*Chapter 4**

I did not move for a long time.

The sun climbed higher and the light in my room turned from grey to yellow. I could hear the house waking up below me. Pots banged in the kitchen. Someone laughed in the yard. A door slammed. The world was going on like nothing had happened, and I was sitting on my bed with my hand over a mark that nobody could see anymore.

My cheek still burned from Vivienne's slap. My stomach hurt from hunger. I had not eaten since lunch the day before, because I had been too nervous to eat before going to see Dorian.

Dorian. Just thinking his name made my chest feel tight. Twelve hours ago I had been climbing those stairs in my best underwear, thinking my life was about to begin. Now I was locked in my room like a prisoner, and my stepmother was planning to sell my secret to the most dangerous man in all the packs.

I laughed a little. It came out wrong, half a laugh and half a sob. I pressed my hand over my mouth so nobody would hear.

Tap.

I froze.

Tap. Tap.

It came from the window. I turned my head slowly. My window looked out over the back of the house, over the flat roof of the kitchen. Nobody ever came up there except the birds.

Tap, tap, tap.

I got up and walked over on shaking legs. I pulled the thin curtain aside.

My mother was standing on the kitchen roof.

She had climbed up the old water pipe, the one that ran along the back wall. Her grey servant dress was dirty at the knees. A few strands of her hair had come loose from her bun, and the morning sun caught the silver streaks in them. She was forty years old, but she looked older. Work does that to a woman. Twenty years of scrubbing floors in her own husband's house had done that to her.

But her eyes were the same as always. Soft and grey green, just like mine.

I pushed the window open as quietly as I could.

"Mama," I whispered. "What are you doing? If they see you up here…"

"Then they will see an old servant cleaning leaves out of the gutter." She held up a small cloth bundle. "Take this. Quickly."

I took it. It was warm. Inside was a piece of bread and a boiled egg, still hot. My eyes filled with tears. I had not even known how hungry I was until I smelled the bread.

"How did you know I was locked in?"

"I heard Madam Vivienne turn the key last night. And I heard the glass break." She looked at my face, and her mouth went tight. "She hit you."

"It is nothing."

"It is not nothing." Her voice was low and angry. Then she softened. "Eat, child. Eat first, and then tell me."

I ate standing at the window. I ate so fast I almost choked. My mother watched me the whole time without saying a word. When I finished, she reached in through the window and wiped a crumb from my chin with her thumb, the way she used to when I was small.

That small touch broke me.

I told her everything. I did not mean to. The words just came out of me like water out of a broken pot. Dorian on the bed. Selene smiling at me. The way he let her push him down with one finger. The words his wolf said to me. *Go home, human.*

My mother's face did not change while I talked, but her hands gripped the window frame so hard her knuckles went white.

Then I told her about the Weeping Spring.

I told her about the rogues, and the iron cuffs, and the hand over my mouth. I told her about the voice that shook the leaves. And then, with my face burning, I told her about the man. I did not tell her everything. Some things a girl cannot say to her mother. But I told her enough.

When I said the word *mark*, she went very still.

"Show me," she said.

"There is nothing to see. It went away last night. It sank into my skin like…"

"Show me, Mira."

I pulled my hair aside and leaned toward the window. My mother reached out and pressed two fingers to the side of my neck, right on the spot.

She held them there for a long time.

I felt it again. That slow, steady pulse under my skin, like a second heart. Thump. Thump. Thump.

My mother's face went white. Not pale. White, like all the blood had run out of it at once. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. She took her hand away and held it against her own chest, like she had been burned.

"Mama?"

"So it has started," she whispered.

"What has started?"

She did not answer. She looked at me the way a person looks at a house that is about to catch fire. Afraid, and sad, and thinking very fast all at the same time.

"Mama, you are scaring me. What has started?"

"Listen to me." She grabbed both my hands through the window. Her grip was hard. "Listen to me very carefully, because I do not have much time. You must promise me something."

"Okay."

"Never let anyone smell your neck. Not anyone. Not a friend, not a healer, not a man who says he loves you. Keep your hair down over it. Wear high collars. If anyone comes close to you, step back."

"Why?"

"Promise me."

"I promise. But why? What is wrong with me?"

Her eyes filled with tears. I had only seen my mother cry twice in my whole life. Once when my father moved her out of the family rooms and gave her bed to Vivienne. And once on my thirteenth birthday, when I sat on the porch steps and did not shift.

"Nothing is wrong with you," she said. "Nothing has ever been wrong with you. That was the lie. That was always the lie."

"What lie? Mama, please. You are not making any sense."

She opened her mouth. I knew she was about to tell me something big. I could see it in her face, the way she pulled in a deep breath, the way she squeezed my hands like she was holding on for both of us.

"Mira, when you were born…"

A horn blew.

It was the pack horn. The big one that hung at the border tower. It only sounded for three things. A death. A war. Or visitors so important that the whole pack had to come out and greet them.

It blew once. Long and deep.

Then twice more. Short and sharp.

My mother let go of my hands. She turned and looked out over the trees toward the road that came in from the east. I leaned out of the window to see.

