So she laced the pastries I loved most with Hollowbane, and I never suspected a thing.

"Seraphina, my stomach hurts so badly. I just swallowed it, there's still time. Please, go find a healer."

She didn't move. My voice cracked raw with panic. "I won't mate with you, alright? I won't. I don't want to live like this, worse than death. Once I'm better, I'll leave. I'll go far away. I won't stand in your way, I swear."

No matter how I begged until my throat gave out, Seraphina didn't flinch.

She held out her arm. "Bite down on me. It won't hurt as much."

I shoved her arm away. "Go find a healer. I'm begging you, Seraphina."

"Fenris, stop talking nonsense. No pack healer is going to treat someone of your station."

"The poison's already taken hold. It's too late. Just be good. Even if you can never sire pups again, my pup will still call you father."

I gripped her hand so hard my knuckles went white. "Seraphina, listen to me. I am the Alpha Heir. The Supreme Alpha's own son. Go find a healer to save me. Now."

But she thought I was lying. She wrenched her hand free, anger flashing across her face.

"You've really disappointed me. There's a limit to how far a lie should go. This is the pack stronghold's territory, not some borderland den of yours. One wrong word here can cost you your head."

She turned on her heel, the night-blooming jasmine of her scent already retreating, already cold.

"It's only barrenness. It won't kill you. Look after yourself."

I watched her walk away, and the last shred of hope inside me died.

Deep in my chest, my wolf let out a sound that wasn't quite a howl. Low, airless, like something crawling into a place it wouldn't come back from.

I curled into the corner. The feeling below my waist began to fade, replaced by a pain so sharp I could barely breathe. The Hollowbane was working its way through my blood, burning from the inside. I could feel it reaching for something deeper than organs, deeper than bone. It was reaching for my bloodline itself, the thread that connected me to every Ashvale who had ever lived, and it was cauterizing the end.

I would probably never sire pups again. And the one pup I had prayed for day and night turned out to belong to someone else.

I drifted in and out of consciousness through the night. Below my waist, everything had gone numb long ago. My wolf had gone quiet. Not sleeping. Not resting. Just quiet, in the way a wounded animal goes quiet when it stops believing help is coming.

The door burst open with a single kick. Caspian Stormfang strode in with a handful of guards behind him. The smell hit me before I could focus my eyes: polished steel and northern pine and the sharp musk of territorial marking, aggressive and deliberate, filling the small room like a claim.

He glanced at me, drenched in blood, then settled himself at the table and poured a cup of tea as though he had all the time in the world.

"Don't blame me. After all, the pup in Seraphina's belly is mine. Can't very well have him calling another wolf father, can we?"

I braced myself against the wall, barely upright. "So you'd rob me of ever siring pups again?"

Caspian let out a short laugh. "Now that's unfair. Seraphina was the one who laced the food. Seraphina was the one who decided you wouldn't keep the ability. I merely... mentioned the idea."

I stared at him, nails digging into my palms until I felt skin break.

He rose and walked over to me. "Though, you should count yourself lucky the pup isn't yours. Imagine it growing up and calling me 'Father.' How would you stomach that?"

"Bring the tonic over. Make him drink it. Help build up his strength."

The guards pried my jaw open and forced the liquid down my throat. I recognized the taste. Severance Root. Bitter as wolfsbane, but worse. Wolfsbane killed the body. This killed everything else.

I thrashed, tried to spit it out, but they held me fast, fingers clamped around my face. The root hit my stomach and I felt it immediately, a wrongness spreading outward, reaching for the place where my wolf lived. Not pain. Silence. A silence that was growing, swallowing the low hum that had been there since the day I was born, the presence that had breathed when I breathed and howled when I howled and had never, not once in my entire life, left me alone.

Caspian crouched in front of me and patted my cheek, slow and deliberate, every touch a humiliation. "Can't have you coveting Seraphina down the line. Can't have you producing more heirs and stirring up trouble."

"My mating ceremony's in two days. Still need to go try on my Blood Circlet. If you'll excuse me."

As he stood, the moonstone pendant at his waist swung into view. He made no effort to hide it.

It was Seraphina's. She had told me it was the only thing her mother left her. And she had given it to Caspian Stormfang.

He paused at the door, as if just remembering. "Oh, right. Seraphina transferred the deed to this den into my name. I hear you're fond of the pastoral life. Just remember, you're living under my roof now. Mind my rules."

My whole body went rigid. When Seraphina burned down the countryside den, she had told me this estate was bought for me. That I could fill it with moonberry bushes and silver-leaf fruit trees and herb gardens.

From the very beginning, she had never intended to give me anything.

"Caspian Stormfang."

I called after him, my voice scraped hollow.

"Has the young Pack Alpha Heir ever laid eyes on the Alpha Heir of the Crescent Dominion?"

