"You aren't from the northern borders," I said to the crimson leather in my hand.

I traced the two-headed silver wolf stamped into the corner. The metal crest caught the faint moonlight, cold and unfamiliar.

A sudden, searing heat spiked through the veins in my wrist. My blood answered the crest.

"What are you?" I asked.

No one in Blackpine carried this mark. Damon despised ornate crests. Elder Thorne banned them entirely, calling them relics of the old rogue factions.

I gripped the smooth material. Lola.

"You didn't just find my medicine," I said to the wind. "You brought a replacement."

The memory of that night in the apothecary hit me. Lola standing by the mortar and pestle, her hands shaking. She hadn't been looking for chamomile tea. She had been scouting the room.

"You swapped the pouches," I muttered, my voice hardening. "You emptied my real silver powder into your cup. You took this fake pouch. You planted the evidence in my vanity."

The pieces locked together. A small, sharp satisfaction cut through the cold in my chest. I wasn't crazy. I hadn't been careless. I had been hunted. Lola orchestrated the entire trial from the moment she stepped onto our porch.

"But why this specific pouch?" I asked, turning the leather over.

The powder itself was the real mystery.

"Sixteen years," I whispered, pressing my fingers against my burning wrist.

Every first of the month, I swallowed that bitter silver dust. If I missed a single day, a raging fever would follow. My bones would ache until I couldn't stand.

"A chronic defect," Elder Thorne used to say. "A weak bloodline."

Damon always looked at me with pity when the fever hit. "Take your medicine, Wrenna. We tolerate your weakness because you fight well."

"But what if it wasn't a disease?" I asked the empty trail.

The heat in my wrist flared again. It didn't feel like an infection. It felt alive. The silver powder hadn't been curing an illness. It had been keeping something locked away. Suppressing my true nature.

I folded the crimson leather and tucked it into my canvas bag, right beside the spool of grayish-blue thread.

"You left a trail, Lola," I said, securing the leather strap. "And I excel at tracking. You wanted my rank, but you just handed me my freedom."

A low, unnatural howl tore through the mountain air.

I stopped.

The sound came from the valley below. From Blackpine.

It wasn't a patrol call. It wasn't a hunting cry.

It sounded frantic. Chaotic.

Then, a second howl joined the first. A distress signal.

"Trouble in paradise already?" I asked the darkness.

I stood on the rocky ledge, looking down at the distant torchlights flickering near the pack gates. They were running. The border patrol was scrambling.

"Did Lola drink too much of her own poison?" I mused.

Or maybe Damon finally realized he banished his best fighter just as the winter rogues began their migration.

"Let Damon handle his own mess," I said, turning my back to the valley. "He has his pureblood Luna now."

I pushed higher up the mountain pass. The snow thickened, masking the jagged rocks beneath my boots. The wind whipped my hair across my face, stinging my cheeks. The heat in my wrist kept the frostbite at bay.

"Stop right there," a voice echoed off the canyon walls.

I dropped my hand to the hunting knife at my belt.

A figure stepped out from behind a frozen pine. A heavy gray cloak obscured his face and shoulders. He blocked the narrowest part of the trail.

"You are trespassing on the upper pass," the man said, his tone low and grating.

"There are no borders up here," I replied, drawing the blade an inch from its sheath. "Move aside."

"An exile doesn't give orders," he said, stepping into the center of the path.

"I am not an ordinary exile," I said. "And I have nothing left to lose. Draw a weapon, and I will leave you bleeding in the snow."

He tilted his head. "Fierce. Just like the rumors."

"What rumors?" I demanded.

"They threw you out," he said, ignoring my question. "Damon Blackpine finally showed his true colors."

"You know my Alpha?" I asked, gripping the hilt of my knife tighter.

"He is no longer your Alpha," the stranger replied. "You lack the pack mark. You smell like silver and betrayal."

"And you smell like a corpse if you don't step aside," I warned.

