And it would cost my entire family their lives.

A mating that ended in execution and ruin was one I could not afford.

And no longer wanted.

I hadn't even made it back to the Blackthorn den yet.

The news of my severed scent-bond courtship with Fenris Vargr had already swept through Aurelia.

The visitors lined up outside the Blackthorn residence, waiting to pay their respects to my father, were the first to catch the scent of it.

One by one, they picked up their gifts and left.

"Does the eldest daughter of Blackthorn still think they're the Blackthorns of old? Bonding into the Vargr bloodline was already above her station!"

"I only wanted to get close to the Alpha Commander through the Blackthorn pack. Otherwise, who'd bother warming up to a bloodline this faded?"

"Who does Seraphina Blackthorn think she is? All she has is a reputation as the finest Omega scholar in the capital. Other she-wolves would kill to be mated to the Alpha Commander, and she's been sitting on that courtship for years. Now she severs it in public? Who is she trying to impress?"

"The Alpha Commander earned his glory young. A territory grant is right around the corner. The Blackthorns are going to regret this until their guts turn green!"

...

I listened to all of it. My heart was still as dead water.

Briar's little face flushed scarlet with rage. "They look down on you, Sister. They look down on our whole family..."

I patted her head. "Briar, what other people think doesn't matter. What matters is that our family stays together, safe and sound."

Briar sniffled.

Then her eyes lit up.

"Father!"

She threw herself into our father's arms the moment he stepped through the gate, still wearing his Pack Council robes. The faint scent of old parchment and dried lavender clung to him, familiar and steadying.

The complaints poured out of her in a torrent: everything that happened at the territory gate with Fenris, every snide remark from every fair-weather visitor who'd turned tail and left.

I clutched the edge of my sleeve, unable to meet my father's eyes.

Not until I heard him ask, "Why don't you want to be mated to him?"

His tone was gentle. He didn't seem angry.

Only then did I dare speak. "I don't have feelings for him anymore."

It was the most straightforward reason I could think of.

I could hardly tell my father that I had been mated to Fenris Vargr twice before.

That the first time, I fell from a cliff and died. That the second time, I lost my head on the executioner's block.

And that I had dragged the entire Blackthorn pack down with me, every last one put to the sword.

He wouldn't believe me even if I told him. Better to say nothing.

My father studied me, brow furrowed. "Seraphina, you have never been reckless."

"There must be another reason."

"Since you won't say, I won't press."

"But let me remind you of one thing. Fenris has been by your side since childhood. He has always adored you. A bond like that is rare. Don't do something you'll regret."

A rare bond?

I used to believe that too. That Fenris Vargr was everything I could hope for.

We were scent-promised to each other before we were born. We grew up side by side. Our wolves had brushed against each other's awareness since before we could shift.

From the first stirrings of young love, I dreamed of growing old with him. I held that dream for ten years.

Every moon-sealed letter he sent from the front, I smoothed flat beneath a paperweight and tucked carefully into a box, layer upon layer.

During the worst of the fighting, when word came that he was dead, I carved both our names into a plaque of moonpale wood. Even if he was gone, I would bond myself to his memory and never take another mate.

That was how much I loved him.

And Fenris?

To pave the way for Ravenna's entry into the Moonhold Citadel as Luna Designate, he surrendered his command and laid down his war markings.

He told me, "Seraphina, you've always been so understanding. I know you'll support my decision."

He asked me to give up my bloodline standing and follow him to the outer territories to live in poverty.

When I was carrying his pup, he turned around and marched back to the capital, all to prop up Ravenna's position.

I tried to stop him.

He said I had changed.

"The Seraphina I knew would never be this unreasonable."

I stood there, frozen.

Something cracked open in my chest, and the cold wind howled straight through.

Three years of mating. Three years in those outer territories, choking down broth made from wild roots.

Hands that once held embroidery needles split open at the knuckles from chopping firewood.

When the kindling was too damp to catch, I got on my hands and knees and blew into the stove until tears streamed down my face.

I never once complained.

And in the end, because Ravenna whispered one word of grievance,

he blamed me.

I ran after their carriage.

I just wanted to ask what I had done wrong.

I lost my footing at the cliff's edge. Two lives gone in an instant: mine, and my unborn pup's.

