Novels by Sam The Fireman

Wren POVThornvale's housekeeper was a broad, grey-haired woman named Hilde who looked at meexactly once, sniffed, and handed me an apron."Alpha says you're to serve at the high table tonight," she said. "There's a welcome feastfor the warriors who rode to the border. You'll pour the Alpha's wine."The apron slipped out of my fingers.I bent to pick it up so she wouldn't see my face. "The Alpha asked for me? By name?""By name." Hilde's mouth thinned. "Don't ask me why. The man hasn't let a new servantnear his cup in five years."I knew why.He wanted to put me on display. The tribute bride, the Silvercrest scullery maid, pouring wine for the Alpha who'd promised to reject her. He wanted every wolf in Thornvale to see mebowing at his elbow, so that when he cast me aside at the full moon, they'd all remember howsmall I'd been.It was cruel. It was clever.It was also exactly what Celeste had planned.On your first night in Thornvale, you'll pour the Alpha's wine.I stood in the c

Wren POVI felt it before I understood it.One moment, I was standing on the cold gravel of a riverbank with forty strange wolves staring at me and Silvercrest's last torch vanishing into the trees. The next, the wind swung around, and something inside me moved.Not my heart. Not my stomach. Something deeper, lower, coiled in a place I hadn't known existed. Like a sleeping animal turning over in the dark.It stretched. It lifted its head.And it spoke.There you are, a voice whispered inside my skull. Soft. Female. Amazed. Oh, there you are.I stopped breathing.Twenty-two years. Six full moons standing alone in the shifting circle. Six years of laughter behind my back, of wolfless and broken and Silvercrest's little mistake. Six years of praying to a Goddess who never answered.And now, on a riverbank at the edge of the world, with my wrists still burning from the rope, there was a voice in my head that wasn't mine.Who are you? I thought, and it felt like shouting into a dark well.

Kade POVThe new moon rose over the southern border like a closed eye.No light. No silver on the river. Just the black outline of the pines and the cold creeping up from the water. It was the kind of night old wolves called a blind moon, when the Goddess looked away and anything could happen.I didn't believe in omens anymore. I'd stopped believing in a lot of things five years ago.But I'd brought forty warriors anyway.They stood in a long line behind me at the ford, torches hissing in the damp air. Rhys was at my right. Mara was at my left, in full leathers, her twin blades crossed on her back. She had insisted on coming. I'd let her, because Mara watching an enemy was worth ten scouts."They're late," she said."Silvercrest is always late," Rhys said. "They think it makes them look important.""It makes them look like they can't read a calendar."Some of the warriors laughed. I didn't. My eyes were fixed on the far bank, where the road came down out of the trees.For ten days, ev

Wren POVThe Luna of Silvercrest liked her tea at exactly the temperature of blood.Not hotter. Not cooler. I had learned that at fourteen, the first time I brought it to her too warm and she poured the whole pot over my hands to show me what too warm felt like. The scars had faded to pale, shiny patches across my knuckles. I barely noticed them anymore.Celeste noticed them. She noticed everything."You're late," she said, without looking up from her mirror."Forgive me, Luna." I set the tray on her dressing table and kept my eyes down. "The kitchen fires were slow this morning.""The kitchen fires were slow because Alpha Lucian sold the good firewood to the Marsh Pack." She pinched her cheeks, frowning at her reflection. "Not that you'd know anything about that. Pour."I poured. My hands didn't shake. They had stopped shaking years ago.Silvercrest was beautiful from the outside. White stone towers along the river. Silk banners on every balcony. Fountains in the courtyards that used

Kade POVFive years later, nobody in the North called me the beggar Alpha anymore.They called me other things. The Butcher of the Black Ridge, after the rogue war. The Iron Alpha, after I took the silver mines from Ironhide in a single winter. In taverns where they thought I couldn't hear, they called me the Alpha with no heart.That one I liked best. It was the only one that was true.I stood on the balcony of the new Thornvale keep and watched dawn break over what I'd built. Timber yards stacked high along the river. Smoke from the smelters curling up beyond the ridge. Training grounds full of warriors who would walk into fire if I told them to. Three hundred and twelve wolves had become nine hundred, and not one of them had gone hungry in four winters.I had rebuilt Thornvale from ash. Literally."You're brooding again."I didn't turn. Mara's bare feet were silent on the stone, but her perfume announced her: jasmine and steel polish. She slid her arms around my waist from behind a

Kade POVThe Ascension Hall of Thornvale had not been this full in thirty years.Nine packs had sent their Alphas. The long tables sagged under roasted boar and black bread, and every candle we owned was burning, because I had sold my father's sword to pay for them. Tonight I would be crowned Alpha of Thornvale. Tonight my fated mate would stand beside me and take her place as Luna.No one in that room needed to know the pack treasury held barely enough to feed us through winter.My father had been dead for six months. Alpha Bram Ravenmoor had been loved by his pack and respected by his rivals, and he had hidden a sickness from all of them. It wasn't in his body. It was in his hands, which could not stop reaching for dice. By the time the fever took him, he had wagered away our timber rights, half our grain stores, and the silver plate my mother had brought with her when she married him. I found the debts the night after we burned his body. A drawer full of them, each one signed in his