"Miss Thornwood, we've found a body in the wildlands. The features match your mother's. We need you to come and identify her."

My smile, reflected in the mirror of the ceremonial-robe den, shattered with a single call across the sending-stone.

The Healer's morgue reeked of wolfsbane and something older, something that clung to the cold stone walls like a confession no one wanted to hear. When they pulled back the shroud, her body was barely recognizable. Her eyes, gone. Her organs, ripped out like she'd been nothing more than game dragged down by a starving pack. The scent that should have been hers, silver cherry-blossom and warm hearthsmoke and clean linen left in the sun, had been hollowed out of her, leaving only blood and rot.

I collapsed, a scream tearing from my throat as the world turned black. Deep inside me, my wolf threw back her head and howled a sound I had never made before.

When I came to, my intended mate, Lucan Bloodfang, was sitting by my side in the dim Healing Hall. He gently wiped away my tears and pressed his lips to my forehead with the tenderness of a man who'd rehearsed the gesture.

"We caught the bastard who did it," he whispered against my skin. "I made sure… he paid for what he did to your mother."

He swore that, for the rest of his life, he'd love and protect me the way she used to.

But that night, jolted awake by another nightmare, my mother's hollowed face swimming behind my eyelids, I caught something outside the bedchamber. A scent that didn't belong. Through the crack in the door, golden lamplight spilled across Lucan's back as he held my half-sister, Mirella Thornwood, in his arms. Her scent reached me first, overripe jasmine with sweet rot beneath it, and my wolf rose under my skin with a low, suspicious growl I had to swallow down.

She was sobbing into his chest, her whole body trembling like a wounded animal.

"If she ever finds out the truth… she'll kill me."

Lucan cupped her face, gentle as ever, gentler than he'd ever been with me.

"Hey, it's not your fault. You didn't know those wolves were slavers. You're a victim too."

The chill in my bones cut deeper than any winter wind off the coast. I could hardly breathe.

So this was it. My mother died… because of Mirella. And the man who swore to protect me was shielding her.

Lucan finally sent Mirella away, the heavy oak door clicking shut behind her, and turned around, only to see me, collapsed on the cold stone floor like a broken doll.

His expression flickered, guilt, frustration, then hardened into something I didn't recognize.

"So you heard everything?"

His tone turned cold, like I was the problem. Like I was the inconvenience.

"Don't blame Mirella. Your mother got greedy, okay? She kept pestering Mirella to help her trade for territory rights. She brought this on herself."

He tossed a blank Blood Oath parchment on the table like it meant nothing. The page landed with a whisper that echoed like a slap.

"Write whatever claim you want. But forget what you've heard. Let's pretend nothing happened for now. The Mating Ceremony is in five nights. We'll go through with it, peacefully."

I stared at the man who once swore he'd love me for the rest of his life. Now, he felt like a stranger wearing a familiar face.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.

If my mating was doomed to become my mother's funeral, then five nights from now… I'd return the favor, with interest.

……

I said nothing. He grew impatient, yanking the leather cord from his throat and tossing it on the nightstand with barely concealed irritation.

"If you get it, then go to sleep."

But something snapped in me. The grief, the rage, it all poured out, raw and shaking, like blood from a wound that refused to close.

"Pretend? Are you fucking serious?!"

"You knew. You knew my mother was the only family I had. And you knew how much it meant to her to see me robed before the Moon Goddess. And Mirella fucking destroyed it!"

Did he really not understand why my mother was desperate to earn her place?

The Bloodfang Pack had looked down on us from the start. His parents, Alpha-Patriarch Mordecai and Luna Vesper Bloodfang, barely tolerated my presence at their table. To them, I was the daughter of an Omega servant, no matter that my mother had once saved their precious pup-heir's life. And my mother, Goddess, she tried so hard to make me worthy in their eyes. That's why she went to Mirella, thinking maybe this time, things would be different. Maybe blood would finally mean something.

I could still hear the arbiter's voice in my head: "Your mother tracked those wolves down to try and get her share back. She didn't know they were part of a rogue slaver-pack, the flesh trade. They carved her up and took everything they could sell."

I couldn't stop crying. Each word came out like a blade. "If it weren't for Mirella and her mother, none of this would've happened. All I want is justice for my mother, and you want to keep me from that?"

