The phone call came at 2:47 AM, shattering the silence of my empty bedroom like a gunshot. I fumbled for my cell in the darkness, heart already racing with that primal instinct that tells you something is wrong before your conscious mind catches up. Devon's side of the bed was cold—he was probably in his office again, or with her. I'd stopped asking where he spent his nights months ago. "Hello?" My voice cracked with sleep. "Mara." My brother Ethan's voice was sharp, clipped. He hadn't spoken to me in three years, not since my nephew's christening where he'd made it clear my presence was a "courtesy" and nothing more. "It's Dad. There was an attack on the northern border. Rogues. He's at Mercy General." The world tilted sideways. "Is he—" "He's alive. Barely." A pause, heavy with all the things Ethan would never say to me. "He's asking for his daughter." The line went dead before I could respond, before I could ask which daughter he meant. But I already knew. He wanted Sera. He always wanted Sera. I sat there in the dark, phone clutched in trembling hands, trying to remember how to breathe. My father, the great Alpha Marcus Thorne of the Silverpine Pack, was dying. And even now, even at