"You walk away from Blackpine territory," he continued, taking a slow step forward. "Why?"

"None of your concern," I snapped.

"You survived sixteen years in that pathetic excuse for a pack," he said. "You guarded their borders. You raised his son. And they discarded you for a stray."

"If you know so much about my life, you should know I don't miss when I throw this knife," I said.

"I know you killed a rogue Alpha three winters ago," he said. "I know you lost half your hearing in your left ear. And I know why you really take that silver powder."

I froze.

"What did you say?" I asked, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.

"Damon called it a disease," the stranger said. "Elder Thorne called it a tainted bloodline. They made you believe you were broken."

"Shut up," I said.

"They fed you poison and called it a cure," he pressed.

"Who are you?" I asked. My patience vanished. I pulled the knife completely free. The steel gleamed in the dark.

He didn't answer. Instead, his gaze dropped to my left hand. To the wrist where the skipped dose of silver powder now burned like a torch beneath my skin. The heat radiated so intensely I felt it through my wool sleeve.

He took another step closer.

"I said stay back," I warned, raising the blade.

He stopped. The wind caught his hood, blowing it back. A scarred jawline and sharp, amber eyes emerged from the shadows. He stared at my wrist, then up to my face. The hostility vanished from his posture entirely.

He dropped his hands to his sides.

"You carry the heat," he murmured.

"I carry a blade," I said. "Explain yourself. How do you know about the powder?"

He lowered himself to the ground, sinking his right knee into the deep snow. He bowed his head, resting a fist over his chest.

"Your Highness," he said, his voice carrying over the howling wind. "The blood of the Moon Goddess... has finally emerged."

"Your Highness?" I repeated, the title tasting like ash on my tongue. I kept the hunting knife leveled at the stranger's chest. "Stand up. Slowly."

The figure rose from the deep snow. The heavy gray hood fell back completely, revealing a woman with sharp amber eyes and a jagged scar cutting across her jawline.

"My name is Seraphine," she said, keeping her hands visible. "I am a guide from the Royal Court. I have been tracking that signature for three weeks."

She nodded toward my left arm. The skipped dose of silver powder burned against my wrist bone, radiating a heat so intense it melted the snowflakes landing on my sleeve.

"You track heat?" I asked, my grip tightening on the hilt of my blade.

"I track the blood of the Moon Goddess," Seraphine corrected. "It runs in your veins. And it is finally waking up."

"I am an exiled border guard," I said. "My blood is entirely ordinary. If you followed me to recruit a mercenary, you wasted your time."

"Ordinary wolves do not survive sixteen years of silver ingestion," Seraphine countered. "Damon Blackpine fed you a lie. He convinced you that you were sick. He used that powder to keep you weak."

"Damon didn't know what it was," I snapped. "He thought it was medicine for a chronic defect."

"And you believed him?" Seraphine challenged.

"I believed the fever that tore through my body every time I missed a dose," I said. "Now tell me what you know, or I leave you bleeding on this trail."

Seraphine did not flinch at the threat. She reached into the folds of her cloak.

I raised the knife higher. "Empty your hand."

She pulled out a flat, heavy object and tossed it through the freezing air.

I caught it with my free hand. The cold metal bit into my palm. It was an old, tarnished token. I rubbed my thumb over the surface, feeling the raised edges of a crest.

A silver wolf with two heads, entwined in thorny vines.

The exact same mark stamped on the empty crimson pouch I found in my canvas bag.

"Where did you get this?" I demanded.

"It belongs to the Court," Seraphine said. "The royal guards carry them. The same guards who transport the silver powder."

I shoved my knife into its sheath and ripped the canvas flap of my bag open. I pulled out the crimson leather pouch Lola had planted in my gear. I pressed the heavy metal token against the stamped crest on the bottom corner of the leather.

The two-headed wolf aligned perfectly. No gaps. No discrepancies.

"Lola didn't just steal my medicine," I said, staring at the matching crests. "She replaced it with Court property."

