Five years ago: "I'm keeping them," I whispered. "Them?" Alpha Caden laughed, cold and sharp. "Get rid of it. An omega's bastard has no place in my bloodline." "I didn't touch her. Not really," Alpha Riven said, waving a dismissive hand. "Find the real father." "Even if it's mine," Alpha Dax added quietly, "I won't claim it. My pack would never follow an alpha who fathered an omega's child." Five years later: "Tell me where they are," Alpha Caden demanded, his voice cracking at the edges. "My mate is barren. I need my child. I need to be a father." "Let me see them," Alpha Riven said, sitting outside my office for the third morning in a row. "Just once. I won't say a word." "I hear one of them has my eyes," Alpha Dax murmured, and I watched his jaw tighten as he fought back something he had no right to feel. I looked at all three of them and felt nothing I expected to feel. "You told me to get rid of them. So as far as you're concerned, I did." Sera Voss was never supposed to matter. She was an omega without a wolf, the forgotten daughter of a pack servant, kept close by three powerful alphas only because she made their lives easier. She tutored them, cooked for them, covered for them, and loved them quietly for years. Then came one reckless night that changed everything. When Sera discovered she was carrying triplets, she went to them. All three. And all three turned their backs. So she ran. She built a life in the Free Lands where those without active wolves were sent to die, or so the stories said. She built more than a life. She built an institution. And she raised three children whose eyes, when you looked close enough, told you exactly who their fathers were. Now a strange sickness is killing pups across the pack territories, and the only person with the knowledge to stop it is Sera Voss. The woman they abandoned. The woman who is supposed to feel nothing when she walks back through those gates. She does not plan to stay long. She does not plan to forgive them. And she absolutely does not plan to let them anywhere near her children. But plans have a way of falling apart when three alphas realize, far too late, what they threw away.

Everyone in the Stonecrest Pack knows Nova Ashfield's name. They say it the way you say something ugly. She has spent eighteen years being blamed for the death of her twin brother. Her own parents, the Alpha and Luna of the pack, treat her worse than the ground under their feet. She cooks, cleans, and bleeds so they can eat and live in comfort. She has never once believed that anyone would choose her. Then Alpha Kade Rivers arrives. He is everything she is not. Powerful. Feared. A man that whole packs bow before. He did not come to Stonecrest looking for a mate. He came for a treaty. But he finds something he did not expect. A scent that stops him cold. A girl on her knees on a dining room floor, covered in bruises, refusing to cry. And a bond the Moon's law says cannot be broken. Nova does not want to be someone's charity case. Kade does not want a mate whose pack treats her like property. But fate does not ask what either of them want. Someone in the Stonecrest Pack will do anything to make sure Nova never rises. Rising is exactly what she intends to do.