After the ninety-ninth time I performed the moonsong in Vesper Duskmire's place and won a standing ovation, I was thrown from a high balcony.

Both my hands were shattered, and I lost my first pup with Cassian Thornridge.

It was all because Heir Alpha Kael Nightbane had issued a search across the Mooncrown Dominion for a rare moonsong singer, declaring that whoever won the grand competition would be offered an arranged mating into the Heir Alpha's den.

Vesper had only heard me sing once, by accident, before she begged Cassian to let me compete under her name.

I owed Cassian my life. I agreed without hesitation.

But every opponent I defeated only deepened Vesper's hatred.

She severed the tendons in both my feet, slashed my face, and even forced a wolfsbane-laced suppressant down my throat so I could no longer speak.

I begged Cassian to stand up for me, and all I got was that weightless voice of his.

"Vesper grew up in a rural branch pack. She's a little rough around the edges, but she doesn't mean real harm. She's just afraid someone will find out you've been performing in her place and it'll bring trouble..."

"Bear with it a little longer. Once she's in the Heir Alpha's den, you and I will have our mating ceremony. I'll find the best moon-healers to treat you, and I promise you'll be good as new."

What he didn't know was that my memory was already returning.

And he would never live to see our bonding day.

——

Consciousness came back slowly, and the pain wracking my body pinned me in place.

I could half-remember now: my moonsong had drawn the Heir Alpha's attention mid-performance.

He'd turned, walked toward me as if pulled by something he couldn't name, and was about to lift the curtain. Vesper, terrified that the deception would be exposed, had shoved me straight out the upper-floor window.

A strange, unfamiliar pain pulsed low in my belly.

I was still trying to understand it when Cassian's and Vesper's voices drifted closer.

Vesper was weeping, that breathy, trembling way she always wept: "Cousin... I really didn't mean to. I was only trying to pull her back, but she lost her footing near the window and fell. I didn't even know she was carrying a pup... I'm so scared..."

A pup.

My hand moved to my stomach before I could think.

So that was what had just been taken from me.

"Don't cry, Vesper. It's not your fault. She's the one to blame, keeping a pregnancy secret like that..."

"Besides, she's always been frail. Even without what happened yesterday, she probably couldn't have carried a pup to term."

Cassian's voice was gentle, patient, soothing the red-eyed woman in his arms. His scent, pine resin and rain-soaked stone, carried no grief at all. Just the calm musk of a wolf tending something precious, and it wasn't me.

And every word drove into my chest like the slow push of a needle, over and over, until I couldn't breathe.

I clenched the bedding beneath me so hard my knuckles ached, and forced every tear back down. Somewhere deep inside, my wolf lay curled and silent, too broken even to whimper.

Five years ago, Cassian had pulled me from a border kill field. I had no memory, no more sense than a frightened pup, terrified of everything. I couldn't shift. I couldn't even remember what my own wolf looked like.

He was patient and tender, teaching me little by little how to exist in the world, how to live like a normal person.

The year we were closest, he whispered a vow against my ear: he would help me recover my past, find my bloodline, and stay by my side until we were old and gray.

Then Vesper's mother died, and Vesper came to Cassian for refuge, and everything changed.

There was a time when I pricked my finger sewing him a sachet and he fretted over it for half the day.

Now we had lost our pup, and I couldn't find a trace of grief on him.

He had stood by and let Vesper ruin me into something crippled, mute, and scarred beyond recognition.

Footsteps stopped at my bedside. Cassian sat down on the edge. His scent settled over me, familiar as an old wound.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner that you were carrying?"

I moved my hand, tried to gesture something, but in the end let it fall.

Vesper had driven me to practice day and night without a moment's rest, not even for sleep. How was I supposed to notice a pup growing inside me?

And a moon cycle ago, Vesper had poured that wolfsbane suppressant into me. I hadn't been able to speak a single word since. How exactly was I supposed to tell him?

When I closed my eyes and refused to look at him, he took my hand gently, his thumb stroking the back of it, slow and soft.

"Nira."

"What happened to the pup… that was my fault. Once you're better, I'll give you anything you want. That garden in the Southlands you love so much — I'll buy it for you, and it'll be our den after the mating ceremony. How does that sound?"

"And that ruby jewelry set you had your eye on last time — I'll send someone to the western territories right now to have it made…"

He paused, drew a long breath.

"As for Vesper… she really didn't mean it. She lost her parents young, and I spoiled her, but she's not bad at heart. Don't hate her. Do it for me, if nothing else. Can you do that?"

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. "Once Vesper is mated off, we'll have our ceremony. I'll make it grand. And then we'll have lots and lots of pups…"

I jerked my face away, dodging his lips.

His scent — pine resin, rain-soaked stone — settled over me like something that used to mean safety. Now it only made my stomach turn.

I hadn't told him that the last few times Vesper had driven me to the edge of death, I'd seen things in my dreams — fragments of a life before this one.

Each time, right when I was about to learn who I really was, the vision broke apart.

But the pattern was clear: every time they broke me, another piece of my memory came back.

All I had to do was wait. Once my memory returned and I found my pack, I wouldn't need him anymore.

Cassian's brow creased at my coldness.

"Nira, I'm already begging you. What more do you want?"

"Vesper was right — I'm the one who spoiled you. Let you think that having some talent at moonsong meant you could act however you pleased!"

"But you might want to take a good look at yourself right now. Drive me away, and what wolf would have you? Or would you rather go back to being a nameless ghost with no pack in the world?"

My eyes flew open, staring at him in disbelief.