Then came the second life. I was careful beyond measure, steering clear of the cliff, making it back to Aurelia alive. I said every kind word I could think of, poured out every ounce of devotion I had. But he still raised his warpack and stormed the Moonhold Citadel for Ravenna Vargr's sake. The entire Blackthorn bloodline was sentenced to annihilation because of it. I stared at him through burning eyes and asked, "Why?" Why sacrifice so many lives for one Ravenna Vargr? He reached up and wiped the tears from the corner of my eye. "Because she's my sister." "I would betray the whole world to see her happy. What's the erasure of three bloodlines compared to that?" In that moment, I finally understood. Childhood scent-bonded, steadfast mates, all of it was a lie. The only person Fenris Vargr had ever cared about was Ravenna.

……

I pulled myself out of the memories and unclenched my fists, my palms aching where my nails had dug in.

"Father," I said quietly, "I want to enter the Moonhold Citadel."

He blinked in surprise. "You mean you want to join the Alpha Supreme Heir's Luna Selection?"

I nodded.

His lips moved soundlessly for a moment. "Seraphina, even if you don't mate with Fenris, there are plenty of fine young Alphas in Aurelia worth considering. A mating bond is too important a matter to decide out of spite."

I cut him off. "Besides the Alpha Supreme Heir, who in this Dominion outranks Fenris Vargr?"

"The Blackthorns aren't what they used to be. You've already been generous enough to let me sever the scent-bond courtship with the Vargr pack on a whim."

"But I refuse to let our bloodline keep declining."

"Besides, a daughter of pureblood lineage will have to present herself at the Citadel sooner or later. If not me, it will be Briar."

Father let out a long sigh. His scent shifted, the old parchment and dried lavender growing heavier with worry.

The Alpha Supreme Heir was cold by nature. Nothing like Fenris, who knew how to charm. In my previous life, only Ravenna had set her sights on the Heir's inner circle. She had been singularly obsessed with becoming Luna Designate.

The Alpha Supreme was wary of the Heir forming alliances with powerful pack commanders. Fenris had to surrender his command of the Crimson Fang before Ravenna could be admitted to the Heir's court. To prove his loyalty and pave the way for her, Fenris had also handed over every last coin of the Vargr household's war-treasury, including my mating dowry.

The day we left Aurelia, Ravenna came to see us off in tears. She leaned close to my ear and whispered, "Rest easy in the borderlands, sister. I'll put your dowry to good use." That sour sweetness of overripe berries clung to her breath, and beneath it, something hollow.

My heart sank like a stone. So my dowry had never been surrendered to the Fang Throne. It had gone straight to Ravenna.

That was the first time I discovered Fenris had lied to me.

……

Father sent for the finest portrait painter in Aurelia to capture my likeness for the Luna Selection scroll. I had barely settled into my pose when Fenris came storming through the territory gates.

He spotted me, faltered mid-stride, and took a moment to compose himself before closing the distance. I caught his scent before he reached me: woodsmoke and hot iron and crushed juniper, and beneath it all that new acrid thread of decay he could not wash away, the rot that had crept in since I severed our bond. My wolf went still inside me, watchful and cold.

His expression was ice. "You don't think you owe me an explanation for this broken bond?"

I lifted my gaze to meet his. "I wanted it broken, so I broke it. What is there to explain?"

"Or does the great Alpha Commander intend to force a mating?"

In the past, I had been nothing but gentle and considerate in front of him. Never willful. Never a harsh word. Fenris's brow creased. "What's gotten into you?"

"Are you upset that I didn't write these past few moon cycles?"

"I figured I'd be marching home soon enough. There was no need to waste riders on sealed parchments."

I let out a mocking laugh. "Funny. I hear Miss Vargr received one every single day, delivered by express courier."

"What happened to not wasting riders, Commander?"

Fenris looked at me with open disappointment. "Ravenna is my sister. You're really going to make an issue out of a few family letters?"

"Seraphina, we haven't seen each other in three years. When did you become so jealous?"

His sister. The same excuse. The same lie, told to me and to himself.

I wiped the smile from my face. "What I've become is none of the Alpha Commander's concern."

"The courtship contract has been returned. We're both free. Don't let me keep you."

"Seraphina Blackthorn!" Fenris seized my wrist. His grip burned with an Alpha's strength, and I felt the ghost of where his scent used to sink into my skin and find welcome there. It found nothing now. "There's a limit to throwing tantrums."

"Our scent-bond courtship was settled before we were even born. You can't just tear it apart!"

