Luna Selene Ward can feel the mate bond. Alpha Thorne Maddox swears there is nothing there to feel. He has wanted out since the night his father died—the night he claims she trapped him. Now Camille Rowe is back, polished and smiling, with a daughter Thorne can lift into the air and laugh with. Selene’s little girl has never heard that sound in her own house. Then the pack physician puts a file in Selene’s hands. Nightwither. Rare. Almost always fatal in pups. Four weeks. June is seven. Her eighth birthday and her last month fall on the same date. Selene stops asking to be loved. She will sign the divorce after the party if Thorne will do one thing: be a father until the candles go out. He treats it like a contract. He shows up. He sits through lunch. He ignores Camille’s calls while June is in the car. It is not warmth. It is presence, and for a child who has been waiting by the door, presence is a feast. It is also enough to split the story he has lived in for seven years. Because Nightwither is not only a fever. The bond he refuses to name is not as dead as he needs it to be. And Camille did not come home just to be chosen. Selene wanted a few ordinary days for a dying child. She may have bought the month that takes the pack apart.