Chapter 1
The winter tithe gathered in Greyhollow’s hall with the smell of boiled roots, damp wool, old smoke, and fear no one had the manners to name.
Snow pressed against the shutters in thick white slabs. It had been falling since midday, slow at first, then with the heavy insistence of something determined to bury every path out of the valley. The roof groaned whenever the wind leaned hard against it. Meltwater dripped from the beams where too much heat from the central fire met too much cold from the world outside.
Selene Veyra stood near the left wall with a basket of rabbit pelts hooked over one arm and a splinter working its way into the pad of her thumb.
She did not pull it free. Pain kept her expression arranged.
All around her, Greyhollow wolves brought forward what they owed: smoked fish wrapped in linen, jars of rendered fat, winter herbs, hammered copper coins, one rusted blade, two bundles of fox fur, three cracked sacks of barley, and a crying child’s wooden toy offered by a widow who had nothing else. Each tribute was placed before Elder Sova’s chair on the raised platform at the end of the hall, beneath the old Greyhollow banner: a grey wolf stitched in fading thread, head bowed beneath a crescent moon.
The wolf on the banner had always irritated Selene.
It looked apologetic.
“Generosity,” Elder Sova said, spreading both wrinkled hands over the offerings, “is not measured by abundance. It is measured by loyalty.”
A murmur moved through the hall. Not agreement, exactly. More the sound people made when they knew silence would be noticed.
Sova sat wrapped in dark furs, his silver hair combed smooth against his skull, his narrow face softened by firelight until it almost looked kind. He had the sort of voice that made hard things seem unavoidable. Selene had heard him use that voice to bless infants, settle boundary feuds, and explain why a hungry family must still surrender their tithe because order, once broken, invited wolves far worse than want.
Maren stood half a pace behind Selene, not listening.
That was the first thing Selene noticed.
Maren Veyra always listened. Even when she pretended not to. She heard mice behind pantry walls, lies under polite greetings, coughs that would turn to fever by dawn. But tonight her attention clung to the hall doors. Her fingers kept worrying the edge of her sleeve, twisting the brown wool until the seam strained.
Selene shifted the basket on her arm.
“You’ll ruin that cuff,” she said under her breath.
Maren did not look at her. “Stand straight.”
“I am standing straight.”
“You’re leaning like a bored crow.”
“That’s because I’m bored, and the crow is an elegant bird.”
Maren’s eyes flicked to her then, sharp and pale green. “This is not the night for your mouth.”
Selene glanced toward the platform, where Elder Sova had begun speaking about the sanctity of pack blood. “When is?”
“When you’re dead, perhaps. I’ll carve your remarks on the stone.”
“That would be thoughtful. Spell my name correctly.”
Maren’s hand found Selene’s wrist. Not hard. Not enough to hurt. Enough to stop the next words before they climbed out.
Selene looked down at that hand.
Maren’s knuckles were white.
Across the hall, Maura Fen caught the gesture and smiled into her cup.
Selene braced herself.
Maura slipped away from the cluster of young unmated wolves near the fire and came toward them with the lazy confidence of a woman who knew exactly where to set a knife so it looked accidental. Her yellow-brown hair was braided with bits of red string, and her cheeks were flushed from heat, ale, or spite. Usually all three.
“Still hiding behind Maren’s skirts?” Maura asked.
Selene looked down at Maren’s plain wool skirt, then back up. “They’re very large skirts. Whole families could shelter there.”
Maren inhaled through her nose.
Maura’s smile sharpened. “Careful. Your keeper looks anxious tonight. She might tuck you into a cupboard before the moon sees you.”
“My keeper taught me to gut fish. Yours taught you to circle rooms looking for someone weaker. We both inherited useful skills.”
A few nearby wolves snorted softly.
Maura’s eyes narrowed.
Selene regretted nothing, although Maren’s grip on her wrist suggested regret might be arriving from another direction.
“You talk like you have rank,” Maura said. She stepped closer, lowering her voice so it would not carry to Sova, but not low enough to spare Selene the insult. “That is what makes it funny. No father named. No mother worth mourning aloud. No wolf worth scenting in a crowd. But Maren polishes you like silver and snarls if anyone scratches.”
Selene’s thumb found the splinter again. Pressed. Let the sting settle her face.
“My father could be a king for all you know.”
Maura laughed. “A king?”
“Or a butcher. I have range.”
