Chapter 1

Elowen’s POV

I was making meat broth for my brother’s prisoner. I stirred the thick broth slowly, watching the fat rise to the surface.

I had learned how to make it thick enough to fill him up, but soft enough for him to eat without much trouble.

It had been a month and I still hated the smell of the dungeon more than the smell of blood.

The prisoner I cooked for every day was no ordinary captive.

His name was Kade Sorin, Alpha Prince of the Southern Pack. In the last battle my brother had led the charge that broke their lines and dragged him back in chains. That single capture had made Thorne’s name known across every Northern camp.

The South was nothing like us. I had heard the older wolves talk about it in low voices, half admiration and half contempt; their fertile valleys, their stone towns and the way their Alphas won wars with cunning instead of claws but here in the North we had nothing but ice and hunger and the strength of our arms.

Strength was the only law anyone respected.

The two packs had been at war for as long as anyone could remember and a prize like Kade Sorin taken alive was worth more to the King than any battle won outright.

Thorne’s order was simple; keep the Southern prisoner alive…the Alpha King wanted him and that was all that mattered.

I wrapped the bowl in cloth and walked out of the kitchen.

Snow crunched under my boots as I crossed the yard and went toward the lower gate.

Two guards saw me and stepped aside without a word. They knew where I was going.

The stairs down to the dungeon were slippery with frost and the air grew colder the further down I went.

I found him where I always did, chained to the far wall, his head tipped back against the stone.

Even in chains, even torn open by the whip, Kade Sorin still held himself like the room belonged to him. Blood had dried in dark streaks across his chest and shoulders but his eyes remained sharp; clear, cold, and unbroken. Looking at him, it was hard to believe this was a man who had been beaten for a full month.

His eyes found me the moment I stepped through the door, sharp and calm like he was studying me instead of the other way around. Even after a month of whips and starvation, that gaze hadn’t dulled once. I’d seen warriors twice his size break faster under half the punishment.

“You again, little Northern bitch,” he said. His voice was rough but steady.

The words were still insulting, but they lacked the pure killing intent he used with everyone else. When the guards came near him, he lunged and spat blood at their faces. He had bitten one of them hard enough to tear skin but with me, he never tried. After a full month of me bringing him food, he simply watched and let me come close.

“Who else would come,” I said, kneeling beside him and setting the bowl down.

His wrists were raw under the chains, fresh cuts crossed his back, some still bleeding. I had seen worse on him before but it never got easy to look at. I had also watched other prisoners dragged through this same dungeon and felt nothing but the numbness the North taught us to feel. I didn’t understand why this one wound sat differently with me, why some nights I lay awake thinking of the sound the whip made against his back.

I lifted a spoon of broth to his mouth.

He turned his head away.

“I don’t want it.”

“You need to eat,” I said. “You can barely lift your arms.”

“Then let me starve. I would rather starve than take food from a barbarian’s hand.”

I pushed the spoon against his lips harder, broth spilled down his chin.

“My brother told me to keep you alive so you’re going to eat, whether you like it or not.”

His mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Your brother,” he said. “The Northern dog who dragged me here in chains like an animal.”

“Watch your mouth,” I hissed, glancing toward the stairs. “If the guards hear you—”

“I don’t care what your guards hear,” he cut in, his voice louder now. “You’re all the same, Savages who drink blood and call it honor. I will kill every wolf in this frozen waste when I get free starting with your brother.”

“Stop talking,” I whispered, my chest tight with fear.

He didn’t stop.

“Tell your King he can whip me until there’s nothing left, I will never—”

I shoved the spoon into his mouth before he could finish, broth ran down his chin.

He choked and glared at me, but he swallowed. I didn’t let go of the spoon until I was sure he wouldn’t spit it back out.

“You’ll get yourself killed,” I said quietly. “Is that what you want?”

He said nothing, instead he just stared at me, jaw tight with blood at the corner of his mouth.

I kept feeding him in silence after that, spoon after spoon until the bowl was empty.

