Epilogue The Perimeter
Nia
The kid looks half-dead when he reaches the perimeter.
He's young, maybe twenty if he were still human, and he's been walking for days. You can tell by the way his boots are falling apart and the hollow look around his eyes. He stops at the edge of the asphalt, staring.
No walls. No checkpoints. Just a clean two-lane road leading into a quiet neighborhood with mailboxes and porches and a couple of kids riding bikes in the distance.
He takes one step forward and three guards materialize out of nowhere, rifles up, barrels inches from his chest.
"Stop."
The kid freezes. Puts his hands up. "I'm here to join. I heard this is the strongest—"
"Turn your head."
He does. The guard on the left leans in, studying the side of his skull. There's a patch of gray fur behind his ear, no bigger than a thumbprint.
"Incomplete integration," the guard says. "Denied entry."
"What?" The kid's voice cracks. "It's just a little bit, I can cover it, I—"
"Move to the holding area or leave the territory. Those are your options."
The kid stumbles back, shoved by the barrel in his ribs, and ends up in a roped-off zone to the side of the road where a dozen others are waiting. Some of them look like they've been there for weeks.
An older man with a shaved head glances over. Sees the kid's mouth opening.
"Don't," the man says.
"This is insane." The kid's voice is loud, too loud. "We're wolves. Why are we pretending to be—"
The man's hand clamps over his mouth, hard enough to hurt. His eyes are wide and he's shaking his head, frantic.
"Shut up," he hisses. "Two idiots tried to force their way in last month. Thought the rule was a joke. The Alpha broke every bone in their bodies and dumped them back out here like roadkill." He lets go, steps back. "You don't go in there unless you can pass. And you don't ask why."
The kid swallows and doesn't say another word.
At the front of the line, Nia stamps another form and waves the next one through.
She's fast. Efficient. She checks ears, hairline, nails, teeth. Anyone with even a hint of something wrong gets turned away. The ones who pass move to the second stage. A briefing: what not to say, what not to do, where not to look. Then a form, signed before they leave.
Only a few are ever cleared for the inner district.
She used to go in there. Used to sit with Rosie in the kitchen and teach her how to say wolf words, back when Rosie still knew what wolves were.
Not anymore.
Nia's face is fully human now, but it's still the same face Rosie saw in the nightmare. The Alpha made that very clear. If Rosie sees her, she might remember. And if she remembers, the whole thing falls apart.
So Nia stays out here. Runs the border. Keeps the wrong ones out and the right ones quiet.
It's not a bad trade. She got three promotions for her service during the Luna's delivery. Now she controls the entire outer perimeter. It's more power than she ever expected to have.
She just can't use it to go home.
A memory surfaces, sharp and uninvited.
She was in his office a month ago, standing by the one-way glass that looks down onto the center of town. Below, Rosie was in the garden, kneeling by a flowerbed with Luca on a blanket beside her. The sun was shining. She was smiling.
Nia couldn't help herself.
"Do you really think you can keep this going forever?"
The silence that followed was long enough that she thought he might kill her for asking.
Then he turned his head, just slightly, still looking at Rosie through the glass.
"Why couldn't I?"
His voice was lazy. Curious. Like he genuinely wanted to know what she thought could possibly go wrong.
Nia didn't answer. There was nothing to say to someone who'd built an entire town just to keep one woman in the dark.
She comes back to the present, signs the last clearance form of the hour, and looks out at the neighborhood in the distance. Perfect lawns. Clean streets. A couple walking a dog.
It's the strongest pack on the continent, and it looks like a retirement community.
She turns back toward the checkpoint and mutters under her breath, too quiet for anyone else to hear.
"You're the king. You make the rules." She shakes her head. "But I knew her before you rewrote her. And that woman's got instincts like a knife."
She walks back to her post, boots crunching on gravel, and doesn't look at the town again.
"Hope you've got a plan for when she figures it out."