“You have nothing.”
The words landed softly.
They always did, at first.
Selene felt Maren go still beside her.
The mark beneath Selene’s left collarbone gave a faint, unpleasant pulse, like a coal hidden under ash. She resisted the urge to touch it. The scar had been there as long as she could remember: a thin crescent tucked just under the bone, pale against her skin, easy enough to hide beneath a collar. Maren said it came from a fever blister when Selene was too young to remember. Selene had once believed her.
Then she had grown old enough to notice Maren lied only when she was afraid.
Selene smiled at Maura. “Nothing must be very threatening. You keep coming over to inspect it.”
Maura’s nostrils flared.
“Selene,” Maren said quietly.
Not a warning. A plea.
That made Selene look at her properly.
Maren’s attention had gone back to the doors.
The hall doors were barred from inside. Two hunters stood near them with spears, their shoulders loose, their mouths bored. Snow pushed through the gap beneath the wood in thin white dust. Beyond that waited the yard, the kennels, the watchtower, the palisade, and the pine forest rising black and steep around Greyhollow’s valley.
Nothing moved there.
No one called alarm.
No wolf howled.
And still Maren watched the doors as though something had already entered.
On the platform, Elder Sova lifted the widow’s wooden toy from the tithe pile. It was a little horse with one leg missing.
“This,” he said, and his voice gentled beautifully, “is loyalty. Not the gold of rich packs. Not the arrogance of great bloodlines. This is what keeps Greyhollow alive. Each gives what each can. Each trusts the pack to guard the whole.”
The widow bowed her head. Her child pressed his face into her skirt, ashamed of wanting the toy back.
Selene hated Sova then. Cleanly. Briefly. With the kind of hate that had no politics in it.
She stepped forward before sense could catch her.
Maren pulled her back.
“Don’t,” Maren whispered.
“He’s taking a child’s toy.”
“He is taking a symbol.”
“He can choke on the symbol.”
“Selene.”
That time, Maren’s voice broke.
Selene stopped.
Maura noticed. Of course she did.
“What is it?” Maura murmured. “Maren forget to tell you where your place is?”
Selene opened her mouth.
The dogs went silent.
Not all at once. That would have been dramatic enough for people to understand.
First the old hounds near the kitchens stopped their grumbling. Then the two yard mastiffs ceased their chain-rattling. Then, from beyond the hall walls, the kennels fell quiet so sharply that the absence seemed to press its ear against the timber.
A hunter by the door turned his head.
The fire snapped.
Elder Sova’s voice continued for three more words before he noticed the hall had stopped breathing with him.
“—sacred duty of—”
The watchtower bell struck once.
Not rang.
Struck.
A broken iron note cracked across the night and died too quickly.
One of the hunters at the door straightened. “That wasn’t the alarm.”
The second bell note came twisted, louder, cut short halfway through as if something had caught the bell and crushed it in a fist.
Maren’s hand closed around Selene’s wrist so hard the bone protested.
Sova rose from his chair. “No one move.”
Everyone moved.
A wave of bodies shifted away from the doors, then toward them, then away again. Mothers grabbed children. Men reached for knives not meant for war. Someone knocked over a basket of turnips. They rolled across the floor, pale and stupid-looking, while the third bell note never came.
The hunters lifted their spears.
A sound rose outside.
Low at first.
Not a howl.
Wood cracking.
The front wall of the hall trembled.
Maren shoved Selene behind her.
Selene stumbled, furious. “What are you—”
The hall doors exploded inward.
One half tore from its hinges. The other split down the center, iron bar bending like wet reed. Snow burst in first, blown sideways by the wind. Then came smoke. Then black shapes moving through both with such speed and order that Selene’s mind refused them for half a heartbeat.
Wolves.
Not Greyhollow wolves.
Bigger.
Armored.
Ironfang.
The name moved through the hall before anyone shouted it. Selene felt it pass from body to body, a silent animal with claws. Ironfang was what mothers used when children wandered too near the northern ravine. Ironfang was the pack that took border towers and left no one standing at the gate. Ironfang was discipline, black iron, dead fires, and the Alpha who broke challenge-law at twenty-two and made three older wolves thank him for letting them live.
A spear flew.
An Ironfang warrior caught it under one arm and kept moving.
