Chapter 3
The Pack Archives looked the way I remembered them — squat, brutalist, like a bunker someone had lost the keys to. I parked under a sodium lamp that turned everything the color of old bruises and walked in carrying the Council's summons.
The archivist on duty was a middle-aged woman with a permanent frown. She glanced at the seal. Then at me. Her eyes went from bored to wary in one blink.
She didn't speak. She walked into the climate-controlled stacks and came back with a thick paper folder. The label on the tab, written in faded ink:
VOSS, LINEAGE — ORIGINAL.
She slid it across the counter with one finger.
I took it to the public reading room. Sat at the long table under the harsh fluorescents. Untied the string closure with steady fingers.
First page: my mother's lineage. Elara Voss. Omega. Clean. Quiet. Service line. Exactly what I'd always known.
I turned the page.
My father.
The name box was a mess. Someone had handwritten Arlen Voss over the original print in cheap ink that had cracked and flaked over two decades.
I leaned closer. Used my fingernail. Scraped at a curl of dried ink near the corner.
A piece flaked away.
Underneath, in clean printer's type:
LUNA ROYAL BLOODLINE.
My breath stopped.
I scraped at the Status box. The handwritten word said Deceased. Underneath, the original print read: Dormant Carrier.
I scraped at the Activation Notes line. Frantic handwriting tried to obscure it. I dug a sliver loose.
Activation Trigger: Rejection by Fated Mate.
The chair didn't move. The lights didn't flicker. The world simply rearranged.
My father wasn't a wandering Beta who'd died in a border skirmish. He was a dormant carrier of royal blood — and I had inherited his sleeping gene.
The activation trigger was a fated mate's rejection.
The cold that had hit my chest the night Calder rejected me. The burn on the back of my neck. The performance metrics brushing the Luna-Class line.
It hadn't been trauma.
It had been a key turning in a lock.
Calder had thought he was throwing away an Omega.
He had detonated a queen.
I closed the file. Tied the string exactly as I'd found it. Carried it back to the counter. The archivist took it without a word, her eyes pitying, and locked it back in its drawer.
I drove out to the bluffs above the territory and let the engine idle. The mark on the back of my neck was no longer burning. It was warm. Pulsing. Alive. Like a contained star turning slowly under my skin.
My phone lit up.
Dex.
A forwarded screenshot. Calder's name. Time-stamped tonight, 9:47 p.m.
My wolf is restless tonight. Pacing. It feels like — it senses her.
I read it twice.
His wolf was sensing me. Six years late, the bond he had clamped down on was waking up because the Luna blood I didn't know I had was waking up faster.
I smiled. Slow. Not happy. Not even cruel.
Powerful.
He felt guilty. His wolf was pacing. And my blood was singing a song he'd tried to silence with a signature.
Let him pace.
I had a hearing to attend.
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