Rose's POV
The drunk guy at the bar grabbed my wrist without asking.
I didn't even flinch. Five years of bartending had taught me that most people were stupid when they were drunk. Stupid and desperate for connection they'd never actually find in the bottom of a glass.
But the second his skin touched mine, I knew exactly what he was.
Upper rank wolf. Maybe Gamma. Probably from a pack somewhere in the midwest based on the bloodline signature. He had money, so he was treated well. He had a family that cared about him, so he'd never had to beg for scraps. He had everything I didn't have.
And I could feel all of it running through his blood like a map.
This was my gift. The thing that had started five years ago in the forest when I was running and broken. Every time I touched someone's skin, I could sense their bloodline. I could feel their family history. I could feel the power running through them like electricity.
It had taken me almost a year to understand what was happening.
It had taken me three more years to figure out why.
I pulled my wrist away from the drunk guy and kept pouring his drink like nothing had happened. He laughed and went back to his friends. They didn't matter. None of them mattered because they were all regular. Ordinary. The kind of wolves who fit into their packs like puzzle pieces.
I didn't fit anywhere.
But maybe that was because I was supposed to fit somewhere else entirely.
My real name wasn't Rose Morgan anymore. It was Sarah Miller now. Sarah had a fake ID, a fake social security number, and a job at a dive bar in Denver that paid cash under the table. Sarah had no past. Sarah had no family. Sarah just existed in the space between things, invisible and untouchable.
Rose Morgan had been a servant in the Moonstone Pack.
Rose Morgan had believed in something that wasn't real.
Rose Morgan had run away five years ago and disappeared into the forest like a ghost.
But I'd spent the last five years becoming someone new.
The research had taken time. Libraries and old documents. Genealogy websites that required careful searching. A doctor named Sophia Hayes who worked in Denver and had connections to the werewolf world. She'd helped me get DNA tests. She'd helped me understand what my bloodline actually meant.
My parents hadn't died in a cave collapse.
The DNA evidence was clear. The police report had been falsified. The cave had collapsed, yes, but they hadn't been there by accident. They'd been murdered. Deliberately. And the evidence that had been buried for eighteen years was starting to emerge in cold case forums and old news archives if you knew where to look.
Why would someone murder two mid-rank wolves from a small pack?
That's the question that had kept me digging.
Dr. Sophia had found the answer hiding in genealogical records that went back to the founding of the werewolf packs in North America. My mother's bloodline traced back. And back. And back. All the way to the First Alpha.
The original founder of all packs.
The woman who had established the bloodlines and the hierarchy and the entire system that the Moonstone Pack was built on.
My grandmother.
Not just any woman. The most powerful bloodline that existed. The bloodline that made Alphas look like ordinary wolves. The bloodline that had been thought to be extinct for fifty years because everyone in that line had been systematically eliminated by pack councils who couldn't handle the idea of a woman with that much power.
They'd killed my parents to stop my bloodline from emerging.
And they'd thought they'd killed me too, or at least erased me enough that I would never figure out who I was.
Turns out they were wrong.
I finished my shift at the bar and went back to my apartment. It was small and clean and had no pictures on the walls. No personal items. Nothing that said Sarah Miller had a life or a past or anything that mattered.
But in my closet, hidden in a folder under the floorboards, I had the documents.
Medical records. DNA tests. Historical documents. Letters from dead council members admitting what they'd done. Proof that the Moonstone Pack had been operating illegally by hiding my bloodline. Proof that my parents had been victims of a cover up.
Proof that I had legal claim to leadership of any pack in North America.
I pulled the folder out and sat on the edge of my bed. The papers felt heavy. Like they weighed more than paper should weigh. Like they held the power to destroy everything and rebuild it in a completely different shape.
Five years ago, I was nothing.
Five years ago, I believed what Kade had told me. That some bonds weren't real. That some wolves didn't matter. That I was just here to serve.
But that wasn't true.
I was never supposed to be a servant.
I was supposed to be a leader.
The thought didn't scare me anymore. It used to. When I first figured it out a year ago, the idea that I could claim any pack I wanted had terrified me. What if I failed? What if I wasn't strong enough? What if nobody believed me?
But five years of living as nothing had a way of making you not care about those questions anymore.
I was going back to Blackwood Valley.
I was going back to the Moonstone Pack.
And I was going to make every single one of them understand that an Omega servant was more powerful than they could ever imagine.
My hands shook as I pulled out my laptop.
The website loaded in seconds. Flights to Denver. Then a two hour drive to Colorado Springs. Then the mountain roads to Blackwood Valley. I could be there in twelve hours if I left tonight.
But I wasn't going to leave tonight.
I was going to walk in during daylight, and I was going to walk in like I owned the place. Because legally, spiritually, and by every measure of werewolf law, I did own it.
I typed in my credit card information. The one card I'd been building credit with for five years under the name Sarah Miller. The one card that proved I was nobody's servant. The one card that could buy me a ticket back to the man who'd broken me and the pack that had erased me.
My finger hovered over the purchase button.
Five years of running and hiding .
Five years of becoming something that nobody expected.
And now I was about to walk back into a place that had told me I was nothing.
I thought about Kade. About the bond that he'd killed with his words. About the pull that had brought me to my knees in a forest at three in the morning. About the man who had chosen his pack over the possibility of something real.
By the time I saw him again, I wouldn't be the girl who'd run.
I would be the woman who'd returned.
I clicked purchase.
The confirmation email appeared in my inbox almost immediately.
Round trip flight. Denver to Colorado Springs. Leaving tomorrow at six in the morning. Returning in two weeks. Which meant I had two weeks to walk into the Moonstone Pack house and change everything forever.
Or to destroy myself trying.
My phone buzzed.
An unknown number. A text message that made my blood go cold.
"I know who you are. I know where you are. And I know you're coming back. We need to talk before you do. It's important."
I stared at the message for a long time.
There was an address attached to it.
A coffee shop downtown.
Tomorrow morning before my flight.
Whoever had sent it knew about my bloodline. Knew about my research. Knew I was planning to return to the pack. And they wanted to talk to me before I did.
The question was whether it was someone trying to help me.
Or someone trying to stop me.