GAMMA'S RISING

The scent of woodsmoke and betrayal doesn't mix well, but Nessa Ashford had gotten good at swallowing both.

She stood at the edge of the training field, arms crossed, watching Darian move through drills with the pack's newest recruits like he hadn't spent the last six months systematically dismantling every promise he'd ever made her. The autumn air was crisp enough to bite, but nothing bit harder than watching your mate laugh at something a stranger said.

Not a stranger, really. Katherine Reyes. Alpha Reyes's daughter. Visiting the Draven Pack territory for the season under the polite fiction of "diplomatic relations."

Nessa knew exactly what kind of relations were being discussed.

"You're staring again." Priya fell into step beside her, arms full of medical supplies for the pack's makeshift infirmary. As the pack's healer, Priya saw more bruises — physical and otherwise — than anyone else in Draven territory. She'd seen Nessa's particular kind plenty.

"I'm observing," Nessa said. "Gammas observe. It's in the job description."

"Gammas also get to have feelings about their mates parading a potential replacement in front of the entire pack."

Nessa's jaw tightened. Across the field, Darian said something that made Katherine throw her head back and laugh, the sound carrying on the wind like it belonged there. Like she belonged there.

"He hasn't announced anything," Nessa said, more to herself than to Priya.

"He doesn't have to. Everyone can smell it on him." Priya's voice softened, the clinical edge falling away. "I'm sorry, Nessa. You deserve better than being made a fool of in your own territory."

Territory. The word sat strange in Nessa's chest. She'd been born in Draven lands, raised on Draven soil, had bled for this pack more times than she could count in her years serving as gamma — the pack's problem-solver, the one who handled the messy work no one else wanted, the buffer between Alpha Corven Draven's temper and everyone unlucky enough to be in its path.

And what had it earned her? A mate bond growing colder by the day, and a front-row seat to her own replacement.

"I need to check the supply ledgers," Nessa said abruptly, turning before Priya could offer more sympathy she didn't know how to accept. Sympathy made things real. Right now she needed the numbness of routine, of paperwork, of anything that wasn't watching Darian Voss decide she wasn't worth fighting for.

The supply room in the pack's main lodge was cold and quiet, exactly what Nessa needed. She'd been managing the Draven Pack's logistics for three years now — inventory, trade agreements, the careful balance of resources that kept two hundred wolves fed and armed and ready for whatever their alpha demanded next. It was thankless work. It was also the only place she still felt like she had control over something.

She pulled the ledger for the northern storehouse and frowned. The numbers didn't match. Again.

This wasn't the first discrepancy she'd found. Over the past two months, small inconsistencies had been creeping into the pack's financial records — shipments logged that never arrived, "training expenses" that led nowhere she could trace, payments to names she didn't recognize. At first she'd assumed clerical error. Now, staring at a six-figure gap in the treasury reports, she was less sure.

She flipped back through the older ledgers, cross-referencing dates, and her stomach dropped.

Every discrepancy traced back to authorizations signed by Alpha Corven Draven himself.

Nessa sat back slowly, the ledger heavy in her lap. Corruption wasn't a word she used lightly — not about her own alpha, not about the pack that had raised her. But the pattern was too consistent, too deliberate, to be anything else. Money bleeding out of pack coffers into accounts that led nowhere, resources diverted while lower-ranked wolves went without, and always, always, Corven's signature at the bottom of the page.

She thought of the wolves in the outer camps who'd been rationing food since summer. She thought of Elder Mabon's recent warnings in council meetings, brushed aside as an old man's paranoia. She thought about how quiet everyone had gotten lately whenever the alpha's name came up.

This isn't paranoia, she realized. This is something rotten, and it's been rotting for a long time.

The door creaked open behind her, and Nessa snapped the ledger shut on instinct, heart hammering.

It was only Darian.

He stood in the doorway, broad-shouldered and achingly familiar, wearing the same expression he'd worn for months now — somewhere between guilt and impatience, like he wanted the discomfort of seeing her to be over as quickly as possible.

"We need to talk," he said.

Nessa set the ledger aside, carefully, deliberately calm. "Do we."

"Nessa—"

"If this is about Katherine Reyes, you can save it. I already know."

Something flickered across his face — relief, maybe, that he wouldn't have to say it himself. That was almost worse than if he'd fought to explain.

"The alliance with the Reyes pack matters," Darian said. "My father thinks—"

"Your father thinks a lot of things that happen to be convenient for him." The words came out sharper than she intended, but she didn't take them back. Not this time. "Say it plainly, Darian. Don't hide behind pack politics."

His silence was answer enough.

"I never chose this," he said finally. "You know how mate bonds work in this pack. You know what's expected of the alpha's son."

"I know what's expected of me, too," Nessa said, standing now, meeting his eyes without flinching. "I've spent three years being your mate in every way that mattered — standing beside you, covering for your father's temper, holding this pack together while everyone else fell apart. And the moment a better offer walks in, I'm supposed to just—what? Step aside quietly?"

"It's not like that."

"It's exactly like that."

The bond between them — thin and strained as it had become — pulsed once, painfully, like a wound reopening. Nessa felt it in her chest, that old tether that had once meant home and now felt like a chain she was ready to gnaw through.

"The betrothal will be announced within the month," Darian said quietly. "I'm telling you now so you're not blindsided in front of the pack."

Small mercies, Nessa thought bitterly.

"Get out of my supply room," she said, voice flat.

He hesitated like he wanted to say something more — an apology, maybe, or some final justification to make himself feel better about it. Whatever it was, he swallowed it, and left without another word.

Nessa stood alone in the cold room for a long moment, breathing through the ache in her chest, and then looked back down at the ledger in her hands.

Whatever loyalty she had left for this pack, for Darian, for the life she'd built here — it was burning away fast. And underneath the hurt, something colder and clearer was taking its place.

She was going to find out exactly what Corven Draven was hiding.

Even if it destroyed everything she had left.