I went downstairs first.

The kitchen was still a mess from three nights ago. The venison plate sat in the sink. And on the counter, half full and gone sour, was my glass of milk.

Nobody had even bothered to wash it.

I carried it back up the stairs and kicked the bedroom door wide open.

Elias was buttoning his shirt. Mara sat on the edge of the bed, picking frosting off the cake with one finger.

I hurled the glass at the floor.

It burst at Elias's feet. Milk and shards sprayed across his bare ankles, and he jumped back with a curse.

"Say it," I said.

"Vesper, have you lost your—"

"*Say it.* You put nightroot in that glass. You drugged me, and you carried me to Thorne's gate yourself."

He wiped a splash of milk off his shin. When he straightened, his face had gone hard.

"Fine. Yes. I sent you to Blackridge."

Just like that. No tears this time.

"I did it to protect the pack," he went on. "Six hundred wolves, Vesper. Children. Elders. You wanted me to let them die because you were too proud to make one sacrifice?"

"A sacrifice is something you *choose*."

Mara laughed and licked the frosting off her finger.

"Oh, listen to her." She stood and moved to Elias's side, sliding her hand into his. "You know what your problem is, cousin? You've always gotten everything. The best dresses. The Alpha's son. Everyone at every feast staring at your pretty face." She tilted her head. "Now you finally know what it feels like to be thrown away."

I stared at her. At the girl I'd shared a bedroom with for six winters after her parents died.

"I gave you a home, Mara."

"You gave me your leftovers."

I turned back to Elias and pointed straight at his chest.

"*You* sent me there. You. He didn't ask for me."

He didn't flinch. He stepped closer instead, sniffed the air near my collar, and pulled a face.

"And you came back stinking of him." His voice dropped low and cruel. "Do you know what the pack will say? That their Luna spent the night in the enemy King's bed. You're not clean anymore. I won't have a dirty Luna at my side."

Dirty.

From the man who'd tucked me into a stranger's sheets himself.

My wolf stirred under my ribs. She didn't growl. She went very, very quiet, the way she did right before a storm.

I lifted my chin.

"I, Vesper Lorne of Frostmere, reject you, Elias Durant, as my mate and my Alpha."

The words left my mouth, and the world tore in half.

Pain ripped through my chest like claws dragged from the inside out. My wolf threw herself against my ribs, howling, slamming again and again until I tasted blood. My knees hit the broken glass. I barely felt it.

Elias staggered too. He grabbed the bedpost, his face gray.

Then he laughed. Breathless and ugly.

"I accept," he gasped. "And let the record show *you* broke this bond. Not me. Whatever happens to you now, you did it to yourself."

The bond snapped.

Silence rushed into the space where he used to be. Cold. Enormous.

I knelt there, shaking, and Mara stepped right over my hand on her way to the door.

---

By noon, everyone knew.

Rejections echo through a pack link. Six hundred wolves felt their Luna's thread go dark.

I walked through the village to the healer's hut, and the silence followed me like a shadow.

Old Bram, whose leg I'd set last spring, turned his back when I passed. Ilsa, whose twins I'd delivered in a snowstorm, pulled her children inside and shut the door.

Nobody spoke to me.

But they all spoke about Mara. She stood at the well in the center of the square, holding up her left hand so the sun caught it.

My ring. The thin silver band with the moonstone Elias had slid onto my finger at our mating ceremony.

She'd taken it off my nightstand.

"Isn't it lovely?" she asked the women gathered around her. "Elias says it suits me better."

---

The healer's hut was locked.

I banged on the door until Elias's Beta opened it. Behind him, Elias leaned against my worktable with his arms crossed.

"I'm here for my things," I said. "My herbs. My medicine stock. The savings from five years of treating this pack. That money is mine."

"Nothing in here is yours," Elias said.

"I grew every one of those plants. I dried every root."

"On Frostmere land. With Frostmere coin." He pushed off the table. "You're a traitor, Vesper. You turned your back on your Alpha. Traitors don't get to walk away with anything."

I looked past him at the shelves. Jars of feverfew. Moonbark salve. The silverleaf I'd climbed the north cliffs to harvest the winter the sickness came.

