"Well, well. I have to say, I'm impressed. Your mate is bedding another wolf, talking about dissolving your bond to register someone else's pup under his bloodline, and you don't even flinch? That's some next-level doormat energy."
I watched her in silence.
Her lips curled. One by one, she undid the ties of her healing gown.
"You know what the difference between us is, Seraphina?"
The figure she revealed made my brow tighten.
"Your body? Let's see how long that lasts after you're done nursing."
"Oh, I won't be nursing. You think these are natural? Why would I ruin them? You know what Theron told me?" She tilted her chin up. "He said you're boring. No fun at all. And your body doesn't compare to mine. I'm an E cup, sweetheart."
So even her chest was fake.
Theron really had no standards.
"Are you done?"
"Not even close. I'm telling you to get lost. Stop standing between us, or I'll make your life a living hell. My mate is dead. I need a new one, and Theron is the Alpha I picked. I'm never letting him go—"
Before she could finish, my hand was already in the air.
The slap cracked across her face.
The sound rang through the Healing Hall room like a thunderclap. Sharp. Clean. Final. My wolf surged to the surface so fast my vision flickered gold at the edges, and for one heartbeat the room smelled like ozone before lightning, cutting straight through the cloying sweetness of Corvina's manufactured scent.
"You hit me?!" She froze, one hand flying to her cheek. She lunged to hit me back, but I caught her arm and swung again.
"You—"
"Yeah, I hit you." My voice was steady. Low. The kind of steady that five years of silence had forged into something harder than iron. "That first one was for being shameless enough to seduce another she-wolf's mate."
A second slap landed clean. The crack echoed off the stone walls, and I felt my wolf settle into my spine like a blade sliding into its sheath. Not raging. Not desperate. Present. For the first time in years, fully and completely present.
"That one's for climbing into a bonded Alpha's bed when your own mate hasn't been dead five moon cycles and you were carrying his pup to term."