"Enough, Selene!" Lucan barked, his face suddenly dark as a storm rolling in off the sea, and for an instant his alpha aura pressed down on the room like a hand at the back of my neck. "Mirella was conned too. She lost everything. And you? Instead of showing any compassion, you've been running around the territory telling everyone she's your father's baseborn whelp. Do you even have a heart?"

"Compassion?" I let out a hollow, bitter laugh that scraped my throat raw. "What about my mother? She died in the most horrific way imaginable!"

"She died because she got greedy and made stupid choices," he scoffed, his lip curling back from his teeth in contempt. "Mirella had nothing to do with it. Don't even think about laying a finger on her."

His voice was frost-edged now, sharp enough to draw blood. I shook from the inside out. My wolf paced behind my ribs, hackles up, snarling at the wrongness of his scent, scorched oak and copper and the sour note of ash gone cold.

I gripped the front of my silk nightgown like it would hold my chest together, like it could keep my heart from spilling out onto the floor. The pale stone blurred under the torrent of my tears.

"Lucan," I whispered. "Have you forgotten? When you were snatched, when that rival pack dragged you off our hunting grounds, who risked everything to save you? Who fought off those wolves with her bare hands until your father's warriors arrived?"

"And what about the day she lay in that Healing Hall, broken and bleeding, and you knelt at her side and swore before the Moon Goddess you'd never hurt me? That you'd take care of me for the rest of your life? That was a blood debt, Lucan. A sacred oath of blood. And you swore on your bloodline's honor."

His jaw clenched, his expression hardening into granite. "Don't throw ancient history in my face. I've given you and your mother everything for years, food, shelter, a place in this den, respect you never earned. Whatever debt I had, I paid it off a long time ago."

Then, as if to twist the knife deeper, he let out a bitter laugh.

"This is about gold moons, isn't it?"

He flicked the parchment at me again. The edge sliced across my cheek, drawing a thin line of blood that dripped onto the pristine pale stone. I caught the scent of my own blood in the air, and my wolf went very still.

I bit down hard, fists clenched until my nails bit like claws into my palms. "I don't want your moon-credits. I want Mirella held accountable for what she's done."

He chuckled, a smug little breath through his nose, the sound of a wolf who'd never been told no. "Go ahead. Let's see which bound advocate is dumb enough to take that case and face the Bloodfang Pack before any Council in these territories."

"Know your place." His eyes narrowed, cold and reptilian. "I won't have a hysterical lunatic as my Luna. This ends now."

His crystal communicator chimed. He glanced at the surface, and just like that, his face lit up like a pup at the Blood Moon feast.

"A gift? From you? That's so thoughtful. Honestly, those packmates only swore on because of you."

"What? No carriage? Don't worry, I'm coming to fetch you right now. Just stay put, bella."

He didn't even look back at me as he walked out, his footsteps echoing down the corridor like a death knell.

I stared at the door as it closed behind him. My tears burned down my cheeks like acid.

Fine. If this is how it's going to be, so be it.

I just stood there, staring after the man I used to love, tears searing tracks down my face. Fine. If that's how he wanted to play it, then so be it.

I turned to pack my belongings, my hands steady despite the trembling in my chest. But then the sending-stone hummed again.

"Miss Thornwood," the arbiter's bound advocate said cheerfully, his voice dripping with false courtesy, "since you've withdrawn the claim in your mother's case, the Council is closing the investigation. Just letting you know."

The link went dead.

I hadn't withdrawn anything.

I froze. The words hung in the air like smoke from a spent fire. Withdrawn the blood oath? What in the Moon Goddess's name were they talking about?

I ran to the arbiter's den as fast as my legs could carry me, my paws of grief pounding the rain-slicked stone like desperate heartbeats. But by the time I arrived, breathless and wild-eyed, the file, my mother's blood-oath record, had already been fed to the flames. Ash. That was all that remained of justice. Curls of charred parchment scattered across the dark oak desk like funeral petals.

Everything blurred. I collapsed to my knees on the woven floor-pelt, my fingers clawing at the arbiter's sleeve, my voice fracturing into something raw and unrecognizable. Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, my wolf made a sound I'd never heard her make, a low keening that had no name.

"You promised. You swore before the Moon Goddess you'd help me get justice for my mother!"