Caspian froze for a moment. "What, you're going to claim you have some connection to the Alpha Heir? The one who barely shows his face at pack gatherings?"

I let out a bitter laugh. "I've heard he's fond of the Bloodhowl frequency. If we could earn even a smile from him, get him to attend your mating ceremony, wouldn't that be a feather in your cap?"

He looked half-convinced at best. "A wolfless wretch like you would know the Alpha Heir's preferences?"

"Believe it or don't. If it turns out to be false, it costs you nothing."

After Caspian left, I curled into the corner of the bed. My body burned with fever, and a vicious pain twisted through my lower abdomen, but no one came.

Looking back now, meeting Seraphina Blackthorn was the single greatest regret of my life.

Somewhere in the haze of unconsciousness, I caught the distant sound of a Bloodhowl threading through the night air outside the window. The frequency that only Ashvale blood could produce, and only Ashvale-sworn sentinels could answer.

Only then did I let myself breathe, and smile.

Long ago, my father and I had made a pact: no matter when or where, if a Bloodhowl carried on the wind, it meant I was in danger. Someone would come to take me away.

At some point, Seraphina arrived. She sat at the edge of my bed for a long while.

When she saw me open my eyes, she touched my forehead. "The fever's broken. Come on, sit up and have some broth."

I dragged myself upright, every joint screaming. My inner wolf, which had been a constant low hum at the back of my mind for as long as I could remember, was silent now. Not sleeping. Gone quiet in a way that felt like a room after someone has died in it. "Caspian was here. He forced an entire dose of Severance Root down my throat. Did you know that?"

Seraphina's expression stiffened. She lowered her gaze. "I knew."

"You knew?"

I fought with everything I had to keep the tears from falling. Inside the hollow space where my wolf should have been, there was nothing. No growl of rage, no surge of betrayal. Just silence, vast and terrible, like pressing your ear to a chest and hearing no heartbeat.

She reached for my hand. I pulled away.

"Fenris, he was only protecting himself. If you and I were to have pups someday, where would that leave him and his bloodline? Where would that leave the pups? It's only natural."

I laughed, hollow and sharp. Natural. What a convenient excuse.

Seraphina set down the bowl and spoke again. "Caspian's been doubled over with stomach pains ever since he got back to his den. It's possible some dark energy from you affected him..."

She trailed off, watching me, choosing her next words carefully.

"There's a venerable elder at Moonspire Shrine. I need you to go to him, have him perform a cleansing rite for you, and then climb every one of the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine steps in wolf form to obtain a Moon Goddess blessing charm for Caspian. Do that, and we can put this whole matter behind us. All right?"

I stared at her, my eyes burning red.

"Seraphina Blackthorn, you and I are finished. If you want a blessing charm, go get it yourself."

I forced my battered body off the bed, trying to leave this wretched place.

But Seraphina blocked my path.

She ordered her servants to drag me away. They ignored my struggling, threw me onto a horse, and rode hard to the foot of Moonspire Shrine.

"Take him up the mountain."

Two guards seized me, one on each side. The steps were inlaid with silver dust, and even through my boots I could feel the burn. I hauled my broken body forward, one step, one bow, one step, one bow. Except I couldn't shift. The Severance Root had stolen that from me. So I climbed as a man on hands and knees over silver-laced stone, and the burning was just burning, with no wolf to share the pain.

Two days without food or water, freshly poisoned and wounded. I passed out and came to and passed out again along the way.

I have no memory of how I obtained the blessing charm. All I know is that the moment I saw Seraphina waiting at the bottom, my legs gave out and I collapsed.

She caught me and gathered me into her arms. Her scent hit me then, night-blooming jasmine over cold steel, and for the first time it made me sick.

"Fenris, you've suffered so much. I promise, even after I mate with Caspian, you'll be the only one in my heart."

I closed my eyes slowly. Three days ago, I might have believed those words. Now they made my stomach turn.

"You have your blessing charm. Let me go."

But she ignored my plea and had me carried back to the den.

"Fenris, don't be stubborn. Tomorrow is my mating ceremony. Caspian has agreed to let you keep living in the den afterward. You'll stay out of each other's way. All right?"

Before she left, she added one last instruction: "The Alpha Heir may attend the ceremony tomorrow. Stay in the den and don't cause trouble."

Shortly after she was gone, my father's shadow sentinels found me.

I looked in the direction she had disappeared, then at this countryside den that had never truly been mine, and a quiet smile crossed my lips.

Tomorrow, I hope you have no regrets.

On the morning of the mating ceremony, the Stormfang estate was draped in moonsilk banners, every corner bursting with celebration. Seraphina stood shoulder to shoulder with Caspian in her ceremonial gown, radiant in white and silver.

The ceremony was about to begin when a voice rang out from beyond the gates: "The Alpha Heir of the Ashvale Bloodline has arrived!"