The impatience on his face, the casual cruelty — and I understood that the man who had once so carefully soothed every flicker of my fear was gone.

How much I'd been made to suffer for Vesper's sake these past moon cycles, I couldn't even count anymore.

The day Vesper first arrived at the estate, she said my rooms had the best view and wanted to swap.

Cassian defended me without hesitation — said I was settled there, it wasn't convenient to move, and told her to pick somewhere else.

It was me who couldn't bear to put him in that position, so I offered to move on my own.

Cassian was so touched by my selflessness that he moved me into his own study. After that, we were together morning and night.

I thought he would always favor me like that.

But it wasn't long before Vesper invited me to see the frost-blooming trees behind the ridge.

When we reached the lake, she shoved me in.

Freezing water flooded my nose and mouth. I couldn't swim. I thrashed, screaming his name over and over.

Cassian took his time calming a hysterical Vesper before he ordered anyone to pull me out.

And even then, he pushed Vesper aside first — then came for me.

When I was dragged from the water, his first words weren't concern. They were blame.

"How could you be so careless? The ice was that thin and you were still playing around?"

"Cousin, I don't even know what happened — I felt someone push me, and I almost fell into the lake myself, so I grabbed at whatever I could, and I accidentally dragged Nira down with me…"

Vesper's version was deliberately vague. Her scent had been sharp with jasmine and copper that day, the way it always turned when she was performing distress.

But the way Cassian looked at me changed instantly.

"You two were the only ones there. Nira — did you hold a grudge over Vesper taking your rooms? Did you try to push her into the lake and end up falling in yourself?"

My mouth opened and closed, the injustice choking me, but I couldn't force out a single word in my own defense.

Once he suspected me, any explanation would have been useless anyway.

Then came the autumn hunt. Vesper's horse spooked and threw her — she scraped her skin.

My horse had been tampered with. I was flung from the saddle, and three of my ribs snapped clean.

Cassian scooped her up without a second glance and ran for the pack healer. I screamed after his retreating back until my voice broke, but he never once turned around.

The den attendants carried me back. I had barely finished having my wounds dressed when he stormed in, livid.

He accused me of drugging Vesper's horse, of being the reason she'd been thrown.

He didn't ask a single question before ordering the flogging.

The attendants wielding the rods had their instructions. It took only two or three blows to shatter both my legs.

After that, every slight Vesper suffered, every grievance she nursed, Cassian laid at my feet.

I was bitter, furious, and yet part of me still believed Vesper had deceived him, bewitched him into treating me this way.

Now I saw it for what it was.

He had never held me in his heart. He never would.

A dazed laugh left me, and I shook my head. Something flickered across Cassian's face, and he began to lift his hand toward my hair.

Then Vesper's voice cut in.

"Cousin, you don't understand how a woman's mind works. She's only upset because you're good to me. This pitiful act is just to make you feel sorry for her..."

"We're both women. Why don't you leave her with me? Let me talk some sense into her. She might come around."

"But..."

Cassian's gaze drifted between the two of us, hesitant.

"Cousin! I'll be entering the Heir Alpha's den in a few days. After that it'll just be the two of you here. If I don't smooth things over with Nira now, and you two end up at odds because of me, I'll never forgive myself..."

Cassian could never stand to see Vesper upset. He nodded, rose, and left.

A sly smile curled the corner of Vesper's mouth.

"Now it's just us. Finally, no need to pretend..."

"I haven't even thanked you properly. Without you, the Heir Alpha would never have noticed me. It's not the title of Heir Alpha's mate, but for someone of my standing, just being allowed to serve at his side is more than I could've hoped for..."

"Still, keeping you around is a liability. If the Heir Alpha ever finds out... No. I will never give him the chance."

"Until I leave for my mating ceremony, you're not setting foot outside this room. Not until I've secured my position in the Heir Alpha's den. And if you ever pull what you did that day again, if you so much as catch his eye, I'll have Cassian kill you."

She dropped that threat like a parting gift, turned on her heel, and locked the door from the outside, every bolt thrown tight.

I lay on the bed and let the tears soak into the pillow.

Three full days. Apart from the attendant who brought meals, the silence around me was terrifying. I drifted in and out of consciousness, fever rising and falling, and images streamed through my dreams that I could not tell from memory.

One moment it was warhorses and clashing steel, bodies crumpling before me one after another. The tang of blood so sharp I could taste iron on my tongue even in sleep, and somewhere beneath it a scent I couldn't name, something cold and clean like snow cedar carried on winter wind.

The next, someone was gripping my hand, calling me "Sister."

Just as the face was about to come into focus, the dream shattered. My eyes flew open to an empty room, and a single thought took root in my mind.

If teetering on the edge of death could summon visions like these, then maybe all I needed was to try again. And again. Until I finally learned who I really was.

I dragged myself upright and rummaged through the cabinet until I found a length of white silk.

I flung it over the ceiling beam and knotted it tight.

The instant my neck slipped through the loop, the fabric bit into my throat.

Agony and suffocation crashed over me at once, and everything went black.

Consciousness peeled away, and the face from my dream sharpened, inch by inch. Something deep inside me stirred, a presence I had no name for, pressing forward as if it too wanted to see.

I was so close to seeing it clearly.

BANG.

The door was kicked open.

Vesper stood in the doorway, two senior den attendants behind her, a bowl of broth in her hands.

"Oh my. Still alive?"

She strolled in with a smile, crouched down, and peered at me. "Trying to die? Did you ask my permission first?"

I lifted my head. My throat hurt too much to speak.