The arbiter, a wolf who'd built his rank on serving the great packs, looked away, unable to meet my eyes. He exhaled slowly, the breath heavy with resignation.

"The one who withdrew the complaint was your intended mate. Lucan Bloodfang." He paused, letting the name settle between us like a blade across the throat. "None of us stand in a position to defy the Bloodfang Alpha-heir. The pack's reach runs further than you know. I am truly sorry, Miss Thornwood."

And just like that, with a small tilt of his head to his wolves, two of them escorted me out into the street. Their grips were firm but not cruel. They had done this before.

But I wasn't giving up.

There had to be someone in this godforsaken territory who still had a spine. Someone who hadn't been bought, threatened, or broken by the Bloodfang Pack's iron jaw.

Hands shaking, I sent word through every bound advocate I could reach, wolves who had spoken for council enforcers, who had won the freedom of made killers, who supposedly feared nothing. One by one, they turned me away. The replies came back the same, delivered in hushed, apologetic tones across the sending-stones.

"Sorry, Miss Thornwood. Lucan Bloodfang made it very clear. Any wolf who touches that case will find themselves on the wrong side of the pack by the next moonrise. We can't help you. You understand."

I dropped to the cold stone outside the last den, my knees striking the ground. My palm landed on jagged rock, blood seeping from the cut and mixing with the grime of the alley, yet I barely felt a thing. The physical pain was nothing compared to the hollow ache consuming my chest.

When I was sixteen, my father cast Mom and me out of our den like we were nothing. The same day, Mirella and her mother moved in, his mistress and her baseborn daughter, finally claiming what they'd been circling for years.

I still remember Mirella, just thirteen, smirking from the staircase as we carried our belongings past her. Her eyes glittered with triumph, and in that moment I learned the truth that had been hidden from me my whole childhood. My father, Garrick Thornwood, had kept a second she-wolf for years. We were the trueborn family, but we were also the disposable ones.

Mom and I ended up in the wildlands with nothing but the pelts on our backs and whatever dignity we could scrape together. One freezing night, huddled beneath a broken bridge for warmth, we stumbled into the middle of a snatch. A crew of wolves in black, killers, clearly, were dragging a young wolf toward a waiting carriage. Even in the dark, even half-frozen and starving, I caught the scent and knew the face from the council talk.

Lucan Bloodfang. Alpha-heir of the Bloodfang Pack. Being seized by a rival pack.

Mom didn't hesitate. She threw herself into the fray, fighting like a she-wolf possessed, screaming for me to run and howl for help. By the time the Bloodfang warriors arrived, she'd driven off three armed wolves with nothing but tooth and claw and a broken shard of glass. She nearly died doing it. They cut her over and over, but she wouldn't stop. Wouldn't let them take him.

Afterward, Lucan brought us into the Bloodfang territory, against his parents' furious objections. Vesper Bloodfang looked at us like we were strays he'd dragged in from the gutter, her scent of cold bergamot and frostbitten lily sharpening with contempt. But her son, her precious heir, insisted. He said he owed us a blood oath before the Moon Goddess.

Mom turned down his offer to keep us as dependents. She had too much pride for charity. Instead she served as an Omega in the Bloodfang den, earning her place with honest labor. I crossed into Lucan's academy. Day after day, I watched that sweet, gentle wolf, the one who carried wildflowers to my mother while she healed, who sat by her bedside reading to her, grow into someone I couldn't help falling for.

He loved me back. On my twentieth Moon Blessing Day, before my mother and the whole household of Omega servants, he knelt and took my hand. His voice was steady, his eyes bright with sincerity.

"I swear before the Moon Goddess," he said, "I'll spend the rest of my life protecting you. You'll want for nothing. You'll fear nothing. This I promise."

But all that started changing a year ago.

He went out one night, some gathering at one of the pack's clubs, drinks with allied wolves. When he came back, something was different. His scent of scorched oak carried a sour note I couldn't place. He started speaking of Mirella differently.

"She's not who I thought she was," he said one night, loosening his collar as he paced our chamber. "She's working three keeps to pay for her own schooling. Can you believe that? The daughter of a wolf like Garrick, scraping by like a common stray."

"And listen to this." His eyes lit with something I didn't recognize. "Some ranked wolf tried to proposition her, said he'd set her up as his kept she-wolf, shower her with moonstones. She stood and struck him across the muzzle in front of everyone. What a fierce female."

