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She was wearing one of them when she opened the door.

The patrol wolf on her porch was young. Mid-twenties, dark-haired, one of Viktor’s eastern rotation. He looked at her with the expression of someone who’d drawn a short straw.

“Miss Mercer.”

“Call me Sloane. You know me.”

“Right.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Orders from the Alpha. You’re to relocate to the inner residences. There’s a unit in the west block, second floor, number fourteen. You can move in today.”

She leaned against the door frame. “Who gave the order?”

“Kahn. Through Viktor.”

“And if I decline?”

The patrol wolf blinked. “It wasn’t a request.”

She looked past him, toward the tree line. The birches stood pale against the morning sky. She’d been staring at those trees for two years. She knew every trunk, every gap, every shadow that shifted when the wind moved through the canopy. She also knew, now, that her father had walked through those gaps at least twice without triggering a single ward.

“When?”

“Today, ma’am. Before dark.”

She almost corrected the ma’am. Decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

“Fine.”

He left. She closed the door, pressed her back against it, and let out a long, shuddering breath as she looked at her cottage. She looked at the cot. The counter. The window with its thin curtains. The drawer beside the bed where Garrett’s notes were stacked beneath a folded shirt, five of them now, each one written in a hand she hadn’t seen since childhood but would have recognized blindfolded.

She packed in eleven minutes. Everything she owned fit into a canvas duffel. When she zipped it shut, the cottage looked no different than it had the day she moved in.

She walked the eastern path toward the inner compound with the bag over her shoulder. Two pack members passed her going the other direction. The first, a woman from the supply team, glanced at her, glanced away, and kept walking. The second, a younger male she vaguely recognized from the training yard, slowed long enough to give her a look she couldn’t read before he moved on.

This was the fallout she’d been bracing for. Not rage. Not confrontation. She could have handled rage. She’d grown up inside rage, knew its rhythms, knew when to duck. This was worse. This was a pack full of people who’d heard her name called beside Chris Williams’s, had watched Chris leave the hall to find her, had registered the broken door, the overnight absence. They’d filed it all away under the heading of not my business, but I have opinions.

She found unit fourteen in the west block. Second floor, end of the corridor, a door with a brass number plate. She turned the handle.

The room was three times the size of her cottage. A real bed with a wooden frame. A desk. A window that faced the inner courtyard instead of the tree line. A bathroom with a lock.

She set the bag on the bed. Sat beside it. Looked at the courtyard through the glass, where pack members crossed between buildings, voices carrying upward in fragments she couldn’t piece together.

Closer. They’d moved her closer.

She couldn’t decide if this was protection or surveillance.

The bond pulsed once, low, at the left edge of her awareness. Chris was nearby. She could feel the shape of him without trying, a warmth that lived beneath her sternum, faint enough to ignore if she worked at it. She worked at it.

She unpacked the duffel. Hung two shirts in the narrow wardrobe. Put the blade under the mattress. Folded the rest into the desk drawer.

Then she sat at the desk, pressed her palms flat against the wood, and breathed until the tightness behind her ribs loosened enough that she could stand without her knees shaking.

***

The dining hall was loud.

Sloane stood in the doorway for six seconds before she made herself walk in. She counted the seconds because counting gave her hands something to do. Six seconds of scanning, locating the food line, locating the exits, locating the empty tables at the back where she could sit with her collar up, her head down, eating fast enough that no one would have time to form a sentence.

The room was full. Evening meal, the compound’s daily ritual of shared food, shared space, shared pretense that every wolf in this room liked every other wolf. Sloane had been eating here for two years. She’d perfected the rhythm: arrive late, sit alone, leave early. She knew which tables to avoid. She knew which groups went quiet when she passed.