Three days after the locket incident, Margaret cornered Arwen at breakfast with news that made her stomach drop.

"There's a gathering tonight. Multi-pack event. The Silver Creek pack is visiting, and the Moonridge wolves will be there too."

Arwen's fork froze halfway to her mouth. "I don't have to go."

"Actually," Margaret's voice got that careful tone that meant bad news was coming, "Elder Morrison specifically requested your attendance."

"Why?" The word came out sharper than intended. Elder Morrison barely acknowledged her existence on good days.

Margaret finally looked at her, and Arwen saw something she didn't recognize in her adoptive mother's eyes. Fear, maybe. Or guilt. "He thinks being around concentrated pack energy might help trigger your first shift."

It was bullshit and they both knew it. But Margaret's expression told her arguing would be pointless.

"Fine. But I'm not staying long."

---

The pack house was already crowded when they arrived that evening. Arwen recognized familiar faces mixed with newcomers—visiting werewolves who carried themselves with confident predatory grace she'd never possess.

She tried to blend into the corner near the refreshment table, wearing the simple black dress Margaret had picked out. Nothing flashy, nothing that would make her stand out. Just another unmated female hoping not to embarrass herself.

The moment they walked through the doors, conversations stuttered to a halt. Not completely—that would've been too obvious. But Arwen caught the way voices lowered, how eyes flicked toward her before quickly looking away.

Margaret guided her toward the refreshment table, probably hoping they could blend into the background. But tonight felt different. The usual undercurrents of dominance and submission were there, but underneath ran something else. Unease.

Near the beverage station, she caught fragments of whispered conversations.

"That's her? The one who can't shift?"

"Eighteen and still human. It's unnatural."

"Her scent..." The voice trailed off, puzzled. "There's something wrong with it."

Arwen's cheeks burned. She started to move away, but a heavy hand landed on her shoulder.

"You." The voice belonged to a broad-shouldered man with steel-gray eyes—one of the visiting alphas from Silver Creek pack. "I'm talking to you, girl."

Every conversation in the room stopped. Arwen felt the weight of dozens of stares as the visiting alpha's grip tightened.

"When an Alpha addresses you, you show respect. Where's your submission?"

Arwen's heart hammered. She tried to lower her gaze, tried to bare her neck the way she'd seen others do, but something inside her recoiled at the demand. Her emotions spiked—embarrassment, anger, years of suppressed frustration.

"I said submit," the visiting alpha snarled, his wolf-light flashing.

That's when it happened.

Power exploded from Arwen's chest like a silver bomb going off. Light poured from her hands, blindingly bright, and every single plant in the room—the centerpiece flowers, the potted ferns, even the dried herbs hanging from the rafters—burst into bloom simultaneously.

Electronics shrieked and sparked. The overhead lights exploded in showers of glass. The visiting alpha stumbled backward, his hand flying away from her shoulder as if she'd burned him.

But the worst part was the frost.

Silver-white ice spread across the floor in intricate patterns that looked almost like runes. Ancient symbols that seemed to pulse with their own inner light. The temperature plummeted so fast that breath turned to visible puffs of vapor.

Every werewolf in the room began howling—not joyous sounds, but screams of pain and terror. Some dropped to their knees, clutching their heads. Others backed against the walls, their eyes wide with primal fear.

"Impossible!" Elder Morrison's voice cracked like a whip across the chaos. The old werewolf was pointing at Arwen with a shaking finger, his face pale as death. "That bloodline... it can't be!"

"What bloodline?" someone shouted, but Elder Morrison just shook his head, backing away from her like she was poison.

The howling got worse. Someone was sobbing. Margaret pushed through the crowd, grabbing Arwen's arm and dragging her toward the exit as the silver light finally faded.

"Move!" Margaret shouted. "Everyone move!"

But Arwen could barely hear her over the roaring in her own ears. What bloodline? What was she?

---

They made it to Margaret's car before the tears started. Eighteen years of being the pack's failure, and now she was something worse—a threat they couldn't identify.

Twenty minutes later Margaret emerged from the building, her face pale and drawn. She got into the driver's seat without speaking, started the engine, and pulled out in silence.

It wasn't until they were halfway home that Arwen found her voice.

"What did they mean? About my bloodline?"

Margaret's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "I don't know."

It was a lie. Arwen could hear it in her adoptive mother's voice, see it in the way she wouldn't meet her eyes in the rearview mirror.

Back at the house, Margaret went straight to her bedroom and closed the door. Arwen sat in the kitchen, staring at her reflection in the dark window and trying to process what had happened. The werewolves' reactions, Elder Thornton's warning, the way even her own pack had looked at her like she was something alien.

She was still sitting there an hour later when she heard Margaret moving around upstairs, then the soft sound of crying. Not gentle tears of sadness, but harsh, broken sobs of someone whose carefully constructed world was falling apart.

Curiosity finally overcame respect for privacy. Arwen crept upstairs and peered through the crack in Margaret's bedroom door.

Her adoptive mother sat on the bed, surrounded by scattered papers and photographs. In her hands was an envelope, expensive-looking stationary with elegant handwriting. Margaret read whatever was inside with tears streaming down her face, then looked up at a photograph Arwen couldn't quite see.

"I'm sorry," Margaret whispered to the photo. "I'm so sorry. I tried to give her a normal life, but... God help us all, I think it's too late to keep hiding what she is."

She folded the letter carefully and placed it back in the envelope, then gathered up the papers and photos like she was putting away secrets too dangerous to leave in the open.

As Margaret moved toward her dresser, Arwen caught a glimpse of the photograph that had made her cry. It showed a woman with Arwen's exact face, but older, more regal, wearing clothes that looked like they belonged in a fairy tale. The woman's eyes held power that made Arwen's recent plant incidents look like party tricks.

Margaret locked everything in a jewelry box that probably held more secrets than jewelry, then sat back down on the bed and buried her face in her hands.

"Eighteen years," she whispered. "Eighteen years of hoping it wouldn't come to this. But I can't protect her anymore. Not from what she's becoming. Not from who wants to find her."

Arwen backed away from the door on silent feet, her mind reeling. The mysterious phone call, the pack's reaction tonight, the photograph of a woman who looked exactly like her—pieces of a puzzle she'd never known existed were finally starting to form a picture.

And tomorrow, she was going to demand answers. All of them.

Even if those answers destroyed the only life she'd ever known.

The locket in her jewelry box upstairs pulsed with warm silver light, as if responding to her determination. Whatever bloodline Elder Morrison had recognized, whatever power had exploded from her tonight, it was connected to that tarnished piece of jewelry and the mysterious woman in the photograph.

Outside her window, storm clouds gathered with unnatural speed, and Arwen wondered if that was her doing too. The thought should have been terrifying. Instead, for the first time in her life, she felt like she might finally understand what she was meant to be.

Just not what she'd expected.