“Protect the pack above all else.” The fire burned down to embers, and the memory of his last words to me stayed hot in my mind.

I was a child and a man, both at the same time, standing over him as his final breath left his body.

It was gone, and so was he. But his words remained, echoing through my life and my choices.

I saw myself the night of my first full moon as Alpha.

It came the same way it had for my father—after a fight and a death.

I could feel it like it was happening again, the weight of the title settling onto me, more solid than any bruise or wound.

I was filled with a combination of pride and terror.

The pack ran with me that night, and I remember the strength in our numbers, the collective sound of our howls claiming the territory as mine.

As ours. I led them under the stars, feeling the mountain’s energy course through us, feeling his presence in the night and in me.

I wanted to live up to it, to be everything he believed I could be.

The pack is everything. Protect it above all else.

I returned to the present, these memories like a storm I couldn’t weather.

Like rain on a roof, pounding and relentless, but unable to drown out my need to protect Serena.

Everything my father taught me said I should put the pack first. Said I should fight whatever was pulling me towards her.

Said I should ignore this feeling that was as persistent and consuming as the memories themselves.

I didn't know how to tell him he might have been wrong. I didn’t know how to tell myself.

But the marks on our bodies made promises I couldn’t ignore.

The more I thought about her, the less the past felt like the only thing that mattered.

The less the weight of my history seemed like a burden, and more like a chain I could finally break.

But could I break it? Could I go against my father’s last words, the ones that had defined me, guided me, kept me steady and in line?

I needed answers, but everything I knew said I wouldn’t find them at the bottom of a mystery.

I’d find them in the same place my father had: in a promise kept, in a pack protected.

In strength that wasn’t just muscle. I let out a breath, slow and unsure, letting it hang in the air as I looked past the fire and into the past that refused to let me go.

I left the fire to die in the hearth. Let it sputter out the way my father never did.

The room was cold now, and I was too restless to sit.

Too haunted by what my old man would have thought about Serena and me.

What he would have thought about her. About me.

A fresh ache throbbed through my shoulder, the mark burning under my skin.

I tried to ignore it. Tried to think past it as I moved to my desk.

Papers littered the top, but they weren’t just reports and patrol schedules.

They were lives. The pack’s. Mine. Ewan's.

The clutter was an eyesore, the kind of thing I usually couldn’t stand. But it had a way of quieting the noise in my head. It was proof that things were manageable, that a little order could cut through the chaos. Not tonight. Not with this uncertainty snapping at my heels, refusing to let go.

I pushed some of the papers aside, not sure what I was looking for, only that I needed to find it.

Details were my weapon against the storm inside me.

They kept me in control, kept the past from drowning me.

But what was scattered in front of me wasn’t just about patrols or border disputes.

It was about something a hell of a lot more personal.

It was about me. About Serena. About the one wolf I thought I could count on.

Conversations with Ewan played back in my mind.

Rehearsed, but not. Sincere, but not. They rang hollow now, like echoes from the far side of a canyon.

He’d been by my side longer than anyone.

His voice had always been a lifeline. But now it felt like a lure, drawing me in while he plotted behind my back.

I sat at the desk, shoving a pile of patrol schedules aside. My fingers itched for answers, but all I found were the same route rotations I’d approved last month.

I flipped through a border watch log. Southside activity—normal. A missing rabbit trap. I threw the page down. Too ordinary.

Next, the patrol training schedule. Ewan’s handwriting was neat. Too neat. I wanted it to scream guilt, but all it gave me was routine.

I found a requisition form marked urgent—signed by Bram. I frowned. No link to Ewan, but it raised a different question: Why the hell were they stocking silver-tipped arrows? I made a mental note to follow up, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.

I dug deeper, frustration mounting like heat behind my ribs. Ewan's shift reports finally surfaced—line after line of clean, consistent, boring detail. Nothing out of place. Nothing that would explain the bile rising in my throat.

And then I saw it. A folded scrap of paper, half-hidden beneath the bottom drawer. The handwriting on it was different—rushed, angry.

I opened it with trembling hands. One line.

“Midnight. East Ridge border. Alone.”

And a signature I knew too well. E.

My pulse spiked. That location was too close to Silver Ridge territory. Too familiar.

I read it again. Once. Twice. Each time, the truth sank deeper.

Ewan. The wolf I would’ve died for was the one leading me to ruin.

He didn’t just distrust Serena. He hated her. He made no secret of it, and maybe that should have been a clue. His reaction to her capture was all fury, all venom. It came from a place I thought was loyalty. It came from somewhere else.

The room spun around me, and I had to steady myself against the desk. The idea of Ewan's betrayal hit hard, as hard as anything I’d ever felt. Maybe harder. I wanted to tear something apart. I wanted to find Ewan and confront him. I wanted to put an end to this before it destroyed us all.

My father’s voice echoed in my mind, telling me to stay strong, stay focused.

But how could I, when the one I trusted most had turned?

When everything I thought I knew was unraveling faster than I could keep up?

I thought Morrigan’s riddle meant the wolf to ruin our pack and my mate were the same person, but maybe I was wrong again.

Anger burned in me, but so did disbelief. That Ewan would do this. That he’d risk our entire legacy. That he’d risk me. But wasn’t that what I was doing too? Risking it all for Serena? Did I even know if she was as clueless as she seemed? Was this part of her plan, to pit us against each other?

I remembered the night Ewan stood between me and a blade meant for my throat.

We were barely more than pups. He bled for me.

Now he’d bleed me dry. The room felt smaller than it had when I first shut the door.

Smaller and filled with doubt. It was choking me, squeezing the air from my lungs, from the entire mountain.

I didn’t know if I could trust anyone, especially myself.

But I had to know. I had to know the truth, even if it meant facing down the one wolf who had always been at my side.

I resolved to confront Ewan, but the hesitation was there.

I could feel it crawling under my skin, colder than the mountain air that seeped in through the window.

If he had betrayed me, betrayed the pack, then what?

What did that mean for everything I thought I knew? What did it mean for me and Serena?

I wanted to scream the question to the ceiling, to the rocks and the wind and the spirits of the wolves that came before me. But I couldn’t. All I could do was whisper it to the empty room, my voice breaking like the faith I used to have: “Am I strong enough to do what needs to be done?”

I stood there, feeling more exposed than I ever had. More alone. The idea of my best friend turning on me was a weight I couldn’t lift, a wound that bled out onto everything. Onto the pack, onto Serena, onto the memory of my father and what he would have wanted me to do.

Moonlight spilled through the crystal window, stretching its pale fingers across the room until it reached me.

It lit my expression, my clenched fists, the question that refused to let me go.

It wouldn’t leave, no matter how much I wanted to drive it out.

The pack is everything—but if the pack is rotting from the inside, who do I protect?

The legacy… or the truth? The mark on my shoulder flared up again, sharp and insistent.

Like it knew the decision was already made, and it didn’t care if I bled for it.

I wouldn’t run from it. I couldn’t. Not this time.

Not when the stakes were this high, and I had more to lose than ever before.

The mountain whispered through the walls, ancient and alive. And for the first time, I wondered if it was warning me—or her.