BLEEDING SILVER

The silver silk of my gown whispered against the hardwood floors as I moved through the shadowed corridors of the packhouse, my footsteps deliberately soft, deliberately invisible. That was what ten years of marriage to Alpha Connor had taught me: how to move through spaces without occupying them, how to exist without being seen, how to be the perfect Luna who spoke only when spoken to and smiled until her cheeks ached.

Tonight, the annual Gathering of Alphas transformed our territory into a stage, and I was the leading actress in a play I had long since stopped believing in.

I paused before the grand staircase, my reflection catching in the ornate mirror that had hung in this hallway since before I was born. The woman who stared back was not the girl who had once dreamed of leading beside a mate who would see her as an equal. That girl had died somewhere in the first year, buried under Connor's casual dismissals and the slow, suffocating realization that I was not his partner. I was his possession. A pretty ornament to hang off his arm, a womb to carry his heirs, a voice to echo his commands and never, ever speak her own.

My hair was pinned in an elaborate twist, the way Connor preferred—controlled, contained, nothing wild or untamed about it. The emerald necklace at my throat was a gift from him, chosen not because the color suited me but because it matched the official crest of the Silver Crescent Pack. I was wearing my servitude like jewelry, and the weight of it pressed against my chest with every breath.

"Luna."

The title hit my ears like a stone dropping into still water. I turned to find Marcus, the head of Connor's personal guard, waiting at the bottom of the stairs. His face was as impassive as ever, but there was something in his eyes—a flicker of something that might have been pity or might have been my imagination. I had learned long ago not to look for allies in places where none existed.

"Alpha Connor requests your presence in the great hall," Marcus said. "The delegates from the Shadowmoon Pack have arrived."

*Requests*. Such a polite word for a command. Connor never requested anything. He took, he demanded, he expected. I had learned to give before he could take, to anticipate before he could demand, to read the subtle shifts in his mood like a sailor reading a storm-filled sky.

"Tell Alpha Connor I will be there momentarily," I said, my voice the perfect blend of warmth and deference that the role of Luna required.

Marcus hesitated. That was unusual. He was a man who moved through the world with the mechanical precision of a soldier, and hesitation was not in his nature.

"Luna," he said, and there was something in his voice that made my spine stiffen, "if you need anything this evening—"

"I need nothing," I interrupted, the words coming sharper than I intended. I softened them with a smile that didn't reach my eyes. "Thank you, Marcus. I will join my mate shortly."

He nodded once and disappeared down the corridor, his footsteps fading into the ambient noise of the packhouse preparing for the Gathering. I stood there for a long moment, my hand pressed against the cool glass of the mirror, watching the woman who wore my face.

She was beautiful. That was never in question. At twenty-nine, I had the high cheekbones and full lips that had drawn Connor's attention at the Choosing Ceremony a decade ago. My hair, when it was free, fell in dark waves past my shoulders, and my eyes were the color of winter ice—pale blue ringed with silver, the mark of a pureblood wolf from a long line of Canadian Alphas. I was everything a Luna was supposed to be: elegant, composed, fertile, and silent.

Silent. That was the part Connor valued most.

I remembered the girl I had been before him. Kiera, who had run with her wolf through the Rocky Mountain forests until her lungs burned and her legs ached. Kiera, who had argued with the pack elders about trade routes and treaty terms at sixteen, who had been marked as a future leader before she was old enough to shift. Kiera, who had looked at Connor on their mating day and thought she saw a partner who would stand beside her, not above her.

What a fool that girl had been.

I pushed away from the mirror and descended the stairs, each step measured, each movement calculated. The packhouse was a hive of activity around me—servers carrying trays of champagne, pack members in their finest attire, the sharp scent of expensive perfume cutting through the natural musk of wolf that never quite left these walls. Everyone smiled at me as I passed, and I smiled back, and the mask settled over my features like a second skin.

The great hall was already crowded when I entered. Crystal chandeliers cast warm light over the assembled wolves, their laughter and conversation rising to the vaulted ceiling in a wave of sound that should have been welcoming but felt instead like drowning. I spotted Connor immediately—it was impossible not to. He stood at the center of the room, taller than almost every other man present, his dark hair swept back from a face that was handsome in the way a blade is handsome: sharp, dangerous, and utterly without softness.

