Chapter 3

I told myself I would not go.

I told myself that for nearly an hour, sitting on the ridge with my knees drawn up and the cloak pulled tight around my shoulders, while the voice in my head went quiet and the ache under my ribs grew louder.

It was not a metaphor. It was a physical ache, deep and hollow, like a tooth pulled from the root. Every breath tugged at it. Every heartbeat made it worse.

At some point, when the stars had turned a full quarter across the sky, I stood up and walked to the healers' tent instead.

It was the sensible thing to do.

Morwenna's tent sat at the edge of camp, apart from the others, lit by a single lantern that swung gently in the wind. She was awake. She was always awake. In seven years I had never once seen her sleep.

She was not old, exactly, and not young either. Her face had the kind of stillness that made it hard to guess. Brown hair streaked with a little gray, tied back with a plain cord, hands stained green from a lifetime of crushing herbs. The Frostmaw children called her Auntie. The warriors called her the only healer worth bleeding for.

"Sit," she said, without turning around.

I sat.

She was grinding something in a stone bowl. The smell of it filled the tent, bitter and sweet at once, like cut grass and smoke. She did not ask what I wanted. She did not glance at my scratches, the ones Dorian had sent me here to have treated. She just kept grinding, slowly, steadily, while the lantern creaked overhead.

"The Alpha thinks you're hurt," she said at last.

"I'm not."

"No." She set down the pestle. "Those aren't scratches you're bleeding from, child."

My blood ran cold.

She turned then, finally, and looked at me. Her eyes were dark and calm and far too kind. She looked at my face. Then at my chest, just over the place where the ache lived, just for a moment.

"It hurts worse when you're farther away, doesn't it?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't.

"It will get worse before it gets better." She poured hot water over the herbs in the bowl, stirred it, and pressed the cup into my hands. "Drink. It won't cure it. It only makes it bearable."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Of course you don't." She smiled, small and sad. "And I haven't said a word."

I drank. It tasted like honey and bitter root, and the ache eased, just slightly, like a fist loosening its grip.

"Astrid," Morwenna said softly, as I rose to go. "Whatever you decide tonight, decide it with your eyes open. That's all I'll say."

I stared at her.

She had already turned back to her bowl.

I left camp the way I had left it a hundred times on night patrols. Down the east path, past the second sentry post, through the gap in the old stone wall where the guards never looked because they trusted me.

That was the worst part. They trusted me.

I nodded to a young sentry as I passed, and he saluted, grinning, and I felt every one of my years of loyalty turn to ash in my mouth.

The forest closed around me. The moon was a thin blade overhead, and the pines stood black and silent. I walked without thinking, and the ache in my chest eased with every step, until I understood that my feet already knew where they were going.

I found him at the river.

He was sitting on a flat rock at the water's edge, in human form, his back to me. Broad shoulders under a dark tunic. Black hair, thick and untidy, falling past his collar. He didn't turn when I stopped in the trees, though I knew he'd heard me.

I drew my knife.

"I'm not armed," he said.

His voice was even lower out loud. It rolled over me and settled in my bones.

"Turn around," I said.

"Slowly?"

"Very."

He turned.

I had seen him on the battlefield, a giant black wolf, a legend. I had not been ready for the man. He was younger than I'd expected, perhaps thirty, with a hard, beautiful face carved out of shadows and a scar that ran through one dark eyebrow. His eyes were the same winter gray, and when they met mine, the whole world tilted.

The jolt came again. Weaker, softer, but there, like a hand sliding along my spine.

He let out a long, unsteady breath, as if he'd been holding it for hours.

"There you are," he said quietly.

"Don't." My voice cracked, and I hated it. "Don't talk to me like you know me."

"I don't." Something flickered across his face, quick and unreadable. "Not yet. But I've been looking for you for a very long time."

I frowned. "You've been at war with my clan for six years."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

He didn't answer. He only looked at me, and I saw him decide something, and set it aside.

"Sit," he said. "Or don't. But you're shaking, little wolf, and I'd rather you were shaking sitting down."

"I'm cold."

"You're not."

I hated that he was right.

I didn't sit. I stayed at the edge of the trees, the knife still in my hand, and he stayed on his rock, hands loose on his knees, and neither of us moved for a long moment. The river murmured beside us. The pull in my chest was a low, constant song.

"Why did you call the retreat?" I asked.

"You know why."

"Say it."

"Because you were on that field." His jaw flexed. "And if one of my warriors had sunk their teeth into you, in the confusion, in the dark, I would have burned every Blackmere wolf on that battlefield to the ground. Myself included."

The words landed like a blow.

He said it simply, without heat, the way a man states a fact about the weather. That was what frightened me.

"You don't get to say things like that," I whispered.

"I know."

"I'm your enemy."

"You're my mate."

"That's not the same thing."

"No," he agreed, softly. "It's worse."

I almost laughed. It came out as a broken breath.

"Listen to me," Luca said, and there was a new note in his voice, rougher, more urgent. "I can't prove what I said out there. Not tonight. Not here. You have no reason to trust me, and I'd think less of you if you did."

"Then why bring me here?"

"I didn't. You walked."

Silence.

"Go to Harrowmere," he said. "It's a village on the northern border. Or what's left of it. Find the survivors. Ask them who burned it."

"The Blackmere burned it."

"Ask them."

"Why would I—"

"Because you already want to." His eyes held mine, steady and gray and terribly gentle. "You've wanted to for years, and you've been too loyal to look."

I couldn't breathe.

He rose from the rock, slowly, deliberately, and I tensed. But he only took one step toward me and stopped, well out of reach. His scent rolled over me on the wind. Pine and woodsmoke and rain, and something warm underneath, something that made my knees weak and my wolf whimper deep in my chest.

"I won't touch you," he said. "Not unless you ask."

"I'm not going to ask."

"I know." A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. "But if anyone else lays a hand on you, I won't make the same promise."

The heat that shot through me had nothing to do with anger.

"Go home, Astrid," he said. "Before they notice you're gone."

I hadn't told him my name.

I stared at him, and he stared back, and then he shifted. Just like that. Black fur rippled over his shoulders, and the huge wolf stepped backward into the trees and vanished as if he'd never been there.

I stood alone at the river.

I got back to camp before dawn.

I slid through the wall gap and past the sentries, and I might have made it all the way to my tent unseen.

But Posy was sitting outside it, wrapped in a blanket, her knees under her chin.

She was awake. She was not smiling.

"Where were you?" she asked quietly.

"Walking."

"For four hours."

"I couldn't sleep."

Posy looked at me for a long moment. Then she stood, crossed the space between us, and leaned in close. She breathed in once, slowly, near my collar.

Her face went white.

"Astrid," she whispered. "You smell like the Blackmere alpha."

I opened my mouth.

"No," she said, and lifted a shaking hand. "Don't. Don't tell me anything."

"Posy—"

"If you tell me, I'll have to choose." Her eyes were bright with something that looked terrifyingly like tears. "And I don't think I'm ready to find out what I'd pick."