At first I saw only dust. A long cloud of it, rising over the trees. Then I saw cars. Big black cars, five, six, seven of them, moving fast down the border road toward our gates. Behind them came wolves. Real wolves, in their animal form, running in two straight lines on either side of the cars. Huge and dark, with black fur. Dozens of them.

I had never seen so many wolves move together like that. Our pack wolves ran in messy groups and played and bit each other's tails. These wolves did not play. They ran like soldiers.

"Who is that?" I whispered.

My mother did not need to look twice. "Blackfang."

The word went through me like cold water.

Vivienne's voice came back to me. *Only one wolf in all the packs would be so careless and so sure of himself.*

My hand went to my neck without thinking. Under my fingers, the hidden pulse jumped. It was beating faster now. Faster and faster, like it knew something I did not.

And then I smelled it.

It was faint. So faint I almost thought I was dreaming. But it came up on the morning wind, over the trees and the roofs and the yard, and it found me at my window.

Cedar smoke. Rain on hot stone.

My knees went weak. I had to hold the window frame to stay standing. Heat rolled up my spine, slow and heavy, and my face went hot.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."

My mother looked at me sharply. She saw my face. She saw my hand on my neck. And I knew she understood, because her eyes went wide and terrified.

"Is it him?" she breathed. "Mira. Is that the man from the spring?"

I could not answer. I did not need to.

"Close the window," she said. "Close it now and do not open it again. Keep away from the glass. Do you hear me?"

"Mama, wait…"

"I will come back when I can." She was already climbing back toward the pipe. "Remember your promise."

"Mama!"

But she was gone, down the pipe and across the yard and in through the kitchen door, moving faster than I had ever seen her move.

I shut the window. I pulled the curtain. I backed away until my legs hit the bed and I sat down hard.

The smell was weaker inside, but it was still there, like it had got caught in my hair. I covered my nose with my sleeve. It did not help. My body was still leaning toward it, the way a plant leans toward the sun.

Below me the house had gone crazy. Feet ran up and down the stairs. Doors banged open. I heard my father shouting orders, his big voice booming through the walls. Someone was crying. Someone else was laughing in a high, excited way that I knew very well.

Selene.

I pressed my ear to my door.

"…the Alpha himself? Here?" one of the maids was saying.

"Since dawn they say his Beta has been asking questions all along the border," said another voice. "Asking about a girl."

"What girl?"

"Nobody knows. But the Gamma is going to wet himself. Look at him running around."

Their footsteps went past my door and down the hall.

My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. I put both hands over my neck. *Please,* I thought. *Please stay hidden. Please, please, please.*

Outside, the cars had stopped. I heard their engines die one by one. Then a long, heavy silence fell over the whole pack. No birds. No dogs barking. No children shouting in the yard. Even the wind seemed to stop.

Then a man's voice rang out from the front of the house. It was not the deep voice from the forest. It was younger and clearer, the voice of someone used to giving announcements.

"By order of Alpha Kael Draven of Blackfang Pack!"

My breath caught.

"Every unmated woman of Hollowmere over the age of eighteen will come to the pack square. Now. No one is excused. No one is to hide. Any family who keeps a daughter back will answer to the Alpha himself."

The silence after that was worse than before.

Then the house exploded with noise again. Girls squealed. Mothers shouted for brushes and dresses. My father roared for Selene to put on her blue dress, no, the white one, the white one was better.

I stood in the middle of my room and shook.

Every unmated woman. That was me. I was nineteen. I had no mate that anyone knew about. I was supposed to be in that line.

And if I stood in that line, he would walk past me. He would come close. He would lean in to smell me like the wolves did, the way the rogue had done at the spring. And my body would answer him, because my body did not know how to lie. And then everyone would know.

Everyone. My father. The whole pack. They would drag me in front of the Alpha of Hollowmere and call me a traitor. And maybe the Butcher of Nine Packs would stand there and watch them do it. Or maybe he would do something worse himself.

But maybe…

I hated the small part of me that thought it. The stupid, soft part that remembered his hands shaking. The part that remembered *Mine*.

Maybe he would not hurt me. Maybe he had come for me. Maybe…

Footsteps came down the hall. Hard, fast, clicking footsteps. High heels.

They stopped right outside my door.

I heard the key go into the lock. It turned slowly. The door swung open.

Vivienne stood there in a fresh green silk dress, with her hair pinned up perfectly and her lips painted dark red. You could not tell she had not slept. She looked like a queen.

Behind her, down the hall, I could see Selene in a white dress, turning in front of the big mirror, smiling at herself. My old coat was folded over her arm. The coat I had worn to the spring. The coat that still smelled of him.

I stared at it. My stomach dropped.

Vivienne followed my eyes and smiled, slow and cold.

"The Alpha has called for every unmated girl in Hollowmere," I said. My voice shook. "He said no one is excused."

"I heard him."

"Then I have to go. If they find out you kept me back…"

Vivienne stepped into my room and closed the door softly behind her. She came close, so close I could smell her heavy perfume.

"Oh, my dear girl," she said sweetly. "You are going to stand in that square?"

She reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, almost like a mother would. Her fingers were ice cold.

"Not you," she said.