Isla's POV
I'm running through the forest with no goal, just away, when my phone buzzes again.
The mystery number: Your daughter is asking for you. The party. Remember?
Lyra.
Oh gods, Lyra. My sweet girl waiting for a father who picked his mistress over her birthday. I stop running, gasping for air that won't come. My hands are shaking so hard I can barely hold the phone.
How do I go back there? How do I smile and cut cake and sing happy birthday when my entire world just exploded?
But Lyra didn't do anything wrong. She deserves her party. She deserves one parent who actually shows up.
I force my wolf down, force my legs to carry me back toward the pack house. The walk feels like it takes hours. Every step is agony because the mate bond—that link I've felt humming quietly in my chest for seven years—is screaming now.
Not with love. With death.
It knows what I'm planning. What I have to do to survive this.
The party is still going when I arrive. Children laughing, balloons floating, music playing. Like the world didn't just end. Like I didn't just find my husband's been building a second family while I played the fool.
"Mommy!" Lyra runs to me, and the word—the right word, from the right child—makes my eyes burn. "Where did you go? Where's Daddy?"
"Daddy had to work, baby." The lie comes easy this time. Maybe because I know it's the last one I'll ever tell. "But I'm here. Let's cut your cake."
We gather everyone around. I light seven candles. Lead the song. Watch my daughter's face glow with joy. And I remember everything because I don't know what happens next. Don't know if I'll be able to stay. Don't know if Dante will use his Alpha power to keep me here, stuck in this nightmare.
"Make a wish, Lyra."
She closes her eyes, serious and sweet. Then she blows out the candles, and when she opens her eyes, she whispers: "I wished for Daddy to love us."
The knife in my chest twists deeper.
"Oh, sweetheart." I pull her close, breathing in her puppy-fur smell. "Some wishes... some wishes aren't ours to make come true."
"But you're magic, Mommy. You make everything better."
If only that were true.
The party winds down. Parents collect their children. The pack omegas clean up. And I'm left standing in the garden with Lyra, watching the sun set, wondering how I'm meant to do this. " Luna Isla."
I turn to find Elder Moira standing at the garden gate. She's old, with silver hair and violet eyes that see too much. I've met her maybe twice in seven years—she's not part of Dante's pack, travels between areas, advises Alphas. " Elder Moira." I manage a polite nod. "This is unexpected."
"Is it?" Her smile is knowing. "You texted me back, child. Or did you think that word came from a stranger?"
My heart stutters. "That was you? The grandmother message?"
"Among other things." She moves closer, and something about her smell makes my wolf pay attention. " Isla Morven. Do you know what your last name means?"
"It's just a name. I was found as a baby, left at a pack border. They gave me a random—"
"Nothing about you is random." Moira's voice cuts through my confusion. "Morven is one of the three main bloodlines. The first shifters blessed by the Moon Goddess herself. And you, my dear granddaughter, are the last live heir."
The world tilts again. "That's impossible. I'm nobody. I'm just—"
"You're a wolf so powerful that an Alpha's order slides off you like rain. You're a Luna who held a dying pack together while its Alpha fell apart. You're a mother strong enough to walk away from her own child to save herself." Moira's violet eyes bore into mine. "Tell me, Isla. Does that sound like nobody to you?"
"I don't understand."
"I hid you as a baby. Let you grow up thinking you were nothing so you'd learn what mattered—character, not power. Then I waited to see if you'd choose yourself or keep breaking for a guy unworthy of you." Her smile turns sad. "I'm sorry it took this long. Sorry you had to hurt this much. But you needed to be ready for what comes next."
"What comes next?"
"You leave this pack. Claim your rights. Become who you were always meant to be." Moira extends her hand. "I have a car waiting. Resources, money, protection—everything you need to disappear before Dante knows what he's lost. "
"Kieran." My voice breaks. "I can't leave my son with—"
"Your kid thinks you're mean. Thinks another woman is his mother." Moira's words are cruel but true. "You can't save a child who's been taught to hate you. Not yet. First, you save yourself."
Tears finally fall. "He's my baby."
"And he'll still be your baby when you're strong enough to fight for him. Right now, if you stay, Dante will use pack bonds to trap you. Alpha orders might not work, but there are other ways to cage a wolf." She squeezes my hand. "Lyra needs a mother who's whole, not broken. Be whole, Isla. Show your kid what strength looks like."
I look at Lyra, who's fallen asleep on a garden bench, tired from her party. Her birthday wish ringing in my mind: I wished for Daddy to love us.
Some dreams can't come true.
But maybe some mothers can show their girls that they don't need anyone's love to be complete.
"Okay." The word feels like jumping off a cliff. "Okay. But Lyra comes with me."
"Of course." Moira laughs. "I wouldn't dream of separating you two."
I scoop my sleeping daughter into my arms. She cuddles close, trusting completely. At least one of my children still knows I'm safe.
"What about Dante?" I ask as we walk toward the waiting car.
"What about him?"
"Won't he come after us?"
Moira's laugh is sharp. "Oh, he'll try. But by the time he knows you're gone, you'll be someone he can't touch. Someone even an Alpha has to respect."
We're almost to the car when I hear it—a howl splitting the night. Dante's wolf, filled with rage and fear and something that might be grief.
He knows I'm going.
"Drive fast," I tell Moira's driver.
Because I might be strong enough to walk away, but I'm not strong enough to face Dante Blackthorn when he's finally decided I matter.
Not yet.
The car pulls away from the pack house, from seven years of lost love, from the husband who never wanted me and the son who doesn't know me.
In my arms, Lyra stirs. "Mommy? Where are we going?"
"Somewhere better, baby." I kiss her silver hair. "Somewhere we can be ourselves."
Behind us, another howl cuts through the darkness. Closer this time.
He's coming.