The silver blade went in between my ribs, and I knew the hand that held it."I'm sorry, Kael," Draven whispered against my ear. My own brother. "There can only be one Alpha."I tried to shift. My bones refused. The wine, I realized, the wine Seraphine had poured me with her soft, smiling hands. Wolfsbane. Of course.She stood in the doorway of the Alpha hall, wearing the Luna's silver circlet I had never given her. She didn't look away as I fell."You should have chosen me," she said.The floor rushed up. The world went black.And then it didn't.I woke up choking on mud.Cold rain hammered my back. My lungs burned. Somewhere close, a dozen wolves were howling, and not the howl of a hunt. The howl of a kill.I shoved myself up. My hands were wrong. Thinner. Scarred in places I had no scars. I glanced at my reflection in a puddle and a stranger stared back: lean, hollow-cheeked, maybe twenty years old.I was alive. In someone else's body.And I was about to be dead again."There he is!

"How many?" I whispered.Sable pressed her ear to the cave wall. "I can hear six. Maybe eight." Her face went pale. "And they're not Ashfang. Those are your old pack's trackers."My trackers. Wolves I had trained myself.The singing grew closer, soft and sweet, the lullaby Seraphine used to hum when we were children, hiding from storms in the Alpha hall. Hearing it now made my skin crawl."There's a back tunnel," Sable said, grabbing my arm. "Move."We ran.The tunnel narrowed until we were crawling on our elbows through wet stone. Behind us, boots echoed and a torch flared orange against the walls. Then the singing stopped."Kael," Seraphine called.I froze.Her voice carried through the rock as clear as if she were beside me. "I know you can hear me. I felt you shift last night. Half the territory did.""Don't answer," Sable hissed."You always did hate being the last to know things," Seraphine went on, almost fondly. "So let me tell you something, Kael. Something your little rescue

"What I promised?" Seraphine's voice stayed calm, but her fingers had gone white around her cloak. "You're not supposed to remember that.""I remember everything," Rowan said, in my mouth, with my throat, and his gaze never left her. "That's the problem with sleeping. You hear it all."Sable stared at him. At me. "Rowan?" she breathed. "Is it really you?"His face softened for half a heartbeat. "Hi, Sab."Then the trackers lunged.Rowan moved like water. Where I fought with brute strength, he slipped under claws, twisted out of nets, used the tunnel walls to throw one wolf into another. Not an Alpha's fighting. An omega's. Someone who had spent twenty years learning exactly how not to get hit.Left, I said, inside our shared skull. Behind you.I see him. He ducked. The tracker's jaws snapped over his head. You're loud, you know that?You're slow.I'm alive, he shot back, and drove an elbow into the wolf's throat.We dropped four of them in ten seconds. The rest backed away, whining, w

Three nights.That count hammered inside my head all day as we crossed the forest, avoiding the roads and the rivers, following only deer trails. Sable walked ahead, one hand pressed against her side, pretending she wasn't limping."Stop looking at me like that," she said without turning."I'm not looking at you any way.""You're looking at me like I'm already a gravestone."You are thinking it, Rowan whispered.Shut up.I'm only saying what she already knows.At dusk we reached a ravine thick with ferns. Sable whistled two low notes, and the earth seemed to open. Figures emerged from between the rocks: packless wolves in patched clothes with tired eyes. The outcasts of the borderlands. A dozen. Then thirty. Then more.And at the front, leaning on a staff of bone, stood an old woman with white hair, watching us with eyes that never blinked."You're late, girl," she said."Maren." Sable tried to smile. "I brought someone."The old woman looked me up and down, and I felt her strip my so

Draven descended the stairs one step at a time, clapping slowly, a crown of black iron hanging from two fingers."You always did arrive at the worst moment," he said. "That's what made you a good Alpha. You never knew when to stay dead.""Let her go," I said."Oh, I can't." He smiled sadly. "She's the point."He knew, Rowan whispered. He knew the mark would go to her."It was never about breaking the ritual," Draven went on, strolling toward the pedestal as if the room were his. "That was Seraphine's little romance. I wanted something bigger. The Moon Stone gives power to whoever it bonds with, but only through a Luna. A willing one. Or one close enough to death that she can't refuse."Sable hung in the silver light, eyes blazing, her mouth moving with words that weren't hers."You planted the book," I said. "You made sure she'd find the ritual.""I made sure she'd care enough to do it." He glanced at her, almost gently. "Sable loves fiercely. Her brother. Her friends. You. A girl lik