"The stray who took your place?" Seraphine asked.

"She isn't a stray," I said, my voice hardening. "She has ties to the Royal Court. And she knew exactly what she was doing when she swapped the pouches."

I looked up at Seraphine. The pieces of Lola's trap were finally forming a clear picture, but the center remained blank.

"Why?" I asked, stepping closer to the guide. "Why go through the trouble of framing me? Why does the Court care about a border guard in a northern pack?"

"Because of what you are," Seraphine said. "Come with me to the Royal Court, Wrenna. The answers are waiting for you there."

"Give them to me now," I insisted.

"The mountain pass is freezing, and you are going into withdrawal," Seraphine said, glancing at my glowing wrist. "I will not explain the intricacies of royal bloodlines while we stand in a blizzard."

"Try," I said.

"That silver powder doesn't suppress a disease," Seraphine said, her amber eyes locking onto mine. "It suppresses your true wolf. You have been locked inside your own body for sixteen years."

The words struck my chest like a physical blow.

Sixteen years of diminished hearing. Sixteen years of waking up with aching joints, believing I was flawed. Believing Damon and Elder Thorne when they looked at me with pity.

"Who did this to me?" I asked.

"The Alpha who raised you," Seraphine replied. "Damon's father. He knew what you were the day he found you."

"He took me in as an orphan," I said.

"He took you in as a prisoner," Seraphine corrected. "And Damon continued the cycle. They used your strength to guard their borders, but they kept you leashed with the powder so you could never challenge them."

"Damon didn't know," I argued, though the defense tasted weak.

"He banished you over a cup of tea," Seraphine said flatly. "Does that sound like an Alpha who valued your loyalty?"

I stared at the metal token in my hand. Caleb's small voice echoed in my ears. From now on, Lola is my mother.

"If I go with you to the Court," I said, my voice steadying. "I can never go back to Blackpine. I lose my claim to the Luna title. I lose my son."

"Caleb is Damon's son," Seraphine pointed out. "He made his choice."

"He is seven," I shot back.

"And you are exiled," Seraphine said. "If you march back down this mountain, Thorne will execute you for trespassing. You will die a rogue, and Lola will win."

She turned and pointed up the steep, snow-covered incline. "The Royal Court offers the truth. It offers the power you were denied."

She pointed back down the trail, toward the flickering torchlights of the Blackpine valley. "That way offers a rigged trial and an unmarked grave."

"I don't run from fights," I said.

"Then pick the right battlefield," Seraphine countered. "Verify your bloodline. Reclaim your wolf. Then decide what to do with Damon Blackpine."

The wind howled through the canyon, whipping my hair across my face. The heat in my wrist surged, a burning reminder of the skipped dose. My veins throbbed, demanding the substance I had relied on for over a decade. The fire began to spread up my forearm, turning my skin flushed and hot against the freezing air.

I stood at the fork in the trail.

Down the mountain lay the pack that betrayed me, the boy who turned his back on me, and the woman who stole my life. If I returned now, I could shove this matching token and pouch in Elder Thorne's face. I could force a confrontation and demand a trial by combat.

Up the mountain lay the Royal Court. Strangers. Politics. And a truth that could rewrite my entire existence.

I looked at the heavy metal token resting in my palm.

The two-headed silver wolf gleamed in the moonlight.

"We leave immediately," Seraphine urged, taking a step up the northern path. "The withdrawal will only get worse, and the patrols will eventually search this far up."

I did not move.

My boots remained planted in the snow at the crossroads.

I held the crimson leather pouch in my left hand and the royal token in my right.

My fingers hovered over the metal crest, tracing the thorny vines, ready to close my fist and choose my war.

I shoved the crimson pouch and the heavy metal token into my canvas bag, pulling the leather straps tight.

"We go north," I said, my voice cutting through the howling wind. "To the Court."

Seraphine nodded, her amber eyes flashing with a dangerous approval. "A wise choice. The elders in the capital will want to see that crest."