Then he added, his tone shifting to something almost accusing, "I know the two of you never got along. But maybe it's because you never gave her a real chance. If you spent some time with her, maybe you'd see how lovable she is."

My gut was screaming that something was off. My wolf paced beneath my skin, hackles half-raised, because the sister who'd smirked at my ruin was playing a long game. But I brushed it aside. Told myself I was only being paranoid. That the old wounds were making me see enemies where there were none.

And then, not long after, one of the mated females in our circle told me Lucan had acquired a bracelet. Not just any bracelet, an ancient piece that had once belonged to highborn she-wolves of an old bloodline. A princess of the line had worn it to her crowning. It was worth more than most wolves earned in a lifetime.

So naturally I thought, maybe he bought it for my Moon Blessing Day. A grand gesture, the kind he used to make when we first fell in love.

But on the day itself, Mirella posted to the spirit network. That exact bracelet, worth a fortune, irreplaceable, mine by every right of love and loyalty, was clasped around her slender wrist. In the image, a male hand held hers, fingers laced together with intimate familiarity. I knew those hands. I'd held them a thousand times.

That night I waited until the last candle burned itself out, the wax pooling on the untouched cake. Lucan never came home.

It was the first time he ever forgot my Moon Blessing Day.

After that he always had some excuse for missing our important moons, the anniversaries, the celebrations, the milestones that mark a life shared between two wolves. There was always a council sit-down that ran late, a problem with the pack patrols, an emergency that demanded him.

At the same time Mirella's spirit network kept updating with careful, calculated cruelty. His familiar shape in the background of her images. His unmarked fingers around a cup of wine in dens I'd never been taken to. His body behind fogged glass, the image cropped just enough to keep deniability.

Six moons ago we had sealed our blood oath, the bond-vow that would tie me to the Bloodfang Pack forever. He told me he wanted to give me the perfect Mating Ceremony. A rite worthy of the future Luna.

Now I know there won't be a ceremony at all.

I picked up the sending-stone and called his private line. My voice, when I spoke, was cold as the grave.

"You wanted my bloodline claim in the Bloodfang territory, didn't you? The tribute rights you signed over to me?" I didn't wait for his answer. "I'm signing them back. All of them."

It was a gift he'd given me the day he finally won me over, those rights. A share of the pack's legitimate holdings, the kind of standing that made a she-wolf untouchable. I told him it was too much, that I didn't need his fortune, only his heart. But he held my hand tight and insisted I seal the papers.

That gentle voice still echoes in my mind like a cruel ghost of who he used to be:

"Baby, if you want the stars or the moon, I'll reach up and pull them down for you. What are a few claims next to that?"

I know now, what we had, it was real. Once. But wolves change. Hearts grow cold. And love? Love is never immortal. It can be killed like anything else.

The boy who once held me like I was his whole world, he's long gone. Swallowed by time and ambition and the poison my sister dripped into his ear, night after night.

Just as I ended the call, my sending-stone lit with a message from Lucan.

[Calmed down yet? I've arranged the burial ground and paid the funeral rites. Satisfied now? Stop testing my patience, Selene.]

Another followed almost at once:

[Did you not see my message? Get to my office at the club. Now. Seal the non-prosecution oath for Mirella. This matter needs to disappear.]

Something in me finally broke. The last thread holding together the she-wolf who'd loved him, who'd believed in him, who'd built her whole life around his promises, it snapped. Deep inside me, my wolf went utterly still, the way an animal goes still before it stops trying to survive.

I called him. My voice was shaking with rage, but beneath it was something harder. Something forged in the fire of betrayal.

"Why in the Moon Goddess's name should I seal that oath for her? She killed my mother. She murdered her, Lucan. And if I say no, what then?" I laughed, the sound bitter and broken. "You going to press my bloody finger to the parchment yourself? Hold me down while your warriors force my hand?"

The silence on the other end was deafening.

He severed the mind-link. Cold. No hesitation.

The silence that followed was absolute, the kind that settles over a den when a death sentence has been passed before the Moon Goddess.

Seconds later, my communicator pulsed against my palm. A crystal-clear image bloomed across its surface, edges sharp and damning.