It had been a month since my brother first sent me down here, a month of watching this man get torn apart because he refused to bend. There was something about watching a chained, starving man get whipped night after night that no amount of Northern pride could make sit right in my chest.

The Alpha King wanted him and everyone knew it, but Kade Sorin’s mind for war was worth more to the North than a hundred blades and the King meant to have it, one way or another.

If he kept refusing, the whips would keep coming, coated in aconite that burned longer than any blade could cut.

Even I, raised around blood since I could walk, found it hard to watch some nights. I told myself it was only because I was soft, the way Thorne sometimes teased me for being, but I had seen other Northern women watch a man bleed and laugh. I could never.

I wanted him to give in, not for the North but for him.

He lifted his head slightly and studied me the way he always did, like he could read my thoughts before I finished having them.

“You want me to submit,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“I want the torture to stop,” I said.

He spat blood on the floor between us, his lips curling with hate.

“Then you’ll be disappointed,” he said through his teeth. “I will never submit to your King, not while I still breathe. Tell your Alpha King that… tell him he can peel the skin from my bones and I still will not bend.”

I said nothing. I picked up the empty bowl and stood, my knees stiff from the cold floor.

I wiped the spoon clean on the edge of my skirt and left without answering.

He watched me all the way to the door but I didn’t look back.

My brother found me in the yard before I even reached the kitchen.

Thorne stood with his arms crossed. His face was hard to read, the way it always was when he had something difficult to say.

“Elowen.”

I stopped. Something in his voice made my stomach tighten before he even spoke.

“Brother, what is it?”

He looked around before he spoke, his voice low. “There’s a new plan for the prisoner.”

My stomach tightened, though I couldn’t say why. “What kind of plan?”

He didn’t answer right away. His jaw worked like the words were something he had to force past his own teeth.

“Someone told the King that Southern wolves care about blood and family more than anything else,” he said. “That a wife might do what the whip could not… a son, most of all.”

I stared at him slowly and I understood him at once.

“You want me to be his wife.”

Thorne didn’t look away, but something in his eyes flinched before the rest of his face caught up.

“The King has already decided, I’m only the one telling you.”

I looked away first toward the dungeon gate, toward the stairs I had just climbed.

I wasn’t foolish enough to be shocked.

This was the North. Female wolves belonged to whoever needed them. If a husband died, a woman could be given to his brother or even his son and ordered to keep bearing pups like nothing had happened. Pups were the only real value most of us had. I had grown up watching it and every time it left a quiet sickness in my chest. I never said it out loud but I never accepted it either.

I had been spared the worst of that life because of Thorne.

When we were small after we lost our mother, the other pups used to steal our food and push us into the snow. Thorne would take the beating for both of us and still come back with something for me to eat even if it was only a scrap of meat he had hidden under his tongue. He raised me when no one else would. He taught me how to stay quiet, how to survive, how to keep my head down until I was strong enough not to need protection.

I still remembered the winter I was six, when I was too small to fight the older pups for scraps at the feeding line and Thorne had gone without eating for two days straight so I wouldn’t feel the hunger as badly. He had been beaten more than once for stealing bread meant for warriors twice his size, just so I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep. That was the kind of brother he was…the kind who wore his love like a debt he never expected repaid.

Without him I would have been used up and discarded years ago.

If he had spent his whole life protecting me then I owed him this.

“I’ll do it,” I said quietly. “If that’s what you need from me.”

His shoulders eased, just a little.

“It’s not what I need,” he said. “It’s what keeps you alive in this pack.”

I nodded, but my chest still felt tight.

Then I thought of Kade Sorin, chained to that wall with his wounds still open, his body barely able to hold itself up.

He wasn’t like the Northern males. He didn’t have their size, their strength built from years of cold and war. He was lean where they were huge, sharp where they were rough.

If I was meant to carry his child, I didn’t know how his body, torn open like this, could survive what that would ask of him.

I only nodded again and turned back toward the kitchen, the same question circling in my head.

Could his body even endure the sex?