Chapter 1

In the entire North, there wasn't a single she-wolf who hadn't dreamed of Cain on some heat-fevered moonlit night.

He was the Alpha of the Iron Claw Pack, the deadliest hunter under the moon. His shoulders were broad enough to carry a whole pack, and when his wolf eyes went dark, even wolves a hundred years old dropped their necks.

He was born at the top of the food chain, powerful and dangerous and untouchable, the kind of male every she-wolf wanted and none of them dared go near. Everyone said the same thing: no wolf alive could tame him.

And I was Elara Hale, the bright, reckless little princess of the Silver Mane Pack.

The Moon Goddess gave him to me. My fated mate.

Three years ago, I went through my first adult shift. My wolf caught fire in my chest, pulling me toward him like an invisible thread drawn tight. The moment Cain lowered his head and caught my scent, something flickered in his eyes. He knew me.

Yet the first thing Cain did was reject me. In front of the whole pack.

“Even if you're my fated mate,” he said, standing in the center of the Moon Goddess grounds, his voice cold as frost, “I don't love you. Not now.”

To be rejected by your fated mate in public was the deepest humiliation in the wolf world. It didn't sever the bond. It only wounded your wolf, so that every time he walked past me without a glance, the tear in my chest split open all over again.

I was the proudest princess Silver Mane had. Young, beautiful, high-born, with one of the strongest wolves in the pack. Who did this male think he was, turning me down?

So one full moon, I slipped something into his deer-blood wine and crept into his room.

He was braced against the window, shirtless, his back drawn taut like a fully bent bow, fighting the wolf that was clawing to break out of him. When he heard me come in, his head snapped around, his eyes two coals of low fire.

“Get out.” His eyes were red.

I smiled and walked toward him, sliding the strap off my shoulder, baring my full bosom. “Go where? Into your arms?”

A warning growl rolled up out of his throat. “Out.”

“Every she-wolf in the North is too scared to touch you,” I said, dragging my fingertips lightly across his tensed chest, arching a brow. “But I've always wondered what it actually feels like to drag the wolf no one can tame past the edge.”

Then I reached down and directly grasped his already hot and hard dick. “Your body says you want me.”

I pressed close, listening to that low, ragged sound he made, moving against him. The male really was built, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, a deep groove down his back. His hips curved hard and taut, thighs thick and powerful and an old scar along his thigh that pulled tight when he moved.

He couldn't hold out. He pinned me to the bed and drove into me.

The women weren't wrong about him. Face, body, strength, in bed he was everything they whispered about.

The air was full of his scent. Thick. Burning.

That night changed everything.

I woke just before dawn. He was already up, getting dressed.

Morning light spilled through the lattice and fell across him. He stood with his back to me, those broad shoulders, that narrow waist, old battle scars surfacing faintly in the gold light, every one of them earned fighting for Iron Claw. He lifted his arms to tie back his hair, the lines of them flexing and easing, and everything about him gave off the raw, unhidden presence of a top predator. He was only getting dressed, but the whole room still clung to the heat of the night before, and it burned all the way up to my ears.

I thought he'd be furious. I'd defied my fated Alpha. By pack law he could punish me, send me crawling back to Silver Mane.

I pushed myself up and looked at him, daring him. “If you want me gone, can we do it one more time first?”

But he came back. He bent down and, with hands that could tear prey apart, brushed my cheek so lightly I barely felt it.

“My little wolf,” he said softly. “This stays between us.”

I was done for.

Three little words, and every scrap of my bravado collapsed.

I cursed myself: “Elara Hale, you are pathetic. One “my little wolf” from a wolf who dumped you in public, and you're already completely undone.”

But I fell anyway. I took “he didn't punish me” and turned it into “he cares about me.” That wolf, so far above everyone, was different with me. He was falling for me. He had to be.

