Chapter 2

The Central Tower’s iron gates stood open. I stepped into the great hall, and the smell wrong-footed me.

The stone chamber that had been stark gray and black—his cold aesthetic—now choked on garish warmth. Crimson tapestries drowned the walls.

“Ilana prefers the warmth,” Silas said behind me.

I turned.

He leaned in the doorway, bare-chested, a linen strip draped over his shoulder. Water-darkened hair clung to his jaw. His golden eyes moved over me—lazy, heavy, the look of a sated wolf still licking blood from his chops.

He stepped closer. Before I could retreat, his hand shot out—not cruel, but casual—gripping my jaw to tilt my head. He inhaled at my throat, nostrils flaring, a low rumble vibrating in his chest that I felt in my bones.

“Your scent distressed her yesterday,” he said, voice a rough velvet that used to purr against my ear in the dark. “She’s sensitive. You understand.”

He led me down to the storage caves beneath the tower. My stomach twisted before we even entered.

There, in the corner, my life was piled like carrion.

The ice bear pelt he’d given me after my first winter run—trampled until the silver fur matted with filth and mud.

The mating cups we’d carved from blackwood together—shattered, the runes we’d burned into them ground to dust under a careless heel.

Silas sighed, the sound rich, dismissive, intimate. “Nothing of real value. Throw it out. I’ll replace what you need, little wolf.”

Nothing of value.

My gaze caught on a crystal jar half-buried in the trash. The lid was cracked. Inside, spilling out, were one thousand and one moonstone shards I’d polished with my own claws during the long nights I loved him from the shadows.

He’d once played with them on the bed, letting them trail through his fingers like stars, laughing when I said they were prayers I was too cowardly to howl.

I knelt. I gathered the broken jar and its spilled dust, and tossed it into the refuse pit.

The crunch of glass was loud.

Silas’s golden eyes narrowed. A flicker of something—irritation, or perhaps the ghost of loss—crossed that perfect, cruel face.

I smiled, showing teeth that didn’t reach my eyes. “You’re right, Alpha. Worthless things, dirtied and broken, should be thrown away.”

Including my stupid, ill-fated heart.

I looked away from his suddenly darkened expression and pulled the Withdrawal Declaration from my oil-skin pack. “Alpha, this is my formal—”

The comms stone at his hip blazed scarlet. Ilana’s voice, sharp and petulant, cut through the damp air.

“Silas? It’s snowing. The cold hurts my bones. Come carry me home.”

The change in him was instantaneous. The predatory warmth in his eyes iced over, then softened into something I’d never received—tender, indulgent, utterly devoted.

He didn’t look at my document. He pressed his claw seal onto the parchment in one swift motion, already turning away, the dismissal absolute.

“Run home on your own four legs,” he said over his shoulder. “Send a howl when you arrive. Safe passage, Amara.”

He was gone before the ink dried.

I stood in the storage cave, the sealed declaration clutched to my chest, as the blizzard began to scream against the mountain.

I walked. The tower sat halfway up the peak, the path ice-slick and treacherous. I held the declaration to my chest with one arm, using the other to steady myself against the cliff wall. Blood scent—my own—mingled with the snow.

My foot slipped on black ice. I went down hard, knee and elbow cracking against stone. Pain flared white-hot. I didn’t check the wounds. I only clutched the document tighter. If it was ruined, I’d have to face him again. Beg again.

I refused.

Through the blizzard, I saw them. Ilana, pristine in white furs, nestled against his side. And Silas, one arm draped possessively around her shoulders, smiling with the tips of his fangs bared—warm, real, cruel.

He didn’t look back.

I bit my tongue until I tasted copper. I straightened my spine, ignoring the blood freezing on my torn knee, and turned toward the forest path—the opposite direction from his disappearing sled.

I walked into the storm, leaving nothing but red drops in the snow behind me.