4. Building Tomorrow

Four and a half years later, I stood in what had once been an abandoned warehouse and was now the nerve center of the Sanctuary’s operation, watching my empire of survivors thrive.

“Dr. Winters, we have three new arrivals from the Cascade pack,” Jennifer called from her workstation, fingers flying across multiple keyboards. “Two teenage siblings and an elderly beta. They’ll need full processing, probably medical attention. The Alpha there has a reputation for…”

“I know his reputation.” I cut her off, already pulling up the files on my tablet. “Get Dr. Martinez on standby and run complete background checks. I want to make sure they weren’t followed.”

“Already running.”

Jennifer was one of my first recruits, a brilliant tech specialist who’d fled her pack after they’d tried to force her into a mating with her abuser. Now she ran our digital security with ruthless efficiency, ensuring that no one who came to the Sanctuary could ever be tracked back to their origin.

I moved to the window overlooking the main floor. Three stories below, wolves from a dozen different packs mingled freely eating, talking, laughing. Some attended the therapy sessions we offered. Others worked in the various legitimate businesses we’d established to make the Sanctuary self-sufficient. We had a bakery, a tech consulting firm, a construction company. All of it run by wolves who’d been thrown away by the pack system.

Forty-three residents currently. Each one a life saved. Each one a middle finger to the pack laws that had tried to destroy them.

My tablet buzzed with an alert. Northern sector perimeter breach, false alarm. Just a deer. But it was the third one this week. Jennifer noticed my frown.

“The sensors are getting too sensitive,” she said. “Or something’s testing our defenses. I can’t tell which yet.”

A chill ran down my spine, but I pushed it away.

“Run diagnostics. If something’s probing us, I want to know.”

“Mama!”

The cry was accompanied by the thundering of small feet, and I turned just in time to catch Emma as she launched herself at my legs. At four and a half, my daughter was a force of nature, all wild dark curls and storm-gray eyes that were so much like Kieran’s it sometimes stole my breath.

“Easy, little wolf.” I scooped her up, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Where are your brothers?”

“Liam’s in the library being boring, and Noah’s trying to convince Javier to teach him knife throwing again.” Emma’s expression was pure exasperation, so much older than her years. “Can you tell Noah that four and a half is too young for weapons training?”

“I’ll talk to him.” I smiled despite myself.

Noah had inherited Dominic’s protectiveness and his need to be useful, to protect everyone around him. At four and a half, he already positioned himself as the Sanctuary’s helper, wanting to take care of everyone. It would have been endearing if it didn’t break my heart every time I saw it.

Liam, quiet and thoughtful, with Asher’s amber eyes and that same calculating intelligence, preferred books and strategy games to physical activity. He was already reading at a second-grade level, already asking questions about pack politics and law that I had to carefully navigate.

And Emma fierce, independent Emma, with Kieran’s eyes and his commanding presence even at four years old, was the leader of their little pack, just like her biological father led his.

They were everything. My reason for surviving. My reason for building this place.

“Mama, you have the thinking face,” Emma said, touching my cheek with small fingers. “Are you worried about something?”

Too perceptive. All three of them were too perceptive, probably a side effect of being born from a mate bond that should never have resulted in children.

“Just work stuff, sweetheart. Nothing for you to worry about.” I set her down gently. “Go check on your brothers. We’ll have dinner in an hour.”

She scampered off with boundless energy, and I turned back to Jennifer.

“Status on the Cascade transfers?”

“Clean. No tracking signatures, no pack bonds that might be monitored. Elena’s crew did excellent work getting them out.” She pulled up their profiles on the main screen. “Two siblings, ages fourteen and sixteen, who witnessed their parents’ execution for speaking against pack law. And one seventy-two-year-old beta whose Alpha wanted to ‘retire’ her when she could no longer perform physical labor.”

The casual cruelty of pack law never stopped infuriating me.

“Get them settled in the east wing. Make sure they understand they’re safe here. That no one can touch them.”

“Will do.” Jennifer hesitated, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. “Dr. Winters, there’s something else. We got a message through the secured channels. Someone’s asking about you specifically.”

My blood went cold.

“What kind of someone?”

“They didn’t identify themselves, but the message came through with an Alpha signature. High-level, possibly Continental Council.” She pulled up the encrypted text on a separate monitor. “They’re asking for the Sanctuary director by name. They said they need to speak with you about a mate bond crisis affecting multiple packs. They’re offering full diplomatic immunity and substantial compensation for consultation.”

“Delete it.” The words came out harsher than I intended. “We don’t work with pack leadership. You know that’s our first rule.”

“I know, but…” Jennifer bit her lip, clearly wrestling with something. “Dr. Winters, they mentioned Silver Crest specifically. They said the crisis started there and it’s spreading fast. Over forty bonded pairs have severed in the last three months, and they have no idea how to stop it.”

Silver Crest.

The name alone made my chest tight, made the mate mark on my collarbone, faded but never fully gone, burn like it had five years ago.

“That’s not our problem,” I said firmly, forcing my voice to stay level. “We help individuals escape pack law. We don’t shore up the system that’s destroying them. Delete the message and blacklist that signature.”

“Already done.” But Jennifer was watching me with those too-knowing eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

I wasn’t fine.

The thought of Silver Crest in crisis, of mate bonds severing en masse, of the pack that had been so eager to reject me now falling apart, it should have felt like justice.

Instead, it felt like a knife twisting in an old wound that had never properly healed.

“Mama!” Noah’s voice echoed up the stairs, young and bright. “Dinner’s ready, and Liam says we have to wait for you, but Emma’s already stealing bread!”

“Emma!” Liam’s indignant cry followed. “That’s the third piece!”

Despite everything, the memories, the pain, the message about Silver Crest, I smiled.

This was my pack now. These children, these survivors, this place we’d built from nothing but determination and fury.

Silver Crest and its crisis could burn for all I cared.

I’d built something better from the ashes of my rejection.

“Come on,” I told Jennifer, closing down my workstation. “Let’s call it a day. Whatever’s happening in Silver Crest, it’s not our concern.”

But even as I said it, even as I walked downstairs to have dinner with my children and the family we’d chosen, a small voice in the back of my mind whispered that I was lying.

Some wounds never fully healed.

Some bonds, no matter how thoroughly rejected, never truly died.