Meg's POV
The call doesn't arrive with ceremony.
It just… settles.
I feel it while standing in line at a bakery. The morning smells like yeast and sugar, warm enough to almost disguise the rain outside. Henry is tugging my sleeve, whispering urgently that the cinnamon rolls are almost gone, and for one blissful second I am only a mother about to buy her son a pastry.
Then the air changes.
No sound, no shimmer, just pressure—like the world leaning in a little too close.
My wolf stiffens under my skin. So does my heart.
Aldden.
The name surfaces before I can stop it, bitter as old metal. I force a smile for the cashier, take the paper bag, thank her like I haven't just felt a ghost breathe down my neck.
Outside, the sky has gone that flat, waiting gray that means something's coming. Henry stops beside me, small hand still holding the strap of his backpack.
"Mama," he says quietly. "Something's pulling."
I crouch until we're eye to eye. "Low breath. Like we practiced."
He nods, obedient and too composed for six. In through the nose, out through the mouth. I match him. By the time we finish the count, the faint silver in his eyes fades. Mine doesn't.
We walk home the long way. I buy time by watching puddles, counting crosswalk lights, pretending the bakery smell is still enough to keep me anchored. It isn't.
By the time we reach the apartment, my phone is vibrating so hard it's almost alive. Unknown number. Of course. I let it buzz itself out. Then another. Then another.
ALDDEN GROUP STOCK DROPS AGAIN TODAY.
BOARD MEMBERS RESIGN IN PROTEST.
THE NEW ALPHA'S CONTROL IS FRACTURING.
Each message a heartbeat of a world I left behind. I read them until the screen blurs and my fingers go numb.
I'd walked away clean. Legal transfer. Every signature witnessed. Every tie cut. I had promised myself Aldden would never reach this life. I did it for Henry.
But blood never really obeys paperwork.
The next message isn't from any living number. It crawls through an encrypted channel I killed six years ago. The screen flickers once, and then the words burn through like carved ice:
The Aldden Group stands destabilized. Pack alliances fracture. Bloodright invoked. The true heiress is called to answer.
The phone slides out of my hand and hits the floor with a dull crack.
Henry looks up from the couch, sensing it immediately. "Mama?"
I kneel so fast my knees sting. "Hey. Look at me."
He studies my face, not the phone. Always me first. Always reading.
"They found us," I say.
His mouth tightens. "The loud man?"
Martins. Even his name hits differently now—less anger, more gravity.
"Yes," I whisper. "And others."
We stay awake through the night. I keep the lights low. The storm outside presses against the windows but never quite breaks.
By morning, the news matches the magic. Markets crashing. Wolves whispering. Treaties fraying like old thread.
Aldden Group was never just a company. It was a spine. My father built it to hold balance where power wanted to splinter. He believed money and law could tame instinct. He was wrong, but he built something strong enough to scare people anyway.
Now my stepbrother is dismantling it, piece by piece.
The bond in my chest flares so suddenly I have to grab the counter.
Martins.
His voice threads through the connection, rougher than memory. They invoked bloodright. I tried to stop it.
"You didn't," I breathe. "You let it happen."
Silence. Then, quieter, I didn't know it was you until the seal broke.
I almost laugh. "You always knew."
The bond hums hotter, alive with images I don't want—council halls dripping with tension, my stepbrother smiling too wide, wolves shifting in frustration. And then
Martins, standing alone beneath the Aldden Tower, his power drawn so tight it hums.
They won't stop, he says. The heir is awake.
My eyes move to Henry, who's pretending to color at the table. His fingers press flat against the page, the way he does when he's trying not to let his magic hum too loudly.
"They want him," I whisper.
Eventually. Martins' voice softens, but it doesn't comfort. First, they want you.
I swallow hard. "What if I ignore it?"
Then they start a war, he says instantly. They'll use your silence as proof you abandoned your claim. Packs will choose sides. Humans will feel the tremor before they ever hear our names.
"And if I go?"
A pause. Then you walk back into the world that once tried to own you.
Henry slips from his chair, padding over to me. His hand finds mine. "We can keep running," he whispers.
I look down at him. At the boy who measures danger before joy, who knows silence better than laughter. Running kept him alive. Staying might teach him something truer.
"I won't let them cage you," I tell him.
The bond warms in reply—not approval, exactly, but acknowledgment.
Come to Aldden, Martins says. Not to surrender. To challenge.
I mages follow again: him at the gates, wolves lowering their heads out of instinct, not obedience. A reckoning waiting in the air like a storm that's already decided where to strike.
"I'll come," I say quietly. "But on my terms."
I wouldn't expect anything less.
The summons on my phone glows brighter, the letters trembling as if alive. I don't touch it.
By nightfall, another message arrives. This one sealed with elder authority, the kind that can make or unmake a bloodline.
The council convenes at the full moon. The heiress must present herself or be declared forfeit.
Forfeit doesn't mean erased. It means hunted.
I turn the phone facedown and begin to pack. Clothes first. Documents. The old blade wrapped in a scarf at the bottom of the drawer.
"They want the heiress back," I say under my breath.
Henry watches, silent and steady. "Then they'll see what comes with her."
His voice is calm, too calm. I stop folding and really look at him—the narrow set of his shoulders, the silver that still flickers faintly in his gaze when he's angry. My child. My father's heir. The moon's warning.
"They don't get to have you," I say again, firmer this time.
He nods like he's the one reassuring me.
The apartment hums faintly, the air dense with power we've both learned to ignore. I shut the bag and sling it over my shoulder. Outside, a siren wails somewhere too close to the horizon.
The world has already started shifting toward Aldden, even here, in this little human block that smells of rain and concrete.
I reach for Henry's hand. He takes it without hesitation.
"Time to go home?" he asks.
The word home catches in my throat. I manage, "Time to finish what we left behind."
We step into the hallway. The lights flicker once, like the building itself feels the call. Somewhere, far away, the bond hums again—Martins, waiting, furious and protective in equal measure.
He doesn't have to say it this time. I can feel the warning clear as heartbeat.
This isn't a reunion.
It's the beginning of the fight we've both been pretending to avoid.
As the elevator doors close, Henry squeezes my fingers. His pulse is steady, mine is not.
"They'll see us coming," he murmurs.
"Good," I say, and this time I almost smile. "Let them."
Because Aldden isn't calling me to kneel.
It's calling me to remind them whose blood built the empire they're trying to claim.
And this time, I won't be walking in alone.