He was laughing at something the Shadowmoon Alpha said, his hand clasped around a crystal glass of whiskey, and for a moment, I let myself remember the way he had looked at me on our mating day. The way his eyes had softened when I walked down the aisle, the way his voice had cracked slightly when he said his vows, the way I had believed—truly believed—that I had found my home.

That man had disappeared sometime in the first year. Or perhaps he had never existed at all, and I had simply wanted so badly to be loved that I had invented him.

"Ah, there she is." Connor's voice cut through my thoughts, and I felt the familiar tightening in my chest as his attention fixed on me. "My Luna."

He held out his hand, and I crossed the room to take it, my fingers sliding into his with the ease of long practice. His grip was firm, almost too firm, and I felt the silent message in the pressure of his palm: *You are mine. Do not forget it.*

"Alpha Connor," I said, inclining my head to the Shadowmoon Alpha and his mate. "Welcome to Silver Crescent territory. I hope your journey was comfortable."

The Shadowmoon Luna—a young woman, barely twenty, with the nervous energy of a doe in a clearing—murmured something appropriate about the beauty of our lands. I smiled at her and said all the right things, and Connor's hand tightened approvingly on mine. I had performed this role so many times that I could do it in my sleep, and sometimes I wondered if that was exactly what I had been doing for the last decade. Sleepwalking through a life that was not mine, wearing a crown that felt more like a cage with each passing year.

The evening blurred into the familiar rhythm of these events. Introductions, small talk, the careful dance of politics disguised as pleasant conversation. I stood at Connor's side and smiled and said nothing of substance, because anything I said that was not a direct echo of his thoughts would be corrected later, in private, with that cold disappointment in his voice that I had learned to dread more than his anger.

"You handled the Shadowmoon Luna well," Connor said during a lull in the proceedings, his lips close to my ear. His breath was warm against my skin, but I felt no warmth from it. "She's skittish. You made her comfortable."

"I simply spoke to her," I said, and the words came out before I could stop them. "She is new to her position. It is not difficult to offer kindness to someone who is struggling."

Connor's grip on my elbow tightened almost imperceptibly. "You spoke to her as I instructed. Let us not pretend you acted independently."

I said nothing. I had learned that silence was the only response that did not make things worse.

The night wore on. I drank champagne I did not taste, laughed at jokes that were not funny, and watched the Alphas of a dozen packs posture and preen like peacocks displaying their feathers. They were all the same, these men who had been born into power or had fought their way to it. They spoke of territory and trade and bloodlines as if the world were a chessboard and they the only players who mattered. Their Lunas stood behind them, silent and beautiful, and I wondered how many of them felt the same weight I did, how many of them had once been girls who ran wild and free before they learned to walk softly and speak only when permitted.

At midnight, the formalities ended. Connor was deep in conversation with the Alpha of a northern pack, their voices low and intent over a map spread across a side table. I touched his arm and murmured that I would retire, and he waved me away without looking at me. It was as much dismissal as acknowledgment, and I was grateful for it.

I made my way through the emptying hall, nodding to those who addressed me, offering vague responses to those who attempted conversation. My feet ached in the delicate heels I wore, and my jaw was sore from the effort of maintaining my smile. I wanted nothing more than to return to my chambers, to remove the mask and the dress and the weight of being seen, to let my wolf rise close to the surface and simply *breathe*.

But sleep would not come easily tonight. It never did on nights like this, when the performance had gone on too long and the silence of my empty rooms felt less like sanctuary and more like a tomb.

I was halfway up the staircase when I heard the voices.

They came from Connor's study, a room at the end of the east corridor that was supposed to be empty at this hour. The door was ajar, and light spilled through the gap in a thin yellow stripe across the dark floor. I should have walked past. I should have gone to my room and closed my eyes and pretended I had heard nothing. That was what the woman I had become would do. That was what Connor's Luna would do.

But something—some remnant of the girl I had been, perhaps, or some instinct that had been buried too long to be entirely dead—made me stop.

"—cannot keep this hidden forever, Connor."

The voice was Derek's. Derek, Connor's Beta, who had been his closest friend since childhood. Derek, whose mate, Elena, had been my closest friend in the pack until she had started looking at me with eyes that held something too close to pity to be comfortable.

I should have walke