The first Greyhollow hunter died without a speech. One moment he stood by the door with his mouth open. The next an Ironfang wolf in half-shift slammed him against the wall so hard the timber cracked behind his skull. Blood spattered the hanging herbs.
Screams tore loose.
Selene lost Maren’s hand.
“Maren!”
“Down!” Maren shouted.
Selene did not get down. Someone crashed into her from the side, and the basket of pelts flew from her arm. The hall became elbows, smoke, snow, overturned benches, iron blades, fur cloaks, firelight flashing on teeth. Wolves shifted halfway and fully in the confined space, bodies breaking and reforming with sickening speed. Claws gouged the floorboards. A child wailed somewhere near the hearth.
Elder Sova’s voice rose over the chaos, cracked for the first time Selene had ever heard.
“Hold! Hold in the name of pack law!”
No one held.
The old law looked very small beside iron.
Selene dropped to her knees as a bench flipped over her head. A woman fell across the tithe pile, scattering copper coins and smoked fish. Smoke thickened from somewhere near the entry, stinging Selene’s eyes. She crawled beneath a table, then stopped when she saw a girl sprawled near the central fire.
Lissa Grell.
Eight years old, perhaps nine. Thin as a broom handle. One cheek pressed to the floor, eyes open and stunned. Blood ran from a cut above her brow into her lashes. She was not screaming. That was worse.
Selene crawled toward her.
A boot slammed down inches from Selene’s hand.
She snatched her fingers back. Above her, an Ironfang warrior drove a Greyhollow man into the wall and snarled, “Yield!”
The Greyhollow man tried to bite him.
The Ironfang warrior broke his nose with the hilt of his blade.
Selene reached Lissa and grabbed the girl under the arms.
“Lissa,” she hissed. “Look at me. Look at me, little thorn.”
The girl blinked once.
Good. Alive.
Selene dragged her backward. Lissa’s heels left dark streaks where mud and blood smeared together. A Greyhollow woman screamed Lissa’s name and tried to reach them, but the crowd surged between them.
“Under the table,” Selene said. “Curl small.”
Lissa whimpered.
“Do it,” Selene snapped, because kindness had no time to dress itself. “Small as a mouse. Mean as a weasel.”
Lissa obeyed, crawling under the overturned table.
Selene shoved a fallen cloak against her. “Stay there.”
A hand grabbed Selene’s hair.
Pain cracked across her scalp. She was yanked backward and hit the floor hard enough to knock air from her lungs. Maura loomed over her, wild-eyed, one sleeve torn, blood on her mouth.
“You,” Maura spat.
Selene twisted under her grip. “This seems like a strange moment for your usual hobby.”
“They came for something.” Maura’s fingers tightened. “Sova said no one would come if we waited until—”
She stopped.
Selene went cold. “Until what?”
Maura’s face changed.
Too late. Too much said.
Before Selene could seize the words and force more from her, a Greyhollow wolf slammed into Maura, sending both of them tumbling into the legs of a bench. Selene rolled away, coughing.
She saw Maren near the platform.
Maren had a knife in one hand. Not a kitchen knife. A narrow, old blade Selene had never seen before. She stood between Elder Sova and the side passage, teeth bared, looking less like a woman who mended socks by lamplight and more like someone who had once known exactly where to put that blade.
Sova had one hand on Maren’s shoulder.
Not for comfort.
To hold her in place.
Maren shook him off.
Then the smoke shifted.
And Selene saw him.
He entered through the ruined doors without hurry.
The wind came with him, flinging snow around his boots and tugging at the black fur mantle over his shoulders. The hall noise bent around him. Not stopped. No battle yielded so politely. But every wolf near the doorway felt him and made room before seeing whether he wanted it.
Kael Draven was larger than Selene expected and quieter than the stories allowed.
No crown. No gold. No theatrical bloodlust.
Black hair damp with snow. A scar cutting through his right eyebrow. A dark iron clasp at his throat shaped like a wolf’s head. His eyes were grey, but not the gentle grey of winter cloud. They were the color of steel left outside in frost.
He carried no drawn sword.
That frightened Selene more than if he had.
An Ironfang warrior came to him, breathing hard. “Outer yard secured. East cabins burning. Fourteen bound. South runners cut off.”
Kael’s gaze moved once across the hall.
It did not rush. It counted.
In that single sweep, Selene saw him take in the platform, the elders, the wounded, the fighting knots, the exits, the children, the weapons, the fear. His face did not change.
