The night was dark and still, the only sounds the steady chirping of crickets and the distant howl of lycans on patrol. The crescent moon hung high in the sky, casting a thin silver light across the path that did very little to push back the shadows on either side of it.

Milo walked with his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved into his pockets, his footsteps heavy on the dirt road. He had just come from the special care centre where his son was being kept, and the visit had left him in a worse state than before he went.

They had refused to release the boy to him. Told him they needed the King’s approval first. The King’s approval to take his own son home.

His beast churned inside him, dark and restless, pushing at the edges of his control with the persistent pressure of something that had been caged too long.

Milo’s hands clenched and unclenched inside his pocket as he walked. He would not give it what it wanted. Not tonight.

He was so deep inside his own head that he missed the shift in the air around him until it was far too late. He never noticed the shadows closing in around him, nor caught the unfamiliar scent on the breeze.

He spun around, nostrils flaring. A sharp prick stung the side of his neck. His hand flew up and closed around a small dart. Before he could rip it out, the world tilted.

His legs gave out beneath him, and he hit the ground hard, face up. Through the thickening fog he watched two figures step out of the darkness and stand over him, their faces hidden under hoods.

"Now," one of them said, looking down at him without any particular urgency, "we have use for you."

The darkness closed in from the edges. Milo fought it for a second, long enough to notice the one thing that cut through even the sedative. These men did not smell like Dravengard. Their scent and aura were completely different.

***

Ruby sat in the hospital bed with one wrist cuffed to the rail, staring at nothing.

Her eyes were swollen from crying, the skin around them raw and tender. She had been weeping on and off since she regained consciousness, not the quiet, controlled kind of crying she was accustomed to allowing herself in private, but the ugly, gasping kind that left her hollowed out and exhausted and no better for it.

She kept replaying the corridor. The roar that had shaken the building. Derek’s hand around her throat. Her feet leaving the ground.

The way Leo had looked at her, through her, as though she were not someone he had known his entire life but simply a threat to be eliminated. It hurt more than what she had done.

The nurses and doctors who came in and out moved around her without meeting her eyes. Nobody had told her anything about Kira. Nobody had told her anything about Derek and she was too ashamed to ask.

She had been the most respected woman in this pack for years. She had worked for that, cultivated it, guarded it carefully. Now she lay here cuffed to a hospital bed wondering what was left of it.

The door opened without a knock.

Ruby’s eyes found Nana in the doorway and her body made the decision before her mind could. She lowered herself quickly back against the pillow and turned toward the wall, pulling her face into the slack, even expression of sleep.

"Get up," Nana said.

Not loudly or harshly, exactly. But with a quality of authority that bypassed every instinct Ruby had and went straight to the part of her that had been obeying this woman since childhood.

She sat up slowly and turned to face her.

Nana stood in the middle of the room, looking at her. Just looking.

And that was the thing that made Ruby’s chest tighten, because she had seen Nana look at a great many people over the years with warmth, with amusement, with the particular fond exasperation she reserved for Kai.

She had never seen Nana look at anyone the way she was looking at her now. Not with hatred. Something quieter than that, and considerably more final.

Disappointment.

"I’m sorry, Nana," Ruby said. Her voice came out small and younger than she intended.

"No," Nana said. "You’re not."

Ruby flinched.

Nana rarely spoke harshly to anyone. She was the kind of woman who found the gentlest possible path through every difficult conversation, who believed in patience the way other people believed in force.

Hearing that flatness in her voice was more frightening than being shouted at would have been.

"How could you do something so vile, Ruby?"

"I don’t know what came over me," Ruby said, her eyes filling again.

"What you did was deliberate," Nana said, moving further into the room. "Every part of it. The aphrodisiac, the chase, the shove."

She stopped beside the bed and looked down at her. "I have always known you had feelings for Drek. I have known for a very long time."

Ruby looked up at her surprised.

"Do you think I would not have encouraged it, if there had been anything there to encourage?" Nana asked.

"Do you think I would have sat back and watched, if he had ever looked at you in the way that mattered? I know my grandson. If you had been meant for him, Ruby, I would have moved mountains to make it happen."

She paused. "But he never looked at you that way. And you are a smart enough woman to have seen that."

Ruby opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

"You would both have been miserable," Nana said. "I may be old, but I understand these things. I thought you were smart enough to understand it too."

"Understand," Ruby said. "Everyone always expects me to understand." The rawness in her voice was real. "To accept. To be gracious about it. But no one has ever once stopped to ask how I actually feel."

Nana was quiet for a moment. "Then tell me," she said. "How do you feel?"

The question undid something. Ruby’s hands twisted in her lap.

"Discarded," she said. The word came out rough and unpolished, nothing like the composed version of herself she had spent years presenting to this palace.

"My parents died in that werewolf ambush defending the King and Queen. My brother gave his life so that Derek could live. Jasper’s dying wish was that Derek protect me. Give me a good life." Her voice broke on the last word and she pressed her lips together.

"And did he fail you?" Nana asked, gently but directly. "Ruby, you held authority in Dravengard that most women in this world will never see. I stepped back from pack politics so that you could step forward. Derek gave you a position that carried the weight of a queen’s influence."

"He fulfilled every promise he made to your brother. I brought you into my heart alongside my own grandchildren." Her voice was steady, but her eyes were bright. "He did all of that while carrying grief that never fully left him. You were there. You saw how that night broke him. He never fully recovered, and yet he bore your burden and everyone else’s without complaint."

She paused. "And now, just this once, he was beginning to find something that looked like happiness. And you could not let him have it."

Ruby squeezed her eyes shut. Tears tracked down both cheeks.

"He was your best friend," Nana continued. "You understood him better than almost anyone. I genuinely believed that of all the people in his life, you would be the one to be glad for him."

She exhaled. "If you had truly loved him, Ruby, you would have wanted his happiness even when it did not include you."

The room was very quiet.

"You are a beautiful woman," Nana softly. "You have had Alphas and Betas and high-ranking Lycans from across the territories show interest in you over the years. You chose, every time, to stay here and watch him instead."

She shook her head. "What you did was not the act of a woman in love. It was the act of someone who decided that what she wanted was worth more than another person’s life. And I cannot forgive it."

"Nana, please—"

Nana turned toward the door.

"Effective immediately, I am stripping you of every official title you hold in Dravengard." Her voice was final, the voice of a woman who had made a decision and would not be revisiting it.

"You can’t." Ruby’s voice cracked completely. "You can’t do this to me because of the daughter of a traitor—"

"When you are well enough," Nana said, her hand on the door, "you will appear before the pack tribunal. Your future in this pack will be decided there." She paused without turning back. "That is my position."

She walked out and closed the door quietly behind her.