"Drop the politics for a minute," I snapped. "Before we disappear into these peaks, I have one final stop to make."

I turned off the main trail, heading toward a massive, lightning-scarred oak near the edge of the ridge. The Blackpine messengers used its hollow trunk to drop border reports.

I pulled a scrap of parchment and a charcoal stub from my pack.

"You are leaving a trail," Seraphine warned, following close behind. She kept her hands resting on the hilts of her twin daggers. "If Damon finds that message, he will know you survived the lower pass."

"Damon doesn't check the border drops," I interrupted, pressing the parchment against the rough bark. "Only the patrol runners do. And Jace runs this route. He already knows I am alive."

I wrote three lines. Short. Direct.

Caleb. The grayish-blue thread will hold against the cold. Do not walk the western perimeter alone. - Wrenna.

I folded the paper into a tight square and wedged it deep inside the dry hollow, pushing it under a pile of dead leaves.

"He chose the stray," Seraphine said. She stared at the tree trunk with clear disdain. "He stood before the elders and called another woman his mother. Why risk our head start for a boy who discarded you?"

"Because he is seven," I said, turning away from the oak. "And I raised him. Damon's poison hasn't fully set in Caleb's mind yet."

"Loyalty to a fault," Seraphine muttered.

"It isn't loyalty," I replied, adjusting my pack straps so the canvas dug into my shoulders. "It is a goodbye. Now, lead the way."

Three days after we crossed the upper ridge, the silver withdrawal finally tore through my system.

The blizzard had broken at dawn, leaving a blinding white glare across the jagged rocks. I stumbled over a hidden root, my knee slamming hard into the frozen earth.

"Get up," Seraphine commanded. She stood ten paces ahead, her gray cloak snapping in the biting wind. "We are too exposed here. The rogue patrols sweep this valley at noon."

"Give me a second," I gritted out.

My teeth chattered so hard my jaw ached. Sweat froze on my forehead the second it formed. The heat that had started in my wrist three nights ago now consumed my entire left arm, boiling beneath the skin.

"The third day is the hardest," Seraphine said, walking back toward me. She didn't offer a hand to help me up. "The powder is completely flushed from your organs. Your body is fighting a war."

"It feels like my veins are filled with boiling lead," I gasped, clutching my left forearm.

"That is your true nature fighting to the surface," she said. "Damon kept you suppressed for sixteen years. The rebound will test your sanity."

I forced myself onto my feet. My legs shook violently, betraying my exhaustion.

"I survived the border wars," I said, my voice raspy. "I can survive a fever."

"This is not a fever," Seraphine corrected, her tone deadpan. "Show me your hand."

"I am fine," I insisted, taking a stubborn step forward.

My vision blurred. A sharp, agonizing cramp seized my chest, stealing the air from my lungs. I dropped to my knees again, digging my right hand into the snow to keep from face-planting into the ice.

"Wrenna!" Seraphine barked.

I couldn't answer. The heat in my left arm spiked, searing the nerves from my elbow down to my fingertips. The pain was absolute, stripping away my pride. I ripped my wool glove off with my teeth and spat it into the snow.

My skin flushed a dangerous, unnatural red.

"Look at your palm," Seraphine ordered, dropping to a crouch beside me.

I forced my stiff, trembling fingers open.

A faint, metallic glow pulsed just beneath the surface of my skin. It wasn't a reflection of the harsh sunlight bouncing off the snow. The light was coming from inside me.

"What is happening?" I whispered, my voice barely audible over the wind.

"The blood is waking," Seraphine said softly.

I stared at my open palm.

Thin, luminous silver lines traced the pathways of my veins. They shifted and writhed like living things beneath the flesh. The temperature radiating from my hand melted the frost on the rocks beneath me, sending up tiny plumes of steam into the freezing air.

I held my breath, watching the royal blood I never knew I possessed finally burn its way into the light.