THE MOON NEVER CHOSE HER

The text on my phone said FORTY DAYS, and under it, a number with a lot of zeroes.

I read it once in the elevator, deleted it, and pressed my thumb against the bandage on my left wrist

until the doors opened on the forty-first floor.

Forty days to find Theron Valdris's weakness.

Forty days to earn the money that would clear my father's old debts and buy me a name no one could trace.

Nobody at the Argent Circle had said what happened on day forty-one. They hadn't needed to.

"Ms. Marsh?"

The man waiting for me wore charcoal wool and a smile that fit him like the suit. "Alaric Venn. Beta, chief of operations.

Welcome to the top of the world." "I'm only here for the books." "Everyone says that."

His gaze dropped to my wrist and slid away. "Right this way.

The Alpha dislikes waiting."

I counted the cameras along the glass corridor. Three. Two guards. One marble floor that smelled of money.

Counting kept my pulse quiet. It had worked for fifteen years. It stopped working the moment Theron Valdris looked up.

He sat behind a desk of black stone with one arm hooked over his chair, a silver ring tapping out a slow rhythm against the surface.

Dark hair. Eyes the color of tea held to a lamp, steady and unhurried, the eyes of a man who had never once had to ask twice.

"Ms. Marsh." He didn't stand. "You've come to count my money." "I've come to verify it."

"Is there a difference?" "One is arithmetic. The other is accusation."

The ring stopped. "Sit," he said. "I'd rather stand." I'd rather you sit.

A pause that stretched exactly one second too long. "But I'll settle for you hearing the rules.

Full access to Valdris Holdings, every ledger, every account. In return, you live in this tower until the audit ends.

No outside calls. No unescorted exits." "That's a cage, Mr. Valdris." "It's insurance."

He rose, "Some people in this city would pay a fortune to know what's in my books.

I won't have you walking out of here with a bullet in your spine because you were careless."

"And the deadline?" "The Blood Moon. Forty days." Tap, went the ring, once, against his thumb.

"The pack holds its ceremony that night. By then, I want my books clean." Forty days.

The same number as my text. I told myself it was coincidence, and my pulse told me I was lying.

"Understood," I said. "Then we have an agreement." He crossed the carpet and held out his hand. I'd rehearsed the refusal.

Medical condition, no contact, so sorry. But he was watching me the way a dog watches a door, and refusing would have been a confession.

I took his hand. The world split along a seam I hadn't known was there. Fire ripped up my left arm, from the bandage to the base of my skull.

The room tilted. The air went white and loud, and underneath the pain, a bell rang inside my ribs, deep and slow and impossible.

Mine, said something in me that wasn't me. Mine, mine, mine— I tore my hand free and stumbled into the edge of the desk.

Theron hadn't moved. His arm still hung in the air between us, and his eyes had gone gold at the rims, bright as struck brass.

"What was that?" he asked, very quietly. "Static." "That wasn't static."

A reaction to your carpet." My voice came out like paper. My wrist felt dipped in molten glass. "I need a moment."

"Ms. Marsh." "A moment, Mr. Valdris."

He didn't push, which was worse. He studied me, and I saw it: his right hand curling slowly, then opening, then curling again.

He turned it over and stared at his own palm as though it belonged to somebody else.

"Alaric," he said, to the empty air. "Alpha." "Take her to the audit suite. Lock the door."

"For her safety?" "For mine," said Theron Valdris, and for a second his voice wasn't steady at all.

I made it ten steps into the corridor before the second one found me.

"There you are!" She stood outside the audit suite with her hands clasped, pale gold hair, white silk, a moon-shaped pendant resting in the hollow of her throat.

Beautiful in the way that makes rooms rearrange themselves around a person.

"Lysandra," she said, and took both my hands before I could stop her.

"Theron's Luna. I'm so glad he's finally letting someone help. He works himself to death."

"Thea Marsh. A pleasure." "I'm sure it will be." Her smile didn't move. Her thumbs found the pulse points at my wrists, the left one a fraction longer than the right.

"You have such steady hands." "Thank you." "Solvane hands." Her head tilted. "Your mother's were the same.

" The corridor stopped. Not in any way I could have shown a camera. The hum of the ventilation went on. The guards at the far end didn't flinch.

But inside me, every number I'd ever counted collapsed at once, and my fingers went cold in hers, and I could hear my own heartbeat very clearly, "I'm sorry?" I said.

"Hmm?" She blinked, and the sweetness rolled back over her face like a tide.

"I said a mother's hands. Gentle. Steady. You'd have made a lovely nurse." "I'm an accountant."

"Of course you are." She squeezed once and let go. "Dinner is at eight, Ms. Marsh.

We do so enjoy company." She drifted away down the glass hall, and the white silk whispered behind her.

I stood where she'd left me, and I understood something with total, clarity.

nobody in this building had said that name aloud in fifteen years.

Not even me. The audit suite had no windows, one lamp, and a table stacked with ledgers as tall as my hip.

I worked, because working was the only thing that kept my hands from shaking.

The first two hours were clean. Invoices. Payroll. Shipping manifests that balanced to the penny, which was itself a warning, because honest money is always messy.

At the bottom of the stack, I found the book that wasn't supposed to be there.

Leather, old, with no label and a clasp that gave under my thumbnail without a fight.

Someone had already unlatched it. A strip of black ribbon marked a page deep inside.

Left for me. I held my breath and opened it. Names. Dates. Dollar amounts.

Down the margins, written again and again in a tight, even hand: Collected.

Collected. Collected. The ink was a rusty brown, and where my bandaged wrist rested against the paper, it began to glow. Faintly. Red.

I yanked my arm back. The glow died. But I had already seen how the ink pooled in the corners of each letter, as if it had never fully dried.

It wasn't ink. It was blood. I turned the pages faster, until I reached the bookmarked leaf, dated fifteen years and six days ago.

The week of the black coats. The week of the laundry chute.

Solvane, Calista: collected. Solvane, Evander: collected. Solvane, Ianthe, age nine: NOT RECOVERED.

Search continues. The room tilted again. My mother's name. My father's name.

Mine, in a ledger kept by the people who had hunted me.

And beneath the last line, in a brighter, wetter red, a single sentence written tonight.

Welcome home, Ianthe. I touched the edge of the final e. It smeared against my fingertip, still warm.

Then I saw the handwriting. The looped W. The hooked tail of the e. The way each letter leaned a little to the left, as if about to run.

I had watched