The winter I'd saved his mother's life.

"Keep it," I said finally. "You'll need it when the fevers come back. Just remember who knew how to use it."

His smirk wavered. Only for a second.

---

The elders called the pack to the square at sunset.

Elder Corvan read the decision from a scroll. His hands trembled, but his voice didn't.

"Vesper Lorne, having rejected her Alpha and bonded herself to the scent of an enemy King, is hereby cast out of Frostmere. She will cross the border by nightfall and never return."

A murmur rolled through the crowd. Nobody objected.

Then hooves sounded at the gate.

Four riders in black leather waited just outside, their horses stamping in the cold. The lead rider was a broad, bearded man with a Blackridge crest on his shoulder.

"Vesper Lorne?" he called. "I'm Gareth Holm. The King sent us. We're to bring you back to Blackridge."

The crowd went dead quiet.

Elias's head snapped toward the gate. Something flashed across his face. Fear, maybe. Or jealousy.

Then Mara tucked herself under his arm, and Elder Corvan raised his hands over them both.

"May the moon bless your Alpha," he said, "and your new Luna."

The pack cheered.

The same wolves I'd fed. Stitched up. Sat beside through long nights while they burned with fever.

They cheered for her.

I turned my back on Frostmere and walked to the gate. Gareth held out a hand to help me onto the horse. I didn't take it. I climbed up on my own.

---

We rode through the night.

By dawn, the black towers of Blackridge cut into a pink sky. The castle gate swung open, and there he was.

Thorne stood on the top step, coat-less this time, his gray eyes fixed on me as I slid off the horse.

My heart pounded. I climbed three steps and stopped.

"You sent for me," I said.

"I sent an escort." His face gave away nothing. "Word travels fast. Your pack threw you out."

"Yes."

"And now you think Blackridge will take you in."

"I think you're the only one who saw what he did."

He held my gaze for a long, quiet moment. Then he turned to Gareth.

"Put her in the east wing. The last room at the end of the hall."

Gareth hesitated. "Sire, that wing hasn't been used in—"

"I know how long it's been." Thorne looked back at me, and his voice went flat as stone. "You have three days, Vesper Lorne. Rest. Eat. Heal. Then you leave my land."

He walked inside without another word.

The door swung shut behind him.

Three days.

I stared at the closed door and almost smiled.

Three days was more than enough.

The room at the end of the east wing had one bed, one window, and one guard.

He planted himself outside my door like a tree.

"Is he going to stand there all night?" I asked. "To keep me in? Or to keep you out?"

Thorne's mouth didn't move. "To keep you from wandering into rooms you don't belong in."

I untied the sash of the robe a servant had left me and let one side slip off my shoulder. Slowly. I took one step toward him, then another, until I could smell cedar on his collar.

"You sent riders for me," I said softly. "Kings don't do that for women they plan to throw out."

I lifted my hand to his chest.

He caught my wrist before I touched him. His grip was warm and absolutely steady.

"Fix your robe."

He pulled the fabric back onto my shoulder himself, the way you'd straighten a blanket on a sleeping child. Then he released me.

"I know your plan," he said.

My face went hot.

"You want to ruin Elias? Good. He deserves it." His gray eyes went cold. "Do it yourself. Don't treat me like your knife."

"And if I'm not strong enough on my own?"

"Then get stronger." He turned for the hall. "Goodnight, Vesper Lorne."

The door clicked shut. The guard shifted outside.

---

The moon wasn't due to fill for two more nights.

It rose anyway. Swollen. Red-gold.

The howl came first. It started low, somewhere deep in the castle, and climbed until the glass in my window split corner to corner with a crack like river ice.

Then the whole fortress answered. Hundreds of wolves, howling back.

I yanked the door open. The guard was gone. Boots pounded somewhere below, and men shouted.

I followed the sound to the north tower.

Gareth stood outside a heavy oak door, his back pressed flat against it. Long gouges ran down the wood from the inside.

"Go back to your room," he barked.

"What's happening to him?"

