ARIA'S POV

The venom would reach my mother's heart in four hours.

Dr. Mercer said it gently, as if there were a gentle way to tell someone her mother was dying. Behind the glass, nurses cut away the leg of Mom's favorite jeans. The denim was soaked dark around two neat punctures above her ankle. She had worn those jeans to my house that morning, carrying a pot of chicken soup because I had forgotten to answer her text about dinner.

Now her last message sat unopened at the top of my screen.

Mom: Soup's on your porch. Don't work too late again.

I forced the tears back. I had no time to waste now.

I turned to Dr. Mercer. "What do you need?"

"A matched antidote. Moonsnake venom binds to the lunar signature of the familiar that produced it." Dr. Mercer glanced toward the treatment room. "The general antivenom is slowing the spread, but it can't neutralize it."

"The snake was Nyx."

His expression tightened. "Sera Lennox's familiar?"

I nodded.

"Then Miss Lennox can authorize the release through the familiar registry."

She could.

And my husband was with her.

Cole answered on the fourth ring. Low music and laughter drifted through the phone, followed by the unmistakable pop of a champagne cork.

"Aria, this isn't a good time."

"Mom was bitten by Nyx."

The music faded when he shut a door.

"What?"

"She's at Northern General. The doctors need Sera to authorize the matched antidote."

"Is Mara conscious?"

"No. They've given her four hours."

Silence followed. Not shock or fear, but the cold pause Cole used before making a decision as Alpha of Ashford Pack.

Water stopped running in the background.

"Cole?" Sera called. "Did you take my shirt?"

My fingers tightened around the phone.

Cole had left yesterday for the Northern Territorial Development Retreat, where Alphas from smaller packs competed for land grants, infrastructure contracts, and the attention of investors powerful enough to pull them into the Sovereignty's inner circle. Ashford territory needed all three. According to him, the schedule was so crowded he might not have time to call home.

Apparently, he had found time to remove Sera's shirt.

"Put her on," I said.

"Aria—"

"Give Sera the phone."

"She's shaken. Nyx came back with blood on her, and Sera's been trying to understand what happened."

"My mother is dying while you comfort the snake's owner."

His voice hardened. "Watch your tone."

Through the glass, a nurse lifted Mom's arm. Her hand fell limply back to the mattress.

"Sera only has to press one button."

"I know how the registry works."

"Then help her do it."

Sera murmured something I couldn't hear. Cole answered in the warm, patient voice he used to use with me, before our marriage became pack reports left beside cold dinners and apologies I was always expected to make first.

Then Sera came closer. "Is Mara all right?"

"No."

"Oh God." Her breath caught delicately. "Nyx has never hurt anyone before."

"We can discuss that after you release the antidote."

"I'm not refusing. I just need a minute."

"She may not have one."

"Don't speak to her like that," Cole snapped.

Something inside me went very still.

"Sera's family is considering a substantial investment in Ashford territory," he murmured to the phone. "If you report this as a familiar attack before we know what happened, you could destroy months of negotiations."

"My mother is dying, and you're worried about an investment?"

"I'm asking my Luna to think beyond her own panic."

"I asked for medicine."

"You accused Sera before she had a chance to explain. Promise you won't file a complaint or involve the Sovereignty, and she'll be in a better state to cooperate."

"You want me to bargain for my mother's life."

"I want you to stop escalating the situation."

Sera's voice trembled behind him. "Cole, don't let her threaten me."

"She won't," he said immediately.

For one humiliating second, I remembered the man who had once promised to put me before every wolf in his territory. Then I looked at my mother's gray face and understood how little that promise had ever weighed.

"You've already chosen," I said.

"Aria, don't be dramatic."

I ended the call.

Dr. Mercer helped me submit an emergency release through my Luna credentials. I pressed my thumb to the screen, and the Ashford crest appeared before flashing red.

AUTHORITY NOT RECOGNIZED.

I tried again.

The same message returned.

"That can't be right." I stared at the screen. "I'm Cole Ashford's Luna."

"There may have been a change to your permissions." Dr. Mercer's careful tone made the back of my neck prickle. "Your Alpha could override it."

My Alpha was in a private lodge protecting his mistress from the consequences of her own familiar.

"There has to be another reserve."

"Not in the hospital network."

"But somewhere?"

His gaze shifted toward the nurses behind the glass. "There is one place that stores restricted lunar medicines outside ordinary pack control."

"Where?"

"The Moonless Court."

I had heard the name in warnings whispered after midnight. It belonged to the buried district beneath the northern city, where the old territorial chambers had survived under layers of steel and glass. Officially, the Court no longer existed. Unofficially, it held the kind of power official institutions preferred not to acknowledge.

"How do I get in?"

"You don't." Dr. Mercer paused. "But if you reach its master, he may let you leave with the antidote."

