RENATA'S POV

The door swung open under my palm before I could stop it.

The scent hit me first—rose oil layered over wet stone and something muskier, something intimate that had no business being in the room I'd spent three weeks sanding and staining by hand. My wolf went silent inside me. Not a growl. Not a warning. Just... gone, the way a flame dies when you smother it.

Caspian's head snapped up from the pillow. Nadia made a small sound beside him, clutching the blanket to her chest like she was the one who'd been wronged. The bedframe creaked—the bedframe I'd built from oak I'd hauled across the Cutwater myself because Caspian said he wanted something that would last.

I'd wrapped his anniversary gift in brown paper. A compass, brass, with his initials etched into the lid. It was sitting on the hall table where I'd left it.

"Renata." Caspian's voice came out rough, but not ashamed. Never ashamed. "This isn't—"

"Isn't what?" I heard myself ask. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. Someone calm. Someone whose fingers weren't pressing so hard into her palms that her nails bit crescents into her skin. "Isn't my bedroom? Because I built this one, Caspian. I remember the grain of every board."

Nadia pulled the sheet higher. Her cheeks were flushed, but her eyes—her eyes were bright. Triumphant. The look of a woman who'd finally won something.

"Caspian." She reached for his hand. "Tell her."

Tell her what? That I'd outlived my usefulness? That he'd never marked me because keeping me unmarked kept me easy to discard?

That part came out of his mouth before Nadia could finish. "You were never fit to be Luna, Renata." He sat up, the sheet pooling at his waist, and I saw the marks on his chest—scratches, fresh ones, from nails painted the same rose color as Nadia's. "You were never willing to be owned. A Luna doesn't keep her own name. A Luna doesn't keep her own road and call it hers while living in her Alpha's house."

I scoffed. One sound, dry as tinder, before my eyes went hot and then dry again.

"Alpha's house," I repeated. "Alpha's bed. Alpha's grain." I walked past them, past the bed, to the desk in the corner. My hands moved before my brain caught up, pulling open the bottom drawer—the one with the false back I'd installed the first year, when I still believed Caspian kept secrets from me out of carelessness rather than cruelty.

The drawer wasn't empty. Folded legal paper, heavy stock, crisp edges. Separation agreement. Already drafted. Already signed by him.

He'd been planning this. Or hoping for it. Either way, the paper didn't tremble in my fingers as I pulled it out. Three years of contract marriage reduced to a signature block.

"Renata." Caspian's voice sharpened. "Put that down."

"Or what?" I turned to face him, holding the paper. "You'll have me removed? You already tried that with your cock."

Nadia's breath caught. Good. Let her hear it—the ugly truth that she'd climbed into a bed built on a contract, not a bond.

I moved to the desk again, found the fountain pen in the top drawer. The one Caspian used for pack business. I uncapped it, tested the nib against my thumb, and watched the ink bloom.

"Don't." Caspian was on his feet now, pulling on trousers, his wolf leaking through his eyes—amber, possessive, furious. "That document isn't final until we discuss terms."

"Terms." I laughed, and the sound came out wrong, too bright. "You discussed terms when you put your hands on my sister. Now I'm discussing mine."

I signed.

Not the name he knew. Not Renata Voss—a name I'd never legally taken, because he'd never marked me, because he'd never once asked me to be his in the way that mattered. I signed the name my mother gave me before she remarried, before she chose Nadia's father over me.

Renata Marlowe.

The letters flowed from the pen like water. Like the Cutwater itself, the road I'd built from nothing, the road that fed Westhollow through every winter he'd claimed credit for surviving.

Caspian's jaw tightened. I watched him process it—the signature, the name, the implication. His wolf ears flattened against his skull, a tell he couldn't hide even when his voice stayed level.

"You can't—"

"I can." I pulled out my phone, thumbs moving fast, pulling up the Cutwater Registry. "The route was never a pack asset. No mate-mark transferred my personhood to you. That's the law you signed when you took me into Westhollow without claiming me. You wanted me useful, Caspian. You forgot useful people keep their own names."

Nadia slid off the bed, wrapping herself in a robe. She came to stand beside him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm. Her hand found his. I watched him not pull away, and something in my chest calcified.

"She's right," Nadia said softly, her voice full of false sympathy. "The route was always hers. She's outlived her usefulness here, Caspian. Let her go."

Outlived her usefulness. The words landed like a slap, but I didn't flinch. I finished typing the claim, hit submit, and watched the confirmation screen blink up at me. Filed. Legal. The Cutwater route was mine alone now—every caravan contract, every grain ledger, every toll agreement that would keep Westhollow alive through the snow months.

Caspian's phone buzzed on the nightstand. He looked at it, then at me, and I saw the exact moment he understood. The winter grain leverage wasn't his anymore. The pack would starve without my signature on the supply contracts, and I'd just made sure that signature belonged only to me.

"Keep the bed," I said, my voice steady as the hand holding the fountain pen. "I kept the road."

I set the pen down beside the separation paper and walked out. Past the hall table where the compass sat in its brown paper. Past the photographs on the wall—our wedding, three years ago, when I'd believed his promises about Luna status and mate-marks and being chosen.

The front door swung open under my hand. Night air hit my face, cold and clean, carrying the smell of pine and river water and open road.

Behind me, Caspian's voice cracked. "Renata."

I didn't turn around.

The truck started on the first try. I'd kept it tuned myself, like everything else I owned. The lodge lights shrank in my mirror as I pulled onto the Cutwater road, and I let myself shake then—one violent tremor that rattled my teeth, then one silent tear tracking down my cheek before I wiped it away with the back of my hand.

I hit the steering wheel once. The horn blared into the empty night.

Then I pointed the truck east.

East, toward Eastmark. Toward the territory of the one Alpha I'd refused four years ago, at the Cutwater Fair, in front of both packs, because I'd believed my refusal would keep the peace. I'd married Caspian instead, a contract to stop a war, and I'd spent three years being inventory in a house I built with my own hands.

The lodge lights vanished behind me. The Cutwater line came up fast, and when my tires crossed it, something in my chest lifted. My wolf raised its head for the first time since I'd pushed open that bedroom door—not howling, not grieving, just watching. Waiting.

The Eastmark border lamps came into view. A guard stepped out, rifle raised, calling something I couldn't hear over the engine.

And then the dark moved.

A tall male wolf walked out of the tree line, alone, unhurried. He stopped between the lamps, amber eyes catching the light, and I knew the shape of him before he shifted—four years older, broader through the shoulders, but the same set to his jaw, the same way he held himself like he'd been waiting for something he'd almost given up on.

Dominic Rourke.

The guard lowered his rifle. Dominic didn't move as my truck rolled to a stop, engine idling, headlights painting his bare chest and the scar that ran from his collarbone to his ribs—a scar I'd never seen before, because four years ago he hadn't had it.

I killed the engine. The silence rushed in.

Through the windshield, Dominic walked toward me, and I watched his wolf surface in his eyes—not a threat. Something else. Something that looked like recognition.

I opened the door and stepped out into the cold.