Chapter 1

Ravynna’s POV

I am the only female warrior in Alpha King's most gruelling training camp and for the first time I have returned home in six years.

When my parents met me at the border, the one I'd been hoping to see wasn't there, Kael.

The man, I've been pining for six whole years.

Nothing seemed to have changed here, the same ancient oaks lining the main path six years ago were still there… their branches arching overhead like a cathedral ceiling.

I pressed my fingertips against the cold window glass and exhaled slowly.

‘Your heart rate is embarrassing’, my wolf Lyra said from somewhere deep inside me, her voice dripping with amusement. ‘I can feel it from here.’

"Oh please shut up," I muttered under my breath.

"Did you say something, sweetheart?" Mom glanced at me from the passenger seat, her eyes soft with the particular warmth she reserved for homecomings.

"Nothing. Just talking to Lyra."

Dad caught my eye in the rearview mirror and smiled. He didn't say anything. He never needed to.

I reached up and touched the base of my throat. It’s a reflex I'd developed somewhere around year two, whenever the ache of missing home got too heavy to carry alone.

The slender chain was still there, cool against my fingertip.

The silver was unlike anything I'd encountered at the center pack.

Kael had told me that it’s crafted by an old artisan in the Blood moon’s pack territory, using a technique that had been passed down for generations.

Treated and tempered so it carried none of the burn that ordinary silver left on wolf skin.

It had been his mother’s and his parting gift to me.

‘There it is,’ Lyra said, softer now. ‘That's what this is really about.’

I ignored her taunts and dropped my hand back into my lap.

The house smelled like home… cedar and my mother's cooking, and for a few honest minutes, I forgot everything else.

Mom had made enough food for a small army, which meant she'd been nervous too, though she'd never admit it.

Dad walked every room with me, pointing out small changes: a new bookshelf, a repainted hallway, and so on.

As if catching me up on six years of the house's quiet life.

As the Alpha of the Silverfang Wolf Pack and Luna, they had never strayed from the simple customs they had upheld for decades.

Mum would always look at Dad with a smile and say, ‘This is life.’

They asked about the Alliance training. I told them everything they wanted to hear, and most of it was even true.

The center pack's resources were extraordinary.

Alpha King's curriculum was grueling and precisely designed… I had learned things I couldn't have imagined at sixteen.

"And a mate?" Mom asked, her voice deliberately casual over her tea cup. "No bond while you were away?"

"No."

The silence that followed made me tense up, knowing what was coming next.

"Anna." Dad set down his cup. "You're twenty-two."

"I'm aware."

"In wolf years—"

"I know what it means in wolf years." I kept my tone even. "It just hasn't happened. I'm not worried about it."

They exchanged one of their looks, the kind that carried entire conversations. I'd grown up watching those looks and had never quite learned to read them.

"We've actually been talking," Mom began carefully, "with the Blood moon."

I made myself breathe normally.

"Blood moon pack took heavy losses in the Lycan raid last month." Dad's voice shifted into the register he used for pack business, measured, deliberate.

"Alpha Jareth was wounded in the battle. Seriously wounded. They need a strong alliance, and we've been close for thirty years." He paused. "You and Jareth’s son, Kael, have always been close."

"Yes," I said. The word came out steadier than I expected.

"His parents think it's a good match. We think it's a good match." Mom was watching me carefully now. "What do you think?"

What did I think? I thought about a young man standing at the edge of pack territory on a grey morning six years ago, pressing something small and cold into my palm without quite meeting my eyes. This was hers, he'd said, voice rough in the way teenage boys got when they were trying not to show something.

My dad had it made for my mom—there's only one like it in the world. The silver won't hurt you, I made sure. He hadn't said anything else. He hadn't needed to.

My parents’ wishes were plain to see. They wanted me to marry Kael, to formally cement the bond between the two packs.

"I think," I said slowly, "that it sounds right."

Mom's shoulders dropped half an inch in relief. Dad reached over and squeezed my hand once, quick and firm.

We talked for another hour about logistics, timelines, and the politics of the Blood Moon’s Pack's recovery.

I said the right things and asked the right questions and by the time I finally climbed the stairs to my old room, I felt something dangerously close to hope settling in my chest.

My room was exactly as I'd left it. That undid me slightly.

The same quilt, the same crack in the ceiling plaster above the bed, the same photo strip from a summer fair tucked into the corner of my mirror.

Kael was making a ridiculous face in frame three. I was laughing in frame four because I always laughed at his ridiculous faces.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed both palms flat against my thighs.

The door opened a crack, Mom.

She came in quietly and sat beside me, and for a moment she just looked at the photo strip too.

"There's something else," she said.

I turned to look at her.

Her expression was careful. Gentle in the specific way of someone delivering weight they wish they didn't have to carry across a room to you.

"I heard it from Elara, a few months back. She mentioned it almost in passing, I don't think she realized…" Mom stopped.

Gauging my reaction before adding, "Ravy. Kael found his mate. About a year ago."

The room didn't change. The crack in the ceiling was still there. The photo strip was still there but my heart skipped a beat.

I became aware that my hand was at my throat again, fingers curled around the chain.

"Okay," I said.

"Sweetheart—"

"It’s okay." I stood up, crossed to the window, and looked out at the dark tree line. My voice, when it came, surprised me with its steadiness. "Does she know? About the arrangement?"

"I don't know."

"Does he know? That our families are discussing this?"

"I assume so, yes. Your dad and Kael's parents have arranged to meet up; we'll sit down and have a proper conversation tomorrow."

I nodded once. Outside, the oaks stood exactly as they always had, patient and unchanged and indifferent to everything happening beneath them.

‘Ravy…’, Lyra said quietly. For once, she had nothing else to add.

I reached back and unclasped the necklace. I held it in my closed fist for a moment—the chain pooling in my palm, weightless and cool, the silver that had never once burned me in six years.

Then I set it down on the windowsill.