Chapter 2

I lick the blood off my teeth and smile at her.

Her Luna aura is still crashing against my chest, trying to force my wolf to belly-up like a scolded pup.

My wolf doesn't move. Not a twitch. Not a whine.

First time in eighteen moons she's refused a Luna command from this female.

My mother's hand is still shaking. Her claws are half-out. Four thin lines of blood run down my cheek where they caught skin.

"Are you done? After everything this pack has poured into you, this is what you turn into? A spoiled, ungrateful pup?"

"You want to walk out? And go where? So every pack from here to the coast can howl about how the Vanes drove out their own blood? When are you going to stop shaming this bloodline, Selene? Goddess, I wish I'd never whelped you. Ivy would never pull this crap."

Blood pools inside my mouth. I swallow it.

Yeah. Every other time, I would have thrown a fit.

Because I didn't get it.

I didn't get why, when Ivy shattered my father's ancestral moon-stone with her own paw, they told the whole pack I was the one who smashed it.

I didn't get why, even after the border sentries poured their scent-memory straight into my father's mindlink, he still swore I was the one who shoved Ivy off the cliff trail.

I didn't get how picking wolfsbloom on a morning run — the one flower that makes Ivy's wolf sneeze her lungs out — turned me into a bully.

This isn't the first time my mother has drawn blood on me.

Last time was two nights ago.

Because Ivy wanted to walk down the aisle in my mating gown and I said no.

She dropped on the spot. Her wolf whimpering inside her, her human body limp on the moonstone floor of the pack house.

My mother slammed me into the wall and shredded my mating gown with her half-shifted claws. Six moons I'd waited on that gown. Gone in ten heartbeats.

Over Ivy, my own mother and I have become almost enemies.

So yeah. I used to fight back. I used to howl and beg someone, anyone, in this whole damn pack to tell me I wasn't losing my mind.

But not tonight.

I've always been the lucky one of the Vane bloodline.

The Vane pack was one bad winter away from folding when I was born. Rogues clawing at every border. Half the warriors laid out sick in the healer's den. My father coughing black blood into the snow, wasting sickness gnawing through his wolf.

The morning after I came into this world, the rogues packed up and vanished into the treeline. My father's wasting sickness dried out overnight. The old healer said in forty moons of tending wolves she'd never seen a wolf-soul knit itself back together like that. Within one moon cycle the Vane pack had swallowed two neighboring territories and my father was the most feared Alpha on the western coast.

My best friend Rhea was a scrawny, plain little she-wolf before she met me.

After we ran together as pups, she grew into the kind of she-wolf every Alpha's son at the annual meet-up couldn't stop tracking with his eyes.

She got mating offers from every pack between the mountains and the sea. Turned down every one. Became the most talked-about she-wolf on the coast.

And Kaelen.

He used to be nothing. A rogue. Half-starved, chased across three borders, dragging a shattered back leg the healers swore would never carry weight again.

Until the night he stumbled across me at the edge of Vane territory when I was thirteen and lost in the pines, and my scent yanked him back from turning feral. I imprinted on him before I even understood what my wolf was doing.

After that, everything went his way. His leg healed clean by the next full moon. He challenged an Alpha and tore his throat out in three heartbeats, no scratch on him. Built Silverpine from six rogues to eighty warriors and locked down the biggest hunting grounds on the western ridge before he turned twenty-five.

For over twenty moons this pack looked at me like I was carved from silver. Kaelen treated me like I was the only she-wolf under the moon.

And every single one of them got everything they ever wanted.

Then Ivy walked into the Vane pack house.

And every last one of them turned on me.

My father's voice goes cold.

"Take everything of hers. It all belongs to this pack. She doesn't walk out with so much as a scrap on her back."

"You want to go, Selene? Go. But nobody's coming after you this time. I'll send runners to every Alpha on the coast myself. Formal renouncement, howled under tonight's moon. You won't carry the Vane name by morning."

They don't even let me grab a change of clothes before they shove me out the front doors of the pack house.

Kaelen follows me down the steps and quietly presses something into my palm.

A single carved bone token. The kind Alphas hand out to allow crossing into their territory.

"A den on the far edge of Silverpine. You can hole up there. Selene, we're done. None of us have the strength for this anymore."

"I wish I'd let you die that night in the pines and pulled Ivy out instead."

I scoff. "Then mate her."

Kaelen lets out a long, tired breath.

"Don't start. I said I'd take you as my Luna and I will. That doesn't change."

"Ivy is a good she-wolf. A genuinely good one. I'm not going to let you talk about her like she's some rogue mutt you toss over the border. Don't say it again."

He turns and walks back up the steps.

I drop the token on the stone and turn to leave.

Ivy comes flying out and clamps a hand around my wrist.

"Don't go, Selene. It's me. I overstepped. I wanted a mate that was never mine to want. I don't deserve any of it."

"You stay. I'll leave. I'll cross the border tonight."

I know exactly what she's doing.

So I just stand there and let her cling to me and fake-cry into my sleeve.

But the second she realizes I'm not going to snarl and shove her off like I always do, she gasps like her lungs quit and drops at my feet.

"Ivy!"

"Somebody get the healer! Ivy, sweetheart, look at me!"

Every wolf in the pack house comes tearing out and swarms around her.

Kaelen's hand shoots out and closes around my throat. His eyes are wolf-yellow, half-shifted, one fang already lengthening past his lip. His Alpha aura slams into me so hard the wolves behind him drop to one knee.

"You put a hand on her? You really think I won't tear your throat out?"

Turns out when you're past the point of anger, all that's left is a laugh.

I didn't even touch her.

And somehow I'm still the one who did.

"Kaelen. I hope none of you ever regret this."

My father's voice cracks like a whip across the pack grounds.

"Get her out of my sight. Silver-chained cellar. I'll deal with her myself."