An investment pact. My mother's name beside Mirella's, bound together in ink and betrayal.

Bold letters burned at the center like a confession beaten out of a dying wolf:

All claims of fortune carry risk. Every loss born of personal misjudgment is the bearer's own burden.

My mother's mark sat at the bottom. Her paw-seal pressed into the parchment like a blood oath she never understood she was making.

He'd been preparing for this. The Bloodfang Pack's bound advocate, that cold-eyed arbiter who'd buried a hundred sins beneath mountains of sealed parchment, was ready to crush me like I was nothing more than a stray sniffing too close to the bloodline's business.

Still, I went to the Bloodfang territory.

Their lawful front rose at the heart of the lower grounds, a towering monument of glass and black stone that housed the empire of trade they showed the rest of the world. The lift carried me upward like a condemned she-wolf climbing toward the executioner's stone.

The doors parted at the fifteenth floor, and there she stood.

Mirella.

She was draped in custom silks, the fabric clinging to her like a second pelt. The pouch at her hip held more gold moons than most warriors earned in a year of bloody work. And there, glittering on her wrist like a trophy torn from a corpse, the princess bracelet.

My bracelet.

She looked like a Luna born. Like someone whelped inside the inner circle, not a baseborn half-blood who'd clawed her way in through seduction and blood.

Her lips curled the moment our eyes met, a serpent's smile. Beneath it her scent reached me first, overripe jasmine with that sweet rot rising underneath, honey drizzled thin over something gone foul.

"Oh no, Selene," she cooed, her voice dripping with poisoned honey. "You look awful. Guess it's true what they say. When a she-wolf gets old, the bloom fades. No wonder Lucan lost interest."

She tilted her head, feigning concern with the skill of a wolf who'd learned to lie before she'd learned to walk on two legs.

"Still haven't laid your mother to rest beneath the moon? Want me to help plan the rites? I mean," she pressed a manicured hand to her chest, "we're nearly packmates, after all."

My hands curled into fists at my sides. Rage, white-hot and blinding, boiled up from somewhere deep in my chest until it threatened to burn me alive from the inside out. My wolf surged against my ribs, a snarl building low in my throat that I swallowed whole.

"You knew it was a trap," I hissed through clenched teeth. "You knew. It was a slaver's con, a scheme that tricked my mother into surrendering every coin she'd saved. Every gold moon she'd earned on her knees, scrubbing the Bloodfang floors."

Mirella's expression shifted into wounded innocence, but the corner of her painted lips twitched with barely concealed amusement.

"How could you accuse me like that?" she breathed, pressing her hand to her heart. "I was only trying to help. Your mother wanted to earn more for your mating dowry. She came to me, Selene. What was I supposed to do, turn away that sweet old Omega?"

My chest tightened like silver chains were being drawn around my ribs. Blood rushed to my head, pounding in my ears like the war-drums before a Blood Moon hunt.

"Goddess," Mirella sneered, dropping the pretense like a mask she'd grown tired of wearing, "that old bitch loved you like you were the whole world, didn't she?"

She leaned in close, her breath hot against my ear, that cloying jasmine thick enough to choke on.

"One day," she whispered, "I trampled the Alpha-Patriarch's favorite peonies. On purpose. Ground them right into the soil." Her voice was velvet wrapped around a blade. "The head of the Omega servants said he'd dock her three moons' wages. Your mother begged. On her knees. Right there in the garden, dirt under her claws and tears running down her face."

My vision blurred. The world narrowed to a single point, Mirella's smiling face.

"I learned later she hadn't taken a single rest-day in moons," Mirella went on, giggling like she was sharing a delicious secret. "Just to hoard coin. For you. For your mating to a male already warming my bed."

She pulled back, her eyes glittering with malice.

"And when I told her to crawl through the garden like a beaten cur?" Mirella's smile widened. "She did it. Just like that. Hands and knees through the mud, while I watched."

My world crumbled.

All those times my mother had smiled and told me not to worry over a thing while I planned my mating to Lucan. All those times she'd insisted everything was fine, that the Bloodfangs treated her well, that serving a powerful pack was an honor for an Omega like her.

I never knew. I never knew what she had endured for my sake.

The lift doors parted with a soft chime, and something inside me snapped clean in two. Deep beneath my skin my wolf let out a sound I'd never heard her make, a low keening with no name.

