My eyes went gold in the rearview mirror and I almost drove off the mountain.

Not amber. Not the warm, wolf-standard color I'd been seeing since my first shift at fourteen. Gold. Molten, bright, there for half a second and then gone.

Storm, my wolf, the animal consciousness that lived behind my ribs like a second heartbeat, slammed forward so hard my hands jerked the wheel.

Turn around. Turn around NOW.

"We're not turning around."

Something is wrong with us. That color. That's not ours.

She was right. Omega wolves had amber eyes. Every shifter knew that. Gold was Alpha. And I was definitively, documented-since-birth, not an Alpha.

I forced my hands steady. Checked the mirror again. Amber. Normal. Mine.

The welcome sign for Nightfall territory appeared through the windshield.

My gut clenched hard enough to taste it.

Three years since I'd crossed this line. Three years since Kieran Blackwood stood in front of our entire pack and gutted me with four words.

"I reject this bond."

My phone erupted.

I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

The screen kept lighting up. Kira wasn't done. Kira was never done.

But I couldn't look at it. Couldn't look at anything except the space where he'd been standing.

The porch was empty now. The screen door still swinging from where he'd gone inside.

He hadn't crossed the distance. Hadn't tried to touch me. Hadn't demanded a conversation or an explanation.

He'd looked at me like I was the only real thing he'd seen in three years.

And then he'd walked away.

Why did he walk away? Storm demanded.

I didn't know.

And I needed to.