Morgan's POV
The sound of tires crunching gravel tears me from a sleep I don't remember choosing.
My body jolts upright in the chair where I've been curled, muscles screaming protest, neck aching from the angle I've held for however many hours passed while unconsciousness claimed me against my will.
The room is dark now, the afternoon light replaced by the blue-gray shadows of early evening, and for a disorienting moment I cannot remember where I am or why my heart is pounding against my ribs like a caged animal.
'The car,' Nireya says, and her presence sharpens with immediate alertness. 'Someone is here.'
The fog of sleep burns away as I stumble toward the window, my legs clumsy beneath me, my brain still processing the foolishness of falling asleep when Sarah could have returned at any moment.
The locks held, clearly, but the vulnerability of unconsciousness makes my skin crawl with retrospective terror.
Headlights sweep across the front drive, painting the garden in harsh white before cutting to darkness.
I press my face against the cold glass, breath fogging the surface, and watch as an SUV rolls to a stop near the main entrance.
The driver's door opens first, Paul emerging with urgency. Then the rear door opens, and Zane helps a figure climb out with careful hands.
Ricky.
The sound that tears from my throat isn't quite a scream and isn't quite a sob—something primal and wordless that propels me away from the window before my mind can catch up with my body.
I don't remember unlocking the door. I don't remember descending the stairs. I don't remember bursting through the front entrance into December air that bites at my bare arms and steals the warmth from my lungs.
I only know that one moment I'm inside and the next I'm crashing into Ricky, my arms wrapping around her with desperate force, my face buried in her hair that smells like rust and salt and the industrial grime of wherever Sarah kept her.
"I'm sorry." The words pour out of me like blood from a wound, hot and relentless and impossible to stop. "Ricky, I'm so sorry, this is my fault, all of it is my fault, I should have told you everything from the beginning, I should have—"
"Morgan." Her voice comes out rough, scraped raw in ways I don't want to imagine. "Morgan, I need you to stop apologizing and start explaining why you apparently turn into a giant dog when you're stressed."
The laugh that escapes me sounds slightly unhinged even to my own ears. "Wolf. Giant wolf."
"Oh good, a semantic correction." Ricky pulls back just enough to look at my face, and despite the bruises and the exhaustion and the trauma carved into every line of her features, her eyes hold the same sharp humor I've relied on for years. "That clears everything up. I feel completely informed now."
Her body trembles against mine—violent shudders that have nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with temperature. The blanket Zane wrapped around her is damp, inadequate against the December night that presses against us from all sides.
"You're freezing." I pull her closer, trying to share what warmth my body can offer. "We need to get you inside, get you warm, get you—"
Ricky goes rigid in my arms.
The sudden tension radiates through her muscles, transforming her posture from exhausted relief to something sharp and wary. Her eyes fix on a point over my shoulder, widening with an expression I cannot immediately read.
"Morgan." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Why is she here?"
I turn.
Sarah stands in the doorway of the packhouse, silhouetted against the warm light spilling from the entrance hall.
Her silk robe catches the glow, transforming her into something almost ethereal, almost innocent—a woman roused from her evening routine by the commotion outside.
But her face tells a different story.
The terror that crosses her features is raw and unguarded, a crack in the mask she's worn for so long that I almost forgot it was a mask at all.
Her eyes dart from Ricky to Paul to Zane, calculating distances and implications, and I watch her realize that her leverage has been eliminated without her knowledge.
The recovery is impressive. Within seconds, her expression smooths into concern, her posture shifts into the familiar Luna authority, and she steps forward with a performance so polished that anyone who didn't know her would believe it completely.
"What's happening?" Her voice carries just the right note of worried confusion. "Paul, why is there a human woman on our grounds? Is she injured? Should I call for the pack healer?"
"Don't." Paul's command carries Alpha weight that makes me want to drop to my knees. "Don't speak, don't move, don't pretend for one more second that you're anything other than what you are."
Sarah's composure flickers. "I don't understand what you're—"
"I said don't speak." Paul steps forward, and the fury radiating from his body transforms the cold air around him into something electric and dangerous.
"I know about the affair. I know about the photograph. And I know about the kidnapping you orchestrated to threaten my mate."
The silence that follows presses against my eardrums, thick with implications that everyone present understands.
Sarah's mask crumbles by degrees—first the pleasant expression, then the concerned posture, finally the pretense that she has any ground left to stand on.
What remains is the face of a woman who has been cornered, calculating her options with the desperation of a trapped predator.
"You can't prove—" she begins.
"I don't need to prove anything to reject you." Paul's voice drops to something quiet and absolute, more terrifying than shouting could ever be.
"I, Alpha Paul of Blood Ridge, formally reject Sarah of Silver Moon as my Luna and my mate. The bond we shared is severed. The position you held in this pack is terminated."
The words carry power I can feel—a shifting in the air, a release of tension, a fundamental restructuring of the invisible bonds that connect pack members to their Alpha and his chosen mate.
Sarah staggers as if physically struck, her hand flying to her chest where the ceremonial bond must be unraveling.
"You have until morning to leave pack territory," Paul continues, and each word falls like a hammer blow. "After that, you'll be treated as a trespasser and dealt with accordingly."
"Paul." Sarah's voice cracks, desperation bleeding through the ruins of her composure. "You don't understand what you're doing. The alliance with Silver Moon—"
"Will be renegotiated without you." Paul turns away from her, dismissing her completely, and crosses to where I stand with Ricky still shivering in my arms.
His hand finds my face, cupping my jaw with a tenderness that contrasts sharply with the fury still burning in his eyes. "Morgan is my true mate. Morgan is the Luna of Blood Ridge. Everything else is logistics."
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