Chapter 1

Briony's POV

The wolf on my table was dying, and Petra wouldn't stop talking.

"Bind it tighter." I pressed both hands against Torin's side, blood slicking hot between my fingers, soaking straight through the cloth. He came through the door twenty minutes ago on Rowan's back, one arm shredded to nothing and a bite in his side deep enough that I could see the white of a rib underneath.

"You're doing it wrong." Petra leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching like this was entertainment and not a man's life stretched out in front of her. "Should've sent for Old Bettina."

"Old Bettina's asleep in the east house, and he doesn't have twenty minutes for somebody to go wake her up." I didn't look up. My hands were shaking, but they hadn't stopped moving, and right now that was the only part that mattered.

Torin groaned, a low broken sound, and his hand shot out and grabbed my wrist hard enough to leave a mark. "It's okay," I told him, even though it wasn't.

"You're going to be fine. Just hold still for me, all right?"

"Ahh fuck" His back came up off the table when I pressed the poultice into the wound, and I felt that sound land somewhere behind my ribs.

"I know. I know it hurts. Almost done." I kept my voice even because panicking wasn't going to close anything faster, and because somebody in that room needed to sound like they had a handle on this, even if it was a lie I was telling both of us.

Petra clicked her tongue like she had somewhere better to be. "Guess it's good the pack's finally getting a real healer's blood in the family. Shame it's not the sister actually doing the healing right now."

I didn't answer that. I learned a long time ago that answering just gave people more to chew on.

"Bet the Alpha's thrilled," she went on, "getting the sharp one instead of…" she waved a hand at me, up and down, like she was deciding whether I was worth the breath. "Well. You know."

"Petra." Sage's voice cut across the room from the doorway, flat enough that Petra actually flinched. "Get out, or make yourself useful and hold his leg so she's not fighting him and stitching him at the same time."

Petra's mouth twisted. "I don't take orders from an enforcer who isn't even ranked yet."

"Then take it from the healer with her hands inside your packmate right now, and get out of her light." Sage crossed the room in four strides and put her whole weight down on Torin's leg without waiting to be asked twice.

Petra left. She didn't slam the door, which somehow felt weird,like she wanted us to know she wasn't bothered enough to bother.

"You good?" Sage asked, once the door clicked shut.

"I'm not the one bleeding out on the table."

"That's not what I asked, stop drifting.”

I didn't have an answer for that one, so I threaded the needle instead. Torin made another one of those broken sounds when it went in, and I whispered sorry, almost there, the way I did for every wolf who ended up hating me a little for how much it hurt to be put back together.

It took another ten minutes to finish closing him up. By the time I tied off the last stitch, my hands had stopped shaking, and Torin's breathing had gone from ragged to something closer to sleep.

"He's going to make it," I said, mostly to convince myself.

"You didn't need me to tell you that." Sage wiped her hands on a rag and looked at me the way she always did after I patched somebody up, checking how much of myself I used up doing it. "You look like hell, by the way."

"Thank you. Very kind of you to say."

"I mean it. When's the last time you actually slept?"

"I'll sleep after the wedding." It came out flatter than I meant it to.

Sage's face did something complicated. "How are you doing with all that? The real answer, not the one you hand everybody else."

"I'm fine. It's not my wedding." I scrubbed Torin's blood off my hands and watched it turn the water in the basin pink. "Marisol's the one marrying a man who scares half this pack just by walking into a room. I hand her the ring and try not to trip over my own dress. That's the whole job."

"You say that like it doesn't get to you." Sage tilted her head. "Petra's not the only one talking, you know. I hear what they call you too. The spare. The…"

"Don't." I kept it quiet, but it landed how I needed it to. "I know what they call me, Sage. I don't need it repeated back to me."

She put her hands up, backed off an inch. "Fair enough."

For a second the room was just the two of us, Torin's steady breathing, and the smell of blood and crushed herbs going stale in the air. It was almost peaceful. I'd take it almost peacefully. Nobody was offering me much else these days.

Then the door slammed open hard enough to hit the wall, and one of the pack elders, Halric, gray-bearded, breathing like he ran the whole way from the main house filled the doorway with a look on his face that dropped my stomach before he said a single word.

"Where's Marisol?"

Sage straightened fast. "What do you mean, where's Marisol? She's at the main house getting fitted.."

"She's not." His voice cracked down the middle. "Nobody's seen her since this morning. Her room's empty. Window's wide open, sheets tied off the sill like she climbed straight out of it." His eyes cut to me, and something in them turned my skin cold.

"Ceremony's in two days, girl. Tell me you know where your sister ran off to."

I didn't. I had no idea where she was.

And from the way Halric's face had gone the color of old ash, I was starting to understand that not knowing was about to become my problem too.