Saturday arrives faster than seventy-two hours should allow. Grayson's announcement sits in my phone like a grenade with the pin already pulled—a threat to all supernatural kind hiding among us—and at four PM, a follow-up message lands: my presence is required. Not optional. Not requested. Required.
The pack grounds smell like wet earth and burning torchwood. The clearing opens before me—ancient oaks forming a circle, flames casting shadows that jump and twist across the faces of every wolf at Blackmoor. Fifty, maybe sixty, packed tight along the perimeter. Their eyes catch the firelight and throw it back amber.
Rhys stands at the tree line where pack territory begins. His hand catches mine before I cross.
"I can't go in there with you." His grip tightens, his fingers pressing white against my knuckles. "Pack law. A vampire on those grounds during a formal gathering—"
"I know."
"If it goes wrong—"
"Then you'll hear me scream and I'll expect you to ignore the law." I squeeze back. "But it won't go wrong."
"You don't know that."
"No." I pull my hand free. "But I know I'm not the same girl who let them dump pasta on her and cleaned it up on her knees."
His jaw works. He steps back, one foot, two, until his shoulders press against the oak behind him. His gray eyes burn in the torchlight, and he nods once. The nod of someone letting go of something he's not sure will come back.
I cross the boundary.
The circle tightens the moment I step through. Wolves shift closer, cutting off the gaps between bodies. Grayson stands at the center on a raised platform beside the pack elder—a woman I've never met, white-haired, her face carved into permanent judgment.
"Sloane Imler." The elder's voice carries without effort. "You've been called to answer for conduct that threatens the integrity of this pack and the safety of all supernatural kind."
"Conduct." I stop at the edge of the platform. "You mean dating a vampire."
"I mean harboring knowledge of an abomination and choosing to protect it over your own blood." Grayson steps forward, golden and righteous, playing to his audience. "You knew what Rhys Vance was. You have research proving it. And instead of bringing that information to your pack, you crawled into his bed."
Murmurs ripple through the circle. Someone spits on the ground near my feet.
"Is that accurate?" The elder folds her arms. "Did you knowingly conceal information about a potential threat?"
"I concealed a person's private medical history." I keep my voice level. "Which, last time I checked, isn't a crime."
"It is when that person is a vampire-werewolf hybrid." Grayson holds up his phone. The photograph—Rhys's amber eyes, blazing and undeniable. "This is what my sister chose to protect. This is what she put above her family, her pack, her species."
The murmurs become growls. Low, rumbling, vibrating through the ground into the soles of my shoes.
"You want me to answer for my conduct?" I step onto the platform. The elder moves aside—startled, probably. Nobody expects the accused to take the high ground. "Fine. Let's talk about conduct."
"Sloane—" Grayson starts.
"Let's talk about a brother who had his friends corner me in empty hallways. Who ordered an entire pack to pretend I didn't exist. Who grabbed my arm hard enough to leave bruises on my first day at this school and every week after."
Silence. The growls fade.
"Let's talk about a captain who planted fake evidence—fabricated screenshots, spliced audio—to destroy my relationship, and got exposed for it in front of the entire academy." I turn to face the circle, meeting eyes that won't hold mine. "Half of you were in that auditorium. Half of you heard the proof. And you're standing here tonight pretending Grayson Imler has the moral authority to judge anyone."
"This isn't about me—" Grayson's voice rises.
"It's always been about you." I turn back to him. "Every decision you've made since I got here has been about control. Not pack safety. Not family honor. Control. Over me. Over anyone who threatens the perfect golden image you've built on top of our mother's grave."
His face drains of color. The elder glances between us, recalculating.
"You want to talk about threats to supernatural kind?" I keep going because if I stop I'll shake apart. "The threat isn't a boy who was born with the wrong blood and spent twenty-one years suppressing half of himself to survive. The threat is a system that murders children in cradles because their parents fell in love with the wrong species."
"She's deflecting—" Grayson reaches for my arm.
"Don't touch me." The words come out quiet and carry further than any shout. His hand freezes mid-air. "You lost that right when you changed my locks and stole my mother's belongings."
The clearing is silent. Sixty wolves staring at the halfblood girl who was supposed to grovel and is instead burning the platform down.
"I'm not sorry for what I did." I face the elder directly. "I found a person in pain and I chose not to make it worse. If that's conduct unbecoming of this pack, then this pack was never worth belonging to."
"You're choosing a vampire over your own blood," the elder says. Measured. Testing.
"I'm choosing a person who showed me more kindness in an elevator than my own brother has shown me in nineteen years." My voice holds. My hands don't, but I lock them behind my back where nobody can see. "If that makes me a traitor, then I've been one since birth. Might as well make it official."
Grayson's face twists—fury and something rawer underneath, something that looks almost like grief before he crushes it. He turns to the elder.
"You've heard her. She's made her choice. She stands with the abomination."
"I stand with Rhys." I correct him. "His name is Rhys. And he's more wolf than anyone in this circle."
The elder studies me for a long moment. Her amber eyes are ancient and unreadable, and the firelight carves deep shadows across her face.
"The pack has heard your answer." She turns to the circle. "Sloane Imler has chosen her position. Any wolf who wishes to challenge that choice may do so now, through formal channels, within the law."
Nobody steps forward. Derek shifts his weight, glances at Grayson, and stays planted. The silence stretches for ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.
"Then this gathering is concluded." The elder descends the platform without looking at either of us. The circle loosens. Bodies drift toward the exits, conversations resuming in low tones that I can't parse and don't care to.
Grayson hasn't moved. He stands on the platform with his fists at his sides, staring at me with an expression that's moved past anger into something colder.
"You think this is over?" His voice is barely audible. "You think making a speech saves him?"
"I think making a speech saved me."
I step off the platform and walk toward the tree line. My legs hold until I'm past the first row of oaks, past the torchlight, past the boundary where pack territory ends and the rest of the world begins.
Rhys catches me before my knees give out.
His arms close around me so tight my ribs protest, lifting me off the ground, his face buried in my neck, his whole body vibrating against mine. The oak bark scrapes my shoulder where he presses us both against the tree, and the sound he makes isn't a word—just a raw, cracked exhale that I feel in my sternum.
"You could have died." His voice breaks against my throat.
"Worth it."
"Don't—" He pulls back far enough to grip my face, his thumbs pressing into my cheekbones, his eyes wild with gray and amber swirling together. "Don't say that. Don't ever—"
"Worth it." I hold his wrists. "Every second. Every word. Worth it."
He kisses me—hard, desperate, his teeth catching my lip, his hands shaking where they hold my face. I taste salt and cold winter and the metallic edge of fear, and I kiss him back until neither of us can breathe.
His phone buzzes against my hip. He ignores it. It buzzes again. Again.
I pull back. "Check it."
He reads the screen and the blood drains from his face for the second time this week.
"What?"
"Grayson." His thumb scrolls, his jaw going tighter with each line. "He's contacted vampire purist families. Six of them. Including the Ashfords." He looks up. "They're calling a joint tribunal. Wolves and vampires together. Saturday was just the warmup."
"When?"
"Championship game." His phone-light throws shadows across his hollowed features. "Maximum audience. Maximum damage. They're going to expose me on the field in front of everyone."