Prologue
PROLOGUE
The copper tang of blood and the scent of ozone filled the clearing, drowning out the sweet pine of the Eclipse territory. My lungs burned, each breath a jagged blade of ice, but the wolf inside me—Azure—wasn’t tired. She was starving.
Aeryn, move, the desperate voice commanded.
Wilder’s voice didn’t come from his throat; it exploded in my mind, a frantic, golden roar of warning.
I didn’t blink. I didn’t hesitate. I leaned into the shift, my bones snapping and reforming with a speed that would have terrified me only a few short weeks ago. The diaphanous silk of my dress, the one Calliope had crafted with heart, shredded into useless white ribbons as my obsidian fur burst through.
I saw the rogue’s eyes—flat, black, and devoid of a soul—as he lunged for my throat. He thought I was just a girl. He thought the crown on my neck was just decoration.
He was wrong.
I wasn’t the girl who took vitamins and hid in the back of the classroom anymore. I was a River Moon Royal, and I was done being masked.
As my teeth found his jugular, the world tilted, and I remembered a time when my biggest problem was an algebra test and a boy who wouldn’t leave me alone at school.
