Chapter One: The Trade

The wind was bitter that morning, laced with frost and silence, it was the kind of silence that clung to Zara Quinn’s skin like a second layer of shame. She stood at the edge of the Gema Pack’s northern courtyard, watching her sisters train beneath the cold light of the rising moon. Swords clashed, bodies moved in practiced rhythm, and battle cries rang out like songs of inheritance. 

She didn’t belong among them. She never had. Not with her wolfless blood, not with her father’s contempt strangling her name at every turn. The others wore their heritage like armor, they were the children of Alpha Lucas Quinn, golden warriors of strength and transformation. Zara wore hers like a curse; a quiet reminder of what weakness looked like in a world ruled by dominance.

She pulled her shawl tighter around her thin frame and turned away, boots crunching across the brittle frost. Her breath misted in the air, trailing behind her like a ghost. She didn’t need to see the looks they threw when they thought she wasn’t watching. 

She had grown up with the sneers of Genevieve and Sydney, the mocking laughter of her half-brother Argyle, the smug glances of the warriors who called her Lamb, the only Quinn who hadn’t shifted on her sixteenth moon. 

Now eighteen, she no longer waited for her wolf to come. She’d buried that hope the same day her father locked her in the cellar for “inviting pity.” He said silence was dignity. She had learned to wear it well.

The summons came just before midday. A low-ranking guard, barely old enough to shave, approached with a bowed head and trembling fingers. 

“Alpha requests your presence,” he mumbled, not meeting her eyes. 

 Zara said nothing, just nodded and followed. Her heart didn’t quicken. There was nothing her father could do to her that he hadn’t already done. Perhaps today she would be banished outright, exiled to the fringe lands like a Rogue. That would be a kindness. But Alpha Lucas Quinn didn’t traffic in kindness.

His chambers were warm, the air heavy with the musk of leather, firewood, and smokeleaf. He sat behind a wide desk carved from ironwood, the same desk where he once signed death warrants and arranged blood feuds over cups of black tea. Today, he didn’t offer tea. He didn’t even look at her. 

“You’ll be leaving,” he said, his voice clipped, and precise. She stood in silence. Not out of defiance, but because she had no script for this. Lucas lifted a sealed envelope and slid it across the desk.

 “You’ve been given to Alpha Hunter Reed of Moonsun.”

Given. Not even traded, talk more of married. Given like cattle. Her throat tightened, but her expression remained still. Her training had been in silence, enduring without flinching.

 “Why?” she asked, and her voice startled both of them. It was the first word she had spoken to him in months.

Lucas finally looked up. His eyes were steel, unmoved by her question. 

“Because you are the only thing I have left that he wants.” He said it like it was nothing. Like her life was worth less than the wolves who followed him into war. 

“Moonsun demands blood for peace. You carry my name, even if you don’t carry my legacy. You’ll serve as proof of goodwill and a reminder of what I’ve paid.” He stood then, walking toward the window. 

“You should feel honored. Most daughters die for their packs but you’re being spared.”

She couldn't answer, her limbs felt numb, heavy with the weight of what he hadn’t said. She wasn’t being spared. She was being sentenced. Hunter Reed was known across territories as a beast in a man’s skin. His father had been murdered during treaty negotiations with Gema a decade ago, and many believed Hunter had been biding his time ever since, waiting for the moment he could strike without starting a full war. 

And now, taking Zara was a clever beginning, he will humiliate, and control her, the revenge will be without bloodshed but will be more painful than death. Lucas had sold her to a man who wanted nothing more than to see the Gema line burn.

By sunset, she was in chains.

The cold iron links around her wrists weren’t tight, but they didn’t need to be. The message was clear. She wasn’t a guest or a bride. She was property. 

She walked through the courtyard one last time, past her sisters, who watched with mild curiosity and thinly veiled delight, and past Argyle, who looked away the moment her gaze brushed his. None of them spoke. No goodbyes, or farewells. Just silence. Always silence.

The carriage waiting for her was black, lined with wolf hide and guarded by Moonsun warriors wearing bone armor and no expressions. One of them opened the door. The other tossed a small, rough-skin satchel at her feet, which was her little belongings. A single dress. A knife she wasn’t allowed to carry. A pendant that once belonged to her mother, long forgotten in the attic until she found it and dared to believe it still held warmth. She picked it up with trembling fingers and tucked it beneath her tunic.

As the carriage pulled away, Gema faded behind her, swallowed by mist and memory. Zara couldn't cry no matter how much she tried, her tears had dried long ago, lost in the echoes of locked cellars and shattered promises. But she did clutch the pendant tight, as if it could protect her from what lay ahead.

The journey took two days.

Through frost-covered woodlands and winding river trails, Zara barely spoke. The warriors didn’t offer food the first night. On the second, one of them tossed her a chunk of bread and a canteen.

She chewed in silence, her stomach hollow and coiling with dread. At night, she lay on the floor of the carriage, staring up at the wooden ceiling as sleep danced just out of reach. Her dreams, when they came, were filled with snarls and burning eyes.

Moonsun territory was nothing like Gema. Where Gema was stone and structure, Moonsun was shadows and snow. The stronghold loomed like a scar on the mountain's spine. Filled with dark spires, thick walls, and watchtowers lit by red flame. As the carriage rolled through the gates, wolves howled in greeting. This was the sound of power announcing itself.

Zara stepped out onto the frost-covered stones, her ankles weak from stillness and fear. The courtyard was full of warriors in black leather, women with steel-wrapped braids, and on a raised platform, the man Hunter Reed she had been given to.

He was taller than she expected. Broad shoulders, rough-cut features, and eyes the color of a dying storm. He didn’t smile or move. He just stood there and studied her the way predators studied prey, not out of hunger, but cruelly. His jaw was clenched, his arms crossed, and his scent, even from yards away, was cold.

“Bring her,” he said. And immediately, the warriors obeyed.

She was made to kneel before him. The chains were removed, but her wrists still ached. Hunter looked down at her, then turned to the crowd.

 “This,” he said, “is what the Gema Alpha considers payment. A wolfless girl with no voice, no power, and no worth.” He looked at her again, his voice dropping lower. 

“Let’s see what else she’s hiding.”

Zara raised her head slowly, her eyes meeting his for the first time. Something pulsed in the air between them. It was something ancient, stirring beneath their skins like an echo waiting to awaken. Hunter’s eyes narrowed, then he stepped back.

“Put her in the servant’s wing. She shouldn't sleep in my hall.”

The crowd murmured, some snickered, and Zara lowered her gaze once more.

As they led her away, one of the women, who was tall, elegant, and her eyes lined with kohl stepped into her path. 

“Welcome to Moonsun,” she whispered. “Try not to bleed on my floor.”

Zara said nothing but in her chest, something weakened. But she promised herself that here wasn't her pack and she must try something new to begin.