“Stop wasting time,” he said.
His voice was low. It should not have carried.
It did.
“Search the hall. Inner rooms. Cellars. No one leaves the grounds.” He paused. “The marked one is alive.”
The marked one.
The words struck Selene in the collarbone.
Maren’s head snapped toward him.
Elder Sova went the color of old tallow.
Kael saw both reactions.
So did Selene.
Her heartbeat lurched.
Marked.
The scar beneath her collar heated again, harder this time, as if something under her skin had heard its name spoken by a stranger and lifted its head.
No.
Not now. Not this. Whatever Greyhollow had hidden, whatever Maren had swallowed, whatever Maura had almost said—none of it belonged to him.
Kael stepped farther into the hall.
A Greyhollow youth broke from behind a pillar and charged him with a wood axe. Kael did not turn fully. He caught the axe haft with one hand, twisted, and the youth dropped to his knees with a cry as his wrist gave. Kael struck him once at the temple, controlled and efficient. The youth collapsed alive.
Alive.
Selene noticed. Hated that she noticed.
“Maren!” she shouted.
Maren looked at her.
For one moment, through smoke and firelight and bodies crashing between them, Selene saw grief on Maren’s face so naked it did not look like fear anymore.
It looked like goodbye.
Then an Ironfang warrior seized Maren from behind.
Selene moved.
There was no plan in it. No bravery polished enough to admire. She snatched the nearest thing from the floor—a kitchen knife fallen from the tithe table, its handle sticky with spilled grease—and ran.
Someone shouted her name. Maybe Maren. Maybe Maura. Maybe both.
Selene ducked beneath a swinging arm, slipped on blood, caught herself against a bench, and drove forward with the knife held low the way Maren had taught her for boars: not high, not dramatic, never where a stronger thing expected it.
Kael turned before she reached him.
Of course he did.
His eyes found hers, and the rest of the hall thinned.
Selene hated him immediately.
It was not the distant hate she had carried for stories of Ironfang, for raiders and hungry Alphas and wolves who took because they had teeth enough to do it. This was personal before it earned the right. He stood inside her burning hall with snow melting on his shoulders and command settled in his bones like it had been born there. He looked at her as though he had been expecting something and she had arrived late.
That look made something inside her bare its teeth.
She slashed for his ribs.
Kael caught her wrist.
Fast.
Too fast.
His hand closed around her with iron heat, and the knife stopped a finger’s width from his coat. Selene twisted, driving her knee upward. He shifted just enough that she struck hard muscle instead of anything useful.
“Don’t,” he said.
Not angry.
That was insulting.
Selene slammed her forehead toward his face. He leaned back. Her skull glanced off his jaw, enough to hurt her more than him. His grip tightened.
She changed tactics and dragged the knife sideways across his palm.
Blood opened bright against his skin.
For the first time, his expression moved.
Not pain.
Recognition beginning too early.
Selene tried to wrench free. He caught her other shoulder, and the torn edge of her collar slipped beneath his bloody thumb.
His blood touched the crescent scar.
The world flashed silver.
Selene could not breathe.
The heat under her collarbone turned vicious, burning through cloth, skin, and bone. Light spilled from beneath Kael’s hand. Not firelight. Not reflected snow. Silver, cold and alive, sharp enough to paint the smoke in ghostly lines.
Every wolf in the hall froze.
Not because someone ordered it.
Because something older than order had walked through them.
The fighting stopped in broken pieces. A blade halted against a throat. A child’s sob caught halfway out. Even the fully shifted wolves lowered their heads, ears flattening, eyes gone wide and white around the edges.
Selene stared at Kael’s hand on her chest.
No.
No, no, no.
The scar was glowing.
The ugly little crescent Maren had hidden beneath high collars and winter scarves, the old mark Selene had been told meant nothing, shone beneath Kael’s blood like moonlight trapped under ice.
Kael stared at it too.
His face had gone very still.
Then his gaze lifted to hers.
Selene had been looked at by men before. With interest. With irritation. With the lazy appraisal of stronger wolves scenting weakness. This was none of those.
Kael looked at her as if a locked door had opened inside a wall he had been preparing to break down.
Behind him, Elder Sova whispered something.
Selene did not catch the words.
Kael did.
His head turned slightly.
Sova shrank back.
Maren made a sound so raw Selene almost forgot to fight.
Almost.
