LOGINI shifted on the stairs.I didn’t stop. I didn’t slow down. Astra came through me between one step and the next, and I hit the front hall on four legs and went through the open doors like a white storm.The lawn was chaos.The floodlights were dead. Only the moon lit it, low and silver behind thin clouds. Bodies lay in the grass. Exiles, mostly. Some still. Some crawling for the trees.And in the middle of the lawn, a ring of wolves.Twelve of them. Big. Gray and brown and silver, sleek and well fed. Greymoor. Real fighters. They stood shoulder to shoulder in a tight circle.In the center, a huge black wolf lay on his side in the grass.He wasn’t moving.Blood soaked his fur. His flank. His throat. His legs were twitching, trying to push him up, and failing.Standing over him was a pale gray wolf with a ragged, half-healed scar across one shoulder.My scar.Varek.Call them, Astra said.Who?Your mates. The bond goes both ways. Call them.I didn’t know how. I didn’t have time to learn
The ballroom doors closed behind me with a sound like a coffin lid.A hundred faces turned toward me.Mothers clutching babies. Old men with canes. Children in pajamas, wide-eyed, huddled on blankets under the dark chandeliers. Greta stood near the long glass terrace doors with a meat cleaver in one hand and a frying pan in the other, looking like she’d been waiting her whole life for this.Outside, the howling had become something else.Snarling. Crashing. The deep, wet sounds of wolves tearing into each other.A little girl near the front started to cry.I knelt down in front of her.“Hey,” I said softly. “Do you know what I am?”She sniffled. Shook her head.“I’m a white wolf.” I smiled. “The biggest one in ten thousand years. And I’m going to stand right here by that door all night. Okay?”She stared at me.“Okay,” she whispered.I stood up. Walked to the center of the room.And I listened.I could hear all of it.Every sound from every wall. Astra pulled it in like breath, sorted
Rhys came back at noon.I heard his car on the drive and was at the front door before it stopped. He climbed out stiff and tired, his coat creased from the road, and he didn’t smile when he saw me.That told me most of it.“Southmere will come,” he said, once we were all in the study. “Alpha Brenna owes us for the flood two winters ago. Forty wolves. They’ll be here by nightfall.”“And Ashford?” Fenris asked.Rhys dropped into the leather chair.“Ashford won’t.” He rubbed his eyes. “Varek got there first. Three days ago. He told them the Aurexians stole a white wolf and a Nightreach son, and that the council will side with whoever wins.” His mouth twisted. “They decided to wait and see who that is.”“Cowards,” Dax muttered.“Practical cowards,” Rhys said. “The worst kind.”Fenris stared at the map.“Forty from Southmere,” he said slowly. “Sixty of ours who can fight. Against thirty exiles and however many Greymoor brings.”“Varek has a hundred,” Kade said quietly.Nobody said anything
They were waiting for me in the study.All three brothers. Kade, still in his muddy boots. And Orion, standing awkwardly by the bookshelves like he wasn’t sure he was allowed in the room.A map of the territory lay spread across Fenris’s desk, its corners held down with a lamp, a coffee cup, and the old leather book.Nobody said anything when I walked in.They’d all heard. Every word at the gate.“Well,” Rhys said finally. “That was dramatic.”“Rhys,” Dax growled.“I’m only saying. That isn’t love, that’s shopping.” He put a hand over his heart. “I may have it embroidered on a pillow.”I almost smiled. Almost.Then I looked at the map.“Do we believe him?” Kade asked.“No,” Dax said.“Yes,” Fenris said.They looked at each other.“He sat in the dirt for an hour,” Fenris said. “He gave up the one thing he came for and told her anyway. That isn’t a trap. That’s a guilty conscience.”“Or a very good trap,” Rhys said. “Varek used her mother. Why not him?”“Because Varek doesn’t need Drave
“You don’t have to go down there,” Dax said.“I know.”“We can send him away,” Rhys said. “Kade’s men can drag him to the bottom of the mountain. I’d even help. I’d enjoy it.”“I know.”I was still looking out the window. At Draven, sitting in the dirt.“I want to,” I said.Fenris hadn’t said anything. He stood a little apart from the other two, his arms crossed, his eyes on the gate.“The gate stays shut,” he said finally. “You talk to him through the bars. And we’ll be on the front steps.”“Fenris...”“On the steps, Flora.” He didn’t look at me. “That isn’t negotiable.”I looked at him for a long moment.Then I nodded.The gravel drive had never felt so long.I walked it alone, in a soft gray sweater and dark pants and boots. Not my uniform. Not a dress. Just me. My hair loose down my back. The mark on my throat bare to the cold air.I didn’t hide it.Behind me, I felt them. Three of them on the front steps of the house. Watching. I didn’t have to look back to know exactly where eac
The next morning I almost didn’t go to training.I lay in Dax’s bed at four-thirty in the morning, his arm heavy around my waist, his breath slow and even against my hair, and I thought about staying.Ask Dax, Fenris had said yesterday. Without even looking at me.So maybe he didn’t want me there.He wants us there, Astra said. He just doesn’t want to want us there.That’s not the same thing.I touched the side of my throat. The mark was tender under my fingertips. Two neat crescents where Dax’s teeth had broken the skin. It throbbed faintly, warm, like a second heartbeat.I slid out from under Dax’s arm.He made a low, sleepy sound. “Where you going?”“Training.”He opened one eye. Looked at me. At my throat.The corner of his mouth curved.“Good luck,” he murmured.*****Fenris was standing in the middle of the north field when I got there.Right on time. Not one minute late.He didn’t look at me as I walked across the frosty grass. He was looking at the mountains. His breath cloude