I raised my hand, eyes blazing with three years of swallowed rage.

"Mirella, you're a monster."

But before my palm could even graze her cheek, she hurled herself backward out of the lift, crying out like a wounded animal as she clutched her unmarked face.

"Selene, I said I was sorry!" she sobbed, her voice carrying down the marble corridor with theatrical precision. "I even knelt to you, and still you're so cruel. Do you truly want me dead that badly?!"

Pack members, warriors in fine coats, bound advocates who knew better than to step into bloodline business, turned to stare.

"If you want me dead so badly, then fine!" Mirella staggered upright, swaying. "I'll die for your mother! I'll pay the blood debt myself before the Moon Goddess!"

She lurched at the wall as though to crack her own skull against the stone.

"Mirella!"

A figure rushed in from the edge of my vision. Broad shoulders, the scent of scorched oak and copper, that faint sour note of ash gone cold. The silhouette that had once meant safety and love.

Lucan.

He caught her against his chest like she was something precious. Something worth protecting.

Then he turned, and his shoulder drove into me with the force of a male who'd learned violence at his sire's flank.

I wasn't braced for it.

My head whipped back, cracking against the lift's brass rail with a sickening thud that rang through my skull.

The world tilted on its axis.

Warm blood, my blood, trickled down the back of my neck and soaked into the collar of my dress.

Lucan rounded on me, his eyes bloodshot, the edges flickering gold with rage. The same eyes that had once looked at me with tenderness. The same hands that had once cradled my face now curled into fists at his sides, knuckles whitening as if claws strained to break free.

"Selene Thornwood," he spat my name like a curse, "how dare you. Apologize to Mirella. Now."

It was as though she were his mate already. His Luna. The she-wolf who would stand at his side when he took his sire's territory.

And me? Just some maddened thing. Some hysterical servant's daughter to be dealt with before she shamed the pack further.

Mirella sobbed against his chest, her fingers clutching the front of his coat, her body trembling with manufactured terror.

"I know she's just hurting," she whimpered, pressing her tear-streaked face into the hollow of his throat. "I already swore I'd pay for it. I'd take on every job I could, even the ones no other wolf will touch. The filthy work. But she," her voice cracked beautifully, "she still struck me. And cursed me. Said I should drop dead."

Lucan's arms tightened around her. His jaw clenched. His eyes, dark as the river where the pack drowned its problems, fixed on me with undisguised fury.

"Have I not repaid you enough?" he snapped, his voice carrying the weight of a wolf used to being obeyed. The air around him thickened, his Alpha-heir aura pressing down on the corridor until the watching wolves dropped their gazes. "Look at yourself, Selene. You're just like your mother. Petty. Greedy. Always playing the wounded one, always begging for a scrap."

He took a step toward me, and Mirella's jasmine clung to his skin, sour beneath the sweetness.

"You two earned the punishment."

My breath caught in my throat as though a blade had been laid to my windpipe. The corridor spun, but I stayed rooted to the blood-slicked marble, too stunned to move.

"Petty and greedy?" I whispered, staring at the male I'd loved, the male I'd been promised to since I was nineteen winters old, like I was seeing him for the first time. "Is that truly what you think of me? That seeking justice for my mother, an Omega who died in your pack's service, makes me some coin-hungry creature gone mad?"

Tears blurred my vision, turning the world to watercolors. But I refused to let them fall. I would not give them the satisfaction.

Something flickered in Lucan's face when he saw me fighting to hold myself together. A shadow of the male he used to be. A ghost of whatever conscience still haunted him.

But the moment Mirella whimpered against his chest, a soft, wounded sound built to twist the knife, his expression hardened back into stone.

"I saw you try to strike her," he said flatly. "I don't care what your excuse is. I don't care what story you've talked yourself into believing."

He took another step, close enough that I could see the vein pulsing at his temple.

"This is the last time I'll say it. Apologize."

My heart clenched as though it were being crushed in a vice, squeezed until nothing remained but pain and the bitter taste of betrayal. Somewhere far beneath it, my wolf had gone utterly silent.

I looked at him. At the male who had sworn to protect me. At the Beta-blooded Alpha-heir who would inherit a territory built on blood and broken oaths.

At the stranger wearing my intended mate's face.

"And what if I don't?" I said coldly.