A brief opening exchange shows Jerzy doubting his own suspicion about Serena while admitting that, even if he is right, it will not change what must be done. In the present, Serena comes downstairs sore and exhausted after the previous night’s violence and finds Amanda in Koen’s kitchen. Amanda explains that Koen is meeting with huddle leaders about another problem, not Serena herself, and then outlines how the Northwest pack works: five geographic huddles advise Koen through an Assembly, but his seconds serve solely because he chooses them.

As Amanda talks, Serena compares the Northwest to other packs and reflects on how feared Koen’s territory is. She remembers Alex describing the pack’s brutal border policy, Koen’s role in helping raise Lowe, and the respect Koen commands because he reunited a once-fractured pack. Those memories explain why Serena, even when desperate for Were help in the past, never would have chosen the Northwest on her own.

When Amanda reminds Serena about a scheduled call with Juno, Serena braces for the family information she once avoided. She reflects on her childhood in institutions and on why she had never been eager to search for her parents: any answer seemed likely to end in pain rather than closure. Only after learning that she was dying did Serena finally ask Juno to run her DNA against Were databases, driven by mortality and a need to know what, if anything, would remain of her.

On the call, Juno and Misery join Serena. Juno first apologizes for the Human genetic counselor who publicly disclosed Serena’s reproductive diagnosis, adding that he has been suspended; this confirms that Koen has already acted on Serena’s behalf. Juno then reveals the first major result of the DNA search: Serena’s Were parent was her father, not her mother, a fact Serena had somehow missed in the public reporting.

That discovery matters immediately to Serena because it means she is biologically different from Ana, whose hybrid inheritance runs the other way. Juno explains that Serena already presents as more Human than Ana, so it is reasonable to expect different hybrid traits and possibly different long-term consequences. Serena is quietly relieved by the possibility that Ana may not share her own fate, even while concealing the depth of that relief from Misery.

Juno continues with the ancestry search results. Serena’s DNA does not match known relatives in the Southwest, and searches of other American pack databases also fail to identify her father; however, Juno notes that one pack’s records are unreliable because its structure changed repeatedly and many records were lost. Serena realizes the implication before Juno says it outright: the missing pack is the Northwest, meaning her paternal line most likely traces back to Koen’s territory.