Selene drove her heel down on Kael’s boot and tore backward. His blood smeared across her skin as his hand slipped. The silver light flared brighter.
A growl rolled through the hall.
It took Selene a heartbeat to understand it had come from Kael.
Not loud. Not uncontrolled.
Possessive enough that every hair on her body rose.
Her own wolf answered.
That was impossible.
Selene’s wolf did not answer things. Her wolf was a sullen shadow beneath her ribs, late to rise, weak in the shift, more dream than beast. She had spent years pretending it did not shame her when other young wolves changed cleanly under moonlight while she shook and failed and tasted blood from biting her own tongue.
But now that hidden creature surged upward so suddenly Selene nearly staggered.
It knew him.
Worse—it wanted closer.
Selene’s stomach turned with fury.
Kael’s nostrils flared once. He scented the change in her. His eyes darkened, not black, not fully wolf, but close enough that the air between them seemed to tighten.
He said one word, too low for most.
“Moonspire.”
Selene did not know the word well enough for it to frighten her properly, but Maren did.
“No,” Maren said.
It came out broken.
Kael’s gaze flicked to her, then to Sova, then back to Selene. The pieces arranged themselves behind his eyes. Selene saw him understand something that belonged to her before she did, and that was the moment anger burned clean through her confusion.
“What did you do to me?” she demanded.
Kael’s mouth tightened. “Not me.”
“Liar.”
His thumb shifted against the glowing mark. Not a caress. Barely pressure. Still, sensation darted through her body, bright and unwanted, and Selene’s breath caught before she could kill it.
Kael heard that too.
Of course he did.
His jaw hardened as if the sound had cost him something.
He released her so abruptly she stumbled.
An Ironfang warrior stepped toward her.
Kael’s arm moved, blocking him.
“No one touches her.”
The hall held that command with the terror of people who understood it mattered.
Selene clutched the torn edge of her collar over the mark. It still burned beneath her palm, silver leaking between her fingers.
Maura stared from near the overturned bench, lips parted, all her jealousy stripped naked into shock.
Elder Sova found his voice. “Alpha Draven, whatever you think you have found, Greyhollow is under council protection. This girl is a low-born ward of our pack. She has no value to you.”
Selene turned toward him slowly.
The hall had gone too quiet for such a stupid lie.
Sova’s eyes slid away from hers.
Low-born ward.
No value.
Marked one.
Moonspire.
Maren was fighting the warrior who held her now, not like a frightened woman but like someone trained enough to make three Ironfang wolves cautious. One twisted her arm behind her back. She gasped but did not cry out.
“Selene,” Maren said. “Run.”
Kael’s eyes did not leave Selene’s face.
“Too late,” he said.
She hated the softness of it.
Hated him for sounding almost sorry.
Hated her body more for still feeling the imprint of his bloody hand over the mark, a heat that had nothing to do with pain now and everything to do with a pull she did not understand.
Selene tightened her grip on the knife.
Kael glanced at it. “You already tried that.”
“I was rushed.”
Something flickered in his eyes.
Amusement.
At a time like this.
Selene lunged.
This time she did not go for his body. She threw the knife at his face.
Kael caught her wrist before she could release it. Again. His patience snapped at the edge, not fully gone but close enough to show teeth.
“Enough.”
Selene drove her free hand toward his wounded palm, digging her nails into the cut.
His breath changed.
Not pain. Not only pain.
His eyes locked on hers, and for one reckless moment she thought he might pull her closer instead of restrain her. The thought should have disgusted her. It did. It also sent heat down her spine so sudden and sharp that shame followed a breath later.
Kael bent his head until his mouth was near her ear.
“Do not make me bind you in front of them.”
Selene smiled because fear wanted her to do anything else. “Worried I’ll embarrass you?”
“You already have.”
“Good.”
His grip tightened, but his voice dropped colder. “You are standing in a hall full of wolves who just learned you are worth killing for. Think before you spend your courage.”
That landed.
Not because she trusted him.
Because across the hall, Jorek Mavren—though Selene did not yet know his name—was looking at her mark with the expression of a man judging whether orders truly prevented accidents.
Kael saw her see it.
The silver light pulsed beneath her collar.
Outside, another shout went up. A Greyhollow runner tried to break through the yard and was driven back by Ironfang wolves. Smoke pushed harder into the hall now. The east wall had begun to catch; flame licked up dry garlands hung from the rafters for the tithe ceremony. Burning pine needles fell like sparks.
