Sarah's wrist twists beneath my grip, but I hold firm, feeling the rapid flutter of her pulse against my fingertips like a trapped bird beating against cage bars.
Her skin is fever-hot beneath my palm, slick with a thin sheen of perspiration that betrays the fear her expression tries to hide.
"Who gave you the orders?" I press harder, watching her features cycle through emotions she cannot quite control. "Someone else was pulling strings eleven years ago, and you're going to tell me who."
"You think you understand what happened, but you're playing with forces that will destroy you." Sarah's voice drops to a hiss. "They aren't simply going to let you—"
She stops.
The words hang incomplete between us, and I watch her jaw clamp shut with visible effort, her eyes widening with the particular horror of someone who has said too much.
The silence that follows is so complete I can hear the blood rushing through my own ears, the distant creak of the packhouse settling around us.
The slip is small—a hint of plurality that suggests Logan wasn't the only architect of my mother's murder—but it confirms what Zane and I suspected in the car.
"They," I repeat, tasting the revelation like blood on my tongue. "Plural. So it was not just your father. There were others involved, weren't there? Others who are still alive."
'She's terrified,' Nireya observes, and genuine surprise colors her presence.
Sarah's expression shutters closed, the momentary vulnerability disappearing beneath layers of practiced cruelty.
"You're hearing things that weren't said, which isn't surprising given your history of delusion and paranoia. Perhaps the pregnancy hormones are affecting your already fragile mental state."
"Don't." The command carries more authority than I knew I possessed. My voice reverberates off the bedroom walls, filling the space with an echo that surprises us both. "Don't try to gaslight me. I want the truth, Sarah, and you're going to give it to me or I'll—"
"You'll what?" Sarah yanks her wrist free with a violence that sends me stumbling backward. "Run to Paul with your theories and your desperate accusations? He might believe you, Morgan. He probably will believe you. But belief won't protect everyone you care about."
The threat lands with a weight I don't immediately understand.
"What are you talking about?"
Sarah's mouth curves into a smile that makes my blood run cold—the particular expression of a predator who has been waiting for exactly this moment to reveal the trap she's constructed.
"Your friend Ricky," she says, and each syllable drips with poisoned satisfaction. "Such a loyal companion. It would be tragic if something happened to her while you were busy making threats you can't back up."
The words don't compute at first, sliding past my comprehension like water against glass.
"Ricky left the safe house days ago," I say, but uncertainty has crept into my voice. My throat tightens around the words, making them sound thin and unconvincing even to my own ears. "She's somewhere safe, somewhere you couldn't possibly—"
"She went back." Sarah crosses to the vanity table near the window. "After you were carried off by my Alpha and his brother, your friend returned to her little sanctuary to pack her things and disappear. Unfortunately for her, I was already waiting."
"You're lying." The accusation comes out weaker than I intend.
"Am I?"
Sarah pulls out her phone from her robe pocket and taps the screen with manicured fingers. The gesture is casual, almost bored.
She turns the screen toward me.
The photograph shows Ricky slumped against a concrete wall, her wrists bound with zip ties, her wild curls matted with what looks like dried blood.
Her eyes are open but unfocused, the particular blankness of someone who has been sedated or beaten into compliance.
Behind her, rusted shipping containers stretch toward a ceiling I cannot see, industrial shadows swallowing the edges of the frame.
The devastation crashes through me like a wave breaking against cliffs.
"No." The word tears from my throat, ragged and desperate. My knees buckle, and I grab the bedpost for support, the carved wood biting into my palm. "No, you couldn't have—she's human, Sarah, she has nothing to do with any of this—"
"She has everything to do with it." Sarah swipes to another photograph, this one showing Ricky from a different angle, her head lolling against her shoulder, fresh bruises blooming across her cheekbone. "She's been helping you hide. That makes her complicit, and complicity carries a price."
'This is real,' Nireya says, and horror threads through her presence. 'Morgan, the photographs aren't staged. Ricky is truly being held captive.'
My legs give out beneath me.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping beneath my weight, silk coverlets sliding cool and indifferent against my trembling palms.
I stare at the screen that Sarah holds before me like a verdict, and feel everything I've built toward collapse into rubble at my feet.
Ricky is in danger because of me. Because I brought my chaos into her life, because I couldn't protect her from the consequences of my existence, because Sarah will always find new ways to hurt me through the people I love.
The taste of bile rises in my throat, bitter and acidic, and I swallow convulsively against the urge to vomit across the pristine carpet.
"What do you want?" The question emerges hollow, scraped clean of the defiance that fueled me moments before.
Sarah lowers the phone, and the smile that crosses her features carries the particular satisfaction of total victory.
She tucks the device into her robe pocket. "I want you to keep your mouth shut about everything you think you know. No more investigations into matters that don't concern you."
"And if I agree to that?" I force myself to meet her eyes, searching for any crack in her armor that might suggest negotiation is possible. "You'll let Ricky go?"
"That depends entirely on whether you fulfill the second condition." Sarah moves closer, close enough that I can smell her perfume mixing with the sharp scent of my own fear. "The pregnancy, Morgan. I want it gone. Terminated, eliminated, erased from existence."
The words land in my chest like bullets, each one tearing through tissue I didn't know could bleed.
"You want me to kill my own child." The horror in my voice surprises even me.
My hands fly to my stomach instinctively, fingers splaying across the barely perceptible swell, as if I could shield the life growing there from the poison of her words.
"I want you to make a choice." Sarah's eyes hold mine without flinching. "Your friend's life, or the life of a fetus that hasn't even developed lungs yet. The math seems simple enough, even for someone with your limited capacity for rational thought."
'She knows she can't touch us directly,' Nireya observes, and fury burns beneath the panic in her presence. 'Paul and Zane would destroy her if she harmed their mate. So she's trying to make us destroy ourselves instead.'
"I can't—" My hands press against my stomach, cradling the barely perceptible swell where my child grows. "You're asking me to murder my baby, Sarah."
"Then Ricky disappears forever." Sarah straightens, her expression hardening into finality. "Your friend will simply cease to exist, and you'll spend the rest of your life wondering what me people did to her before the end."
The silk of her robe settles around her like armor, and she becomes once again the Luna I have learned to fear—untouchable, unmovable, utterly without conscience.
"Tick tock, Morgan."
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