwood pack who could rebuild a shattered engine with her bare hands, who understood machinery in a way that bordered on unnatural. A mind like that, wasted in some backwater pack workshop, fixing trucks for wolves too arrogant to properly thank her.

Magnus didn't waste resources. And he never let anything valuable slip through his fingers, not when he could simply take it.

Thomas Blackwood, terrified and desperate to please, had made it easy. One cold command, one veiled threat against his pack, and the fool had thrown his own daughter to the wolves without a second thought, unaware he'd handed Magnus exactly what he wanted all along.