Chapter 9

"Thanks to the both of you I survived. And I'm very rich now. You clawed your way up and got yourself an empty Alpha."

Damon had offered the covenant himself. Before the ceremony he had said, again and again, that he owed her too much to pretend otherwise. Whatever happened, he wanted to make it right. So he signed, and even tied his outstanding Pack debts to his own name instead of hers.

The air in the ward went thin. Selene's face emptied of color. "You're lying. He wouldn't. He can't — all of it?"

"All of it. Including the debts you now inherit as his Mate. Welcome home."

Selene swayed. She had only finished the donation a week ago. Her body was still torn up. The fall, when it came, was straight down onto the tile. A nurse ran in, stared, and helped her out.

Marla returned to find petals all over the floor. She took one look and set to cursing even as she swept. "Little piece of work. Don't you let that in your head, kit. The Moon sees." She tidied Wren's bed and fluffed pillows with a vengeance.

Damon, told what had happened, did not go to Selene. He stopped outside Wren's door and sent Marla a message through the glass. "Tell her I'll handle it. She won't bother you again. Please rest."

Wren read it without expression.

In truth Wren had been afraid. Afraid she would claw her way back to life with nothing to claw her way back into. Three years of Healer bills had gone through Damon's accounts. Her own savings had gone into the joint fund. She did not know how many coin she had left. Relapses happened. Care cost. Damon's guilt was real. His resolve was not. Selene was hunger in a nice dress.

So from the hour she had been reborn she had laid her own nets. The night before surgery she had asked Marla to find something — the plump wooden pup-doll. Four years back Wren had miscarried on the highway while running a contract for Damon. He had knelt and cried. They had walked to a Temple and bought the little wooden pup as a keepsake. It had sat on Damon's desk for years. When she got sick he put it away so she would not grieve. He had, eventually, forgotten about it.

Before surgery Wren had asked Damon to make her a bowl of the porridge he used to make when they were poor. He had, without hesitation, agreed and gone home to their old house to do it. While he was there, Marla played Arlan's recording on the living-room screen on a loop. She set the wooden pup on the coffee table, beside their engagement photo. Everything staged.

Coming back alive was not enough. This time, Wren was playing chess.

Wren opened the feed on her phone. Low lamplight. Damon face-down on the couch, reeking of wine, the engagement photo clutched to his chest. A glass tipped on the rug, liquid spreading. Eyes closed, tears sliding anyway. On the screen across from him, Arlan's footage played — Wren seated in sunlight, red-eyed, quiet, walking through ten years with her voice. The good years. The dry winters. The slow decay of something tender.

The last frame paused on Arlan asking her if she hated him. On camera she had held still. Then smiled. "No." Two words. Slow and clean as a blunt knife.

Damon's shoulders jerked. Every lie he had told himself peeled off in layers. What was left was naked, raw shame.

In the ward Wren watched the feed without feeling much. She had never been a kind she-wolf. She counted, she remembered, she paid. The first thing she had done after waking with the old life in her head was figure out how to survive. She had no choice but the long game.

After Damon flew away with Selene, Wren kept Elias close so that every later stage of her treatment was in her own hands. With the other hand she sent Selene photographs from a burner Mind-Link — her own face after chemotherapy, vomit streaked with blood, bruised and yellow, every image chosen to pry Selene's fear wider. Selene's softness was a show. Her cowardice was real. The more terrified Selene was, the more she would stall the ceremony, the sooner she would show her true face, the faster Damon would see.

Before Highland Wren had screened hundreds of inns and chosen Arlan's. Arlan had won a Territory documentary prize. His nephew worked in medicine. That nephew knew Elias. A single thread ran from a mountain inn to her main Healer — her safety net.

Even Marla had been part of it. Marla had been betrayed by her own Mate and hated cheats in her bones. Marla was the one she-wolf in the building guaranteed to take Wren's side with teeth.

The one unknown had been Damon's heart. Real love could still turn. Guilt could wear off. She had not dared gamble her life on his conscience. So she had staked everything on a single move — win everything, or die a little sooner.

When Arlan had asked her whether she hated Damon, she had said no. That was a lie. Of course she hated him. Only hate does not heal, and she did not have the time to wait for it to.

The Moon had been kind. She had won.