"What does he charge?"

"Never only money."

Twenty-seven minutes later, I descended beneath the Old Quarter.

The driver refused to take me past the sealed archway. Beyond it, lunar lamps burned blue along walls carved before the Sovereignty had a name. The deeper I went, the heavier the air became, pressing against my lungs with the force of an Alpha command no one had spoken.

Two guards blocked the final door.

"My mother was dying. I'm here to ask for help."

One of them reached for me. "No one enters during containment."

A roar shook dust from the stone ceiling.

The guards looked toward the door, and I slipped between them before either could recover.

The chamber beyond was vast and dim. Three wolves stood against the walls, maintaining the greatest possible distance from the man at its center without actually abandoning him.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. Silver restraints hung broken from one wrist. Power rolled off him in violent waves, thick enough to make my knees weaken, yet it wasn't fear alone that stole my breath.

He was beautiful in the way winter cliffs were beautiful—severe, merciless, and capable of killing anyone foolish enough to move closer.

His head turned.

Gold flooded his eyes.

He crossed the room before I could retreat. One hand closed around my wrist while the other braced beside my head, trapping me against the door without crushing me into it.

"Who let you in?"

His voice scraped over my skin. Heat radiated from his body, at odds with the cold stone behind me, and beneath the scent of cedar and metal, I caught something darker—moonlight, blood, and grief.

My gift stirred.

I had spent years reading fractures in bone, easing injuries and drawing pain from Ashford wolves, but I had never felt anything like the break inside this man. It pulled at me with terrible intimacy, as though whatever had splintered behind his breastbone recognized me.

I should have been trying to escape.

Instead, I raised my free hand and pressed it to his chest.

The chamber disappeared.

Moonlight flashed across blood. A woman's hand slipped from his grasp, and grief—ancient, furious, preserved inside bone—tore through me. Pain drove the air from my lungs, but beneath my palm, his heart slowed.

The pressure in the room collapsed.

His body stopped an inch from mine. His gaze dropped to our joined hands, and the madness in his face gave way to something no less dangerous.

Interest.

"What did you do to me?" he asked.

Warm blood trickled over my upper lip.

"My mother was bitten by a Moonsnake. I need the matched antidote."

"Which familiar?"

"Nyx. Sera Lennox's keeping."

Desperate to save my mother, I barely noticed the cold glint that flashed through his eyes.

"Sera refused to release the antidote?"

"If she were willing to help, I wouldn't be here." Bitterness roughened my voice. "Can the Moonless Court help me or not?"

Displeasure flickered across his face. I knew better than to provoke a dangerous man in the heart of his own territory, but every second I wasted was another second of my mother's life slipping away. Caution was a luxury I no longer had.

"The Moonless Court does not grant favors freely," he said. "What are you prepared to offer in return?"

"Anything."

He smiled, slow and dangerous. "Fearless and naïve. What a troubling combination."

I shoved against his chest. "If you have no intention of helping me, then let me go."

He released my wrist, and I hated the sudden absence of his touch almost as much as I hated myself for noticing it.

His eyes settled on me again. "Where is your mother?"

"Northern General. Dr. Mercer is treating her."

The gold in his eyes darkened for a moment, his focus turning distant as he issued an order through the mind-link. Then his attention returned to me, accompanied by a wicked curve of his mouth that I found far too enticing.

"Breathe, little bone-reader," he said. "The antidote is already on its way."

I was startled that he had recognized my gift so easily.

Bone-readers had grown increasingly rare since the war fourteen years ago. Most could do little more than sense fractures or draw away a measure of pain, but even that was enough to make them valuable—and vulnerable to anyone who preferred to possess a useful gift rather than pay for it.

At Cole and my mother-in-law's constant insistence, I had spent years concealing what I could do.

Before I could ask how he had seen through me, my phone rang.

Dr. Mercer's name lit the screen.

"Aria, you did it!" Excitement sharpened his voice. "The authorization came through. We'll administer the antidote as soon as it arrives—ten minutes at most. Your mother is going to wake up."

Relief hit harder than fear ever had.

My knees buckled, but the man caught me before I struck the floor, one strong arm circling my waist. I clutched the front of his shirt to hold myself upright as all the terror I had been forcing down finally tore free.

"She'll live?" I whispered.

"Yes."

The certainty in his voice made me believe him.

When I tried to straighten, I became intensely aware of every place our bodies touched—his arm firm around my waist, his fingers resting over my racing pulse, my palm still pressed above his heart. I should have pulled away.

Neither of us moved.

"What do I owe you?"

"You promised the Court anything."

"People say desperate things when their mothers are dying."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Then you should be more careful about who hears them."

A shiver swept through me that had nothing to do with the cold.

"When do you intend to collect?"

His thumb pressed lightly against my pulse.

"Saturday."