So I clung to him for two more years. By day he wouldn't spare me a look. But when the moon swelled and his wolf couldn't hold back, he'd push open my door, take me until my legs gave out, and breathe those same two words against my ear. Afterward he'd give me little things I liked, sometimes moonstones he'd brought back from the far North.

I thought he loved me. I told myself the cold spells were just his nature, or the weight of his title.

Until the anniversary I'd built up in my own head. The whole pack was in an uproar: Cain had crossed the border himself and brought Seraphine home.

He'd mentioned her to me once. He said she'd saved his life long ago, so she was special to him. Precious.

I'd never really understood what “precious” meant to him. Not until then.

It was the first time I ever saw him drop everything for the pack just for one wolf. He rode a shadow-wolf a hundred miles to fetch her, and on the way back he shielded her against his side, even steering her clear of the loose stones underfoot. She caught a chill, so he cleared out a whole warm hall and brought in a holy healer from the South to watch over her day and night. She so much as frowned, and his eyes went soft.

That kind of tenderness and solemnity felt utterly foreign to me.

He never once sat with me while I healed. Even when I had half my shoulder ripped open in the training ring, blood soaking through my hunting leathers, he'd just glance at me and say, “Handle it yourself.”

So that was the truth. “He didn't punish me” was never love.

He just couldn't be bothered with me.

But I couldn't let go.

Over those years my love for him only grew deeper. I was hooked on the rare tenderness he gave me, drawn to the pull of him as an Alpha who carried a whole pack on his own. I wanted to stay at his side. So I spent a whole day getting ready, put on my best leathers, and went to the hunting grounds where we'd first met, to wait for him. I'd decided to tell him I wanted to properly seal our fated mark with him, whatever it cost.

Cain never came.

I waited five whole hours, alone, until even the night patrol started looking at me with pity in their eyes.

That night, he was with Seraphine again.

Something in me cracked. I drank until my wolf went hazy, shifted, and shredded every single thing on his desk that had anything to do with that woman.

When he came back and saw the wreckage, he didn't even frown. He just told someone to clean it up and keep an eye on me, then walked past me the way you'd step around a puddle you'd knocked over by accident.

Fine.

Since you’d been so generous, I’d be generous too.

I grabbed the comm crystal and opened the channel I knew so well.

“Father. The marriage. I'll do it. In two weeks I'll go north and marry the dying Thornwood heir. But I have one condition.”

Magnus's image came through the link, lit up with joy. “Yes! Name it!”

“Sever my bloodline. Strike me from the pack rolls.”

His expression froze. “What did you say?”

Beside him, my stepmother Vesna's eyes practically glowed.

“I said I'll marry the Thornwood heir who's at death's door. In exchange, we're done. Cut my name from the rolls. As of this moment, I'm no longer Silver Mane. Throw your arms wide open and welcome your mistress and her daughter into the hall. From the day you drove my mother off that cliff, I stopped wanting you for a father.”

His face went a sick shade of green. “I told you, that was an accident.”

I met his eyes and smiled, cold. “Accident or not, same thing. She went over the cliff edge on her way to catch you and Vesna together. Let's stop pretending we're family. You spent five months arranging to ship me off to Thornwood, all so your precious mistress could finally take her rightful seat and her daughter could finally wear the Silver Mane name.”

Magnus shot to his feet. “Elara, you want to sever the bloodline? Fine. Starting tomorrow, you're not my daughter.”

“Deal.” I turned to go. “Oh, and don't forget to tell Thornwood. Their bride isn't the Silver Mane Alpha's daughter anymore. She's a cast-off with no pack at all. Ask them if they still want to pay the same price.”

So there I was. A homeless stray with nothing to my name. The wolf I'd thought was mine had his first love back. My father had moved his mistress's daughter into our home.

To hell with all of it.

What I hadn’t expected, though, was that the very next day would bring news I couldn't accept.

To make room for Seraphine, Magnus had torn down the little house and garden where my mother had lived.