Chapter 2

"Let her have it?" I raised my hand and pulled the necklace from my collar.

The silver chain, set with a deep blue moonstone, was the Frostfang pack's ancestral token. Its cold gleam under the candlelight made Ryan's gaze waver.

"Ryan, take a good look. This isn't an ordinary necklace. What did Grandma say when she gave it to me on her deathbed last year? Have you forgotten?"

Ryan's Adam's apple bobbed. He didn't dare look at the moonstone. "I… I know, but Lily just lost her parents. What's wrong with you giving in to her a little?"

"So losing your parents means you can take other people's things?" I took two steps forward, the silver chain swaying in front of me.

"Three years ago, you said Lily saw the bracelet Mom left me and liked it, so you took it for her. Last year, you said Lily needed the silver-poisoning treatment manuscript I commissioned from the north for her herbology studies and took that too. Ryan, are you my brother or Lily's?"

Lily's sobs grew louder as she shrank into Ryan's arms. "Ryan, stop. It's my fault. I shouldn't have wanted Blair's things… I was just staying with the Frostfang pack anyway. I'll leave."

"Who dares to make you leave?" Ryan stood up abruptly, causing a suit button to pop off. "Blair, can't you have a little sympathy? Lily's so pitiful. Can't you just give way to her?"

"Pitiful?" A deep, resonant voice came from the doorway.

George Fuller, my uncle, entered, leaning on his silver-headed cane. The wolf head crest on the cane tip gleamed coldly. He was the Frostfang pack's Grand Elder and the person with the most authority in the pack.

"Ryan, you shut your mouth! Even if Lily were your biological sister—never mind that she's adopted—it wouldn't be her place to touch it! Have you forgotten the ancestral rule that one must not overstep and take tokens without the right?"

Ryan's face instantly flushed a deep purple. He hurriedly explained, "Uncle George, I didn't mean to. I thought… I thought it was just an ordinary necklace."

"You thought?" Uncle George's cane thumped on the floor, raising dust from the cracks between the flagstones.

"You're 25 years old. Have you learned nothing of our pack rules? At last month's assembly, I specifically told you tokens are tied to inheritance. Did it go in one ear and out the other? Go copy the ancestral rules ten times now. Don't come out until you're finished!"

Ryan's gaze suddenly turned venomous, and he fixed it on me. "You did this on purpose! You clearly knew it was a token, yet you deliberately asked me that question, just to make me look bad in front of Uncle George! Blair, when did you become so scheming?"

My heart felt as though it had been pierced by an icicle, the pain numbing my fingertips.

Werewolf packs placed the highest importance on blood ties, and siblings were supposed to be the closest to each other. But now, my own brother saw me as an enemy.

"I'm scheming?" I laughed, the sound echoing through the banquet hall, carrying a chill.

"If I were scheming, Lily would have been driven out of the pack three years ago. If I'd told Grandma when she first stole my bracelet, do you think she could have stayed in the Frostfang pack?"

Lily's sobbing paused for a moment. She glanced at me, her eyes flashing with a hint of triumph before it was quickly covered by tears.

"Blair, I really know I was wrong. Don't say that… I just liked the necklace too much."