Page 10

It was the pressure. The unbearable weight of him pressing into every part of me, like he was already beneath my skin. I felt nothing of my wolf. She was gone. Silent. Cowering so deep inside me, I didn’t even know if she still existed.

All I had left was the runes. Carved into my spine with blood and sacrifice and dark magic.

Please,I begged silently, teeth clenched.Please, gods, let them hold. Don’t let him see. Don’t let him feel what I am.

He leaned in. Closer.

I felt the heat of his breath on the curve of my ear, smelled iron and frost and something darker—like smoke curling from burned-out churches.

His voice was a whisper, but it filled the world.

“What pack do you serve?”

Every muscle in my body froze. My heartbeat stopped. Just for a moment. The way he said it… as if it was a sacred question. As if it mattered. As if there would be no lie strong enough if he sensed the truth.

My lips parted, but no words came. My mind screamed—none, none, none!—but my throat was dry, burning, sealed shutby terror.

He hadn’t squeezed yet. But he could. He would.

And if he found out, if the runes failed, he would know what I was. What I washiding. The only thing I had was the lie. And the prayer.

Hold. Please, hold.

CHAPTER 5

Andros

I expected many things when I came to this godforsaken stretch of ice and fish stink.

Resistance from the boy, maybe. Some desperate locals trying to hide him. Perhaps a few Crescent loyalists with enough spine left to bare their teeth. What I did not expect—washer.

A wolf. But not one I recognized. Not Crescent. Not rogue. Not mine. She looked like nothing. And yet…everything.

Long black hair clung to her face, soaked from the snow, dripping like ink down her shoulders. Her skin was too pale, almost translucent under the gray morning light, as though she’d never known warmth. And her eyes—gods, those eyes—were a violent, feral shade of green. Not forest green. Not even emerald. But somethingalive. Something primal. Like moss growing over stone, like flame burning in the heart of a winter storm.

She was thin, almost sickly. Bones too sharp beneath skintoo soft. A body made of hunger and frostbite. But the way she moved...

Chin high. Shoulders square. Jaw set like she would bite down on the world before letting it swallow her.

There was no submission in her. No flinch. No tremble. Not even as I held her throat in my palm and pinned her to the frozen wall of her collapsing little shack. Her pulse beat against my fingers—fast, but not desperate. Not panicked. Controlled.

She didn’t plead. She didn’t cry. She just stared at me. Like she was daring me to go further. A wolf. And yet… she didn’t smell like one.

Her scent was broken. Flickering. Like smoke trying to form a shape and never quite managing it. Wolf, yes—but beneath something else. Covered. Masked. Hidden in salt and seaweed and rot. I’d hunted enough to know when a trail had been tampered with.

This was deliberate. This was magic.

Dark magic.

It clung to her like another skin. Ancient, blood-soaked, stitched into the very air around her. Whoever hid her scent knew their craft. And that should have infuriated me. But instead, I leaned closer.

“What pack do you serve?” I asked, my voice a whisper made of smoke and ash.

Her lips parted—but nothing came. Her eyes widened, just a little, and something in them… cracked.

I felt it then. A shiver, not in her body, but through the air between us. Like something ancient had woken beneath her skin. Not her wolf—no, that was still silent. But the thing beneath the silence? Itknewme. And I wanted to knowitback.

She looked like a ghost, but she burned like prophecy. And for the first time in years, my wolf stirred in my chest—not out of hunger. Not out of rage. But want.