He thought I was throwing a tantrum.

He had no idea that reaching this moment had cost me two lifetimes.

I spoke each word like a nail driven into wood. "I will not mate with you, Fenris."

His grip on my wrist tightened. "If not me, then who?!"

He was banking on the fact that the Blackthorns needed the Vargr pack's protection.

And he was certain my heart still belonged to him alone.

I met his furious gaze without flinching. "A lone wolf. A drifter. A turned wolf from the outer territories. Anyone would do."

"Anyone but you."

Fenris's breath caught.

He closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath.

Then he reached into his coat and pressed something into my hand.

I recognized it at once: the gift I'd given him ten years ago, the day he left for the front.

Back then, it had taken me half a year to find the moonstone, and another half to have it carved into a ring threaded with silver.

When I placed it in his palm, I'd said, "May we be like this stone. Hearts never parting, forever bound."

The ring looked exactly the same as it had then.

But all I wanted now was to sever every thread that tied me to Fenris Vargr.

He didn't know what I was thinking. His voice softened. "Seraphina, I fought on the frontier for ten years, and you waited for ten. Every wolf in Aurelia knows the depth of your devotion."

"Saying you won't mate with me now, that's just anger talking."

"This ring is the one you gave me before my first campaign. I'm leaving it with you. On our mating day, you'll tie it on me yourself."

He thought that lowering his tone and producing an old keepsake would be enough to coax me down the steps he'd so graciously laid out.

Where did he get that kind of confidence?

Fenris said his piece and left. The scent of woodsmoke and scorched earth lingered in the room long after the door closed, and beneath it that acrid note of decay I hadn't noticed in my previous lives. My wolf turned away from it.

I picked up the moonstone ring and tossed it into the painter's supply case.

"Miss, this looks far too valuable. I couldn't possibly keep it."

The painter fished the ring out carefully and held it back to me.

I waved him off. "It's yours."

"Do a good job on the portrait. If I'm selected, there'll be more where that came from."

The painter thanked me over and over.

"A beauty like you, Miss, is certain to be chosen."

I smiled and said nothing.

In the days that followed, while I waited for word from the Moonhold Citadel, Fenris came calling constantly.

Every visit, he brought armfuls of gifts.

Moonstone-studded hairpieces, bolts of the finest silk fresh from the southern territory looms, and all manner of rare curiosities, until they spilled across my courtyard in heaps.

I stared at the mountain of offerings, lost in thought.

My mother took my silence for hesitation. "Seraphina dear, are you having second thoughts?"

"Fenris is clearly still devoted to you, and you haven't been selected yet. There's still time to fix things. Just say the word and we'll arrange a mating ceremony, do it properly..."

I knew my mother had always been fond of Fenris.

Growing up, anything she made for me, she made a second one for the Vargr den.

Winter pelts, summer shirts, nightclothes, boots and wrappings.

All sewn by her own hand, stitch by stitch.

She'd loved him like a second pup.

She never could have imagined that Fenris would prove so heartless, that he would bring ruin on every last member of our pack.

I wrapped my arms around her and said softly, "He has feelings for someone else."

She asked who.

I shook my head. "All you need to know, Mother, is that he is not the right wolf."

Worry creased her face. "But Fen... but Fenris has made it known that anyone who dares court you is making an enemy of the Vargr pack."

"If you aren't chosen this time, what will become of your future..."

My hands clenched, nails biting into my palms.

Fenris wanted to bring home a decorative mate, a bond in name only.

Every noble-blooded daughter in Aurelia was his for the choosing.

Why did he insist on clinging to me?

Was it simply because the Blackthorns had fallen far enough to be bullied?

Too bad for him. He'd miscalculated.

The summons for the Alpha Supreme Heir's Luna Selection arrived, just as I'd expected.

My mother rose before dawn to help me dress.

The ceremonial robes were elaborate, the moonstone circlet heavy on my head.

She steadied my shoulders, her eyes rimmed red. "Seraphina, whatever happens, selected or not, your father and I and every last member of this pack will stand behind you."

A sharp ache bloomed in my chest. I nodded. My wolf pressed close from the inside, quiet and warm, the way she always did when the hurt ran too deep for sound.

The carriage bound for the Moonhold Citadel had been waiting outside the territory gate for some time.

After saying goodbye to my parents and my sister, I climbed in alone.