Chapter 2: The Warning

They gave me a quarter of an hour to pack.

Two guards stood outside the narrow room, arms folded, eyes on the wall. I didn't waste the time on tears. I folded my two dresses into a satchel, wrapped my mother's old knife in a cloth and shoved my boots on without lacing them.

My reflection stared back from the mirror. My eyes were red rimmed. My lip had split where I'd bitten it through. I looked dragged out of a fire.

Good, I thought. Let them see it.

My wolf didn't answer. She hadn't spoken since the hall. She lay curled behind my ribs, still as stone, and every time I reached for her I felt the torn edge of the bond and flinched.

"Time," said the guard at the door.

They walked me through the servants' corridors so no one would have to look at me. Behind us, the Citadel's bell began to toll the end of the Convergence. Each note sounded like a door shutting.

At the western gate the guards stopped.

"Follow the road to the border stones," the taller one said. He didn't meet my eyes. "Don't turn back. If you're found in Moonfang territory after dawn..."

"I understand," I said.

He hesitated, as if he might say something kind. Then the gate closed behind me with a dull iron clang.

I walked.

The road wound down through black pines. The cold got into my lungs and sat there. I kept my eyes on the dirt, because if I saw the Citadel's lights I would start to cry.

I haven't done anything, I'd said to him. Why?

He hadn't answered. He hadn't even blinked. And yet...

I stopped walking.

His hands had been shaking. He'd pressed a palm to his chest as though the rejection had hurt him too. A man who truly wanted me gone should have looked relieved. Kaelith Veyr had looked like someone cutting off his own arm.

Don't, I told myself. Don't make excuses for him. He meant it.

Ahead, the road bent toward the border stones. A few hundred paces and I would be out of Moonfang forever.

That was when the bond stirred.

It wasn't the warmth from before. It was a thread so thin I almost missed it, a last strand that hadn't quite snapped. Along it, from far behind me, came a voice I'd only heard for a heartbeat in the throne room, rough and low and shaking.

Forgive me.

I staggered. My hand shot out and caught a pine trunk.

"What did you say?" I breathed. But the thread was already gone. The cold rushed back in, and the forest was silent.

Two words. Not an explanation. Not a reason. Just a plea thrown across a broken bond by a man who had destroyed me in front of everyone I'd ever known.

Then, behind me, a twig snapped.

I knew it was wrong before I turned. No owls, no insects. The quiet of a place where every living thing is holding still.

"Who's there?"

The shadows between the pines shifted.

A wolf stepped onto the road, enormous, gray as ash. Its eyes gave back a flat yellow gleam. It wasn't growling. That was what frightened me. A wolf that growls is warning you. This one simply watched me, patient and certain.

I took a step back. The wolf lunged.

I threw myself sideways and felt claws rake the air where my throat had been. I rolled and came up with my mother's knife in hand. I didn't remember drawing it. This was no stray. It was hunting me. The attack had been placed, timed, and waited for.

Someone sent it.

"Wake up," I hissed at my wolf. "Please. I need you."

Nothing. Just gray silence.

The wolf struck again, slammed into my chest and drove me flat. Teeth snapped an inch from my face, its breath stinking of blood and iron. I jammed my forearm under its jaw and held it off, sobbing, as the teeth came closer.

And then, finally, something answered.

It rose from the bottom of me, slow and furious. Not the singing creature from the hall. Something that had been struck and decided to strike back. My wolf lifted her head, and the world flared gold.

I screamed.

I heaved, and the gray body went flying into the trees. I scrambled upright, breathing hard. Pale claws curved from my fingertips.

The wolf rose, shook itself, and began to change. Fur melted into skin, and bone folded with a wet sound. In seconds a man stood on the road, naked and bleeding from a gash across his ribs I didn't remember giving him.

He was smiling.

"There she is," he whispered. "I told them it would only take a little push."

"Who sent you?" My voice came out snarled and low.

He laughed, and blood bubbled between his teeth. I had cut him deeper than I'd realized. He was dying, and he knew it.

"The Alpha should have killed you," he said, "when he had the chance."

The words went through me like cold iron.

"What do you mean? What did Kaelith..."

But his head had lolled to one side. His eyes rolled up, and the smile stayed as the breath left his chest in one long rattle.

I stood over him, shaking. The knife slid from my fingers into the dust.

The Alpha should have killed you.

Not I'm going to kill you. Not you're a threat. He had said it like a verdict. Like it was a mistake someone had been waiting to correct.

I knelt and reached to close his eyes. That was when I saw his wrist.

Something was carved into the pale skin there, the lines fresh and weeping. A symbol I'd traced a thousand times as a child, hanging from a chain around my mother's throat.

The night before she disappeared, she had been wearing it.

My stomach turned over.

I was staring at the same mark