The warehouse had become hell on earth.
Flames roared up the walls, swallowing rusted steel beams and spitting black smoke into the pre-dawn sky.
The air stank of burning diesel, gunpowder, and blood.
Screams of rogue mercenaries mixed with the victorious howls of Blackwood wolves.
Bodies lay twisted on the pier (some human, some half-shifted, all dead).
I walked through the carnage untouched.
Damon and Marcus carved the path ahead of me like twin black blades.
Any rogue foolish enough to raise a weapon lost the arm that held it before the shot left the barrel.
A sniper on the roof tried to line up a shot; Marcus leapt twenty feet straight up, grabbed the man by the throat, and flung him into the harbor.
The splash was swallowed by fire.
Bullets sparked off shipping containers inches from my head.
I never broke stride.
My eyes stayed fixed on the second-floor office window where a flash of red hair kept appearing and disappearing like a dying flame.
Scarlett.
She was mine.
The external staircase was already half melted.
I climbed anyway, boots ringing on warped metal, heat blistering the air around me.
Sparks showered my hair. The hoodie Ryan gave me years ago caught fire at the sleeve; I ripped it off and kept moving.
The office door was reinforced steel.
I kicked it once.
It bent.
I kicked it again.
It flew inward, hinges screaming.
Scarlett stood at the far end, back pressed to a shattered floor-to-ceiling window, flames licking the frame behind her.
Her red hair was singed, face streaked with soot and tears, eyes wild with the madness of a cornered animal.
In her shaking hands: a matte-black Glock pointed straight at my heart.
She laughed, high and broken.
"You're too late, little omega. Ryan's dead. I felt the bond snap hours ago. You're fighting for a corpse and a bastard who will never be Alpha."
I stepped over the threshold, slow, deliberate.
"Wrong on all three counts," I said.
My voice was calm. Ice over steel.
"Ryan's heart started beating again twenty minutes ago.
My son is the rightful heir.
And I stopped being an omega the night you laughed while I bled in the rain."
She pulled the trigger.
Click. Click. Click.
Empty.
Her face crumpled.
She hurled the useless gun at my head and shifted mid-scream.
A sleek crimson wolf exploded from her skin, twice my size, lips peeled back from ivory fangs dripping silver venom.
She launched.
I waited.
At seventeen, Ryan had drilled self-defense into me every dawn for a year.
He always said, "Never fight fair when someone wants your blood."
I dropped low at the last second, exactly the way he taught me.
Scarlett sailed over my head, claws shredding empty air.
I came up behind her and drove Ryan's silver dagger into the thick muscle of her left hind leg, all the way to the hilt.
Silver met flesh.
She crashed through a burning desk, splintering wood and glass, shrieking as the poison burned through her bloodstream.
She shifted back instantly (naked, bleeding, crawling on the floor like a broken doll).
"No—no—please—"
I walked forward, boots crunching on broken glass.
She scrambled backward until the wall stopped her.
"We can make a deal! I have money! I have contacts—"
I crouched in front of her.
Blood dripped from the dagger onto her bare thigh, sizzling where it touched skin.
"You sent rogues to murder a five-year-old child," I said softly.
"That was just business! Ryan would have—"
"You poisoned the father of my son with silver."
"He banished me! He deserved—"
I pressed the flat of the blade under her chin, forcing her wild eyes to meet mine.
Her pupils were blown wide with terror.
"The Elders will never allow this," she whimpered, voice cracking. "You're human. You can't execute a ranked wolf—"
"The Elders are not here," I whispered.
I leaned closer until I could smell the fear-sweat on her skin.
"And Ryan chose me the second he stepped in front of that knife for our son."
She opened her mouth to scream.
I slid the silver across her throat in one clean, merciless stroke.
Not savage. Not cruel.
Just final.
A thin red line appeared.
Then the blood came (fast, dark, unstoppable).
She clutched at her neck, eyes bulging, making wet choking sounds.
I stood and watched the life drain out of the woman who tried to destroy my family.
Scarlett collapsed sideways, red hair pooling in her own blood like spilled paint.
The Red Witch was dead.
I turned and walked out of the burning room without looking back.
The stairs had collapsed completely.
I jumped the last ten feet, landed in a crouch, and straightened.
The entire pier went still.
Every Blackwood wolf (those in fur and those in skin) dropped to their knees as I emerged from the smoke.
Hundreds of them.
Heads bowed. Throats bared.
Damon rose first, eyes shining with something close to worship.
"It is finished, Luna."
I looked at the inferno behind me (Scarlett's empire reduced to ash) then let the silver dagger fall from my fingers.
It hit the concrete with a wet, final clang.
Damon held out a satellite phone, hand trembling just slightly.
"It's the hospital."
My heart stopped.
I took the phone with fingers that suddenly felt too small.
I pressed it to my ear.
"Luna?" The doctor's voice cracked with exhausted wonder. "He's awake. He ripped the breathing tube out himself and demanded to know if you and the boy were safe. He's asking for you. Both of you."
The world blurred.
I dropped to my knees right there on blood-soaked concrete, in front of the entire kneeling pack, and cried (ugly, raw, unstoppable sobs that tore out of me like years of grief finally breaking free).
Not from fear.
From the sudden, brutal knowledge that it was over.
Scarlett was dead.
My son was safe.
And the man who broke me once had just fought death itself to come back to us.
Damon knelt beside me, silently offering his jacket again.
This time I took it.
I wiped my face with the sleeve, stood, and looked at the wolves who were now irrevocably mine.
"Burn what's left," I ordered, voice hoarse but steady. "Leave nothing for the crows."
Then softer, to Damon alone:
"Take me to him."
The convoy roared to life.
We left the pier burning behind us (a funeral pyre bright enough to be seen from Manhattan).
Mercy had died tonight.
And the Luna had come home to claim her family.