"The early moon. His heat came with it." Something slammed into the door, and Gareth's whole body jolted. "It happens to the strongest Alphas. He locks himself in and he rides it out. Alone."

"How long?"

"Until it breaks." His jaw was tight. "Or he does."

Another blow. The hinges groaned.

"He's going to tear through that door," I said.

"He won't. He'd rip his own hands off first."

I stared at the claw marks. At the blood smeared across the lowest one.

He'd sent me home with his coat. He'd sniffed nightroot in my veins and gone rage on my behalf.

And he was the most powerful weapon in the north.

"Move," I said.

"Absolutely not."

"Gareth. He's bleeding." I set my palm on the wood. "If he wants me gone, he'll throw me out himself."

He stared at me for a long beat. Then he slid the bolt.

---

The room was dark and burning hot.

Thorne crouched against the far wall, shirtless, his chest heaving. His veins stood out like cords. His knuckles were raw. When he lifted his head, his eyes weren't gray anymore. They were molten silver.

"Get. Out."

His voice came out wrecked, half human.

"No."

"Vesper." He dug his fingers into the stone floor. "I will hurt you."

"You sent me home untouched when I was drugged in your bed." I stepped closer. "You won't hurt me."

I stopped holding my scent back. I let it pour off my skin, warm and sweet and wild, the scent I'd kept locked down my whole marriage because Elias said it was too much.

Thorne went rigid. A growl rolled out of his chest.

"Don't," he rasped. "Don't do this for revenge."

"Maybe I'm doing it because you're bleeding all over your floor." I knelt in front of him. "Tell me no, Thorne. Say no and I'll walk out."

He didn't say no.

He said my name instead, like it hurt.

I kissed him.

He froze for one heartbeat. Then his hand fisted in my hair and he kissed me back, hard and hungry, his teeth catching my bottom lip.

"Last chance," he growled against my mouth.

"I don't want it."

He tore the robe open. His mouth found my breast and sucked my nipple hard, and I arched off the floor with a cry.

"Fuck, Vesper. You smell like you're already mine."

"Then fucking take me."

He lifted me like I weighed nothing and pinned me against the wall. I wrapped my legs around his hips. I felt his cock, thick and hot, pressing against my wet pussy.

"Look at me," he said.

I did. Silver eyes. Scarred brow.

He pushed inside me in one long, brutal stroke.

The stretch stole my voice. My nails dug into his shoulders.

"Thorne—fuck—"

"Too much?"

"Don't you dare stop."

He didn't. He fucked me against the stone, deep and relentless, every thrust jolting a moan out of me. His mouth dragged across my throat. His teeth grazed the spot where a mark would go and stopped, shaking.

"Not the mark," he gritted out. "Not tonight."

"Harder, Thorne."

He carried me to the floor, flipped me onto my hands and knees, and drove back into me from behind. His hand spread across my belly and pulled me back onto his cock.

"Come for me, Vesper. I want to feel you."

I came screaming his name. My pussy clenched around him, and he swore and came hard inside me, his forehead pressed to my spine.

It didn't break his heat.

It barely dented it.

He took me again on the rug. Again with my back on the cold stone. The window turned from red to black to gray. Somewhere around the fourth time, my arms stopped holding me up.

I felt him lift me. Felt soft sheets under my back. A blanket drawn up to my chin.

"Sleep," he murmured.

My last clear thought before the dark pulled me under was almost funny.

Elias had never once lasted past midnight.

---

I woke to sunlight and silence.

Thorne stood by the cracked window, fully dressed, buttoning his cuffs. His knuckles were wrapped in clean linen. His eyes were gray again.

"You're awake," he said.

I sat up, clutching the sheet. Every muscle I owned ached.

"Thorne, about last night—"

"Breakfast is outside the door. Gareth will walk you back to the east wing." He turned. His face gave away absolutely nothing. "Eat something."

That was all.

No mention of anything that had happened last night.

He reached for the door handle, then paused.

"Two days left," he said without looking back.

Then he was gone.

And that was when I noticed the thin silver chain on the pillow beside me. It held a small pendant, a wolf's tooth bound in wire.