“Alpha?” one of the Ironfang warriors asked.
Kael looked once more at Maren. Then Sova. Then Selene.
His decision changed the room.
“Take her alive.”
Three words.
The hall erupted again.
Maren screamed Selene’s name.
Selene wrenched against Kael’s hold, but he had already moved. He stripped the knife from her hand and tossed it aside. She swung at him. He caught the blow against his forearm. She kicked. He turned his hip, took the strike, and stepped into her space as if she were a storm he had chosen to walk through.
“Don’t you dare,” she hissed.
Kael reached for her.
Selene spat in his face.
The sound it made was small.
The reaction was not.
Ironfang wolves went rigid. Someone growled. Jorek started forward with murder plain in every line of him.
Kael lifted one hand.
Everyone stopped.
Slowly, Kael wiped his cheek with his thumb.
Selene expected rage.
She would have preferred rage.
Instead he looked at the smear of spit on his glove, then back at her. His mouth curved by the smallest degree, something too grim to be a smile and too intimate to be contempt.
“There you are,” he said.
Selene hit him.
He let that one land.
Her palm cracked across his face hard enough to turn his head. Pain burst through her hand. The hall inhaled.
Kael looked back at her.
The mark at her collarbone burned bright enough to silver the edge of his jaw.
Then he bent, caught her around the waist, and lifted her over his shoulder as if she weighed no more than one of the tithe sacks.
Selene’s breath left her in a furious grunt.
For one stunned heartbeat, the world turned upside down: Kael’s back beneath her ribs, the black fur of his mantle against her cheek, the floor rushing beneath his boots, firelight spinning, snow beyond the broken doors, Maren struggling in Ironfang hands, Sova pale and motionless, Maura staring as if Selene had become something monstrous and magnificent in the same breath.
Then Selene came alive.
She clawed at Kael’s back. “Put me down!”
“No.”
She drove her elbow toward his spine. He shifted enough to ruin the angle.
“I said put me down!”
“And I answered.”
She grabbed for his belt, his coat, anything that might unbalance him. The man did not stumble. He walked through the wreckage of the hall while warriors parted around him and Greyhollow wolves watched with a horror that made Selene feel suddenly, violently alone.
Maren’s voice ripped through the smoke.
“Selene!”
Selene twisted enough to see her.
Maren had broken one guard’s nose. Another had her by both arms now. Blood ran from her lip. Her eyes were not on Kael. They were on Selene’s glowing mark.
“Tell me!” Selene shouted at her. “Tell me what I am!”
Maren took one step forward and was dragged back.
Elder Sova caught her gaze.
Maren’s mouth closed.
That silence was worse than every scream in the hall.
Kael carried Selene over the broken threshold.
Cold struck her like a slap.
The yard outside was white, black, and red. Snow fell through smoke. The watchtower leaned at a wounded angle, its bell hanging cracked in its frame. Ironfang wolves moved through Greyhollow’s outer yard with brutal order, binding the living, disarming the furious, dragging the wounded away from fire whether they wanted rescue or not. The east cabins burned low and orange. The kennels were open and empty. No dogs barked.
Selene tasted ash.
She lifted her head as much as Kael’s grip allowed and saw Greyhollow’s hall behind them, doors shattered, roof breathing sparks into the snow.
Her home looked smaller from his shoulder.
That made her fight harder.
Kael’s arm clamped across the backs of her thighs, firm enough to keep her from sliding, careful enough not to crush. That care infuriated her so deeply she could barely see.
“I’ll kill you,” she said, breath ragged.
He kept walking.
Selene struck his back with both fists. “Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
His calm threaded through her rage and pulled it tighter.
She twisted again, searching for Maren, for Lissa, for anything not being carried away by this man. Snow landed on Selene’s face, melted against the heat in her skin, ran cold down her temple.
The mark beneath her collar still glowed.
Kael’s blood had smeared over it.
His scent surrounded her now: smoke, iron, winter air, and something dark underneath that her wolf pressed toward with humiliating hunger.
Selene bared her teeth against the feeling.
The Ironfang Alpha carried her through the snow while Greyhollow burned behind them, and every step took her farther from the life that had lied to her and closer to the man whose blood had woken the lie.
She dragged in one harsh breath.
Then she screamed Maren’s name into the burning night.
